Unable to meet her life-hardened eyes, he dropped his gaze to the table.
Lightning cracked noisily, casting a streak of bluish-white light through the dirtied windowpane, shattering his maudlin thoughts and her fleeting calm. Rowena gasped, her skin blanching. She’d been forever changed... and even all these years later, the sight of her fear gutted him worse than the bullet shot into his left thigh at the Battle of Bussaco. It matters not. Her demons are her own...
“What are you reading?” the quiet question left him before he could call it back.
He sought to distract her. The same way she’d always known him so well; his soul a mirror of her own in some ways, she knew he sought to divert her attentions from the storm.
Why did he have to unsettle her like this? The baiting and harshness were easier than this gruff concern. Concern that contradicted the aloof stranger who’d forced her from Mrs. Belden’s and back into his life and into a world in which she didn’t belong.
Why should he even care if I’m scared or worried... or... or anything? And no matter that on the morrow they’d return to being aloof strangers; for now, he was the friend from long ago. She hesitated and then slowly turned her book around. Rowena braced for his mockery.
“Proper Rules of Proper Behavior and Proper Decorum,” he murmured. She sought to make out anything in his emotionless tone.
He’d always been teasing and charming. Where all the young women and ladies in the village had courted the favor of his brother, the future duke, she’d never given a jot for that useless title. Rowena braced for a jest.
That did not come. His face a carefully schooled mask that revealed nothing, he collected the volume from her, drawing her eyes to his right hand. A vicious scar marred the center of that once perfect appendage, this jagged flesh highlighting the truth—he was no longer that coaxing boy and she was no longer that always-grinning girl. “It is not a gothic novel,” he said. His was more a matter-of-fact observation from a man given to ponderings.
“No. It is not,” she confirmed. Long ago, she’d ceased reading those tales. Those silly tales of love and good triumphing over evil had served as nothing more than a mockery for the reality that was life. “Work hardly permits a woman the luxury of time to read for pleasure.” She settled for a safe, false explanation.
“Is that what this is? Material you are expected to read for your employment?” He lifted his gaze. His penetrating stare could pierce her every secret and unspoken regret.
“It is all that is available for us to read.” Her words came haltingly. Was this another game he played with her?
“Us?” He lifted an eyebrow.
The dragons. “The instructors,” she clarified. Women seen as an extension of the dreadful Mrs. Belden and hated for it. A coolly, emotionless woman Rowena had morphed into these years. She balled her hands into fists, and she battled back regret at the way life had turned out for her. Of course, she should be only grateful. Whereas her mother had been passed around from protector to protector, Rowena had been spared that ignoble fate. The duke had seen her cast out of the folds of her family, and she’d lost every remnant of her once-happy existence. But he hadn’t seen her suffer the fate of a whore. What a horrid liar she was even in her own mind. Bitterness soured her mouth. For this childless and husband-less existence had never been the one she’d dreamed of. She tamped down a sound of disgust with herself. How wholly selfish and ungrateful, not being content with security and secretly yearning for more.
At Graham’s silence, she stole a sideways peek at him. Instead, he continued to wordlessly turn the pages of her book. What did he think of the words there? Those tedious lessons designed to drum all spirit out of a woman and make her into a refined, emotionless figure?
The Graham of her youth would have pressed her with questions. Mayhap teased her for the silliness inked in those pages, and they would have both dissolved into laughter. This new life-hardened, older version of himself said nothing but rather periodically flipped those pages in a distracted manner. The hated note pressed into her hands long ago, slipped onto the table, whispery soft in its descent. They froze. At once, they looked at it. Oh, God. Heart racing, she shot her hands out and rescued the page from his vision and tucked it into her lap. Surely a man who’d so easily discarded her wouldn’t recall that long-ago note. A letter now aged by time. If he did, what would he make of her carrying it around, all these years later?
He narrowed his eyes but did not press her for details on that yellowed scrap. “Your Mrs. Belden’s sounds like a miserable place.” Her Mrs. Belden’s. Ironically, it was the only place that had truly belonged to her. A place where young ladies’ souls went to die. Students and instructors alike. An establishment filled with strangers, whose very presence there ensured Rowena’s security. But security did not always happiness bring.
It is a miserable place.
“And yet you remain on there?”
Rowena stared unblinkingly at his immaculately folded white cravat. Had she spoken aloud? She trailed the tip of her tongue over the seam of her lips, picking her way carefully around her words. “There are not many options”—outside of whoring oneself—“for a young woman without noble connections.” Even less for a reformed courtesan’s apparently equally wicked daughter.
...You could return home...
As soon as the notion slipped forward, she started. Where had the foolish idea come from? Once upon a lifetime ago, she’d entertained the thought of again seeing her parents and sisters. With the passage of time, she’d accepted the truth—they’d never truly seen her as a member of their family. She’d too much pride to go back to the people who’d turned her out. Nor had they made so much as an effort to welcome her back. Rowena gave her head a slight shake, shoving unwanted memories to the side. No, she was not so much the fool that she’d ever trust anyone but herself again.
Graham folded his arms and, in an effortless move more befitting the carefree lad he’d been, he kicked back on the legs of his chair, hooding his thick black lashes all the more. “Your family could not have taken you in after your husband passed?” Her fictional husband.
Rowena dropped her hands to her lap and balled them so hard that her nails left crescent marks upon the flesh. “Is that a question?” she dodged.
“An observation.”
Of course, Graham, as a duke, would know all. Not all. That ugliest sin kept from him, the one that had seen his father shatter her. It was a fragile secret that his miserable father had taken to his grave. Or had he?
“I see your family when I return to Wallingford Castle.”
For a second time, the parents who’d betrayed her, the life she’d left behind, forced their way back into her thoughts.
Oh, God. His casual statement ripped a jagged, vicious hole inside her heart that left her aching and numb. That he should see her kin when she remained nothing more than a stranger to them. A mother. A stepfather and two younger sisters who may as well have shared all her blood for the depth with which she’d loved them. It was what had made leaving them possible. Even so... that selfish, small part of her wished her parents had fought the duke for her. Wished they’d put her before their family’s security. But she’d never mattered to anyone in that capacity: not the mother who’d birthed her. The lord who’d sired her. The stepfather who’d called her his daughter on a lie. And not Graham.
“I...” Words stuck in her throat, melding with the agony of pained regret and love. “Do you?” Was that hoarse, ragged whisper her own? Lightning cracked close to the Fox and Hare and, for once, she did not hear that always terrifying sound, fixed as she was on Graham’s words.
“At Sunday sermon.” He paused. “When I attend.” He grinned, and her heart caught, as he was momentarily transformed into the dashing boy who’d won her heart. “I recently saw them at the village fair. I’d been observing the festivities.” As any benevolent lord would do. “Your sisters were speaking to an old gypsy woman...” He continued speaking, his
voice coming as if from down a long, muted corridor.
She’d relegated the memory of her mother and two younger siblings to the far-flung corners of her mind. Not thinking of them. Not drawing forth memories. In that place, they remained forever young, frozen in time, unaging versions of their innocent selves. But they were not. Bianca and Blanche would now each be young women, seventeen and eighteen... The same Rowena had been when she’d been sitting with friends, giggling about gypsy’s tales and lore. She swallowed hard. Only, her sisters had no doubt avoided the wicked path Rowena and her mother had once traveled. Were they even now happily wedded to kind gentlemen from the village? Her heart pulled with that hope for them.
Mayhap Graham was even crueler than she’d credited, and his purpose in joining her was to flay her open and leave her even more exposed and broken than he had before. Rowena leapt from her seat so quickly, her chair scraped along the hardwood floor, noisy in the quiet inn.
Stopping mid-sentence, Graham looked questioningly up at her.
“I have to go,” she rasped, and gathering her book and stuffing the note inside, she spun on her heel and did what she should have done the moment she’d spied him sitting in the taproom: she fled.
Chapter 7
His tankard empty and forgotten, Graham remained in the taproom long after Rowena left. Steepling his fingers under his chin, he stared into the high flames dancing inside the hearth.
When he’d gone off to battle Boney’s forces and learned firsthand the harsh reality of war, Rowena had been the person he’d clung to. As friends were cut down around him on the battlefields, he’d fought through the gripping agony of loss by thinking of her face. And when he’d slayed his first victim with a bayonet to the throat, sobbing and screaming, it had been the hope of seeing her again that had given him the strength to end that man’s life—and all the countless others he’d killed thereafter.
The moment he’d learned of her perfidy in her parents’ cottage all those years ago, he’d taken his leave of them, bitter and broken. He’d descended first into a bottle, and then further and further into debauchery in the arms of countless whores and mistresses. None of the scandalous parties or wicked women had done anything to dull the pain of losing Rowena. In a bid to drive her from his memory he’d shredded all hint of morality. Carousing, drinking in the most dangerous ends of London. Until one of his moments of madness had seen a nameless whore with a swollen cheek and terror in her eyes. He’d stumbled from that room, and with the help of Jack, his one loyal friend, found his way home. It was the last time he’d relinquished control of his emotions or taken a woman to his bed. Every decision he’d made for the past eight years had been logical and clearly thought out.
Until now. With Rowena’s reemergence, all the oldest hurts and regrets and resentments stirred, challenging the life he’d made for himself. It no doubt accounted for the moments of madness he’d suffered not once, but twice in her company.
Not for the first time since he’d required Rowena return to London with him, he doubted the wisdom of that decision. By her very presence, she threatened his need for placidity. But against his better judgment, he’d demanded she take the post of companion, and now his turbulent mind was paying the price for that rashness.
Rain beat down a heavy torrent on the roof of the Fox and Hare Inn. Steady rivulets struck the lead windowpanes with a noisy pinging like sharp nails being driven into the glass.
What was that note tucked between the pages of her book? At first, he’d believed it was nothing more than a letter from Mrs. Belden. The pain that seized her features before she’d gone told a different tale. As a man with secrets, he well appreciated that every person battled their own demons. Yet, his fingers had still twitched with the need to yank the book from her fingers and read the words she’d so desperately sought to protect. What words were written there? Had they been penned by Mr. Bryant and Rowena had therefore kept them close? An unwanted, seething jealousy twisted around inside. You bloody fool...
“Another ale, my lord?”
Graham started, and looked from the indicated tankard to the always grinning innkeeper, Martin, who held a cloth in hand. “No. Thank you.” Pushing back his chair, he stood.
Dropping a bow, Martin set to work wiping down the scarred but immaculate table. Graham made his way abovestairs, the wood stairs groaning loudly in the nighttime still. He started down the narrow corridor, briefly pausing beside a door. Her door. His jaw flexed as resentment flooded him that she should know rest when his thoughts ran amok with questions and regrets.
Giving his head a disgusted shake, he found his rooms and closed the door quietly behind him. Shucking off his jacket, he laid it neatly on the lone chair. His cravat came next. With meticulous, precise movements, he unfolded the stark white satin and set it atop the seat. The young man he’d been before he’d gone off to war, he would have thought nothing of tossing the garments into a messy heap or even sleeping in his travel-worn clothes. From across the small, cramped quarters, he caught sight of his reflection. The cracked and dusty mirror did little to conceal the austere features and stiff set to his frame that was very much his father’s. Graham stared at himself. This is who he’d become. This is the cool, emotionless figure he’d worked so desperately to become. And he’d do well to remember the need for that rigid control. Seeking out the bed, he sat and removed his boots. He lined them up with their sides touching against the bed. It was those little measures of control that grounded him.
Graham reclined on the lumpy mattress and closed his eyes, eager for sleep so he might be free of Rowena Bryant.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Bloody hell. At that incessant trickle he opened his eyes. In the darkened space, he stared at the ceiling. The lone candle cast shadows about the room and highlighted the water pooled in the far corner of the Fox and Hare’s finest rooms—as the proud innkeeper had referred to them.
He shifted the pillow under his head, all the while considering that growing water stain on the wall. Where most noblemen would have sneered at the accommodations, Graham had spent too many years with the hard, muddy earth as his only mattress and rain-soaked garments his only protection from the elements. No. It was not the state of the rooms or his miserable mattress that kept him from sleeping. Nor the nightmares that haunted him too often.
Rather, the grief that had contorted Rowena’s face, just before she’d hastened away from the taproom and raced up the stairs that kept him awake, still. At one time, there had been no secrets between them. She would have turned to him and shared whatever silent trouble that weighted her, just as he would have shared with her. When he’d entered Mrs. Belden’s and demanded she be hired as companion to his ward, he’d gleefully relished the reality of her having no choice but to enter into his household and squirm as he forced her to confront her own treacheries. And at last, with her in his life, he could put the memory of her to rest. Purge her from his thoughts and retake mastery of the heart she’d ravaged eleven years earlier.
What he’d not accounted for was this tender regard for her that had existed since the moment they’d spit in their palms and shook on a pledge of forever friendship to the day he’d lain her down under the stars and claimed her virginity in an act of love.
A rolling thunder rocked the countryside and he turned his head, looking toward the wall shared between him and Rowena. He strained his ears. Mayhap she slept.
His senses, heightened on the battlefield, and the paper-thin walls between them did little to mute her faint whimpering. Graham dragged his hands over his face. Why could she not be sleeping? Why could she not be peacefully resting, so that he did not have to lay in the opposite chamber joined by a thin wall knowing and hearing those telltale sounds of her fear?
She is not my responsibility. She is nothing more than a servant in my employ.
She was also the woman who when he’d been off battling Boney’s men had not bothered to write him a single note. The same woman who, for the years of frie
ndship between them, hadn’t even had the decency to tell him to his bloody face that in his absence she’d come to love another. Instead, she had left him to find out from her parents and his loyal friend turned man-of-affairs.
Then, his heart always had been weak for her.
A streak of lightning illuminated the room in a soft blue light. He automatically turned his head toward her chambers. Rowena’s low moan filtered into his room.
With a curse, Graham gave up on the hope of a peaceful slumber. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and climbed to his feet. The floorboards shifted and groaned in protest as he stalked over to the faded white plaster that separated him from her. Spreading his arms, he propped his palms on the walls and leaned his forehead against the cool surface.
Another flash of light spilled through his chamber window, followed by a sharp crack that struck close to the inn.
He pressed his lips into a hard line and knocked his forehead silently against the surface, listening to her whimpering as it pierced the walls. After her treachery, he’d believed nothing could bring him peace in life except to know Rowena Endicott suffered. What he’d failed to realize, until he’d forced her back into his life, was that her suffering still had the power to gut him. Graham sank to the floor. “Are you all right?” he called, not for the first time that day.
Silence met his inquiry and, for a long moment, he thought she’d feign sleep. “I am all right, Your Grace.”
Your Grace. “Graham,” he reminded her, frustration turning over inside him that she continued “Your Gracing” him. Silence met his request, stretching on, indicating she’d either not heard or had no intention of replying.
Schooling the Duke (The Heart of a Scandal, #1) Page 9