by Laura Landon
“Yes?”
“Is there any way we can ever be together?”
A painful silence followed. His lack of response should have answered her question, but he couldn’t take a chance that she’d harbor any hope. Through a pain that was more agonizing than he could bear, he gave her the only answer he could. “No.”
She nodded as if she’d anticipated his response, but her hand trembled as she lowered the latch.
She opened the door and stepped into the corridor.
He didn’t know how it had come to this. He shouldn’t have let her stay the night with him. He shouldn’t have held her in his arms. He shouldn’t have let himself dream that every night could be like this one. But he had no control where she was concerned.
And for the rest of his life he would have to live with this and every other memory they’d shared…
…and lost.
CHAPTER 20
Nothing was real from the time they stepped off the ship in London. Harrison waited for them at the docks with four carriages. One for Hannah and Morgan. One for Austin, Harrison and herself. One to take the Marquess of Culbertson to his residence. And one to take Gabriel away from her.
She pressed her fist against her stomach. She hurt. Oh, dear God, but she hurt. This time when he left her there would be no reason to come back.
They reached Etherhouse and Harrison kept her close as they made their way up the walk. Ruskins opened the door and for the first time in her life the butler wore a smile on his face.
“Welcome home, Lady Lydia,” he said with a respectful bow.
“Thank you, Ruskins. It’s good to be home.”
Harrison gave the order to bring tea, then led them to the morning room. “Why don’t we sit down? After such a long day, I believe a brandy is in order for both Austin and myself.”
Harrison went to the sidebar and poured Austin a brandy. Ruskins opened the door and a servant entered with tea and sandwiches that she set in front of Lydia.
“Ruskins,” Harrison said before the butler could leave. “Have Cook kill the fatted calf. I’ve listened to my brother’s stomach growl for more than an hour now. Please, warn her that he’ll undoubtedly devour everything she puts in front of him.”
“Very good, sir.”
“A toast,” Harrison said after Ruskins closed the door behind him.
Austin and Harrison each had their brandy, and Harrison poured Lydia a small glass of sherry so she could join his toast.
“To my brother, who gave me the worst scare of my life, and who I’d miss more than life itself if he hadn’t come back to us.”
Harrison and Lydia raised their glasses.
“To Liddy,” Harrison continued. “Who put herself in danger, not because she was asked, but because she’s the true hero of our family.”
Lydia blushed as her brothers raised their glasses to toast her.
“And to Major Gabriel Talbot,” he added. “A dear friend. One who’s not present to hear this, but to whom I owe more than I’ll ever be able to repay. He had in his care the two most important people in my life and he brought them back safely. This isn’t the first time he’s made the ultimate sacrifice for our family and we will forever owe him more than we can pay.”
A knowing glance passed between her two brothers and with eyes that glistened with emotion, they drank a toast.
Lydia wasn’t sure what Harrison meant when he said this wasn’t the first time Gabriel had made the ultimate sacrifice for their family, but she assumed he meant the times he’d saved Austin’s life during the war. That had to be it. And yet…
“Now,” Harrison said, refilling Austin’s and his glass. “I want to hear this brilliant plan of Gabe’s that got you safely out of France.”
Austin related every detail of how they’d hidden in the barrels that Gabriel passed off as refuse. Then, when he feared they’d be discovered, Gabriel had jostled one of the barrels of slop.
Lydia knew if Gabriel were here he’d stop Austin from making him out the hero, but without his interference, it was impossible to lessen his ingenuity and bravery. He was a hero. His heroism came out more clearly with every detail Austin revealed. But Gabriel wasn’t here to be a part of their celebration. He’d chosen to make their break clean.
Lydia thought of the night they’d spent in each other’s arms. Was it possible that his world hadn’t changed as drastically as hers?
Was it possible that what they’d shared had meant nothing to him?
A niggling wave of trepidation gnawed away at her, causing an uneasy feeling to sit in the pit of her stomach and refuse to go away.
He’d meant it when he’d said there wasn’t any way they could ever be together, but somehow she knew separating himself from her hadn’t been his choice. She knew he didn’t intend to see her again. But the reason wasn’t because he didn’t care for her enough. She would know if that were the case. If there was one thing she was certain of, it was that Major Gabriel Talbot cared for her. No, not just cared for her.
Major Gabriel Talbot loved her.
Lydia smiled – not a small grin she could hide behind the cup of tea she’d raised to her mouth, but a wide, euphoric smile that made her want to shout with glee. Gabriel loved her just as she loved him, injured leg included. But there was a reason he’d walked away from her, and it had nothing to do with the dowry he’d used as an excuse not to marry her.
An explosion of light ignited somewhere inside her breast. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but it gave her a glimmer of hope. If she could discover the reason he thought he couldn’t marry her…
“Why did Gabriel refuse to marry me a year ago?”
Her question couldn’t have had a greater impact if she’d dropped a cannon ball in the middle of their sitting room. The glass in Harrison’s hand stopped mid-way to his mouth and Austin sputtered as he tried to swallow the sip of brandy that suddenly seemed to have difficulty going down.
“Would you like me to repeat my question?” she said, watching the color fade on both her brothers’ faces. “What was the real reason Gabriel—”
“We heard you,” Harrison interrupted.
Of her two brothers, he seemed to recover first. Austin, however, kept his gaze focused on some insignificant spot on the other side of the room.
“You know what Gabriel told you,” Harrison said.
“I know that what he told me was a lie. My dowry meant nothing to him.”
“What would you have lived on?”
Lydia smiled. “I have Southerby Manor.”
“Do you think that would have been enough?”
Lydia wanted to laugh. “Yes, it would have been enough. We loved each other,” she said, rising from the sofa. “Love and Southerby Manor would have been more than enough.”
She moved her gaze from one brother to the other. “What happened when Gabriel met with Father? You were there. What did Father say that forced Gabriel to tell me he didn’t love me?”
A soft knock on the door prevented her brothers from having to answer her question.
“The Duke of Chisolmwood is here,” Ruskins announced. “I suggested that now was not a good time but he was quite insistent.”
Harrison and Austin exchanged uncomfortable looks, then Harrison rose from his chair. “Show the duke in, Ruskins.”
“Very well.”
The Duke of Chisolmwood walked in without being announced.
“Your Grace,” Harrison said stepping away from his chair.
“Etherington.”
The greetings were stilted. When they’d finished with the required pleasantries, the duke turned his attention to Lydia. A chill ran down her spine.
“I’m glad to see you are no longer missing.” He studied her with an assessing glint.
“I was hardly missing, Your Grace. I was visiting.”
“Whom were you visiting?”
Lydia tried to make her lie convincing. “I spent last month in the country.”
“How interestin
g, then, that you were seen disembarking from the Silver Star just a few hours ago along with your brother, Captain Landwell, and Major Talbot.”
Lydia fought the warning that caused her blood to rush to her head. “Then you also know that your son, the Marquess of Culbertson, disembarked from that same ship.”
“Yes. I just left my son and heard some fabrication that doesn’t bear repeating. I thought perhaps you might be able to enlighten me as to the real reason you went to France.”
“I’m afraid I can’t. Where I’ve been isn’t open for discussion.”
The Duke of Chisolmwood’s eyebrows narrowed. “Then perhaps we should move on to a topic that is open for discussion.”
“And what might that be?”
“The announcement of your engagement to my son.”
Lydia’s breath caught in her throat. “I—”
His Grace held up a hand to stop her from continuing. “I just informed my son that I will schedule a celebration to announce your engagement a week from today.”
“Your son agreed?”
“Of course. He knows his duty. He’s known for more than a year that he’s required to marry you.”
Lydia clasped her hands in front of her and faced their guest. “Because it’s his duty?”
“Liddy,” Harrison said, his voice filled with warning.
She ignored him. She was tired and frustrated and her nerves were stretched to the limit. The man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with had just walked away from her for the second time. Now, the Duke of Chisolmwood was explaining that his son would marry her ‘because it was his duty’ and she would marry him for the same reason. Well, she didn’t care a fig about duty.
She glared at the duke. “Perhaps,” she said louder than she intended, “I prefer to have a choice in selecting the man I’m to marry.”
“You don’t have a choice. You never did. Your year of mourning allowed you a postponement, not a reprieve.”
“Because my father signed some paper?”
“Yes. Because your father signed some paper. A legal agreement, signed by your father and witnessed by your brothers.”
Lydia’s gaze darted to Harrison, then to Austin. She couldn’t believe they’d had a hand in her betrayal. They both knew how much she and Gabriel loved each other. “How could you?”
“Oh, don’t blame them,” Chisolmwood said. “They had no more choice than your father.”
Her blood ran cold and she took a step closer to the Duke of Chisolmwood. “What did you say that made my father sign your agreement?”
“Nothing, really. I simply gave him a choice he couldn’t refuse.”
“What choice?”
Chisolmwood’s brows arched and he looked toward Harrison, then back to her. “Your father didn’t tell you?”
Lydia couldn’t hide her surprise. “Tell me what?”
Chisolmwood smiled, then gave a bitter laugh. “He took our secret to his grave. How like him.”
“What secret was there between you and my father? And what choice did you give him?”
Chisolmwood hesitated, then answered her with a staggering degree of haughty confidence. “I gave him the choice of making you the Duchess of Chisolmwood, or, allowing you to marry a penniless major and bringing about the total ruination of himself and your brothers.”
Lydia swayed and Harrison’s arm was there to support her. “You threatened to ruin Father?”
She looked up and saw a dark, angry stain in Harrison’s eyes. Austin hadn’t moved from the center of the room but the glare in his eyes was even blacker than Harrison’s.
“And Gabriel? Is that why he told me he didn’t want to marry me?”
The room filled with a deadly silence as she looked from one brother to the other, then finally focused all her bitterness on the Duke of Chisolmwood. “Why is it so important that I marry your son?”
Chisolmwood took a regal step forward and breathed in a breath so huge it lifted his shoulders. “Because you were born to be a duchess.” He slashed his hand through the air. “Just as your mother was. Until he stole her from me.”
The hostility in Chisolmwood’s voice shocked her. She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out.
“You were in love with our mother?” Austin said.
“And she was in love with me! Until your father forced her to marry him!”
Lydia looked first at Harrison, then Austin. The shocked expressions on their faces told her Chisolmwood’s revelation was as complete a surprise to them as it was to her.
Lydia shook her head. The duke was mistaken. Her mother and father had been more in love than any two people she’d ever known. Obviously, though, Chisolmwood had never gotten over loving a woman he couldn’t have. “So you decided if you couldn’t have my mother, your son would have me?”
Chisolmwood smiled. “You’re so much like her you could be my Genevieve in the flesh. If only I could have saved her from the life she had, married to him.”
Lydia stepped out of the protective cocoon Austin and Harrison had formed around her and walked to the other side of the room.
She kept her back to the duke and for several long seconds stared at the lifeless logs in the grate. When she couldn’t stand the anger raging through her any longer, she slowly turned to face him.
“What did you use to blackmail my father?”
“His debts.”
“How much?”
The corners of Chisolmwood’s mouth lifted. “More than your brothers and Major Talbot could begin to pay. Although they’ve made a valiant effort to do so.”
She remembered Gabriel’s demand for the largest note in exchange for his presence at the ball Chisolmwood hosted.
Her world shifted around her. To keep her father and brothers from being ruined, Gabriel had told her he didn’t love her. Then he’d demanded the largest of her father’s notes. She focused her gaze on Harrison. “How much is left to pay?”
The expression on Harrison’s face turned hopeless. “More than we could pay if I sold everything we own.”
Lydia’s heart plummeted to the pit of her stomach. “And if I refuse your son’s offer?” She faced Chisolmwood bravely even though a feeling of dread overwhelmed her.
“Everything that isn’t entailed will be mine, and everything that is entailed will fall to ruin in a matter of a few years.”
Lydia fought the thundering of her heart. This was the same choice Gabriel had faced. “You’re that desperate for your son to marry me?”
“I’m that desperate to make your mother’s daughter a duchess. I’m that desperate to give you everything I wanted to give your mother but couldn’t.”
“Even though you know I don’t love your son but love someone else? The same as my mother loved someone else and didn’t love you?”
“No! Your mother loved me. She always loved me. Always!”
Lydia suddenly realized that the Duke of Chisolmwood had lived with the delusion of her mother’s love for so long his fantasy had become a reality. Which meant there were no lengths to which he wouldn’t go to see her married to his son.
“My son will come to see you shortly.”
Lydia tried to meet the duke’s threats with a courage she far from felt. As if he realized the threat she was about to make, he held up his hand to stop her words.
“You’ll accept his offer. You are too much like your mother to do anything different. You will make whatever sacrifice is necessary to save your brothers from ruin.”
“Is that what you think my mother did?”
“Of course. With never a word of complaint.”
Lydia stared at Chisolmwood and searched for the words that would make him believe her mother had been happy with her father. But she suspected anything she said would fall on deaf ears.
She let her gaze move to where her brothers stood together. The soldier in Austin faced her with his jaw clenched tight, his shoulders squared, with the forced bravado of a man facing a firing squad. In cont
rast, Harrison studied her with the quiet strength that had always been his forte. Oh, how she loved them.
She knew how much they hurt for her, knew how much they wanted things to be different, but nothing could change what she had to do.
“Liddy—” Harrison started to say but Lydia held up her hand.
“Don’t. You’ve known all along how this had to end.”
Lydia faced the duke. “You may tell your son I’ll be expecting his visit.”
She turned away from him before she had to see the superior gloat of victory on his face, and walked toward the door. She couldn’t stand to be in the room with the man who’d just destroyed her chance for happiness, and yet…
She stopped when she reached the door. She couldn’t leave without telling the Duke of Chisolmwood something she hadn’t told another living soul, something even her brothers didn’t know. She turned.
“I was with my mother when she died. She was very weak and in a great deal of pain. But at the end, she wouldn’t take any more laudanum because she said it muddled her mind. I sat beside her on the bed and she took my hand and pulled me close. She wanted to make sure I heard her last words.”
“What did she say?” The look on Chisolmwood’s face filled with hopeful anticipation.
“She said, ‘Take care of your father. Leaving him behind is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.’”
Lydia didn’t wait to see Chisolmwood’s reaction but stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her.
She thought of her life without Gabriel and understood what her mother had meant.
CHAPTER 21
Lydia made her way through the crush in the Plunkett’s ballroom on her way to the terrace. The crowd was unbelievable tonight, with nearly all of Society back for the start of the Season.
It had been nearly a week since they’d returned from France, and each night she’d gone to either a ball, a musicale, or the opera.
As everyone in Society had noted, the Marquess of Culbertson had also been in attendance.
She glanced to an alcove at the back of the room near the door that led outside and studied him. He was deep in conversation with her friend Emmeline. The two seemed to get along very well so Lydia didn’t feel guilty about leaving him.