“What are you on about?” Jack cried, slamming his fist against his palm. The pulsing intensity in his eyes hinted at the thin grasp of control he had. “This is me,” he entreated. “Me, Hampstead. I know you; a man who has gone out of his way these seven years to avoid people is not a one to go about dancing in a ballroom or caring after an unwanted ward... unless there was another reason.”
Fury rippled slowly inside. An unwanted ward. Only, that was how Graham had viewed Ainsley since the moment she’d been placed in his care. Everything had changed, however... since Rowena.
Releasing a sigh, he set his glass down. It was wrong to bait the one man who’d attempted to help him all these years. A man who’d urged him to hide himself away and cut off emotional ties to all people. Only, Rowena, however, had helped him to see that he was no monster. He was just a man scarred by life... and they all wore different marks. “I cannot marry her.”
Jack scoffed. “Of course you can’t. Nor should you want to.”
“You misunderstand,” Graham corrected.
Understanding dawned in his friend’s eyes. He jumped to his feet. “What?” he asked, his voice coated in shock.
“Lady Serena... I cannot marry her.” He knew that now. Mayhap he always had.
“Because of Rowena.” It was a charged statement, nonetheless Graham nodded, confirming his friend’s supposition. He didn’t believe he’d ever earn her forgiveness or be deserving of her, but neither could he form a ruthless match with a woman he didn’t love. Not even to fulfill his responsibilities as duke.
“But... but...” Jack shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“I love her,” he confessed somberly. Shock briefly froze him at admitting that aloud after years spent squashing his emotions. “I never stopped loving her,” he murmured to himself. Even as he’d told himself he hated her, inside he’d always known that.
Jack sputtered. “But she betrayed you.”
“Why can you not see the truth, Jack?” he asked impatiently. “Why, when I’ve shown you proof of my father’s crimes. She was your friend, too.”
A choking, barren laugh left the other man’s bitterly twisted lips. “She was never my friend.”
At the vitriol there, an icy chill rushed along his spine. Graham slowly stood and clasped his hands at his back. He’d already given Jack more than he owed on the matter of his future. “We’re done here.”
The rapid rise and fall of the other man’s breath matched in time to the ticking clock atop his mantel. “And what of Lady Serena?” Jack said at last.
Guilt needled at him. Granted, he’d never publically courted the lady, and only partnered her in the requisite sets at various balls, but Jack had spoken with the young woman’s father to ascertain the amenability of a courtship. “There was no formal suit,” he said at last. “And I’ll not marry where my heart is not engaged.” He said it. Those handful of words counter to everything he’d professed these years. Rowena had shown him what it was to laugh and feel again, and he’d not live the cold, empty existence he’d lived these twelve years without her.
“And will you marry Rowena?”
“I don’t know.” Didn’t know if he could ask her to brave a life with him. Didn’t know if he had any right to try and begin again, even if she was. “I just know I cannot marry Lady Serena.”
Giving his head a disgusted shake, Jack spun on his heel, and stalked off. He slammed the door hard behind him, leaving Graham alone with the silence echoing around his office.
Now, to convince Rowena that he was, in fact, a man worthy of her.
Chapter 18
Rowena had not seen Graham since yesterday’s dance lesson... or if one wished to be precise, since Jack had arrived.
Seated at the breakfast table, she chewed at her lower lip. Was it business that commanded his notice? Or had everything they’d learned yesterday meant nothing at all?
She gave her head a shake. Do not be silly. He is a duke. I am his servant. He’d made her no promises, nor did she expect or want them. To open herself to love again would be folly. Most especially a love for him. Another betrayal at his hands would only destroy her. She hated the life that was stolen from the both of them, and the friendship they’d once shared. Just as she hated the reality that there could have never been more with him. And that he’d found the distinguished young lady he would take to wife. Her insides twisted in vicious knots. Stop.
Snap.
Rowena blinked slowly.
Seated at the opposite side of the table, Ainsley snapped her fingers. “Mrs. Bryant, I was speaking to you.”
“Speaking to...?” A rush of mortified heat climbed Rowena’s neck and spilled onto her cheeks. She sat up in her chair. “Forgive me,” she said weakly. I was woolgathering about my employer.
Ainsley eyed her again for a long moment, with far-too-perceptive eyes. “Yes, well, I asked how we would begin today’s lessons.”
There was a hopeful glimmer in the young lady’s eyes that hinted at a woman very much tired of lessons on decorous behavior and acceptable speech. In truth, Rowena herself would scream if they went through the motions of those miserable curtsies once more. “I thought we might make another visit to Hyde Park and discuss the values of art.” Those man-made gardens were the closest she felt to the English countryside... and that trip also helped get her free of this townhouse and escape Graham’s nearness. “and then after we’ve finished, we can review Society’s rules of polite discourse,” she said in feigned nonchalance.
“Is this because Hampstead is worried about my recital?”
Rowena swallowed a sigh. Of course her charge would hear that latter part above all else. She opened her mouth.
“What am I worried about?”
Rowena gasped as that deep baritone slashed across their debate.
Graham stood in the doorway. He is here. In his fitted fawn breeches, sapphire jacket, and black hessians, he was a study in masculine elegance. At the heated gaze he trained on her, all doubts faded to an afterthought. Her body burned hot from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair with the memory of his touch.
“Hampstead,” Ainsley piped in, and then with her teeth, tugged at a piece of bread. Flakes broke off and scattered about the white linen tablecloth.
Yanked back from her wicked thoughts, Rowena cleared her throat and stood.
Tossing down her nearly devoured bread, Ainsley hopped up. Her chair dragged noisily along the hardwood floor. “Hampstead,” the young lady repeated.
Modeling a curtsy for Ainsley, Rowena kept her focus trained on her charge. Sighing, Ainsley sketched another one of those rusty dips.
Graham bowed, and then gestured for them to sit. After he’d made a dish at the sideboard, he carried his plate over and claimed the chair closest to Rowena. “Well?” he prodded, as he snapped a white napkin open and placed it on his lap. “What am I purportedly worried about?”
“Your introducing me to your stodgy friends,” Ainsley replied. “And my lack of ladylike skills.”
Rowena’s heart tugged. The young lady worried about disappointing him. She wore that fear in her defensiveness.
Graham leaned back in his seat and accepted a cup of steaming coffee from a servant. “I assure you, I’m not at all worried.” It did not escape Rowena’s notice he didn’t take umbrage with the girl’s description of the guests who would grace his table. That and his confidence in Ainsley recalled all the reasons she’d first given her heart to this man all those years ago.
Still, the skepticism stamped on Ainsley’s face painted her disbelief louder than any words.
Rowena steered them back to the original focus of their discussion. “I was speaking to Miss Hickenbottom about the value of art,” she explained as Graham blew on his drink. Her charge sent her a grateful look.
“Of which there is none,” Ainsley piped in.
“There is, however, value in having an enlightened mind.”
At Graham’s solemn reply, an unexp
ected show of support, Rowena flared her eyebrows. He gave a slight, imperceptible nod that, had she not been looking, she would have missed. His meaning, however, clear—she had his support, even if he didn’t wholly agree with the merits of an art lesson, given the girl’s upcoming entrance into Society.
“Perhaps we should prepare for your upcoming recital after all, then,” Rowena suggested, deliberately wheedling. “I’ve still not heard the songs you’ve prepared—”
“I’ll take the art lesson,” Ainsley groused. Her cheeks colored, and she jutted her chin out mutinously. “I’ve already told Hampstead he needn’t worry about the recital. I can sing.” Ainsley favored Graham with a hard look. “And play the pianoforte proficiently.”
Rowena chewed at her lower lip. Even with the girl’s insistence of those respective skills, whenever Rowena suggested they prepare for the gathering, she met it with a fierce opposition and evasiveness.
Ainsley shifted in her seat. “What?” she asked, looking between them when they both said nothing. “I do have some ladylike skills.”
“I didn’t doubt your skill.” Graham lifted his glass. “Your father often talked of his love of the pianoforte.”
Ainsley scrambled forward in her seat; her gaze imploring. “Did he?” That desperate question came from a woman clearly hungry to know anything about the man who’d left her behind.
Across the table, he held his ward’s eyes. “After battle, he would often regale us with song. He often said he missed his piano more than he did any per—” His remembrance immediately cut off and a dull flush marred his neck. He coughed into his hand. “Mrs. Bryant?” he directed at Rowena, and she stared questioningly back, “I would see Ainsley perform several arrangements for our guests, in memory of her father.”
It would be an effort to, more than anything, demonstrate to the ton that Ainsley Hickenbottom was as accomplished as the ladies whose parentage was not in question. “Of course,” she assured him.
“I-I’ll decide which songs I perform in his honor,” Ainsley’s voice cracked. “As such, there are no further ladylike lessons required.” She scowled. “Including God-awful watercolors and paints.”
Her charge brought them neatly back to the original matter at hand. “Given Ainsley’s appreciation of Da Vinci, I thought we would take lessons in Hyde Park later this morning.”
“Oh, thank the bloody Lord.”
The breathless blasphemous prayer filling the breakfast room after her announcement had them, as well as the smartly uniformed footmen stationed at the walls, coughing into their hands, burying laughter.
Graham made little effort to hide his amusement. With a half-grin, he waggled his eyebrows in silent challenge.
She thinned her eyes into little slits. He found this amusing. The miserable blighter. Either oblivious or uncaring of the response she’d earned, her charge shoveled food into her mouth, as though she’d been told she was sitting down to take her last meal. No help forthcoming from Ainsley’s powerful guardian, Rowena redirected her efforts to guiding the girl. “We do not curse,” she gently reprimanded.
“My father did it all the time.” Ainsley spoke around a too-large bite of eggs.
“Indeed, he did,” Graham supplied—unhelpfully.
The girl attended her plate once more, and Rowena paused to glower at Graham. Behave, she mouthed.
He winked.
She furrowed her brow, befuddled by this... new... and yet older version of Graham Linford. Where was the pompous, unsmiling duke? And who could believe that she’d prefer him, in this instance, that stodgy ord. Gritting her teeth, Rowena stamped her foot silently under the table.
“What was that tapping?” By the teasing glint in his eyes, Graham knew damn well what that blasted tapping was.
“I didn’t hear tapping,” Ainsley put in, glancing around.
“It is because there was no tapping,” Rowena exclaimed, and two pairs of eyes swiveled to her. Her cheeks burning, she forced herself to calm.
After Graham had turned her away nearly ten years earlier, she’d resolved to never again feel. She’d prided herself on the control and mastery she’d managed over her emotions... only to take breakfast with a teasing Graham and his precocious ward and find herself vastly less polished than she’d ever believed, or hoped.
Always count to five to give oneself proper time to formulate a proper reply. Everything was proper. Proper. Proper. Proper. Gently pushing aside her plate, Rowena counted to five, using that skill ingrained by Mrs. Belden. And suddenly, she wanted to scream at the constraints imposed on her. On all of them. Mayhap, Ainsley had the right of it.
“Are you counting, Mrs. Bryant?” Ainsley asked, scratching at her brow. She looked to her guardian.
He inclined his head. “It appears as though she, in fact, is.”
“I am not counting,” Rowena said evenly. She had been counting. Altogether different matter. “Furthermore, we were discussing language that is appropriate and language that is not,” she informed, bringing them back to her earlier lesson. “I instructed Ainsley that it is impolite to go about cursing.”
“Indeed,” Graham agreed, having the decency to school his earlier amusement.
“And I believe it’s unfair a man is able to go about cursing, while a lady is not permitted those same liberties,” Ainsley countered, turning Rowena’s words back on her. In a show of protest, her charge took another large bite.
The servants’ bodies shook with their amusement. It was all bloody well and... It was all well and good that they found amusement in the girl’s spirit. It was not, however, in Ainsley’s best interests.
“One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.”
Ainsley paused with the fork halfway to her mouth.
“Do you know who said that, Miss Hickenbottom?”
Her charge eyed her with a wariness of someone far more advanced in years.
“Your Da Vinci,” Rowena neatly supplied.
“Are you using my Da Vinci against me again?” Outrage deepened the girl’s freckled face.
“I’m using your Da Vinci to show you there is reason to be in control of yourself; from your words and your movements and your actions, for reasons that extend beyond societal dictates, and deal solely with the person we allow ourselves to become.”
They sat locked in a silent battle until the young lady fell back in her seat. “Very well, Mrs. Bryant. I’ll allow you your art lesson.” She jabbed a finger in the air. “But only because it’s in Hyde Park, and Hampstead can surely use some time out of doors.”
That less-than-subtle scolding raised color to Graham’s cheeks.
Goodness, the girl didn’t need a companion. With her ability to scold a duke, she could oust Mrs. Belden from her post as headmistress.
“Shall we?” Ainsley asked, jumping up, with far more enthusiasm than one who’d been debating the merits of an art lesson only a moment ago.
At her unexpected eagerness, Rowena stitched her eyebrows and came to her feet alongside Graham. “Dip a curtsy to His Grace,” she guided, demonstrating another one of those respectful movements. She watched Ainsley as she went through the stiff movements of a still painful curtsy... And then a slow understanding dawned—why Ainsley wanted an art lesson. In the short time she’d known the girl, she had gleaned Ainsley Hickenbottom was as proud as the day was long. Did she see her lack of ladylike skills as a testament of her failings when, in fact, there were no failings there? The failings belonged solely to the ton, which set the rules and standards as to what was important and who was of value. Invariably those calculated peers always found women such as her and Ainsley as inferior. That wasn’t altogether true. There was one gentleman who never gave a jot about one’s birthright.
“Well, Hampstead, are you accompanying us to this miserable art lesson?” Ainsley challenged.
Panic flared. “His Grace, I expect, is otherwise busy.”
Instead, he remained standing. “I would not miss Mrs. Bry
ant’s first art lesson for the world.”
An afternoon in Hyde Park with Graham, even if his charge was there? Rowena choked.
Bloody hell.
A short while later, Graham walked in a stilted silence beside Rowena. They trailed along behind a quick-moving Ainsley.
How did old lovers act around one another when they discovered everything, except for three fleeting years, had been steeped in lies and deception? What was there to say? Certainly not words that could ever make any of it right.
Ainsley skipped ahead along the graveled path with a joyful exuberance. Graham gazed on wistfully at Hickenbottom’s daughter, who was near an age to Rowena when they’d first met. As a girl on the cusp of womanhood, she’d once been in possession of that same youthful innocence. They both had.
His smile crumpled. Then, he’d done as all dutiful second sons did and marched off to fight. He’d romanticized what war would be and donned his crimson uniform, only to return from war an empty version of the boy he’d been. How easily life altered a person, destroying that naiveté and leaving in its place a jaded person, rightfully wary of the world.
“You wonder that it was ever real,” Rowena said softly, and he started. “You wonder if you merely imagined and dreamed that time in your life.” Their thoughts had always moved in harmony. The spring breeze tugged and pulled at the hem of her woolen cloak. She shifted the sketchpads in her arms, and Graham reached for them.
Angling her body, she ignored his attempt to help. She’d always been proud. Too proud.
“Despite that innocence,” he murmured, “she still bears the mark of life.” Just as Rowena had, as a girl of fourteen. He’d, however, failed to see just how deeply she’d steeped herself in shame and sadness for having been born a bastard. Circumstances which said nothing of her great worth, and hadn’t mattered a jot to him.
Rowena worried at her lower lip, as she was wont to do, in a telltale gesture that spoke to her concern.
Schooling the Duke (The Heart of a Scandal, #1) Page 23