The Truth About Love and Dukes

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  Watching him, the realization of impending separation fully hit her, deepening her already dismal feelings. “Until this moment,” she said slowly, watching his back as he fastened his collar, “I didn’t think about the fact that I wouldn’t be seeing you tonight.”

  “Neither did I,” he confessed. “It’s been a wild week, rather.”

  “Perhaps I could come down with you and your family. I know you hadn’t wanted me to do that,” she added, hoping like hell she sounded indifferent enough for pride’s sake, “but that was before we . . .” She paused as she watched him go still, but she forced herself to finish. “But that was before. Now, it’s different, surely?”

  “Is it?” He turned, and Irene wished suddenly that she had not become more skilled at reading his expressions, for she knew before he spoke what he was going to say. “You can’t come to Hampshire, Irene,” he said gently. “It won’t do.”

  She looked down, her heart stinging at the rebuff. “I understand,” she mumbled, though she really didn’t.

  In an instant, he was in front of her, putting his hands on her arms. “Look at me.”

  Pride forced her to look up even though her eyes, damn it, were stinging.

  “It is far, far more difficult to be discreet in the country, particularly in a part of the country where everyone knows me. In London, there are hotels, taxis, and some degree of privacy and anonymity. In my village, there would be none of that. We might be able to sneak off for a bit of time together, but the chances are high that we would be seen. And even if we do not make any attempt to be alone together, I fear—”

  He broke off and drew a breath. “I am, as you know, a man who does not show his feelings openly, and I have always found that to be useful talent, but since I met you, Irene, that sort of sangfroid has become harder and harder to maintain. It wears on me. My desire for you has not abated these four days. It has only grown stronger, and I fear that I will not always be on my guard to conceal it. I live every moment with this fear—that someone will look into my face, and see what I feel. That I will one day forget discretion, forget caution, and people will know the true nature of what is between us. Can you say, honestly, that you would always be able to hide the desire you feel for me?”

  “No.” It was a difficult thing to admit. “I don’t think I could, not every moment.”

  He kissed her, then his hands slid away from her shoulders and he turned away. “In light of that,” he said as he returned to his dressing table and reached for one of his shirt studs, “I suppose it is a good thing that I shall be in the country for the autumn. It will give us both time to get our bearings.”

  Irene stared at him in dismay. “The entire autumn?”

  His hands stilled. “We’ll have to see,” he said after a moment and resumed fastening shirt studs in place. “I have a great deal to do at Ravenwood, and the other estates as well. I’ll be able to come to town occasionally, but not too often, or it will cause gossip and speculation. I have no reason to be here at this time of year, you see.”

  “So where does that leave us?” Even as she asked the question, she knew the answer, and her dismay deepened. “I won’t see much of you at all, will I?”

  He picked up his tie and looped it around his neck before he answered. “I’m afraid not,” he said at last. “Not until spring. And even then, we shall have to continue to be as discreet as possible.”

  “Of course, but . . .” She paused, the ramifications of the situation truly sinking in for the first time, cutting through the blissful haze that had surrounded her these past four days. “Oh, God, we can’t ever really be seen together in public again, can we?”

  He paused, his hands still at his collar. “Do you think we can?” he countered as he finished knotting his tie. “You know, better than anyone,” he said as he reached for his waistcoat and put it on, “how gossip starts, how fast it spreads. You are an unmarried woman, and I an unmarried man. Given how we feel, do you think we can risk ever being seen together, even chaperoned, without causing gossip? People will begin speculating about us. Your competitors may catch the scent of a story and start following you, and we’d be in the devil of a mess.”

  She would never, she realized, be able to see his home. She would never be able to sail with him or sit at dinner with him again. She looked over her shoulder at her hotel room and the scattered clothes, remembering the aftermath of their first night together, and she knew, suddenly, what he’d known all along.

  “So, this is all we have,” she said, returning her attention to him. “Sneaking in and out of hotel rooms in the season, and perhaps a few times the rest of the year.”

  He turned from the mirror and came to stand in front of her again. His hand cupped her face, but she did not look at him. Instead, she stared at his shirt front and the elegant silver stud with the ducal coronet. “Do you remember, Irene,” he murmured, his fingertips caressing her cheek, “what I told you when you first proposed this arrangement?”

  “One can’t go back,” she whispered. The moment she said it, everything in her rebelled, anger and frustration flaring up. “God, is there no place for us, other than this?”

  “There is. You could marry me.”

  Irene stiffened. “We’ve talked about this already.”

  “Perhaps we should talk about it again. I know you do not want to give up your work, but as we’ve discussed, you could continue it to some extent, if you were discreet. And though I know you do not want to be a duchess, I’m not sure you’ve considered the job in a very objective light.”

  She moved uneasily, not sure she wanted to rehash this topic. “I am not convinced I want to live in your world, Henry. I confess, I’m not all that taken with it.”

  “Shall I move into your world instead? A world of scandal sheets and occupations for women and suffragists and middle class terrace houses? Where in that world would I fit? I am a duke, not a clerk at Lloyds. I cannot set aside my position. There is no means of doing so. And even if I could do it, I would not, for there are far more people than the two of us that must be considered. Those people depend upon me, Irene, to be just what I am and who I am and where I am. I cannot leave my world.”

  “I know that. I wouldn’t ask it of you.”

  “So your question is answered, then. We are now in a place between our worlds, a place of nighttime assignations, of hotel rooms and risk and secrecy, and unless you change your mind and marry me, this is all we have.”

  “And that,” she whispered, forcing words out, “is not enough for you, is it?”

  “For now, perhaps it is enough. But it cannot last, Irene.”

  She looked up, startled, but before she could reply, he went on, “As much as I want you, I do not know how long I can exist here. The strain of it wears on me, even after less than a week, for I feel history repeating itself. I am treating you just as I treated my wife—hiding you away, keeping you as a secret pleasure and an object of shame. It is harder than even I expected, and with every moment that goes by, the guilt of what I am doing weighs on me more heavily.”

  Irene stared at him, shocked and dismayed. “All this time,” she murmured, “through these nights we have been together, I have been so happy. But you . . .” She stopped, finding it hard to say the words out loud. “But you have not.”

  “I have.” His voice was fierce, harsh. His gray eyes were dark and turbulent, but in his face, there was pain, pain that hurt her, too, that made her feel as if her heart was being ripped out of her very chest. “Here in this room, when it is just us and there is nothing else, this time has been the happiest of my life, Irene. But life cannot just be this room. And out there, I am in agony.”

  With that confession, her heart seemed to part from her completely, tearing out of her breast and tumbling straight into his hands. In that moment, she fell in love with him.

  The sensation was overwhelming, and it took her a moment before she could think of anything to say in reply. “And here I thought I was learning to
discern your feelings. I had no idea of this. Why did you not tell me?”

  “Tell you what? I tried to explain beforehand how this would be, but I knew you did not understand. I should have walked away, but I agreed to this arrangement because, God help me, I wanted you so much, I could not stand not having you. I still feel that way, as selfish and dishonorable as it is.”

  “We chose this together. You must not berate yourself and feel guilty for what is between us.”

  “Must I not? Even though I wholly deserve my own recriminations? I am torn, not only by my desire for you, but also by suspense and fear on your behalf and the dictates of my conscience, as well I should be. If we are discovered, then you would be proclaimed a strumpet, and I would deserve all the blame for having made you so.”

  “That hasn’t happened, Henry,” she reminded. “We cannot torment ourselves with worry over things that have not happened.”

  He looked as if he wanted to say more on the subject, but he nodded instead. “Very well,” he murmured and turned away, returning to the dressing table.

  “At least our first separation won’t be too long,” she said, trying to put the best face on things as he buttoned his waistcoat. “I’ll see you when you come back on Monday with your mother and my sister.”

  He didn’t reply. Instead, he reached for his pocket watch, but then he paused, and though his head was bent and she couldn’t see his face in the mirror, she felt a little shiver of apprehension again along the back of her neck. “I don’t think,” he said after a moment, “that I will be coming to town as soon as that.”

  Irene was astonished. “But what about your mother’s wedding?”

  “I won’t be at the wedding.” He tucked his watch into his waistcoat pocket and fastened the fob. “No one in the family is going.”

  She could not believe what she was hearing. “But you said you’ve accepted her decision to marry him.”

  “So I have. But attending would imply to society that I approve.” He lifted his head and met her gaze in the mirror. “I don’t.”

  “Oh, Henry, really!” she cried, aggravated beyond bearing. “I cannot believe you can still be as fastidious as this.”

  “You abhor playing the hypocrite, yet you think I should do so?”

  “I suppose I thought you’d be more charitable,” she shot back, stung. “More forgiving.”

  “It’s not a matter of charity or forgiveness, Irene. Such condescension on my part would further tarnish the family in society’s eyes.”

  “Oh, hang your image and your precious society! This is your mother we are talking about.”

  He ignored her scowl and her aggravated words as he picked up his cuff links and began to put them on. “My attendance would further damage Angela and Sarah’s chances. It would mean even fewer invitations arriving for them, and therefore, even less chance of them being considered for suitable matrimony.”

  “Marriage isn’t everything,” she cried. “Suitability isn’t everything.”

  “My sisters would not agree with you there, Irene.”

  “What about you?”

  He went still for a moment, then he tugged his cuffs into place and turned around. “I don’t agree with you either.”

  Those words felt like a knife going into her chest, and he seemed to sense their impact, for he sighed. “Surely you could not expect me to offer any other answer?”

  “I don’t know what answer I expected,” she countered, stunned, her chest aching. “Perhaps one that wasn’t so damned disappointing.”

  “I’m sorry to have disappointed you,” he said, and with that cool reply, all the bliss of the past few days began to crumble.

  What had she been thinking to expect him to be anything but the man that he was? Had she really thought a couple of weeks in her company and a few nights in her bed could overcome the strictures of a lifetime? Had she really dared to hope that a few spirited discussions could imbibe him with some of her working-class views and modern values? Had she ever believed that she possessed sufficient influence to make him see beyond rules and traditions and what others might think? If that was what she’d been thinking, she’d clearly been lost in a fantasy. The place in her chest where her heart had been now felt like a gaping, empty hole.

  If this was what it felt like to be in love, she thought, then she wanted no part of it. A sound very much like a sob escaped her.

  In an instant, he was in front of her again, his hands on her arms. “Irene—”

  “And you wonder why I refuse to consider marrying you?” she choked.

  His head turned a fraction, almost as if she had slapped him, and it was a long moment before he spoke. “If we continue as we are, the time will come when you will not have a choice. When we are caught, your name will be dragged through the mud. Your competitors will reveal all the lurid details of our affair to everyone in my world and yours. What then, Irene?”

  “That hasn’t happened!”

  “But it will. It is, I fear, inevitable. That is what I am trying to make you see. At that point, circumstances will force your hand. You can refuse me, live in shame, and leave me to endure all my life the knowledge that I have dishonored you and sent you down the road to ruin. Or you could then marry me, and both of us would have to live with the fact that you were forced to do so by circumstances. You would resent it, that resentment would grow, and whatever you feel for me would eventually turn to ashes.”

  “You are talking of your late wife now, not of me.”

  “I am talking about the inevitable course of a love affair that is not conducted in honorable fashion!” He gripped her arms when she tried to turn away. “Listen to me, Irene. If you chose to marry me now, freely, of your own will and consent, without waiting for circumstances to force you, then it would be different.”

  “Would it?” she cut in. “You talk of my free choice, yet you work to influence me with the dictates of your conscience. I know you think I ought to feel the same shame that you do, but though it is perhaps a flaw in my character, Henry, I do not feel shame. You talk of my consent, yet you do not ask me what I want. You talk of honor and duty, and obligation, because those are important to you, but you never ask what is important to me.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t ask because . . .” He paused, his hands sliding away from her shoulders. “I fear the answer would break my heart.”

  “Do you have a heart?” she cried. “Forgive me for being skeptical, but I have never seen much evidence of it. And that is the crux of the problem. I want to love you, Henry. And you make it impossible.”

  Her voice broke, and to her mortification, she began to cry. He moved to touch her, but she took a step back and his hands fell to his sides.

  “I want to love you, and I don’t just mean here in this room. I want to love you because I am in love with you.”

  Even as she said it, the pain in her chest shimmered through her entire body, for she knew love did neither of them any good. “And don’t tell me,” she went on fiercely before he could reply, “that what I feel is merely passion, or that I am overwhelmed, or swept away, for what I feel is none of those things. I love you. I know it as surely as I know my name, and yet I can see by your face that you do not believe me.”

  “How can I?” he muttered, rubbing his hands over his face as if trying to think. “You say you love me, but you will not marry me and share my life?”

  “No, Henry, I won’t. It isn’t because of my work,” she added at once, “for as much as I love what I do, I would give it up if I had to, in order to follow my heart. And it isn’t because I’d be a duchess, for though I don’t relish the prospect, I daresay I could manage the role if it came to it. No, I will not marry you because you cannot bring yourself to attend your own mother’s wedding.”

  He stared at her, looking utterly baffled. “What on earth does Mama’s wedding have to do with us?”

  “She is your mother, Henry. She needs you, she needs your support, but you wit
hhold it, and for what? You say you do it for other members of the family, but have you asked them if they want to attend?”

  “No, because I know what their answer would be.”

  “And perhaps your conclusion would be proved correct, but my point is that you have not asked them. In fact, I doubt you even considered their right to be consulted on the subject. And even if you are right in this particular case about what they would decide, did it ever occur to you that as head of the family, your own best action might be to support your mother and attempt to persuade the other members of your family to do the same? Of all the duties you may hold, surely the greatest one must be to show others, by example, what is right. And in this case, that means standing by your mother when she needs you, not turning away from her.”

  “Irene,” he began.

  “Do you see now why I refuse you? If I married you, what would become of me?” She pressed a hand to her chest. “Me, Irene? What would become of what I think is right? Of what I aspire to and dream of and believe in? Would you ask me what I want, would you consult with me and gain my opinion, or would you simply decide what was best for me?”

  She didn’t wait for him to answer. “And what of children? If I marry you, and we have a daughter, what will she be in your world? What of her hopes and dreams? What if she comes to you one day and she says, ‘Papa, I don’t want to do the season and find a husband; I want to go to university and become a doctor and make the world a better place’? What will you tell her?”

  “I—” He broke off and swallowed hard. “My position would obligate me to discourage any daughter of mine from such a course.”

  “Oh, God, Henry!” Even though she was not surprised by his answer, it infuriated her and deepened her resolve. “With every further thing you say, you cement my conviction that I am right in refusing you. For though I love you, you break my heart with your rigid and uncompromising view of the world. As for what I want, I would happily live in sin as a strumpet and a man’s guilty pleasure, if my only other choice was to be his obligation and his duty. And if all that is not enough reason to refuse you,” she added, choking back tears, “I could never marry a man who desires me but cannot bring himself to love me—a man, in fact, who does not even seem to know what love is!”