He leaned down and kissed her left cheek, her right. “S’il vous plaît, mon amie. Crois-moi.” Trust me.
“Justin.” She caught his hand and held it for a long moment, obviously debating whether to argue more. Then she let his fingers go.
It was what he’d wanted—it shouldn’t have broken him all the more.
She nodded. “Tomorrow then. We’ll be on the first train.”
Not more than a day behind him, which would give him precious little time to get hold of himself. He looked to Whitby. “And when is the next one, my lord? Do you know?”
“Three o’clock.”
Then they had no time to waste. He lifted his hand, wanting to settle it on her cheek or in her hair or at her waist. To hold fast to hers, as he had a month ago.
He let it drop back to his side. “I have to go. Thank you, my lord, for your hospitality. And you, Lady Ramsey.”
Animosity apparently forgotten, she dropped into a curtsy. “The pleasure is ours, Duke.”
A hand pressed upon him, heavy and unrelenting. Unable to utter another word, he turned and left, his silent cousin at his side. He wouldn’t, apparently, have the journey home to come to grips with anything.
He was the duke. And his every step had to take that into account from now on.
Their voices a din in her ears, Brook stared at the empty doorway. He had left, just like that. Wrapped up in his own misery and unwilling to let her share it. He had deliberately pushed her away.
He needed her—Worthing was right about that—but he wouldn’t let her help this time.
Her aunt’s words came back into focus. “No, we must have the conversation, Ambrose.” Aunt Mary grasped her wrist and tugged Brook around to face her. “A young lady of breeding does not offer to travel with a man. Surely you know that. You were raised in a palace, not a … a …”
Words must have, thankfully, failed her. Brook sighed. “You don’t understand, Aunt Mary. He has always been a brother to me, my dearest friend, and he is hurting.” How could she not be with him when he was hurting?
“I do understand, my dear.”
Her father snorted. “And well you show it.”
Aunt Mary shot him a glare. “But you are not children anymore, Brook. You must take your reputation into account.”
“Leave her alone, Mary.” Whitby settled his hand on Brook’s shoulder, his arm about her back. It was the closest thing to an embrace he had given her. “There is nothing wrong with traveling with one’s father to a funeral.”
Lifting her hands in exasperation, Aunt Mary spun away. “You could not possibly have discussed it before she—”
“We didn’t need to.” He squeezed her shoulder. “These things are understood.”
Not to all, apparently. “Ambrose—”
“She is my daughter, Mary. Let me worry with her. You, I believe, have a wedding to plan.”
Brook leaned into him, savored the feel of his arm as it slid around her. Even so, it couldn’t ease the place gone taut inside. First Justin had left her here, after promising to stay. Now he was pushing her away when he needed her most. She could fight him, fight for him, fight for what she had assumed would always be there between them.
But what good would it do if he didn’t fight alongside her?
Justin stood at the window of his study, high in one of the turrets of Ralin Castle. His thumb kept rubbing at the heavy gold of the signet ring Aunt Caro had given him that morning. The seal of Stafford—the same ring that Wildon dukes had been using with their signature since the first of them, hundreds of years before.
It didn’t fit. Grandfather’s knuckles had swollen with age, and he’d had the thing enlarged. Now it moved all about Justin’s finger, up and down, round and round. Uncomfortable. Unfamiliar. Unsuited.
What he wouldn’t give to be outside on a ride through the familiar hills and dales. Instead, he stood in a somber black suit, trying to ignore the sea of people milling about below, all waiting to offer their condolences. In a matter of minutes, he would have to climb into the sedate coach, leading the procession to the chapel in town. Then another procession to the family cemetery on the far edge of the property, where they would all gather round him again.
He turned the signet around.
“Justin.” Aunt Caro’s voice came from the doorway, but he didn’t turn around. He didn’t want to see her draped in black. “We’ve only a few more minutes.”
His nod felt stiff, his body brittle. Like if he moved too much, he could snap in two. He turned, intending to move, to slip past her. But he made the mistake of looking up and saw her in her mourning, and it made a fist form in his gut. “What was it he wouldn’t let you tell me two weeks ago? About Father?”
Torment flickered over her face, the face so much like his mother’s. “Now isn’t the time, Justin.”
She’d said then he should know, he should know how much Father had loved him—something he could use right now, when the world felt so empty. But what did it really matter? He was gone, Grandfather was gone, everyone was gone … or maybe it was just Justin who was. Broken. Hollow.
“Wait.” Aunt Caro held up her hand, palm out. Face twisted. “I think now is the time, actually. I can’t watch you do this, Justin. I can’t let you turn into him.”
His brow furrowed as he shoved his hand into his trouser pocket. “Into Father? You needn’t worry about that. I’m nothing like him.”
But Aunt Caro only looked all the sadder as she lowered her hands. “That’s my fear. That you’ll focus only on William’s bad habits and not see his strengths. That you’ll try to model Edward or your grandfather when … when you shouldn’t. When you don’t know what their single-mindedness did to this family.”
Justin lowered himself to the edge of his desk, not taking his gaze off his aunt’s face. He’d long known her and Uncle Edward’s marriage had been rocky at best. They’d married for love, she had said once, but when she failed to produce an heir, it had soured. But aside from the mistresses he then kept, his uncle had been a decent man. Always working for the good of Stafford—that’s what he remembered of him.
Aunt Caro sighed. “William … William wasn’t your father.”
She might as well have taken the medieval sword from the wall and run him through. Justin couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Couldn’t believe it. If he wasn’t his father’s son, then it meant he had no Wildon blood in his veins, that he wasn’t the rightful heir to the duchy. Well, he was—it was a matter of legal name at birth and little else—but he shouldn’t be. He was only …
Aunt Caro’s eyes slid shut. “Edward was.”
The sword pulled out, but it left a gaping wound in its place. Wildon blood then … but suddenly that didn’t matter as his mind ground into gear. “Wait. You’re telling me that my mother … No. She wouldn’t have. She was—”
“She was not to blame.” A cynical laugh snorted from his aunt’s lips, and she pressed a hand to her temple. “She was only seventeen, she had no idea, no defense—it was Edward. I knew then it was Edward, but still I was so furious, so hurt I couldn’t see her pain. I couldn’t see what it meant for my baby sister when she discovered she carried you. I …”
She shook her head. Her lips quavered. “They wanted to keep her here through her term. Deliver the child and, if it was a boy, give him—you—to me to raise. Edward’s heir. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t, not then.”
He felt as heavy as the stone walls around him. “Of course you couldn’t. But Mother—”
“Sweet Georgiana.” Now the pain faded, and her eyes went soft. “It is just as well that I was too weak to save my sister—she never would have given you up. But my refusal forced the duke’s hand. He ordered William to marry her. That way, you would be legitimate, a Wildon by name as well as blood. And assuming I never produced a son, the title would fall to your father and you after Edward. The line would be preserved.”
The line. Always about the line. Justin closed his eyes and
shook his head, though it did nothing to make the awful truth go away. Never once had Father hinted to Justin that he had been forced into fatherhood. Even when Justin had all but accused him of being less a man than Uncle Edward—he winced now at the thought of those words—Father had merely grinned and said how glad he was that Justin had inherited all the best traits of the family.
“But he loved her.” That was a truth he couldn’t question even now. “And she him.”
Aunt Caro folded her hands before her. “A blessing that happened quickly. It could not erase in your father’s mind the injustice we had all forced upon him, but he was a good man, Justin. He held it against us, but never you. Never your mother. He loved you both more than anything in the world.”
Justin pushed to his feet and turned toward the window again, twisting the signet around his finger. In the silence that crept in, he sent his mind backward. Through the years, through the trips to England and home to Monaco. Trying, in retrospect, to find any flicker in Father’s eyes. Any unexplained shadows.
All he could see was the way Father had drawn Mother into his arms and danced with her when a band of street performers below their window had struck up a waltz. The way they had both drawn him close—he an awkward boy of ten—to cradle the tiny form of Amalie, how they had whispered in his ear that he would be the best brother in the world. How, when his mother and sister died, Father had pulled him closer instead of pushing him away. “We still have each other,” he had said. “We at least have each other.”
He didn’t know that he was that strong. Didn’t think he could be like his father, not in the ways that mattered.
Aunt Caro touched a hand to his arm. “Don’t shut us all out, Justin. Don’t be like Edward, please. It would break your mother’s heart. Break your father’s. You’re better than that, better than him.”
Was he? He didn’t feel it just now. He didn’t feel anything, not even the promises he had stared at in his Bible last night, willing the black words to lighten his spirit. Maybe his mind knew the truth, but his heart was too raw. It had gone numb.
He pivoted, shrugging off her hand, and headed for the door and the spiral stairs beyond it.
Aunt Caro scurried behind. “Justin!”
He ignored her, hurrying past one landing, down toward the next. Maybe Brook would still be inside somewhere. Maybe he could find her and … and what? When she had come upon him in the library last night and wrapped her arms around him, it had taken every ounce of strength he had not to press his lips to hers and beg her to love him. Beg her to make him feel alive again.
She deserved better than that. She deserved to fall in love, not to be forced to marriage for fear of hurting him … and he suspected she loved him too much to say no if he asked. Just not for the right reasons. Not for the reasons he needed.
Aunt Caro sighed behind him. “Do you intend to follow the duke’s instructions on where and when to travel?”
It would mean leaving almost immediately. Fixing things. Building things. Shoring up the holes inside. “I should be back by the start of the Season.”
His aunt slowed his step with a hand on his elbow. “What of your Brook? Have you considered how it will hurt her if you leave her now? I thought you meant to court her. But if you leave—you could lose her.”
“No.” The oath whispered out, more prayer than denial. “Never. She is my very heart, Aunt Caro. Mon âme.” His soul.
Her smile softened, lost some of its sorrow. “You have more of William in you than you suppose.”
He prayed she was right.
The silence resumed as they wound down the rest of the turret and joined Cayton and Aunt Susan in the foyer. Together, they stepped outside, into the masses.
The sun was too hot. It seemed today, of all days, England’s skies ought to have been grey and low and menacing. Instead, summer had pounced on them for one last hurrah, scorching all the mourners in their dull black frocks and coats. Justin’s eyes scanned the crowds, looking for the gleaming golden head that would soak in the warmth so happily.
She was there with her father, her eyes already on Justin. She didn’t offer him a smile—she’d know he didn’t want one. But she nodded. And it gave him strength enough to straighten his spine and head for the coach.
The services passed in a blur. The church, the graveside. The mourners passed in an even hazier one. Faces he didn’t know, names he wouldn’t remember. He shook hands, nodded, and even managed a strained smile now and again. Even when they called him Duke or Stafford. When those without a title of their own called him Your Grace.
Perspiration trickled down the back of his neck by the time the line had shrunk to a bare two dozen left to greet. That was when Brook appeared before him, on her father’s arm.
Whitby shook his hand and gripped his shoulder in one strong, quick move. He said nothing, just moved on to Justin’s aunts and cousin.
Brook’s fingers somehow became tangled in his, though he couldn’t be sure which of them had reached out. He held on and used them to pull her closer. Not as close as he would have liked. And then whispered, in Monegasque, “Say my name.”
She squeezed his fingers back. “Justin Wildon.” Soft J. Long U. Silent N. As it was meant to be said.
One knot of the pain loosened, and he felt his shoulders relax. “Brook. I will have to travel.”
The shadows in her eyes belied the understanding nod. “I thought you might. To where?”
The names had been swirling around his head incessantly. “Canada and the Caribbean to start, so I can make it home again for Thate’s wedding.” His friend had looked almost apologetic as he shared his good news yesterday. “Then Africa, India.”
Her eyes emptied of emotion, the way they did when she fought for composure. Her shoulders seemed to have absorbed the tension that left his. “When will you be back for good?”
His throat ached. “In time for your debut.”
“Seven months.” She drew herself up taller, donned the invisible cloak of the Grimaldis. “It has never been so long.”
No, even when he was at school, he’d taken his holidays in Monaco. “I will be home for the wedding though. And I’ll write. Tell you stories of my adventures. ‘Justin Crusoe,’ perhaps.”
“‘Around the World in Two Hundred Days.’” Her smile was but a flutter, quickly gone.
He lifted their hands and pressed his lips to her knuckles. “Pray for me?”
“Every morning. Every night. Every noon.” She raised up on her toes and kissed his cheeks as she always did.
How he wished it were hello-again instead of good-bye. He gave her fingers one more squeeze. “Save your first dance for me.”
“C’est la tienne.”
He smiled and let her move to his aunt. Someday, God willing, she would be his, not just a dance.
The smile faded when Pratt stepped up. Neither of them extended a hand. Pratt smirked. “No worries, old boy. I won’t let her get too lonely in your absence.”
Justin bit his tongue. Someday, he would level in a fist in the reprobate’s nose—and enjoy every bruised knuckle he earned.
Darkness blanketed the house. It had been late when they got home from Ralin, later still by the time Brook bade her father good-night and retired. She had tried to sleep, tried to rest, tried to put aside the fear that nothing would ever be the same again between her and Justin, though she couldn’t think what had caused the distance between them. Why he kept pushing her away.
She wished her mother were here, to give her advice.
Instead she had found only thunder behind her closed eyes. The lightning had flashed, the panic had nipped. The darkness had overwhelmed her.
What was it about that infernal dream? A storm, but never any other details. Just impressions, fuzzy and vague and all the more frightful for it.
She shivered and pulled her dressing gown tighter, holding the candle out before her so she wouldn’t wake the house with the flip of electric switches. She had already tipt
oed past Whitby’s door. At her mother’s, she paused. But no, if she went in there, her father might hear her. No reason to wake him.
There were other places in the house to find her mother.
Usually at the end of the corridor she turned for the stairs leading downward. Toward the outside, the dining rooms, the library. But according to her father, Mother’s favorite room had always been her upstairs salon. And so Brook took the stairs going up, her candle providing scanty light in the dark stairwell.
Shadows flitted to and fro in the room she let herself into. Tree limbs swaying before moonlight, night creatures in the skies. Despite herself, she shivered again and headed directly for the oil lamp, ornate and feminine, sitting upon the well-worn desk. Once she’d lit it and its cheery yellow glow illumined her corner of the room, her shoulders relaxed.
The chair was small and dainty, woman-sized. Its padding had worn thin, evidence of how often her mother had sat just here, where she now did. Perhaps she had even brought Brook up with her when she was a babe, let her lie on the Turkish rug and coo while she attended her correspondence.
Perhaps they had been together here, before it all went to pieces.
She trailed her fingers over the embellishments carved into the edge of the desk. This, much like her Mother’s bedroom, had been left unchanged aside from cleaning. She’d already poked around enough to know that the top center drawer contained pens and ink, wax, a seal. Paper was stored in the bottom right, correspondence she had saved in the left.
Brook bent down and pulled open the deep right drawer—and realized she’d been wrong. What she had thought was a stack of paper was actually old letters.
Well, she didn’t know what she would have written to Justin yet anyway. She reached for the stack and pulled them out, thumbed through.
The name Henry Rushworth was on enough of them to catch her eye, so she flipped one open at random. The handwriting was bold and bare.
Well, Lizzie, I’ve arrived in India, and it’s hot as blazes. You would hate it, I daresay …
The Lost Heiress Page 17