“I haven’t inquired about him,” she said. “I don’t want to know. I don’t care.” Finally the words were true. She didn’t care. She wouldn’t inquire after Adrian because his circumstances no longer mattered to her. Once he left London, once he ceased to plague her, she would never think on him again.
“Don’t you?” he asked, a hint of skepticism lurking in his voice. “I’ll tell you anyway, as he told me himself. He’s come back for you.”
She blinked, nonplussed. “I see,” she said, noncommittally.
“I don’t believe you do,” he said ruthlessly. “His wife passed away. He’s spent the last year in mourning as was only proper. And now he is free to marry again.” He sipped his tea placidly, but the room was thick with tension. “He never stopped loving you, he said. He has bitterly regretted his actions for the past three years, and now there is nothing to come between the two of you.”
Except for James.
Jilly tucked a loose curl behind her ear, surprised at how little the words affected her. Once she would have thrilled to the notion, longed for Adrian to have repented of his actions. And while she regretted that he had suffered so, in a sort of vague, distant way, she knew that the time when they might have been together had long since passed and would never return.
“I am sorry for him,” she said simply. “I shall have to convey to him my regrets for his wife’s passing.”
“He has no such regrets,” he said. “She was a millstone around his neck and they loathed each other in the end.”
“Then I am doubly sorry for him,” she replied. “What a sad situation for the both of them.” She canted her head to the side and considered James, the tension in his face, the way he searched her expression. “Did you suppose I would cast caution to the wind and go to him?”
“Of course,” he said. “He is the one you love, is he not? When you have pined for him so these last years, why would you not go to him the instant you learned he was free?”
“I don’t love him,” she said, sipping her tea. “I did love him very much, years ago, but I don’t anymore. I have no more feeling for him than I would for a stranger on the street.” She wasn’t certain why she had told him that, only that it had seemed imperative that he know that she was not mooning over a love that she had lost years ago. At least, not any longer.
His eyes narrowed on her face as if he could ferret out traces of untruth with his gaze alone. But after a moment or two the suspicion vanished from his expression and he opened his mouth to speak, and she knew with perfect clarity what he intended to say.
“Don’t ask me,” she said, with a touch of desperation. “Don’t, please—not yet. I need to think. Just—just give me some time to think.”
He heaved a sigh, impatience written in the tense line of his jaw, etched into his furrowed brows, the slash of them severe in his face. She supposed it went part and parcel with being a duke, that he had so rarely been denied anything he wanted that he handled it poorly. And yet he had acquiesced to her wishes, his mouth closing on the words that he had been about to cast between them.
Instead he said, “You’ve suffered beneath the burden of being a perfect lady for too long. For once, you ought to do something wicked.”
Her cheeks heated. “What would you call that night at the theatre?” she inquired in a soft voice, conscious of Fenton’s presence just outside the door.
A dimple cut his cheek as he grinned. “Fun,” he said. “Something with which I suspect you have little experience.”
“Ladies are not forgiven for such things,” she said. “Fun is rarely a consideration.” But she felt her lips turning into a helpless smile, unwillingly amused.
“It should be. For you, it should be.” He smiled down into his tea cup. “I suppose you must know I’ve secured an invitation to the Hewlitts’ house party.”
She had. Nora had been thrilled, pointing out that the rules of etiquette were far more relaxed in a private home, that Jilly might have the chance to truly get to know the duke beyond a crowded ballroom or a chaperoned trip to the theatre or a fifteen minute visit in a drawing room.
“I thought you didn’t attend such things,” she said. “I suppose they must hold little interest for you. I expect that London is far more interesting—for a man, at least—than a simple country house party.”
He laughed, snatching up another tiny tea cake. “I didn’t used to attend them,” he said. “House parties can be dangerous for men. Too many opportunities exist for certain situations—situations which might leave a lady compromised and a gentleman obliged to slip his neck into the parson’s noose. I’ve assiduously avoided them.” His smile took on a decidedly rakish tilt as he turned the full force of his blue gaze on her. “But then, I had never met a lady whom I wouldn’t mind compromising.”
Her heart leapt in her chest as that suggestive look fell upon her, the warmth in his eyes suggesting that he had, at last, found a lady worth compromising, as if the threat of the parson’s noose settling about his neck was not the torture he had clearly once considered it.
Unsettled, she murmured, “It is a foolish lady who lets herself be compromised.” Good heavens, when had the room grown so warm? Was London in the grip of an unseasonably warm spring?
He chuckled, and a lock of his thick blond hair fell over his forehead, surprising her with the urge to tuck it back. “Have you never been tempted to an assignation with a man? Never to set so much as a toe out of line?”
One did not speak of toes in mixed company, but his inquiry was far more inappropriate. But Fenton had not strayed from his position at the door, had not given any indication whatsoever that he had overheard—which she knew he had not. “I have never taken such a risk with my reputation, Your Grace,” she said, primly, as if the use of his title would set a bit more distance between them, force him to draw back from his line of questioning. “Too many ladies are themselves forced to suffer the consequences of such liaisons. I would not wish to be one of them.”
A flash of white teeth, a devious grin, as if he desired nothing more than to tempt her into a bit of wickedness. “I wouldn’t let us be caught,” he said. “Although if we were, I would make you my duchess.”
“Being a duchess has never been an ambition of mine,” she snapped irritably.
“Every woman wishes to be a duchess,” he returned easily. “God knows that’s been made clear enough to me throughout my life.” Something lurked in his eyes, a bit of world-weary cynicism acquired long ago.
“Not every woman,” she said. “If I had wanted a duke, I would have married you already, wouldn’t I?”
His brows lifted, almost in surprise, as if she had pointed out a truth that had escaped him. He settled back in his seat, a bit of the tension that had gathered in his shoulders easing as he considered her face, which she knew must be stiff with the insult he had unintentionally delivered to her. “My apologies,” he said softly. “I had no right to say such things to you.”
“No, you did not.” Her voice was crisp, severe. “Worth is not measured by titles, nor consequence by wealth, nor importance by estates and holdings. Had I wanted a title, I assure you I could have found one.”
“Then what is it you want?” he asked, and his voice had lowered to an expectant purr. He made promises with a voice like that, the sort of promise that no lady of sense would take a risk on. It was the sort of voice that suggested that she had only to name her requirements and he would deliver them into her hands. But she had had such promises once before, and they had lasted only as long as a star shooting across the black velvet of the sky—gone in a flash once something better had come along.
She would never put herself in a position to be left behind again. She had to be certain. To be loved. His friend the viscount had evinced his belief that she was loved, but it was easy enough to say the words—living by them was a far different prospect. She would not solicit the words from him, give him reason to play her false, to toy with a heart that had been battered a
lready. He would have to offer them freely or not at all.
And so she said, “I want my shameful past to be forgotten. I want not to be looked at with pity or with suspicion. I want not to be an object of speculation, of curiosity.”
He shifted uncomfortably as he realized that he had turned her into those things once again, that whatever measure of peace she had managed to snatch during the past three years had been obliterated by his pursuit. And he said, “I suppose I owe you more apologies than I had realized,” in a sort of low, regretful voice. “But you’re wrong if you think there’s anything shameful about your past, and you’re wrong if you allow the shallow opinions of others to shape you. You’re wrong if you punish yourself for the past, if you would deny yourself a future because of it.”
She gave a bitter laugh, averting her eyes to her cup, aware that that blasted stray curl had yet again freed itself to bob before her eyes, almost as if it were taunting her. “It’s so easy for you to say that,” she said. “I wonder how you would feel if you had lived it.”
She had not been aware of him moving; he had managed to cross the floor without her even being aware of it, like a panther prowling silently across a plain. She started when he took the seat beside her, frozen as he removed her cup from her frigid hands, set it on the table before them, and collected her gloved hands in his. “So tell me,” he said. “Make me understand.”
A flash of pain bit into her, tightening her jaw. “You hear the whispers start the moment you enter the room,” she said hoarsely. “People look at you, but they don’t see you, not really—they see who they expect you to be. And everyone sees something different. A pitiable, foolish girl, practically left at the altar. A woman who surely must have committed some grave sin to bring about such a turn for herself.” She gave a rough, coarse laugh, which scratched her throat on the way out. “No one blames him, you know. It is always the woman’s fault. If she had been the proper sort of woman, she would not have found herself in such a situation. Clearly there is some fault in her, something that sent him fleeing into the arms of another.”
“No,” he said. “None of the fault was yours.”
“I know that!” she snapped. “Don’t you think I know that? I don’t need you tell me what I already know.” She tried to extract her hands from his, but he merely tightened his grip, sidling closer. “My point, Your Grace, is simply that I am the only one who does. Everyone else has always wondered. I was ruined the moment he eloped—not as a consequence of my actions, but as a consequence of his. Even the men who might have courted me didn’t want me,” she hissed. “They wanted gossip—they wanted to be able to crow about discovering what it was about me that had sent Lord Kirkland fleeing all the way back to Scotland with another woman two weeks before he was to have married me.”
She gave another yank on her hands and at last succeeded in wrenching them away from his. But there was only a moment in which to savor her victory before she felt his arms slide around her, drawing her across the empty space that separated them, into his arms. With a gasp she shoved her arms up to push him away, only to feel his hand cup the back of her head, pushing her cheek into his shoulder. “He was a coward,” he said into her tousled curls. “And as cruel as it may seem, I am glad he was—I am glad he ran off, for if he had not, you would not be here now. I might never have met you, never held you, never kissed you.” His lips touched her temple, skated along the curve of her cheek. “They’re all fools, every one of them,” he whispered. “And I am sorry that you’ve suffered them alone for so many years. You have been so very brave, darling. But you don’t have to be alone anymore. You don’t have to suffer in silence. You don’t have to suffer at all. Don’t you think it’s time for you to be happy?”
That horrible gasping sound—it could not be coming from her. And yet she felt it in her chest, felt the tears that she had spent the past three years assiduously blinking back, swallowing down until her throat ached with them, spilling over her cheeks at last. She had never wanted to think of herself as weak or helpless, the sort of woman that required a man’s comfort to weather her own difficulties. She had been orphaned at twelve, raised by an indifferent staff, abandoned by a feckless brother—she well knew that she could not place her faith in anyone else. She knew the travails of wishing for more than she had, the consequences of becoming reliant on another person for comfort—for anything.
And he—he crooned soothing nonsense into her hair, and his arms banded around her, and his gloved hands moved in soft, gentle circles on her back. He comforted her like a child, and his strong shoulders banished the world beyond the drawing room, until there was only the two of them locked in an embrace that, while most decidedly improper, could not be said to be anything other than what it was.
“I don’t know how to be happy,” she rasped at last, what felt like hours later. And his chest rose and fell with a ragged laugh, as though he had weathered a storm of his own.
“Neither do I,” he admitted. “But wouldn’t it be grand to discover it together?”
Chapter Seventeen
James had arrived at the Hewlitts’ estate, just forty minutes from London, well before Jilly had. As a duke, he, of course, had been afforded one of the better bedrooms to be had—and he had shamelessly conspired with Lord Hewlitt to make certain that Jilly’s room was near his own, and that her Aunt’s was quite far away, indeed. Lord Hewlitt had, of course, been thrilled to be taken into his confidence—although it was hardly a secret that he had been pursuing Jilly, he had deliberately let Hewlitt think something scandalous would happen at their house party, and Lord Hewlitt’s wife was a notorious gossip.
Still, he was having trouble convincing himself that the words he had given Jilly in her drawing room just yesterday afternoon had been false, designed to soften her toward him further. She had cried. She had cried. Something about it had stirred some protective instinct within him that he had thought long dead and buried. She had cried in his arms like a child, and all he had wanted was to erase the pain that clearly tormented her still. He had wondered, briefly, why she had continued to force herself into the thick of it, why she continually punished herself by attending events where people slighted her, where they gossiped about her as if they knew the intimate details of her life. And then he had realized that if she had retreated, even for a moment, they would have savaged her still further—it was only by pretending that she did not care, only by showing her face and pretending an indifference she did not feel that she could control what was said of her even a little. To hide away would be to confirm their whispers, lend credence to their spiteful suppositions.
She was truly a remarkable woman. She didn’t deserve his deception, his nefarious scheming. She deserved a man who loved her, someone who would cherish her strength, her kindness, her compassion—someone who would shelter her against the cruelty of the world, protect her from everything that would do her harm.
And he found himself wishing that he could be that man—that they could have locked eyes across a crowded ballroom, that he had courted her honestly, that he would win her in earnest. For the first time he considered that Nick might’ve been right. That with his scheming, he might’ve thrown away a chance at something truly amazing.
But his die had already been cast. Secrets had a way of coming out. Even if he did give up his quest for revenge, what would happen if she ever discovered the depths of his perfidy? Given her experiences, given the way he had lead her to believe he was different from all the rest of them, he had to assume that she would never forgive him for making a fool of her once again.
Better to stay his course. He might go to his grave regretting what he had done, wishing he had been a better man—but he could never have her forever, regardless. He had surrendered that possibility the moment he’d approached her with ill intent.
Only now was he fully aware of how much he had lost with a single foolish plan. When at last she realized what a fool he had made of her, they would both be destroyed—but sh
e would suffer the more for it. Regardless of his duplicity, society would forgive him. Never mind that between the two of them, his experience was the greater; the Ton would only see her mistakes, never his.
And her only mistake would be settling for someone so unworthy of her.
∞∞∞
“I don’t understand why Lady Hewlitt placed our rooms so far from one another,” Aunt Marcheline muttered caustically for what had to have been the fifth time.
Jilly didn’t either, but she suspected that James had had some hand in it. As an unmarried lady, Jilly’s room ought to have been placed in the east wing of the house, along with the rest of the eligible ladies and their companions—and yet she had found herself situated in the north wing, right next to the dowager Duchess of Pemberton. She had not yet discovered who had the room to her left, but it had not escaped her notice that there was a connecting door between the rooms, and that knowledge had raised a few suspicions.
“The duke is here,” Aunt Marcheline said, regarding Jilly speculatively.
“I know,” she said in response. “I imagine Lady Hewlitt must be ecstatic.”
Aunt Marcheline huffed, fingering the fine linen of the pillowcase. “She hopes to snare him for her daughter,” she said. “I wouldn’t put it past her to engineer a compromising situation. It’s how she caught Hewlitt, after all.”
A sigh puffed out from between her lips. “Aunt, gossip is cruel.”
“It’s not gossip when it’s true,” Aunt Marcheline said. “You make up your mind about him, Jillian, but do it soon. Otherwise the choice may be taken from your hands.” Aunt Marcheline put her hands on her hips, her features arranged in a scowl. “If you don’t want him, there’s plenty of other ladies that do, and they’ll be less circumspect here than they would in London. Many’s the man to find himself tied down at a house party like this. And the girls grow bolder every year, I swear.” She clucked her disapproval.
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