“Very much so,” she told him.
Heavens, if he tried to leave without her, she would see a horse saddled and gallop after him.
“Then I shan’t argue the matter,” he relented, weariness lacing his baritone as well. “We will be taking the carriage the entirety of the journey. It will be far more efficient than waiting on the next train, securing passage, and then procuring a ride to take us to my mother’s home. I will see you back here in one quarter hour.”
One quarter hour was scarcely any time at all, but she knew his time to see his mother before she died was rapidly dwindling. She would make do.
She nodded and relinquished her grasp on him with the greatest reluctance. “Of course. I will make all haste.”
“Josie?” he called after her when she turned and began bustling toward the kitchens.
She glanced back at him, her heart giving a pang at how lonely he looked. How desolate.
“Thank you,” he said.
She wanted to tell him he did not need to offer his gratitude. After all, it was his love she wanted. His heart. All of him.
“You are most welcome, Decker,” she said instead.
And then she fled to the kitchens, trying to drive all thoughts of a certain viscountess and that troubling letter from her mind. Nothing was as important as helping Decker to get to his mother’s side before it was too late, or being there for him through the difficult days ahead.
Death, like life, was never easy.
Jo had learned that painful lesson a long time ago.
The carriage rattled over roads, swaying.
Reminding Decker why he preferred the civility of traveling by rail to the drudgery of hooves and wheels. But the necessity of reaching his mother as quickly as possible had proven impossible to ignore.
The sun had settled over the countryside not long after they had reached the periphery of London. They had eaten their impromptu dinner whilst fighting the traffic out of Town, and he had been heartily glad his wife had possessed the forethought to see a meal brought along. Although he had little desire to eat, occupying himself had aided in distracting him from the dread threatening to swallow him whole.
By the glow of the carriage lamp, he was drawn, once more, to the sight of her, sitting opposite him, still dressed in the same afternoon gown she had been wearing when she had returned from her Lady’s Suffrage Society meeting. Other women would have balked at flying from London without notice. Others would have been content to allow him to go alone, as he had intended, and to remain in the comfort of Town.
What awaited them would not be pleasant. The telegram had been succinct but clear: his mother had suffered a stroke, and she was drastically weakened. Her doctor feared she had not much longer to live. There was a possibility he would not reach her before she passed.
And although they had scarcely spoken since their fierce row some seven years ago concerning his inheritance from the Earl of Graham—aside from brief letters apprising him of his younger sister Lila’s welfare—he loved his mother. He regretted now, as the carriage slowly brought him closer to her deathbed, the years and the anger and the pride which he had allowed to intervene.
Because now? It was too late.
“Decker?” Jo’s soft, concerned voice cut through his thoughts. “Talk to me, please.”
She was a good woman. Too good. And he was a bad man, a selfish man, a foolish man. If she truly did love him, he hardly deserved that love. Lord, he did not deserve her compassion and kindness here and now. What had he ever done to deserve her? Find a list? Coerce her into ruining herself with him until she had been left with no choice but to become his wife?
What a monster he was.
He despised himself in that moment.
All the same, he sighed, unable to give voice to the tumult swirling within. “What would you have me say, bijou?”
“Will you tell me why you have such a strained relationship with your mother?” her query was tentative, still slicing into him. “It is apparent to me how very much you love her.”
He raked his fingers through his hair, exhaling slowly. “I do love her. She is a good woman who made the wrong choices. She always loved him more than she loved any of her children, however, and that is her greatest fault. He never loved her enough. Indeed, I question whether he loved her at all.”
The admission was torn from him. It felt far too personal, as if he were holding up a magnifying glass for Jo to inspect the ugliest parts of him.
“Him,” Jo repeated gently. “Do you mean your father?”
“The Earl of Graham,” he bit out, for he refused to think of that selfish bastard as his father. A father was a man who was a part of his children’s lives, and Graham had certainly never been that, either for Decker or for Lila.
Especially not for Lila. As a daughter born on the wrong side of the blanket, she did not suit Graham’s urge for vengeance. The man already had seven daughters. Decker alone had been the unfortunate beneficiary of the earl’s dubious generosity, and only inasmuch as it suited Graham’s purposes.
“Your mother was in love with him, and you did not deem him worthy of that love,” Jo said.
“Damned right he was not,” Decker confirmed. “The Earl of Graham loved himself, his money, and his pleasure, and not necessarily always in that order. He wanted his wealth to carry on in his own bloodline. But not just any bloodline. Only the male bloodline. He had eight daughters and one son. Me.”
“That is the source of your quarrel with your mother, is it not?” Jo ventured. “You told me you love her, that you would do anything for her, but that you are estranged. It was the inheritance which caused your rift.”
Once again, she was probing. Prodding him. Examining parts of himself Decker did not like to think about or to acknowledge. And yet, uncomfortable as it was, he also found her tender persistence oddly reassuring. None of the women in his past had ever deigned to see the man beneath all his rakish, devil-may-care trappings.
His Josie did.
My Josie, my wife, my love.
The thoughts emerged from nowhere, but he did not dare speak them aloud.
Instead, he swallowed down a rising lump in his throat, that same, old unwanted knot of emotion, and answered her question. “It was. I did not want to accept a penny of Graham’s wealth. I was set to deny it all. My mother told me I had to accept it for my sister Lila’s sake. You see, Lila is, like me, a bastard. But, unlike me, a daughter. Do you know what he left her, a sweet girl of five years when he died, whom he had only deigned to meet once in all her life? He left her one hundred pounds. He left more for the care of his bloody hunting dogs than he left for his own flesh and blood.”
Decker’s rage, the fury he had done his best to abate over the years with whatever distraction at hand in the moment, returned. This time, he had no faceless woman to bed, no depraved party, no bottle, no way to disappear, to forget.
This time, he was a man sitting in a carriage with his wife, on his way to see his dying mother for the last time. A man who regretted the way he had treated both of those women. His hands were balled into fists in his lap, trembling.
Jo slid onto the Moroccan leather bench at his side in a whisper of sound. She brought her sweet scent, her strength, her warmth. His need for her was so intense, it was crippling. He sat there, utterly humbled, as she embraced him. He had never felt so comforted. So cared for. Not since he had been a lad in the arms of his mother.
But this was different. Not at all the same. This was the touch of a woman, his wife. The woman who, just yesterday, had told him she loved him. He believed her. Hell, he needed to believe her. Without a modicum of pride, he wrapped his arms around her, clinging to her, holding her so tightly he feared he was hurting her and forced himself to relax his hold.
“I am so sorry, Decker,” she whispered softly. “You all deserved better, every one of you.”
“Yes, we did.” It was, he thought, the first time he had ever acknowledged it. The first time the pain of this par
ticular part of his past had been unearthed to someone other than his mother. “But I damn well know one thing. I do not deserve you.”
Her hand stroked up and down his spine in a steady, reassuring rhythm. Calming and soothing him as her other arm remained banded around his waist, holding him tight. “I am nothing extraordinary. I am merely your wife, and I care for you. I hurt when you hurt.”
She was killing him, his Josie. This sweet, passionate, young, intelligent, funny, compassionate, loving woman he had married. He definitely did not deserve her, despite whatever delusions she insisted upon accepting. It was merely her nature. She was Persephone to his Hades, bringing life into his darkness when he had not known he needed it.
He lowered his face to her throat, inhaling the familiar, beloved scent of orange blossom. He could not resist pressing his mouth to her velvet-soft skin. Her heart strummed steadily beneath his kiss, a reassurance he needed in this uncertain journey.
“I never want you to hurt, Josie,” he murmured against her skin, kissing her again because now that he had begun, he could not seem to stop. “You are too sweet, too kind, too good. Too good for me, it is certain.”
He thought, for the first time since receiving the telegram earlier, about Nora’s letter. About his intention to reveal everything to Jo. He wanted to, and he would, but his emotions were already a maelstrom. He could not bear to add one more struggle to the moment. For now, he was going to be greedy and simply accept his wife’s comfort and concern as she offered it to him.
Later, he promised himself, after his mother was well, he would tell Jo about the letter. Or later, after his mother was gone.
The latter plunged him back into the depths of despair and regret. How he wished he had spared his mother some time in the last seven years, an audience, at least. Could he have forgiven her? Should he have forgiven her?
What mattered when death was likely waiting at the other end of this carriage ride?
“You must not hold on to your regrets,” Jo told him then, as if she could read his troubled musings. As if she heard them spoken aloud. “There must have been a reason for you to remain estranged from your mother, all these years. Did she force you to accept the inheritance?”
A shudder wracked him. He inhaled deeply of the scent of her neck. She was more potent than a drug to him. He was like an opium eater, needing her to soothe a deep and abiding ache within him. “She threatened me. I told her I would not accept Graham’s blood money. She told me if I refused, I would no longer be permitted to have any contact with my sister, Lila. She was adamant. She said she had sacrificed for me, for Lila, that she would not allow me to squander her efforts in favor of my pride.” He paused, collecting himself, before continuing. “Part of me knows she was right. Part of me never forgave her for what she did, for what she forced me to do.”
“My love.” She kissed the top of his head. “You were both trying to do what was right. Pray, do not punish yourself any more than you already have.”
My love.
Those words affected him. How could they not? They stole their way into his heart and settled there, refusing to leave. Because they fit there. They belonged. Just as she belonged in his arms, his life, at his side.
What would he have done, receiving that telegram today, if he did not have Jo? A dash through the countryside, no food, no one to cling to, no one to accept him as he was. No one to love him. The prospect loomed, horrible as a death.
“Thank you,” he whispered, kissing her cheek. It was the closest he could come to a declaration. His emotions were too turbulent, too confused. He did not want to tell Jo he loved her out of gratitude.
He wanted to tell her unencumbered by grief and necessity.
Because he did love her. Decker realized it then as the carriage continued to sway over the road and his wife held him in her arms. He clung to her as if she were his last chance at surviving the lashing waves of a sea that threatened to drown him.
He was in love with Lady Josephine Decker.
His wife.
His heart.
“You do not need to thank me,” she told him, still tenderly stroking up and down his back.
She made him feel cherished. Made him feel as if there could be light in the darkest moments.
He buried his face in her fragrant hair. Even the clean scent of her shampoo was precious to him. “You are wrong. I have much to thank you for.”
Everything, in fact.
The words were there, stuck in his throat, mired in emotion.
To think he had despaired of Sin for finding himself besotted with his countess. Decker had come to understand just how quickly the love of a remarkable woman could change a man. Could make a man whole. Fill in all the pieces of himself he had never known were missing.
“Thank you for sharing these parts of yourself with me,” she said then, startling him when she kissed his cheek. Her golden-brown gaze met his, searching through the low light of the carriage lamp. “I did not know you had a sister. Will you tell me about her?”
It occurred to him then just how much he had shielded himself from her. How little of himself he had revealed to her. He had much to atone for, that was certain. And he would begin here and now.
He kissed the upturned tip of Jo’s nose. “Lila is a hellion like me. I think you will like her. If…my mother should die, I will become her legal guardian. She will have to live with us. Would you be amenable to that?”
Hell, that had not occurred to him until this moment. His mother’s family had disowned her, and the dowager Countess of Graham would not be welcoming a by-blow into her brood of seven daughters. Lila would be his responsibility.
“Of course I would be amenable,” Jo said. “If she is anything like you, I shall love her. We will make her as comfortable as possible and welcome her with open arms. You need not fear where she is concerned.”
Could she be any more perfect, this woman he had wed?
He kissed her lips softly, slowly, reverently, telling her with his mouth what he could not yet form into words.
The carriage rattled on, delivering them to their destination and whatever lay ahead.
Chapter Seventeen
His mother had aged in the seven years since he had seen her last. The ebony hair which had been her crowning glory had turned entirely silver. The healthy glow had fled her cheeks. She had lost weight, her high cheek bones shockingly angular, her hand in his light as a bird.
Her physician had informed him this was not his mother’s first stroke. Why she had never written him of her ailments, he did not know. Her letters had always been impersonal, containing accounts of Lila’s studies and the scrapes in which she found herself. There had been nothing of herself. No indication she had grown infirm.
Decker bowed his head, clutching her unresponsive fingers. Dr. Thompson had said she’d had moments of lucidity throughout the day, but the lucidity had waned. This attack had been worse than those which had come before. It had rendered the left half of her body incapable of movement. She had been given laudanum just prior to Decker and Jo’s late-night arrival, to ease her pain and unrest. But the situation was dire, the outcome clear.
His mother did not have long to live. He was at once grateful for this moment alone with her and terrified it would prove the last he would ever have.
“Mama,” he whispered. “I am sorry.”
Simple words. But true. He meant them with everything he had.
As he stared at her still form, the counterpane tucked around her as if she were merely asleep and not dying, he could not fathom why he had held on to his anger and pride for seven years. Had his self-righteous rage been worth the time he could have spent with his mother?
No.
Tears blurred his vision, but he blinked them away, determined not to weep. Not yet, at least. Not until she was truly gone. For now, she yet breathed. For now, she could hear him. At least, he hoped she could.
Even if she could not, he had this chance to unburden himself,
and he was going to take it.
“I know you were doing what you thought best,” he murmured, stroking the tracery of blue veins rising in relief from her bony hands. “You did your utmost to protect your children. I understand that now. Would that I had then. But I was young and proud, and I did not want to accept Graham’s blood money. I understand why you made the choices you did, and although I may disagree with them, I should have found forgiveness within me.”
He paused, studying her face for any signs of life. Her chest yet rose and fell, but her face was still as a plaster death mask. Part of him wanted to rail at her, to cry out, to demand she wake so he could have this last dialogue with her, this chance to free himself of the burden of his pride.
“I forgive you for forcing me into accepting Graham’s funds,” he added. “I have done a great deal of good with his money, and I will continue to do so. Originally, it was to spite him. To throw away his coin on commoners. But it evolved into something more. I enjoy helping people, Mama. I think that is a trait I inherited from you. You were forever taking care of someone or some creature because it gave you pleasure to do so. Whether it was a son who must have been a terrible duty to you at times, or a stray cat in need of a filled belly, or a man who never acknowledged you in public, or even a toad which had gotten itself trapped in a garden pot, you were a caretaker. None of us deserved you. Right, mayhap the cat. The toad probably would have found his own way out, eventually.”
He tried to smile, but his eyes had welled with tears once more. He swallowed hard. “I suppose what I am trying to say in my own selfish way, Mama, is that I should have forgiven you a long time ago. I hope you can forgive me for holding on to my pride and anger when I should have let go. I hope you forgive me for staying away for seven years when I should have held you close, and for not appreciating you until it may be too late.”
He inhaled, his body shaking involuntarily as he struggled to contain his sobs. The tears were running freely down his cheeks now. “I also hope you shake free of this. That you open your eyes and rail at me for being such an arse.”
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