Her Favorite Duke

by Jess Michaels

  Simon didn’t acknowledge it as his friend left, closing the door behind him. “What is it?” he asked.

  “You were going to leave,” Meg said. Not asked—said, for she didn’t want to give him a chance to launch into a hundred explanations of the unexplainable.

  The color left Simon’s cheeks and he stared at her in silence for what felt like an eternity. “Roseford told you?” he finally asked.

  She nodded, but the movement felt jerky and unbalanced. “Yes. And thank God he did, for it seems you never would have. But that’s what your best at, isn’t it, Simon? Withholding.”

  He flinched at the accusation and she could see that he wanted to move toward her. He didn’t, of course. It seemed he was patently incapable of doing so.

  “I wasn’t trying to withhold something from you, Meg,” he said softly. “I didn’t leave, so I wasn’t certain there was any point in telling you that it was my initial plan.”

  She moved toward him, hands clenched at her sides. “Do you wish you had?”

  “Told you or left?”

  “Left!” she cried. “Do you wish you had left?”

  He bent his head. “If I had, I wouldn’t have hurt anyone.”

  She drew in a sharp, hard breath and staggered away, recoiling just as she would have if he struck her. In some ways, it felt as though he had, for the truth of him…of them…now hung between them in a way she had been trying to hide from. Avoid. Pretend she could repair.

  It was clear now that she had been a fool.

  “You would have hurt me,” she said, her voice hardly carrying.

  He lifted his gaze slowly. “What?”

  “Damn it, don’t pretend that you don’t know how I feel for you,” she said with a violent shake of her head. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know all along. You and I have had a connection that went deeper than friendship, deeper than lust, for years. We both felt it. And you know that if you had ridden off with Robert and I had married Graham, that it would have hurt me. The fact that it was only some night you regret that kept you from doing it…well, that hurts me almost as much.”

  “The situation was…complicated,” he said softly.

  “Of course it was,” she said, throwing up her hands. “I was in love with one of my brother’s best friends and marrying the other. You think that hasn’t torn me apart for years? That seeing you and wanting to be near you and wanting to touch you hasn’t broken my heart and my spirit?”

  His eyes went wide. “You love me.”

  “If you don’t know that, then you are blind as well as a coward,” she whispered. “Because I have never been very good at hiding it. Especially not when we were alone together.”

  “Meg—” he began.

  She shook her head. “No. No! I know you, Simon. You’re going to start reciting all these reasons why we are wrong and what we did was wrong and how we don’t deserve to be happy. That you don’t deserve it. But that is a pile of…well, it’s a pile of something I’m not supposed to say as a lady. And you know it.”

  “I was never trying—”

  “You were never trying at all!” She realized she was shouting. And she didn’t care. She wanted to shout. She wanted to scream because she had been silent for so long.

  “Do you think I wanted to walk away?” he snapped.

  She folded her arms. “You were going to, so in this situation I suppose it doesn’t matter what your intention was.”

  He stared at her, his mouth opening and shutting.

  She shook her head. “Simon, I know you’ve cared for me as long as I’ve cared for you. But you were never willing to fight for me. And I’ve been fighting. I’ve been fighting since we were caught together that night in the cottage and it was clear we would be forced to marry. I knew that we could be happy, that we could be…right. But now I see I was a fool.”

  She stared at him, at his beautiful face. She saw his pain. But she also saw his hesitation. And that was what broke her, for it proved to her what she already knew.

  He wasn’t willing to overcome the obstacles between them. She wasn’t worth it to him. And like Emma, she realized she didn’t want to live a life like that. She couldn’t love this man and have him incapable of allowing himself to feel the same in return.

  She’d rather be alone.

  She backed away, forcing a wall down between them just as he had done so many times before. “I’m leaving.”

  His eyes went wide. “Leaving?”

  She nodded slowly. “I need time. I need to think. I’ll go to James and Emma’s. I just need…to not be here.”

  “Please, Meg,” he said, moving to her. He caught her arms, but she struggled free of him even though his touch burned her with desire and love.

  “No,” she insisted. “I just need to…go.”

  He backed up a step, his mouth drawn down and his eyes dark with emotion. Then he nodded. “I won’t stop you.”

  Those words were meant to give her what she wanted, but her heart sank when he said them. Because in the end, that was the problem. He wouldn’t stop her. And that meant what she wanted was something she would never have.

  She shook as she turned her back on him. She shook as she walked out of the parlor in silence. She shook as she waited for Finley to call for a carriage. But she didn’t turn back and he didn’t call out for her.

  In that moment, she knew it was over.

  Simon paced the parlor, drink in hand, just as he had been doing for…God, he didn’t know how long. Hours, for certain. The room had grown dark, then light had returned.

  Meg had not.

  His mind had spun all night, spun with Graham’s accusations that he didn’t fight, with Meg’s. Their words wound together, burrowing into his soul and making him question everything he’d ever believed about himself.

  He was a peacekeeper. He had been between his mother and father, he had been between those in his group. He’d spent a lifetime trying to be whatever was needed to make things…pleasant.

  And now he was being told that it wasn’t enough. Worse, he knew that it was true. But to be more, to fight, that required him to take a risk. And giving his heart, reaching for more, that had never ended well for him over the years.

  “Your Grace.”

  He turned to find Finley in the doorway, the butler’s face drawn with concern as he looked at him. And why not? The poor man kept offering him food and suggesting he take some rest, but Simon couldn’t do it.

  He had to find a way to deal with this and he just didn’t know how.

  “What is it?” he asked, his voice rough from exhaustion.

  “It’s me.”

  The butler stepped aside and James strode into the parlor. Simon froze. His best friend’s face was tight and his eyes were bright with anger.

  “You can leave us, Finley,” Simon said softly.

  The butler did so, closing the door behind him without having to be asked to do so. The moment it clicked shut, James pushed up on him, chest forward, body language nothing but aggressive. “I asked you to do one simple thing. What was it?”

  “Not to hurt Meg,” Simon said, and his voice cracked. “And I failed you. You want to hit me, call me out, destroy me, then do it.”

  “I don’t want to do any of those things,” James snapped. “I want to see you figure out what you need to do. What you want to do. And I want to see you be happy.”

  Simon bent his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever been happy, James. I’m not sure I know how.”

  He sank into the settee and rested his head in his hands as emotions he normally controlled washed over him. He felt James sit beside him.

  “I know what your life was like as a boy,” James said. “Your father wasn’t as overtly cruel as mine could be, he wasn’t as violent as Graham’s, but I know you spent your life walking a tightrope. Trying to be what everyone wanted you to be in order to keep some kind of peace. Hell, you even tried your best to keep Graham
and me steady when we lost our way.”

  “You and he are fighters,” Simon whispered. “I just don’t know how to be.”

  “What do you want?” James asked.

  “Her,” Simon snapped, looking at his friend at last. He saw pity in James’s face, but also understanding and both broke him. “Bloody her, always her, only her.”

  James nodded. “Then you’d better figure out how to be the man she needs, because your time is running out.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She was devastated when she showed up at our home yesterday,” James said, his frown deepening. “I’ve never seen her so broken. And she…”

  “She what?” Simon asked, leaning in.

  “She left, Simon. She was determined that she couldn’t see you again, that she couldn’t know that you don’t love her enough to make her a priority. She left London this morning.”

  Simon leapt up. “Left? Where did she go?”

  “Back to Falcon’s Landing,” James said with a sigh. “I tried to talk her out of it, said that I would mediate between you. Emma tried to convince her too, she even invoked our unborn child in an attempt to guilt her into remaining. But Meg just kept saying that you hated yourself more than you loved her and she wouldn’t be a part of it anymore.”

  Simon stared at his friend, the words that James was saying settling into his skin, his soul, his mind and his heart. They mixed with Meg’s accusation that he was a coward, with Graham’s harsh words about Simon never fighting for what he wanted. It stewed together and, without thinking, Simon tilted his head back and let out a roar that all but shook the room.

  James rose slowly as Simon panted through the intense emotions that ripped him apart.

  “I have to go after her,” Simon gasped out at last when he could speak. “I have to follow her.”

  For weeks James had only looked at him with a combination of concern and contempt, but now his friend’s lips turned up slightly. “It took you long enough to figure that out. What will you do?”

  “What I should have done from the start,” he said. “What I was afraid to do for all these years. I’m going to be honest. I’m going to be open. And I’m going to…to fight for what she is and what I want. And I won’t take no for an answer, even if she gives it to me for ten years. I won’t back away until she knows that I am just as invested in her as she is in me.”

  “She loves you,” James said softly.

  He bent his head. “I haven’t deserved it before. I was so convinced that I couldn’t sacrifice anyone else’s needs to get what I wanted. But I’m going to fight to deserve it from now on.”

  “Good. That will be a start,” James said, clapping him on the arm. “So when do you go?”

  “I have a few things to prepare,” he said, wishing he could rush headlong toward Meg right that instant and throw himself on her mercy. But he had hurt her for too long and too deeply to think that was enough atonement. He needed to prove himself to her. That would take planning.

  And perhaps a few days to herself would make her more open to what he wanted to give.

  “I’m going to fix this, James,” Simon said, locking eyes with his friend. “First with Meg, and then with Graham.”

  “Worry about Meg now,” James suggested. “Now what can I do to help?”

  Simon thought on it a moment, then nodded as a plan began to take shape in his mind. “Well, first I need the very powerful Duke of Abernathe to send word to his servants…”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Meg strolled through the garden behind her brother’s country estate and let out a long sigh. Falcon’s Landing had always been an escape for her, a pleasure. But she’d been home for five days and she felt none of those things. Instead, when she looked around her, all she saw were reminders of Simon.

  There in the corner of the garden, just beside the fountain, was where she had first met him. Up on the terrace was where he had once spun her in a dance the night she came out to Society and had been so nervous she almost couldn’t move. How many times had they whispered private little jokes and stories to each other at suppers at the table in the dining room?

  And then there was her room. Once a sanctuary, all she could think of now when she laid her head on her pillows was that this was the place where Simon had come and claimed her innocence after they’d been forced to announce their engagement.

  Every place she looked was him. Was them.

  And it was so desperately unfair since she knew that “them” was a lie she’d told herself. Simon would never allow a “them” to exist. Not really.

  In the end, she supposed she’d have to just sequester herself away. Perhaps James and Emma would allow her to build some kind of little cottage on the edge of the property, a place that would hold no memories of Simon. A place where he had never touched her.

  God knew he’d probably be just as happy to be estranged. Then she wouldn’t be a constant reminder of all he had betrayed and lost.

  “Your Grace?”

  She turned to find Grimble coming down the path toward her. She wrinkled her brow, for the very proper butler was hardly ever seen outside the confines of the house.

  “Is there something I can do for you, Grimble?” she asked, clearing her mind of all her maudlin thoughts as best she could.

  “There is a bit of a problem that I fear requires addressing,” the butler said, stopping before her and shifting with discomfort. “A household issue.”

  Meg nodded slowly. “I see. Well, what is it?”

  “You know that caretaker cottage a few miles down the road on the property?”

  Meg froze at the mention of the caretaker cottage. That was probably why Grimble was shifting so furiously now. Everyone knew what had transpired there between her and Simon. Well, they thought they knew, anyway.

  “Yes, I think you know I know the spot,” Meg managed to croak out and Grimble blushed slightly. “What is it?”

  “Well, Toby was going out to market earlier today and happened to take the long path through the estate. He noticed that some damage had been done to the cottage, and he feared some items inside might be missing.”

  Meg folded her arms. “Grimble, I appreciate the importance of the issue, but why are you addressing this to me? It seems like something the estate staff could handle quite well on their own. Have them begin to repair the damage and take an inventory. Then write to Abernathe to let him know of the situation.”

  Grimble cleared his throat. “Yes. Of course. I shall do that, but you see, you were the last person to be inside the cottage, Your Grace. And since there may be items missing, we thought it would be best if you could go and make some kind of list of anything you notice amiss.”

  Meg shook her head. “I-I may have been there recently, but I couldn’t—”

  She stopped herself. It was amazing how physical her reaction to this situation was. The very idea of going to the caretaker cottage again made anxious tingles run through her body. To go back there, to face that place…

  Grimble was staring at her. “I do not want to cause you discomfort, Your Grace, of course. I only thought you might be able to help.”

  Meg sighed. “No, you aren’t…it—it isn’t your fault, Grimble. And you are right, as the last person on the estate who was at the cottage, I might be the best judge of what is to be found there.” She stared off through the garden for a moment, trying to calm herself as she considered her options. “I could use a ride anyway. I’ll go past the cottage and have a look.”

  Grimble almost sagged with relief. “Thank you, Your Grace. That would be most appreciated.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll go change. Will you ask that Star be saddled for me?”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” Grimble said, falling into step beside her. “And I’ll have a picnic lunch prepared for you, as well.”

  Meg did her best not to let out a deep sigh. Her broken heart must be very obvious, indeed, to have Grimbl
e so forcefully pushing her to make half a day of her excursion. But perhaps he was right that it would do her some good to get away. She’d look in on the cottage, make her observations and then take a long ride.

  “Very good,” she said as they entered the house and she headed for the stairs. “I’ll be down shortly.”

  She moved to her chamber and rang for Fran to help her into her habit. It had been a long time since she rode and Star was her favorite mount, but despite all that, she didn’t look forward to it. Going back to the caretaker cottage felt like returning to a scene of a crime. And right now she wasn’t ready to face that, or all the feelings that still boiled inside of her that would likely never be resolved.

  Simon saw the rider coming long before she arrived. He caught his breath and lifted his spyglass to his eye as he leaned against the window. Meg wore a dark blue riding habit and a jaunty hat, but when he caught a glimpse of her face, his heart sank. She looked utterly miserable.

  And it was going to take a lion’s share of work to fix that.

  He put the glass away and looked around. He had been in Abernathe for two days. Two days of hard work had put the caretaker cottage into good shape, ready for Meg and all his plans for her.

  If she would stay, that was. If he had not done so much damage that she would turn away from any offer he made, not trusting him.

  In the past, such a possibility would have perhaps put him off. But not today. Not with Meg. With Meg, he had to fight. It was what she needed, what she deserved. And perhaps for the first time in his life, it was what he wanted to do.

  He wanted to earn her.

  He heard her pulling up to the cottage. She said soft words to her mare. It was time.

  He drew in a long breath, and walked to the door and outside to greet her.

  She was staring up at the cottage but when he exited the house, that expression changed. For a brief moment he saw pure joy when she looked at him, love, desire, pleasure. But then those were wiped away. Pain slashed across her face and she brought a wall down between them that he knew he was entirely responsible for.