Accidentally Compromising the Duke (25 page)

In the far distance the dowager duchess was strolling with Squire Wentworth. Adel smiled. She could see the affection developing between the two when they thought no one was observing.

Lady Harriet saw her and waved. A few minutes later, she reached Adel.

“It is wonderful to see you up and about, my dear. Is my foolish and stubborn son home?”

A startled laugh jerked from Adel. “No.”

The dowager duchess sighed and linked their hands together in companionable silence.

“Why have you not followed him to London? A wife’s place is beside her husband and it has been two weeks since your stomach has settled. You are fit for traveling.”

“Edmond does not love me.”

The dowager duchess froze, and then faced her. “My dear, he worships the ground you walk upon. It is fear that drove him away.”

“What utter rubbish. I told him I carry our child, and he ran away to London without writing a single word to me for six dreadful weeks. When I came to this marriage I had nothing to offer him but my eventual love. I gave it to him even knowing he would never love me in return, and now I have never felt more a-alone.”

Adel burst into mortified tears. “Oh, forgive me; I’ve been such a watering pot lately.” She swiped at her face angrily. “Did he ever tell you how we met? I
snuck
into his bed at Lady Gladstone’s house party. It was quite by accident I assure you, for I’d only intend to comprise Mr. Atwood. Edmond insisted we wed to avoid scandal. Before I even said yes, he told me all the love he had to give was bu…buried with his wife. He avoided my bed with a single minded purpose that even I had started to admire, and the only reason I am with child now is because he had been drunk,” she ended on a sob. “He does not want
me
…no gentleman has truly ever wanted me, for I have nothing to offer! Can there be any other opinion?”

Embarrassed at her emotional outburst she marched away. Edmond loved her? As she loved him? Adel faltered.

You are beautiful.You taste sweet…I could feast on you forever.

There are days when I shudder in dread at the thought, of what might have happened if you had not climbed into my bed, because I would now be wed to another. I’ve never desired another woman as I do you, Adeline.

The heated and sometimes tender words he’d expressed wafted through her mind. It probably should not have, but the memory quieted some of the pain pricking at her heart.

What if he truly loved her? Would he really have felt such fear if he only felt mild affections?

Oh!

Lady Harriet regarded Adel for a lengthy moment. “Come, let us retire to the parlor and ring for tea.”

Adel glanced toward the lawns. “And what of Squire Wentworth?”

“He’ll keep,” she said on a light laugh. “He knows I will not be long, and he may do a spot of fishing in the lake.”

A few minutes later they entered the main house, and Adel rang for tea and cakes. They entered the warmth of the parlor and sat on separate sofas. A footman arrived in short order with a tea tray and several pastries.

The dowager duchess faced her. “I’ve been meaning to thank you for weeks now,” she said softly.

Adel lifted startled eyes to her. “I have done nothing.”

“Since your marriage to my son, he has laughed.” This last bit was said so wistfully Adel’s heart ached.

She had thought his icy reserve had only been for her. Had he always been like this? “Is Edmond not a man to laugh?”

“Hardly.”

Not even with his first wife? Adel ached to know. “I take no credit for it, but I thank you for the sentiments.”

“My son abhors grief,” she said, surprising Adel.

Lady Harriet retrieved the cushion she had been embroidering earlier and resumed her task with dazzling skill. “I witnessed something in my eldest son I had not observed in years. Peace. It made me feel hope and fear for my sweet boy in equal measure.”

A small smile curved Adel’s lips to hear Lady Harriet refer to a man so virile and ruthless with his power as sweet. “I have yet to uncover this sweetness.” Though if she admitted it, there had been nothing experienced in her life as heavenly as the sweet bliss of his kisses. The way he watched her sometimes, the intensity in which he loved her had given her hope. The mere memory was enough to make the flesh between her thighs ache. Heat crawled up her neck, and she hastily poured tea into a cup and raised it to her lips, praying Lady Harriet would believe it was the steam from the tea that would account for her flushed appearance.

“Edmond lost his father, a man he idolized, at the tender age of twelve. I was selfish in my grief.” She lifted pain eyes to Adel. “I almost lost my son because I was caught up in my own despair.”

A drop of blood stained the cushion, and with a gasp, Adel clattered the teacup onto the table and rushed over to the dowager duchess. Adel gently withdrew the cushion and the needle from her.

“Please do not speak of it, for it causes you pain.”

Adel understood, it had been four years since her mother had passed, and she could hardly think of her without her throat burning from the need to hold back the tears. There were days where her heart seemed to split in two, and she wondered when the void would ever be filled. Reading had only delayed the inevitable return of dreaded grief. Though since her marriage, life had been mostly pleasing, and she had thought little about the loss of her mother.

“Sit my child,” Lady Harriet said gently. “Though it pains me, I wish to speak of it, for I want you to win.”

Win?
“I was not aware I was vying for a prize.”

The dowager duchess’s intensity finally penetrated, and Adel’s heart beat an alarming thud. She sank to her knees beside her, uncaring of the unladylike position. “Then tell me, quickly.”

Lady Harriet closed her eyes and spoke in a clipped voice. “I was so lost in my own grief I did not realize Edmond was wasting away. He’d cried himself to sleep every night, and was barely eating. I’d given orders for his tutoring to be paused, and for his friends to give him space. I did not help him, I allowed him to create a haven in which he could grieve and rail unrelentingly. And he did so for weeks, months. When I came out of my own stupor my boy was skin and bones. I called for the doctor and he gave me the alarming prognosis that Edmond’s heart had been weakened from the weight loss, and he needed special attention to encourage eating. A few days later he contracted a fever, and in his weakened state it was a brutal battle. The fear I encountered I never wanted to endure again.”

She took a shuddering breath and Adel squeezed her arm. “He recovered. I wanted to cosset him, wanted to keep him close, but he refused. It was as if something had died in him when his father passed. My sweet boy hardly laughed and played. The joy in him had been dimmed. He had been close to his younger brother Jackson, and he pulled from him. Edmond even insisted on returning to boarding school, instead of his tutors coming back to the estates. It was as if he wanted to flee the memories. Then he returned on his eighteenth birthday and met Lady Maryann.”

Lady Harriet smiled. “Maryann was beautiful and demure, and she lit something inside of him. It was a small spark but I was joyful. I encouraged the attachment, and I could sense his reluctance. It was as if he feared being too close to Maryann. But she persevered, and he offered for her. Yet he remained wary. As if he was waiting for something to happen. Though he loved her, he was remote at the best of times. It hurt and confused Maryann, but she coaxed, and he thawed, and it was beautiful to see Edmond enjoying the hope of a happy future. He basked in his beautiful children, and I would dare say he was happy. Then she died.”

Lady Harriett pushed from the settee and walked to the windows. “Suffice to say, my child, since he married you, for the first time I have heard my son laugh out loud since his father’s death.”

Adel flinched.

“I do not care what you did or the why of it…but I thank you. The coldness he exudes now, it is because he cannot bear the idea of losing you, too. I see your unhappiness, and I urge you, do not give up on him.”

Then as if embarrassed for her emotional state, she inclined her head and walked with evident false serenity from the drawing room.

Adel slowly gathered herself. Edmond loved her. The assessment felt right, but if he really did, based on what Lady Harriet just revealed, he was truly lost to her.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Weeks of being apart from his duchess had not dulled the agony pounding through Edmond’s heart. He rolled his head back against his shoulders, trying to ease the tension. Though when he wrote to his daughters, he was careful not to feed his weakness to learn about Adeline. Sarah and Rosa had no such qualms.

He glanced down to the letters he had splayed on the desk in his library. Dozens of them, and he had taken ink and underlined the phrases that mentioned his duchess.

Dear Papa, Adeline is puking again and seems very low in spirits.

Papa, Adeline smiled today, but then she promptly burst into tears when Mrs. Fields mentioned another letter had come from you.

Papa, Mamma says we must decorate a nursery, but she is unsure where to have it established since Mrs. Fields explained you ordered every trace of the previous nursery destroyed and it has now been made into Lady Adeline’s library.

He had read that last letter a dozen times. His girls referred to Adeline as mother. He cleared his throat and looked to the next underlined words in the next letter.

Today was the first morning since you left that Adeline came downstairs to break her fast. She looked so beautiful.

He rustled through the mound and selected his favorite.

Papa, today Mamma took a walk in the gardens. She helped us escape the schoolroom, and Mrs. Fields packed a small hamper for us. We had the picnic by the lake and it was glorious. Sarah and I wished you were here, and Mamma smiled. I think that means she wants you home…we miss you. We also picked names for the baby! Sarah and I are so excited. We are hoping for a brother.

He was a damn fool. For some reason God had found favor in him, and Edmond was squandering it. He should be at Rosette Park with his wife and children. He should be holding Adel, comforting her, rubbing her feet and her back when she was weary. Holding the chamber pot for her when her stomach rebelled.

Instead, he had fled to London, rousing his staff in the dark of the night and setting them on their ears. He had been holed up for days, not visiting the sights as he had been lying in his letters. He did not want his daughters to know he had not been eating and that he was coldly miserable.

The door opened and he glanced up.

Westfall strolled in unannounced, took one glance at the letters spilling all over the desk, some on the floor. The man said nothing, simply moved to the sofa closest to Edmond and sank onto it, tilting his head back and staring at the decorative plasterwork on the ceiling.

“You’ve been in London for six weeks, and I do not believe you have left the residence,” the marquess said.

Edmond grunted.

“There is gossip that you have separated from your duchess.”

It had taken Westfall long enough for his curiosity to get the better of him.

“I’d not thought you a man to listen to that kind of rumor.”

“I heard it from my valet who seems to have a cousin who is an upstairs maid at Rosette Park.”

Edmond arched a brow.

“So what is happening with your duchess? You rested your honor upon marrying her when you did not have to, so why are you mucking it up?”

Edmond leaned back in his chair. “I care for her…deeply.”

“Truly?” the marquess asked, with sincere incredulity. “You have truly fallen prey to the same affliction twice?”

Edmond chuckled without humor. Westfall was certainly right in thinking this a damnable curse. Edmond could not sleep or eat without dreaming of Adeline. His first few nights had been tormented with nightmares of losing her, of seeing blood pour from her, and beautiful accusing eyes damming him to perdition. Then they had slowly transformed into dreams of walking beside her on their lake, a child of their own running on the lawn with the girls, seeing the joy on her face. He’d remembered those images, and his fear of losing her had been strangled by the fear of truly never getting to know her in her entirety. If he had only days with her, or months, or years, as he had been praying for, he should treasure whatever time God allotted them together.

Life without Adel was too bleak to contemplate, and it was time for him to return to Rosette Park.

He’d fallen in love with Maryann through the rose-colored spectacles of a young man, who had needed to be awakened. He had seen there was more to life than fulfilling his duty conserving everything his father had left behind. With Adeline… Edmond scrubbed a hand over his face. The depth of emotion he felt for her was truly too frightening at times, but in the midst of the passion, there was a calmness, a joint meeting of souls like he’d never felt before. The realization ached worse than a fist to his gut. He half laughed, half groaned. He was becoming a damned poet.

“It seems I have,” Edmond said dryly. “I cannot sleep or work, I do nothing but think of her. Every damn day I write her a letter that I have not posted. Sometimes I write a note in the morning, and there are days I still write to her before I sleep.”

“If you care for her, why have you been holed up here for weeks? I confess my ribs do not wish to meet with your fists again.”

He’d chosen to work off the raw edginess—both of body and of mind—by bare knuckle boxing with Westfall. Edmond had refused to even swallow a drop of liquor, he would not drink again to bury pain. Perhaps he would for pleasure, or when he entertained, but never to drown his sorrows again. Westfall had simply raised his shoulders at Edmond’s pronouncements, carefully peeled off his skintight coat and waistcoat, and joined him on the mat in the exercise room.

That morning’s session had been grueling, brutal, and freeing. He fully understood Westfall’s desire not to step on the mat with him again for some time. Edmond had been sparring with him almost every evening, ruthlessly striving to detach himself from the torment he’d put himself under. His friend had been constant, even going as far as to take up residence in one of Edmond’s guest rooms and he had realized Westfall had his own demons to work through.