by Jane Goodger
“But what if he does?” Charles persisted. “Everyone will know and . . .” His voice trailed off, because John could see there was murder in his father’s eyes.
“We shall deal with such a happenstance should it occur,” his father said finally and with such coldness that Charles blushed.
“I will not hold you to any promises made,” Melissa said, her voice strong, her eyes steady.
Charles looked truly regretful he’d even hinted at such a thing. “There will be no need. No need,” he said. “My devotion will remain constant no matter what happens.”
For the first time, John wished Charles were not such a good man, for many men would have walked away from Melissa under these circumstances. And he wanted nothing more than for Charles to walk away.
The drive home from the ball was markedly different from the trip there. For one, John sat next to his father, his eyes never straying from Melissa, as he tried to gauge how she was faring. He could not let her out of his sight, and this feeling that he had failed to protect her made him nearly ill. Though he trusted his father to do something to Waltham, John feared he would not be satisfied with whatever course his father took.
“I think, perhaps, I should forgo any more public events,” Melissa said on a sigh. “Each time I appear in society, something terrible happens.”
“That is only because you keep wandering off and putting yourself in danger,” John said.
Melissa shot him a dark look. “The opera was my fault. But this was not. You all told me my father wouldn’t be there, and how was I to know he would accost me?”
“Why did Charles allow you to wander about by yourself? And where the hell were you, Miss Stanhope, when all this was happening?” John demanded, his anger and frustration making him surly.
“John, that is markedly unfair of you,” his father said.
“Is it? We all failed Melissa, me most of all. I was keeping my distance so that she could be with Charles, but I should have known he wouldn’t be able to protect her.”
“No one is to blame but Waltham,” George said.
John beat a fist upon his knee, wishing he didn’t feel so utterly helpless. The thought of Melissa’s being at the mercy of such a man was like acid burning in his gut. What sort of man would accost his own daughter? It was beyond depraved. If John had been with Melissa, if he had been the one asking her for a walk in the garden, he would never have let her go off on her own. He stared at Melissa, at her profile as she looked out the carriage window. As they passed the gaslights, her face was illuminated by the soft light, and she looked so ethereally lovely his heart was wrenched. To think that madman had touched her, had made her cry. How could he let her marry Charles? How could he live each day of his life without her?
The answer was simple. So simple, a surge of pure joy filled him. He couldn’t live without her. He couldn’t let it happen. He could not and would not allow Charles to marry the one woman on earth that he would ever love. What kind of fool was he to almost let her slip away from him? He was no fool, and he was done making decisions to please others. He loved Melissa, and he was quite certain she loved him. What the hell had he been thinking?
She turned to him then, just as he was coming to this conclusion, and he knew that what he was thinking was written clearly on his face. She stared at him curiously, her expression slowly softening until he saw what he was feeling reflected clearly in her eyes. And then she smiled, as if silently saying, “It’s about time, you great buffoon.”
He let out a laugh, and she joined him.
“Something is amusing now?” his father asked testily.
“No, Father, not amusing,” he said, his eyes never leaving hers. “Something rather better than that.”
Chapter 17
It was all John could do to sit there and not drag her into his arms. He would ask for his father’s blessing, but if he didn’t get it, he would take her to Gretna Green or Canada or America. He felt as if a dark, murky cloud that had been surrounding his soul for weeks had dissipated. He loved Melissa. Loved her. And he’d be damned if anything or anyone kept him from her.
As they entered the house, his father and Miss Stanhope headed directly to his father’s study.
“Father, Melissa looks impossibly weary and I am as well. I’ll bid you good night and walk Melissa to her room,” he said, keeping his voice as level as possible, considering he was walking on clouds.
“Oh, yes. Good night then,” his father said distractedly.
Miss Stanhope gave John a searching look before turning and following his father down the hall that led to the study. When John and Melissa reached the top of the first landing, he stayed her with a gentle hand on her arm.
“I need to tell you something,” he said, looking down at her, completely and utterly in love with her, and praying she felt the same. He couldn’t be mistaken, could he? He took a deep breath, letting it out in a shaky release of pent-up tension. “I love you,” he blurted. “And it will be a cold day in Hades before I let Charles marry you. That is, of course, if you love me. Otherwise, you may marry Charles, for I only want you to be happy. Though of course I wish you wouldn’t.” He closed his eyes briefly as he realized what a muck of it he was making.
Melissa stood very still, looking up at him with those solemn, beautiful eyes, and she gave him the smallest of smiles. “What of your father?”
“I don’t care. I can make him understand. Or perhaps not. Likely not. But I cannot live without you by my side. I cannot allow you to marry another, not when the very thought makes me die inside.”
She looked down at her hands. “You don’t believe in love, John. How can you be certain this is not some misguided bit of chivalry because of what happened this evening?”
“Misguided . . .” he said, stunned. “If you believe that . . .”
“I don’t, but you’ve spent a great deal of time and effort trying to get me to understand your feelings about love and marriage.” Melissa looked up at him, searching his countenance for the truth.
“I have been fighting this . . . this . . . thing I feel for you for weeks,” he said roughly. “I didn’t believe in love, Melissa, because I’d never felt it before. I’ve never felt anything like this madness that tells me I would do anything to make you happy. Anything. Even allow you to marry Charles if you love him, even though I swear my heart will be torn from my breast if you do.”
“That’s rather gruesome,” she said, smiling up at him. Why wasn’t she relieving his torment? Did she not love him? Was she trying to figure out a way to spare his feelings? Shouldn’t she be throwing herself into his arms and declaring her undying love? By God, if she didn’t love him, she ought to tell him now before he shattered. He was starting to breathe a bit harshly, and his hands were clenched by his sides to stop himself from dragging her into his arms and kissing her until she relented.
She stepped closer to him, and he stiffened, even as she kissed his cheek; he was bracing for the blow that would break his heart. “I do love you, John,” she said softly. He took her shoulders gently and pulled her away so that he could look at her face. “I’ve loved you since the day your horse took that carrot from my palm. I just didn’t trust my feelings because you were the first young man I’d ever known.”
A broad smile slowly formed on his face, and he finally allowed himself to pull her against him and kiss her silly. It was a rather unsatisfying kiss because they were both smiling like fools. They ended up laughing together, there on that landing for anyone to see should they happen by. But at that moment, neither cared.
“A very happy ending to a very terrible day,” Melissa said, burrowing her head into the crook of his neck. And he thought he could stand there forever like that, with her warm body pressed against his, with her head resting on his shoulder in complete trust. He put his hand up to stroke her hair as he had wanted to do so many times.
“Tomorrow you will break it off with Charles, and I will tell my father that we are to be married.”
“Can’t we simply hie off to Gretna Green?” she asked hopefully.
“No,” he said grimly. “We are going to hurt two people who trusted us. I am going to lose my best friend and my father’s esteem, but I don’t care.”
“I do know that Charles will be angry, but your father, surely he will understand.”
John smiled down at her, but that smile was for her sake only. He knew what was coming. He knew Charles would likely hate him for the rest of their lives. And he knew his father, a man he had never wanted to hurt, would feel betrayed. John wasn’t certain he could make him understand, but he knew he had to try. “I’m certain I can turn him around. And if not, we’ll be taking that carriage ride to Gretna.”
He took her hand and led her to her door. “I want more than anything to go into your room with you—you do know that?” He burned for her in a way he’d never burned for another, but he would not cuckold his best friend. Tomorrow night, however, after Charles had been informed that the engagement was off, well now, that was a different story entirely.
George Atwell, Earl of Braddock, did not like it when things went awry, and things had definitely gone awry. His brother’s request had seemed so simple when he’d written that letter pleading with his older brother to help his only daughter find a good marriage. It had been so easy to write back and tell Rupert that, of course, he would do what he could to ensure Rupert’s daughter was happily and safely married and that no one would hear a whisper of her illegitimate birth. Very few members of the ton even remembered George had a brother, so the idea of presenting his niece to society, of seeing her safely married, seemed such a simple one. He never could have anticipated that his niece was the Duke of Waltham’s daughter, that she would resemble his legitimate daughter so strikingly, or that the damned duke would discover her practically on the eve of her wedding to a fine young man who truly seemed to love her. It was messy and unpredictable, and he hated messy and unpredictable things. It was one reason he’d so diligently avoided marriage all these years. That thought, unaccountably, bothered him even more and gave him an unwanted reminder of last evening with Miss Stanhope.
It was only after their kiss in the garden, after his ridiculous burst of elation, that he’d begun feeling the noose get a bit too tight. So last night before they retired for the evening, he’d thought it would be a good idea to put things right between them. To be clear about where he stood. And so he’d told her as she sat stiff-backed in his study and he’d stared into the fire. Yes, he’d been a tad abrupt with Miss Stanhope. Diane. No doubt he wouldn’t be seeing her smile up at him so guilelessly again. He refused to feel bad. He refused to remember how she’d looked at him when he’d told her flat out that, while he was attracted to her physically and would enjoy making love to her, he had no plans of making their relationship permanent. She’d nodded in that no-nonsense way of hers and bid him good night. He’d thought, at first, that she’d taken his announcement rather well, until he saw her eyes change just as she turned away. She’d been stricken, perhaps even on the verge of tears, and that had bothered him. It had bothered him far more than he would like to admit, if he were honest. He’d been tempted, God help him, to call her back, to tell her he’d broken things off with his mistress weeks ago. In fact, the day after their first kiss. And that made the noose pull even more tightly.
Frankly, the woman made him nervous. She made him yearn for things he thought were long forced out of his hardened heart—things like quiet walks and making love and waking up next to the same smiling face day after day. She would be a lovely old lady, one of those women who aged well, who retained an elegance and grace so many others didn’t. And she wasn’t so old that she couldn’t bear him a child or two. Perhaps a girl with blond hair and blue eyes. He shook his head firmly, pushing away such thoughts. He could do without all that nonsense, thank you very much.
And so, when John knocked on his study door at half past eleven in the morning, he was grateful for the distraction. He enjoyed his son’s company, for John was one of the few truly intelligent, logical men he knew who shared his core beliefs. John was his rock.
“Good morning,” he called out, pulling out a blueprint for the grain mill he was building in September. “Take a look at this.” He pushed the drawings toward his son, who gave them a cursory look.
“A fine mill,” he said. “Father, I have something I need to talk to you about.”
“You haven’t been out carousing lately, have you?” George asked good-naturedly.
“It’s about Melissa.”
George’s heart sank. He truly didn’t want to talk about Melissa or the problems that now plagued him regarding his niece. He fully planned to write to Charles that day and move the wedding date up. He’d received the marriage contract from his solicitor just that morning, and given the events of the previous evening, he felt the matter of their wedding was becoming rather urgent.
“Really, John, everything’s been settled.” He’d thought that would put an end to the conversation.
“No, Father, it hasn’t. You see . . .”
George looked curiously at his son. He actually looked quite ill, and George wondered if John had stayed up late and imbibed too much port. John nervously wetted his lips, then looked him straight in the eye. “I’m in love with Melissa and want to marry her.”
George shot him a half smile. “We’ve discussed this, John. There’s no need . . .”
“You’re not listening, Father. I love her. I’ve loved her for a long time. Quite desperately. I want your blessing. We both do.”
George looked at his son as if someone else had somehow gotten into John’s skin. The noises coming from his mouth sounded like John, but the words made absolutely no sense. “That’s impossible. You know that.”
“No. It’s not. I cannot allow her to marry Charles, not loving her the way I do. I cannot live anything resembling a normal life without her.”
George barked out a laugh. “My God, John, do you hear yourself? You’re lusting after a girl—quite inappropriately, by the way—and now you have convinced yourself you love her. You and I both know love is a fleeting, worthless emotion that doesn’t exist beyond the first time you bed a woman.”
“No, Father, you are wrong. I have lusted after many women, but I’ve only loved one. I only agreed with you all these years because I had never been in love.”
George threw up his hands. “Oh, for God’s sake, John.” He stared at him in disbelief. He didn’t mean to be cruel, but really. “If it were any other girl, I’d say bed her and be done with it. But I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
“I have compromised her.”
His son’s face was like stone, and George knew he was not lying. A building anger burned in his stomach. His son, whom he trusted with his very life, had done the one thing George could not have imagined. “Are you telling me you took your cousin’s virginity?”
“She is not my cousin,” John said forcefully, and tearing his gaze from George’s expression of disbelief, he added more softly, “She is yet a maid.”
“Thank God for that.” George felt nearly limp with relief. This was not irrevocable.
“Father, you do not understand. I want your blessing, but I do not require it.”
George’s entire body stiffened, and he looked at his son as if he’d never seen him before. Who was this ardent young man proclaiming his undying love? What sort of insanity had overtaken him? This fervent, ridiculously naïve man in front of him was not his son. “You cannot mean that,” he said softly.
“I do.” And this time, John looked directly into his eyes. “I do understand the consequences of such a marriage. I know that either Melissa will be considered a bastard or you will lose your standing in your commission. I do not come to this decision lightly, Father. But I have no choice. I cannot allow the woman I love, the woman who loves me, to marry another simply because you or society tells me I should.”
“I don’t know who you are,” George said,
stunned beyond bearing that his son could betray him in this manner. “You promised to protect her. I trusted you.”
John looked truly pained by his words. “I know. And I have betrayed that trust. Every time I looked at her, every time I touched her, thought of her, I betrayed that trust. It is killing me, Father, but I cannot choose you over her, and I pray you do not ask that of me.”
George stared blindly at his desk. “Leave me now.”
“Father, please, your esteem means much to me.”
“I said leave!”
John did not start at the shout, but nodded calmly and turned away from him, pausing at the door just before he left the study. “I would never willingly do anything to hurt you, Father,” John said, his voice low and filled with raw emotion. “I love you, and this has been one of the most difficult decisions of my life. Please, Father. Please forgive me and give us your blessing.”
He left, shutting the door quietly behind him, leaving George to stare in hopeless disbelief at the spot where his son had stood.
Chapter 18
The flowers arrived just before noon. Baskets filled with a bright yellow flower, already beginning to wilt. The butler looked at them in dismay, but directed several footmen to bring them into the main parlor where Melissa sat restlessly and worked her needlepoint. Miss Stanhope, in an unusually quiet mood, read a book.
When the first footman entered, Melissa smiled at the bright flowers that filled the pretty white basket. Miss Stanhope had told her to expect such offerings from the gentlemen she’d danced with the night before. But five more baskets followed, all with the same flower—celandine.
“Who on earth would send a girl baskets filled with weeds?” Miss Stanhope said, staring at the profusion of flowers that most British gardeners pulled up and discarded.
“Joys to come,” Melissa said softly. She wouldn’t have thought John would have made such a gesture, but the meaning of these flowers was clear. She’d spent long, wonderful hours with Le Langage des Fleurs, poring over the drawings of flowers, fascinated by the idea that even something as simple as grass could have a meaning.