CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Sebastian sat in the darkness of Chesney’s study in Audley House and stared up at the portrait of his father hanging over the fireplace. It was a copy of the portrait that hung in Chestnut Hill that Mother had insisted Father sit for when he was awarded the dukedom, just as Josie had insisted that this copy be made and hung in her home after he died. She’d offered to have a second copy made, one Sebastian could hang in Park Place, but he’d refused her kindness. After all, he already had enough reminders there of his father.
But tonight, so much guilt swirled inside him that he needed to be here, because he could no longer tell where his guilt over his father ended and his guilt toward Miranda began.
Why did you give yourself to me? Her parting words reverberated inside his head, and he was unable to stop hearing them or seeing the tears that had streamed down her cheeks in anger, rejection, and frustration. Christ! He knew exactly why. Because she was beautiful and tempting, and he wanted her. It was that simple. Plain old lust. Couldn’t have been anything else to make him so reckless as to—
A damned lie.
The truth was that he’d wanted to share the freedom and life in her, to experience that same exuberance for living that had died in him with his father. Because they were friends, and then they were more…and all of it had felt wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that he hadn’t stopped to question any of it until it was too late.
With a curse, he shoved himself out of the chair and stalked across the room to the shelf where Chesney kept his best cognac. He filled a glass overfull with the stuff, then swallowed down half of it in a desperate attempt to numb himself.
It wasn’t working. Even as he wiped the back of his hand over his mouth, the image of her returned with fresh force—Miranda lying in his arms in his bed, admitting in a whisper so soft that he barely heard her…I love you. He squeezed his eyes shut as the next image came unbidden of her standing in his rooms in tears. What the hell did she want from him? He couldn’t marry her, and she knew it. She’d known it from the very beginning.
But damnation, so had he. He knew he needed to marry the daughter of a peer, a lady with good breeding and fine standing in society. One whom Richard Carlisle would have been proud to call his daughter. That was what he needed in his duchess.
Although what he wanted in his wife…He bit back a groan of anger and frustration. What he owed to his father and to the family, to their legacy and reputation— Damnation! Wasn’t he entitled to compensation in return for all the responsibility he shouldered? Didn’t he have the right to claim some bit of happiness for himself in return? How long was he expected to be punished for one mistake?
“Sebastian?” His mother’s voice reached him softly through the shadows.
He sucked in a deep breath at the intrusion. “Mother.”
He turned to face her as she entered the room, closing the door after herself and shutting them together into the darkness. Even now, long after midnight, she was regal and dignified, carrying herself with confidence and grace. Every inch of her a duchess.
“I knew I’d find you here,” she said quietly as she crossed the room to him. When she reached his side, she leaned up to place a kiss on his cheek. Her face darkened as she asked gently, her voice not a question, “There are too many ghosts at Park Place tonight, aren’t there?”
More than she knew. He forced a smile and raised his glass to her. “Chesney has better cognac than I do.”
He could tell by the way she paused that she knew he’d just lied to her. “Then pour me a taste, will you?” With a motherly squeeze of his arm, she walked toward the fireplace. “I think we both could use it tonight.”
He arched a surprised brow at her odd request, yet did as she asked, splashing a swallow’s worth into a glass and carrying it to her. He couldn’t remember seeing his mother take a drink of the stuff in his life.
She took the brandy from him, and he frowned down at the cold fireplace. “Do you want me to ring for a footman to build a fire?”
She shook her head a bit wistfully. “You know, when I was young, we had to light our own fires.”
With a twist of his mouth, Sebastian took that as his cue. He set his glass on the mantel and took up the poker to stir up the coals.
“There was always work to be done on the farm, so we all had to pitch in and do our share,” she continued, a nostalgic smile pulling at her lips. “Including lighting the fires.”
As the first fingers of flames snaked up from the stirred coals, he reached into the coal bucket and tossed a chunk onto the grate. “I’d forgotten about that, that you grew up on a farm.”
“Not just any farm. Your grandfather was a tenant of the Earl of Spalding, your great uncle.” The faint smile at her lips blossomed into one full of love as she looked up at her late husband’s portrait. “That was how I met your father. Richard had come to the estate to pay his respects to the family for helping him with his army commission, and we met while he was riding up the lane. He was so handsome in his red uniform. I’d never seen another man like him in my life, so tall and imperial. Strong and powerful.” Her smile faded with a touch of melancholy. “And the kindest man I would ever know.”
He returned the poker to the rack and wiped off his hands. His chest tightened to know that he would never have that same connection to the woman he chose to be his wife that his father had with his mother. Already he felt the loss of it as palpably as if he’d lost a limb. “And it was love at first sight.”
“Oh no! Not at all,” she corrected with a faint laugh, surprising him. “There were lots of soldiers in those days, and all of them looked handsome in their uniforms. I was much too shrewd to settle for the first one who came riding along.”
Raising the brandy to his lips, he hid his smile. “Of course.”
“But your father was just as stubborn as I was, and over the next few months, he wore me down until eventually I agreed to marry him.” The growing flames softly lit up the room around them, so that he could see the knowing smile on her face as she stared up at the portrait, still as much in love with her late husband as she’d been the day she married him. “I gave him all the trouble I could, too, in those first days of our courtship to make certain he would be willing to fight for me and stand by my side the way I thought a husband should.”
“It worked,” he commented quietly. His father had been completely devoted to his mother until the day he died.
She turned her head to look at him, and her face softened with concern. She said gently, “I hear there’s a woman putting you through your own troubles.”
He froze, the glass halfway to his lips. Anger flashed through him. “Josie told you,” he muttered. “She had no right.”
“You upset her.”
He guiltily slumped his shoulders. These days it seemed he was upsetting every woman in his life. He blew out a hard breath. “I’ll apologize to her in the morning.”
“That would be gracious of you, but I don’t think she wants an apology as much as to know that you are all right. She was worried about you.” She paused sympathetically. “And about Miranda.”
He stared down at his glass as he rolled it slowly between his palms, watching the way the cognac shined gold-red in the firelight. “There’s nothing to be worried about.”
“Hmm.” She raised her own glass to her lips to take a tentative sip. “Seems to me there’s a great deal.”
He clenched his jaw, turning his anger onto himself. “It was my fault. I’ll make certain Miranda’s protected. I won’t let her be punished for my mistake.”
“And you, Sebastian?” She thoughtfully traced her fingertip around the rim of her glass as she slid a sideways glance at him. “Should you be punished for daring to care about that girl?”
He held her gaze for a heartbeat, then looked up at his father’s portrait. “Yes.”
He finished off the rest of his brandy in a gasping swallow, but there wasn’t enough cognac in the world to dull the p
ain. Or ease the guilt.
“I must admit that I was surprised when your sister told me what had happened,” she pressed gently. “Not only that you found Miranda attractive, but that you let yourself be intimate with her.”
Embarrassment surged through him, and he shook his head. “This is not a conversation I should be having with my mother.”
Her eyes sparkled with amusement at that. “My dear boy, where do you think you came from—a stork?”
“Yes,” he agreed quickly with a very arched brow. Good Lord, he desperately needed more brandy. “Yes, I did. So did all my siblings.” He paused to consider…“Except for Quinton, who was left by gypsies.”
She smiled at that. Thankfully letting go of that aspect of the conversation, she turned her gaze back to the portrait.
Several moments of silence passed. Her smile faded as she commented thoughtfully, “She must mean a great deal to you if you’re this troubled.”
“She does,” he answered quietly. There was no point in lying to his mother. She knew him too well.
“Hmm. Then what do you plan to do about it?”
What could he do? “Nothing.”
“Because you’re a duke,” she said deliberately, “and she’s the niece of our tenant farmer…who most likely lights her own fires.”
He gritted his teeth at that subtle rebuke. “It isn’t the same, and you know it. Father wasn’t a peer when you married him. He was an army officer, free to marry whomever he pleased.”
She set her glass away, apparently not having a taste for brandy after all. “Do you care about her, Sebastian?” she asked quietly but bluntly. “Or was she simply an evening’s entertainment?”
He lowered his gaze to the fire, unable to bear looking at his father’s picture as he admitted quietly, “I love her.”
His mother’s lips parted in surprise. She was too shocked by that to say anything.
“I know,” he admitted, blowing out a hard breath. “Stuns the hell out of me, too.”
Needing something to do, he set down his empty glass and took up the poker again, although the fire didn’t need to be tended. After a few halfhearted jabs at the coals, he gave up, returned the poker, and began to pace.
“She’s nothing like I thought she was,” he admitted. “She’s not at all flighty, just vivacious, although a bit beyond control when she gets swept up into the excitement of the moment.” The memory of the opera came back to him in vivid detail, and he couldn’t help but remember how excited she’d been that night. A faint smile tugged at his lips. “Do you know she reads Milton and rewrites Shakespeare?”
Mother blinked. “Rewrites Shakespeare?”
“There should have been a pirate scene in Hamlet,” he explained, and truly, wasn’t that obvious? Then the smile he’d been holding back fully blossomed into a grin of pride. “And you’d be so pleased with what she’s done with the orphans.”
“I am,” she confirmed softly. “All the women who sit on the orphanage board think she’s done a remarkable job.”
“She isn’t at all the annoying girl from next door any longer.” And that was the problem. In the past few months, Miranda had grown into a woman in her own right.
“Does she make you happy?”
He stopped pacing and faced her, fighting back the urge to refill his glass. “More than I thought possible of any woman.”
His mother hesitated, needing a moment to digest that bit of information, then asked softly, “Does she know how you feel about her?”
“She knows I cannot marry her.”
“Cannot,” she pressed, “or will not?”
In what his life had become, there was no difference. “I need a duchess, not only a wife.” He shook his head. “A country bluestocking who knew nothing about society or its rules until this season…How can she ever become the duchess I need?”
Mother gazed at him sympathetically. “The same way I went from being a country girl to a duchess,” she answered quietly. “One day at a time, with the love and help of my husband.”
He shook his head. He desperately wanted to believe her. He wanted to hope that he could be happy in his choice of wife and the future they’d have together, but the situation wasn’t as simple as she made it out to be. “She’s the orphaned niece of our tenant farmer,” he said. “She’s no better in society’s eyes than a shop girl, barmaid, or—”
“Actress?” she interjected gently.
He froze, his body flashing numb. The events of that terrible night of his father’s death came crashing back, and he could barely breathe under the weight of it. She knew…Mother knew! But that—that was impossible. He’d covered his tracks too well, and he’d never seen the woman again after that night.
“That’s where you were the night your father died. With an actress you’d met at the theater.” Her eyes softened on him. “And you haven’t forgiven yourself for it.”
Her soft words pierced him like a knife, and he stared at her, searching her face for answers. How long had she known? Dear God, how much had he hurt her all these years, only for her to suffer his thoughtlessness in silence?
He squeezed his eyes shut against the memory, but it did little to stop the pain. “I should have been with my family, not with her.”
She laid her hand gently on his shoulder. “How could you have known what would happen that night? Even if you’d been there, you couldn’t have stopped the accident. No one could have.”
The anguished words tore from him—“I could have been there to say good-bye.”
“Oh, my poor boy.” She cupped his face in her hands and tenderly kissed his temple. “That’s the punishment you’re still carrying inside you, isn’t it?” she whispered, her voice strangled with tears. “The blame you still place on yourself…that if you hadn’t been with that woman you would have been by his side. But we don’t know that, either.”
“I do.” He opened his eyes to look at her, and her face blurred as the self-recrimination tore from him. “Because if I hadn’t hidden her from all of you, hadn’t lied about where I was, you would have known where to find me. You could have sent for me, and I would have—”
“Still arrived too late,” she finished in a whisper, the truth too painful for her to find her voice. When his shoulders slumped beneath the weight of that, she reached up to lovingly brush a lock of hair away from his forehead. “You must stop punishing yourself for that night. You were a good son to your father, Sebastian. He was so proud of you.”
“Proud?” He couldn’t stop the bitter laugh that rose on his lips. “Of what, Mother? A string of dalliances with disreputable women, even after I’d promised him that I would put the title and our family before all else? Or lying to both of you because I knew he wouldn’t have approved of the women I associated with?”
Her eyes softened with grief and compassion as she gazed silently at him.
“The night my father died, instead of being at his side to provide comfort to him and you, I was in the bed of an actress.” The confession cut at him as he rasped out, “A woman I knew Father would never have approved of. I put my own selfish desires before the needs of the title and neglected my family.”
“And you haven’t let yourself have a moment’s happiness since,” she concluded gently. Then she added as she deduced, “Except with Miranda. And the guilt of that is eating at you, isn’t it, my son? Because you think you were punished the night your father died.”
“I know so,” he admitted as he stepped away from her. He couldn’t bear her concern a moment longer. “I knew I could never marry Miranda. I didn’t put the dukedom first, or I would never have…” He ran a shaking hand through his hair. “I was only thinking of myself, not of the title.”
“But, Sebastian,” she reminded him gently, “you are the title now. How does being unhappy serve yourself well?”
His chest tightened so hard that he could barely breathe. His happiness…the same concern that Miranda had for him last night. Yet tonight, the answer was
still unchanged. What he wanted as a man was of no concern. His wants and desires ended the night his father died, when he became Trent. “Father would never have approved of Miranda as my duchess.”
“Oh yes, he would have.”
He stared at her in disbelief. “She’s not of the same station.”
“No, she’s not.” She turned to gaze once more up at the portrait, with love glowing on her face. “And he would have only cared that she’s a good woman who loves you for yourself and who makes you happy.”
Uncertainty churned inside him. “But the actress—”
“Her he definitely would not have approved. But it would have had nothing to do with her profession.” She turned to face him. “The reason I know about her and that night was because she came to Chestnut Hill a few weeks after your father died, looking for you. She’d learned that you’d inherited, and she planned to set herself up as the new duke’s mistress. She didn’t care about you or gaining society’s respect—she only wanted your money.” A self-pleased smile curled her lips. “I sent her packing so fast I think I frightened her.”
“I had no idea,” he murmured, surprised by his mother’s fierce protection of her family during the darkest time of her life.
“At the time, there was no reason to tell you. You didn’t need to carry that burden on top of the others you were already shouldering.” She frowned, her face darkening with remorse. “But I now think I might have made a mistake in not telling you.” She paused a long and thoughtful moment. “What did Miranda want from you?”
“She wanted me,” he admitted quietly, still not quite able to believe it himself.
His mother tensed, her eyes narrowing at that. “She wanted to be duchess?”
“No,” he corrected quietly, looking up at his father, “she wanted me to be happy, and she wanted me to love her. She didn’t want the duke at all.” He grimaced as the memory of her words fell through him like ice water. “She wanted me.”
“It seems to me,” she said as she smiled at him with love, “that she can still have you, if you allow it.”
If the Duke Demands Page 28