Forever and a Day

by Delilah Marvelle

  The duke pointed at him, shaking his gray head, and edged back. “No. That is where you are wrong. For I wholeheartedly believe in love and would never put anything before it. I was married to your mother, for God’s sake, and that was a love I dare you and the rest of the world to match!”

  The duke dropped his hand heavily to his side and glanced away. Drawing in a ragged breath, he hissed it out, lowering his gaze. “I never knew fire until your mother came along.” The duke threw back his head and blinked rapidly as if fighting tears. “The very thought of her still makes me ache despite her being gone all these years. It just so happened that she and I were born of the same world. Such is not the case with you and Mrs. Milton.”

  The duke leveled his head. “Even if I allowed you to marry this poor girl for love, in the end, it is not you or I who will suffer, but her. Bless her heart, but that woman doesn’t breathe like us or think like us. Your desire to make her into the sort of woman London will accept is ludicrous. It takes years to create the lady London wants and by then she’ll be dead to you. They will only shred her apart and shun her until all of that fire you love in her will turn against you and burn you to cinder like you damn well deserve.”

  Grabbing hold of both his shoulders, the duke turned him toward himself and shook him gently. “Our wealth and our name are strong. They will survive this if I relent, give or take a gash or two. But she won’t survive any of it. She sees the tide rising well above her head and is already warning you of it, yet she is still willing to drown for you. By God. That is a woman worth loving, and I am asking you to not only love the poor girl, but save her. Your mind isn’t what it should be, which is the only reason why I have to tell you any of this. She will have everything except for the one thing that matters most—respect. And that respect will never be earned by handing over our title through marriage. She will only be seen as some wretch you plucked up off the street. Is that what you want for her?”

  Shifting his jaw, Roderick glanced away and eased out of his father’s grasp. “What are you asking me to do?”

  “I am asking you to let her go before she suffers beyond anything your love could save her from. You must not remember what truly awaits her in London, Yardley. Or you wouldn’t do this to her. I know you wouldn’t. Not if you loved her.”

  Roderick squeezed his eyes shut in anguish. He was damned either way. To live with her meant seeing her suffer, but to live without her wouldn’t be a life worth living at all.

  He reopened his eyes. “I cannot let her go. She is the only thing left in my life that feels real. I still know nothing of myself other than I am surrounded by a tainted world that won’t even allow me to love the woman I want to love. Do you know how goddamn bizarre all of this is to me? I can’t breathe knowing that I may be forced to live forever within a mind that isn’t even my own. A mind that cannot remember anything!”

  The duke was quiet for a long moment. “Though you have yet to know it, you are still the same man. Let me tell you who you are. You are a good man. A man who has always sought to do right by himself and others. You are also a learned man who earned not one but seven Oxford degrees by the time you were nineteen, putting your damned brother and everyone, including myself, to shame. Sadly, despite all that astounding knowledge you acquired, much like the rest of us male idiots roaming the world, you were unable to translate a woman’s heart. ’Tis an age-old dilemma no university will resolve. You didn’t learn that sometimes a man must set aside his passion before it destroys the woman he claims to love. Such was your story with the marchioness, and sadly, such will be this story.”

  Roderick glanced toward him, unable to believe a word of it. He had destroyed a woman? With his love? Was this before or after he had involved himself with his brother’s wife?

  The duke paused and patted him on the shoulder. “Do what you will, Yardley. I am merely trying to give you sound advice. Something I haven’t done much of throughout the years, given all of my damned responsibilities to the estate and life in between. Just know that regardless of what you decide, even if you should choose to make her a wife, I have decided I will stand by it. Because a true father doesn’t abandon his son in a time of need, especially when it involves his lifelong happiness.”

  The duke patted his shoulder one last time. “I am in room one and twenty should you feel the need to further discuss this. We have ten days before we leave to London, which gives you more than enough time to resolve this. Now. I want you to get out of these wet clothes. I’ve already called for the footmen and the valet. They will be here shortly.” The duke hesitated as if wanting to say more, but instead strode back toward the door. Opening it, he glanced toward Roderick one last time and closed the door behind himself.

  When would he remember his mess of a life? When would any of this make sense? When would he be able to—?

  Stalking toward the closed door, Roderick gnashed his teeth and kicked that door with a muddied boot, marking it with sludge. Gritting his teeth, he kicked the door again and again and again, trying to lash out his frustration, wishing that the entire world would just stay the hell out of his head.

  He stumbled back, leaving the pristine oak paneled door smudged with booted muddy marks, and tried to level out of his ragged breathing. Dearest God. He was going to have to decide on something that would haunt him and Georgia for the rest of their lives. He didn’t know if he had it in him to let her go, even if it meant seeing her suffer at the hands of the London elite.

  Removing his muddied boots, he tossed them aside and stripped his soaked stockings, drenched coat, shirt, waistcoat and trousers, flinging them away one by one. Standing in mere undergarments, he stalked toward one of the open trunks and whipped out a dry snowy-white linen shirt, yanking it up and over himself. He tugged it down into place and smoothed it against his chest with a shaky hand, feeling the warmth slowly returning to his still-cool, damp skin. He paused and glanced toward his feet, realizing a strip of crumpled black silk had fallen out of the trunk when he’d swiped up his shirt.

  He blinked. He knew what it was. It was a mourning band worn to denote the memory of someone lost. The same one Georgia had insisted he’d worn the day they had met on Broadway. It appeared he had more than one mourning band made. For how else would it have appeared here at the hotel?

  He bent and carefully gathered the silk, fingering it. When would he remember the brother and the life he had lost? He glanced up and scanned the countless, useless items cluttering the room. Aside from the mourning band itself, nothing seemed to whisper of who he had once been. It only bespoke of wealth, extravagance and cosmetic comfort that had been blanked by a self-righteous mask of importance. Had he only cared about all things superficial?

  He tightened his hold on the black silk, wishing that its touch could fill this void that continued to linger in his head. Though he didn’t remember being the cad his father described, he was already becoming one by forcing Georgia into a life she clearly didn’t want to be a part of.

  Roderick’s gaze paused on the one thing in the room that did whisper of who he might have really been. Those methodically piled old leather-bound books, which had been stacked atop one another on a sizable mahogany table and a chair. Given their frayed white edges, they appeared to be well read and old, and given how perfectly they had been arranged and aligned atop one another, they also appeared to have been well loved and important to him.

  He wandered over to the table, his brows coming together as he set the mourning band aside. One of the old books had been left open and set apart from the others. It was as if it was the last thing he had touched before leaving this room and disappearing from his own life.

  Leaning toward it, Roderick dragged and angled the open book toward himself and read the first words he saw.

  How miserably am I singled out from the enjoyment or company of all mankind. Like a hermit (rather should I say, a lonely anchorite) am I forced from human conversation. I have no creature, no soul to speak to; none to
beg assistance from.

  Those achingly miserable words penetrated his own breath like a blazing sword being plunged straight through his throat. He knew what this was. He’d read it countless times since youth.

  Roderick paged through the musty, browning and roughened pages and slapped the book shut. The worn leather binding revealed the fading gold lettering of the words The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner.

  This book had once been his life.

  Grabbing it up, he savagely dug his fingertips into that well-worn hard binding, drawing in uneven, ragged breaths. Every last emotion and thought he’d kept in his head, his heart and his soul exploded like thunder, causing his vision to blur against tears as he tried to ease the excessive trembling in his hands in an effort to keep holding that book.

  He remembered.

  He remembered everything.

  He winced. Everything, that is, except for a sizable blank that simply wasn’t there. Why couldn’t he remember getting on a boat or arriving in New York? Why couldn’t he remember what he’d done all of these months whilst in the city of New York? And why couldn’t he remember Atwood or—?

  He paused, swallowing hard. Dearest God. He and his father had found Atwood. He was alive.

  Smite him, what a mess this was. What a mess. Aside from Atwood, he still couldn’t remember the one thing he wanted to remember most: meeting Georgia prior to that omni mishap that had rendered his mind blank.

  Not that it mattered anymore.

  His father was right. His circle would never accept Georgia as his wife, and in time, she would only hate him in the way she already did for trying to change her, and that he could never live with. For her sake and for the writhing love he would feel for her given all that she had done for him when he had no one and nothing, not even a thought in his head, he would give her everything…by letting her go.

  It was time to send good old Robinson Crusoe back into the pages of a book where he belonged.

  Gently setting his book atop the stack of other books that had been given to him by his mother long ago, Roderick aligned it with the others with a trembling hand. He simply was never meant to know happiness. Not in this lifetime.

  A knock made him glance up.

  “Your bath is ready, my lord,” a footman called from the other side of the closed door.

  He cleared his throat, trying to erase any lingering emotion that still rattled his thoughts. “Thank you. You may enter.”

  The door veered wide and a procession of footmen in gray livery entered carrying in a large bathing tub and buckets and buckets of steaming hot water.

  Once he had soaked, scrubbed and shaved and returned to a state of physical cleanliness he hadn’t seen in days, he would go to his father and announce that he was leaving Georgia behind. Not because he didn’t love her, but because of a new and far more disturbing memory. He refused to destroy Georgia in the same way he had allowed Margaret to destroy him by turning him into something he was not.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Reader, I think proper, before we proceed any

  farther together, to acquaint thee, that I intend

  to digress through this whole history…

  —Henry Fielding,

  The History of Tom Jones (1749)

  This is what had actually been, once upon a damn time in a faraway land known as England

  ANYONE WHO HAD EVER MET Viscount Roderick Gideon Tremayne, if even for a quarter of an hour, became fully aware that he was unlike any man in London. Or England, for that matter. To some, he was a quintessential genius whom scholars idolized for having earned seven Oxford degrees by the time he was nineteen. To others, Roderick was nothing more than an overeducated prick. In truth, he simply held no patience for those who weren’t as devoted to the art of learning as he.

  His fondest memory, even as a tot, was tucking himself against the skirts of his governess at the base of her chair, and demanding she read his favorite story, The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. The moment she’d finish, he’d promptly supply, “Again. Only slower.” After all, the story should have lasted six days. Not four.

  The woman would dutifully page to the beginning and read Robinson’s story all over again, drawing out the words in an effort to better please him. The moment she’d finish, he would tug on her skirts and demand, “Again. Please?” The poor woman had no choice but to commence reading it again and again.

  Despite him being only four, she eventually insisted to his mother and father, the Duke and Duchess of Wentworth, that he learn how to read, given his most unusual fondness for it. His father thought him far too young for such an ambitious endeavor, but his mother agreed, insisting that he should commence at once, given his unprecedented interest. Her only rule was that he was never allowed to touch or read any books pertaining to the French Revolution.

  It was divine intervention. Reading was like discovering how to spin gold out of paper. Although Robinson Crusoe was well below his level of intelligence even at four, he’d always identified with being shipwrecked and, in turn, felt that he was the only civilized person left in the world.

  His father and brother were certainly proof of that. As Roderick grew older, the duke only insisted he play more, not read more. Whilst his brother, who had been born first and therefore had been graced with the grand title of Marquess of Yardley, only trotted around the house with a blunt-edged sword and hit everything with it…including Roderick. Yardley would insist that he learn to be a man of twelve, like him, by carrying his own blunt-edged sword, so that they could battle Napoleon and his minions together.

  Despite being three years younger than his brother, Roderick always felt as if he was the more mature of the two and loathed the idea of playing a Brit going up against the French. Napoleon’s confinement to the island of Saint Helena in that year of 1815 by the British had reignited a burst of patriotism across England that had leaked into their father’s conversations and straight into Yardley’s gullible head. No one seemed to understand that Napoleon had been far more educated than most Englishmen, which was probably why it had been so damn difficult for the British to defeat him. Brain Over Brawn was his motto and, oh, how he wished it was everyone else’s, too.

  In an effort to avoid playing with his brother, the moment the sun touched the sky, Roderick would slip into the farthest corner of the house with a book he’d stolen from his father’s library and disappear. Yardley only saw Roderick’s need for privacy as great sport. With that blunt-edged sword held high, Yardley would dash through the vast corridors of their Wentworth home and strategically march from room to room hollering “Tremaaaaaaaaaaayne!” like the savage that he was.

  No matter how well Roderick hid, that bastard always managed to yank him out of whatever corner, room or wardrobe he was hiding in. In regime-style, Yardley would then point the tip of his sword at Roderick’s unevenly buttoned waistcoat and say, “You’d best cooperate or I’ll tell Father that you’re stealing books out of the library again. You know he doesn’t want you reading books that aren’t appropriate for your age.”

  Everything about his brother was so annoying, and him being heir only further overinflated that stupid head. Even worse, no rational form of explanation kept Yardley from seizing one of Roderick’s own books and dangling it over the hearth as ransom for play. Yardley knew that the dangling of any book over a flame always riled Roderick into full cooperation. Despite grudgingly relenting to his bullying every time, Roderick insisted on being Napoleon Bonaparte himself instead of a mere British soldier, for at least then he could lay out maps and strategize how to take over the world.

  When he’d grown tired of having his best maps ripped in half and being called a Frenchie by his brother, which yielded no educational benefits whatsoever, he refused to play with Yardley ever again. It earned him not only several unmerciful blows to the head that made him bleed, but resulted in the charring of his favorite 1734 edition of The
Complete Mineral Laws of Derbyshire by George Steer.

  Roderick did everything he could to keep himself from sobbing like a girl when he finally dragged himself up off the floor. He eventually sniffed himself over to his father and choked through tears about his burned book and the fists he’d taken to the head.

  Every time, his father would jump to his feet and roar toward the open doors, “Yardley! How many times do I have to crop you? How many?”

  “Leonard, really,” his mother would insist in a stern tone. “Instead of yelling across the house, go directly to him and take care of it. And when you are done, send him my way. I am rather concerned with that boy’s aggressive tendencies. I suggest we take away his sword.”

  Oh, how he loved his mother so! Even the utterance of her name—Augustine Jane Ascott, Her Grace the Duchess of Wentworth—defined her beauty and glittering greatness. She was an astonishing sixteen years younger than his staunch, overly serious father and was therefore youthful and compassionate, but firm when most needed, and above all, always sought to support his love for the written word. She would even sneak various books out from the library for him, always whispering that it was their little secret. It included books that popped his eyes wide open. Like Le Diable amoureux by Jacques Cazotte. It made him want to move to France and take a wife at the age of eleven.

  In 1818, on his twelfth birthday, his mother, whose belly was large with yet another child, had gifted him with a stack of ten books ranging from the philosophies of Socrates to the The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. Inside each book, she had slipped a single uneven strip of parchment imprinted with ink that he was supposed to piece together with all the rest like a puzzle. She insisted that once pieced together the parchments would lead them on the greatest adventure they would ever know, but that she would only share said adventure after she’d given birth and after he’d read all ten books.