Douglas: Lord of Heartache (23 page)

“I see.”

Two innocuous words imbued with a full complement of female censure, making clear she did not want to hear about his real estate. Well, neither did he.

Douglas stepped back, leaving Guinevere alone in the sunlight. “I would rather a thousand times tell Rose her pony died than let you face Westhaven alone, but were I to openly defend your causes, it could only redound to your discredit.”

“I would hardly go that far. You are as much family as David, and he certainly feels comfortable tilting at windmills on my behalf—or he would if I’d allow it.”

Which left Douglas feeling both respect and consternation toward Fairly. “But you are not allowing it—yet. I almost feel sorry for Westhaven, Moreland, and Victor Windham.”

“That’s the spirit. I shall be quite formidable.” She smiled at him, the saddest smile he’d yet to see from her. “Before you go, tell me your thinking regarding Linden.”

This, Douglas concluded, was a bid for mutual composure. He seized it not quite gratefully, but with a sense of inevitable duty, and—hang noble intentions—took Guinevere’s hand, too. “I don’t know what to think of Linden. The house itself is captivating, but the estate is troubled, as you know, and I can hardly like the idea of relying on Loris Tanner to implement the restoration of the place when she’s been taken advantage of by her errant father already.”

“So you are thinking of declining it?”

Douglas kissed her knuckles, though he stood with her before a window, and he ought to have been halfway down the drive by now. Also half-drunk.

“I can think of nothing, Guinevere, save resolving matters between us. Until I know for a certainty you are wedded to another, I will make no commitments elsewhere. If you were to accept my suit, the decision whether to buy Linden, or some other property, would be one made by both of us.”

This bit of honesty caused his lady—
the
lady—to withdraw her hand. “If you didn’t buy Linden, where would you look?”

Her tenacity was one of the things Douglas admired most about her—usually. “Heathgate mentioned that property was available locally, between Enfield and Oak Hall. The neighbors might be a slight drawback though.” He tossed out that sally despite the mood, the circumstances, and the untruth his comment conveyed. “I see a smile on your face, Guinevere, so it’s time I take my leave of you.”

She went into his arms, a dear and familiar comfort against the ache threatening to break Douglas’s heart.

“Leave me with something, Douglas. I need a token, something to reassure me you are real, that we really did lo—that we really did spend time together.”

That her composure slipped to this degree was a relief, and her request a blessing—for they truly had spent time
together
. Douglas stepped back and withdrew his penknife, a plain, serviceable little blade he kept razor sharp.

He freed his hair from its old-fashioned queue, then sliced off a curling lock about three inches long and laid it across her palm.

“Not very original,” he commented, taking out a monogrammed handkerchief—how he wished he had something prettier to give her. He folded the linen around the lock of hair and then closed her fingers around it. “Your token.”

“You are such a sweet, romantic, dear man, everything I dreamed of as a girl and thought I would never find.” She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. “I will miss you.”

“You will likely see me by Wednesday,” Douglas replied, his lips against her temple. Wednesday was ages and ages away to a man staring at a dying dream. “I’ll want to know what Westhaven has up his sleeve, and I will not allow you to keep it from me.”

“I wouldn’t. I won’t.”

“Good. Until Wednesday then.”

She framed his face with her hands and turned his head so she could kiss him—not a tender, wistful parting kiss, either. Guinevere’s kiss was ravenous, hot, demanding, and arousing—also both heartbreaking and reassuring. Douglas at first simply let her have her head, accepting what she bestowed without either inciting or denying her passion. When she slipped her hand around the back of his neck and molded her body to his, however, arousal stirred in earnest.

For a moment, he allowed himself to reciprocate, to plunge his tongue into her mouth and press himself tightly to her curves. To acknowledge the heat that flared between them still, to revel in it however briefly, was as much relief as agony.

Douglas eased the kiss back to something sweet and tender, to the parting kiss it should have been, and Guinevere accepted his decision—for once without argument.

“Until Wednesday,” she said, leaning against his chest. Douglas moved his hands on her back, soothing and caressing, but also memorizing the bones and muscles, the contour of her spine. And then he held her, but forced his hands to still, and eased his grip.

“It is so difficult, Guinevere, not to crush you to me, to wrap my arms around you as if I’d never let you go. I don’t want to leave you.”

As he’d intended, his admission was fortification enough that Guinevere could take the first step away.

“And I don’t want to let you go,” she replied, the sad smile curving her lips. “I’ll tell Rose you’ll come visit midweek.” She took his arm and walked him to the front entrance, where she handed him his greatcoat and gloves.

“Until Wednesday.” Douglas brushed one last kiss to her cheek and took his leave.

***

“A caller for you, madam.” The butler offered Gwen the calling card, which—no surprise—bore the Earl of Westhaven’s particulars engraved in black script on white stock.

“Show him in to the small parlor,” Gwen directed, as the butterflies in her stomach threatened to upend her lunch. She tidied her hair—again—pinched her cheeks—again—and closed her fingers around the handkerchief she’d kept in her pocket since Douglas had left her side days earlier.

She made her way to the family parlor—the room she associated most strongly with Douglas—and opened the door to find herself perused by a pair of serious, even beautiful, emerald-green eyes.

“Miss Hollister.” Gayle Windham, or rather, the Earl of Westhaven, looking altogether handsomer and more imposing than Gwen remembered him, made her a formal bow.

Gwen curtsied to an appropriate depth, no more. “My lord.” She gestured to the sofa. “Please have a seat.”

Westhaven resumed his inspection of her, but when Gwen took one of the rocking chairs, he sat himself in the other rocking chair, in closer proximity than the sofa would have afforded. Gayle Windham was more heavily muscled than he’d been six years ago, his dark chestnut hair a trifle longer, and his air that of a man preparing to assume a weighty title, however reluctantly.

“May I offer you tea, my lord, and perhaps something to eat?”

“Tea,” the earl responded, still studying her.

“Have I a smudge on my nose, then?” Gwen asked when he seemed disinclined to take up the conversational reins.

“You do not. You look, in fact, to be thriving.” He was not offering a compliment.

“How fortunate, for I
am
thriving.” She willed Westhaven to hear the implication:
No
thanks
to
your
lecherous
brother.

“I am pleased to hear it.” Then his handsome features creased into a frown. “No, actually, I am relieved to hear it. Quite thoroughly relieved.”

His sentiment was genuine, and made Gwen recall something she’d forgotten. She had liked Gayle Windham, six years ago. He’d grown on her gradually, as Victor had promised he would. He was the personification of the dutiful son, and despite those lovely eyes and patrician features, he was without artifice. Though he had dignity in abundance, he wasn’t an arrogant man.

And whereas Victor had been flamboyantly handsome, with green eyes, dark hair worn rakishly long, and the Windham height and grace, Gayle was quieter, his tastes sober, and his demeanor reserved.

Sitting in her parlor, all quiet self-containment, Westhaven reminded her fleetingly of Douglas.

Whom she would never stop missing. “You were concerned about my welfare?”

“I was,” he replied, “but you did not invite continued interest from any member of my family, and because I understood and respected your reasons, I trusted to my brother to deal with you, should the need arise.”

The tea tray arrived—the best service in the household, polished to a spotless shine—accompanied by pears, cheese, bread, sliced ham, and an assortment of cakes. The interruption was timely, for Gwen felt her temper flare higher at Westhaven’s words.

“I see no need,” she said as evenly as she could, “for any member of your family to
deal
with
me. I am at a loss to explain your visit now, six years after our last, unfortunate encounter.”

“I appreciate your curiosity,” Westhaven said, not a hint of confrontation in his tone, “so I will be as plainspoken as you. I am here at the request of my brother, who feared were he to approach you directly, you would not receive him.”

Gwen could not imagine handsome, dashing Lord Victor Windham fearing anything. “Why in the world would I avoid Victor? He was a mistake, but one that has faded into obscurity with time.”

“So you have forgiven him?” Westhaven asked, his regard intent for all his manner was nonchalant.

“To be quite honest,” Gwen said, reaching for the silver teapot, “I haven’t spared him sufficient thought to consider whether he’s deserving of it.”

My, how wonderfully mendacious she could be when provoked, though how wonderfully true the sentiment was of late.

“Was my brother so forgettable?” Westhaven asked, accepting his cup of tea.

“You speak of Victor in the past tense,” Gwen pointed out. “He is a memorable man, but his actions regarding me are better forgotten. I trust he is getting on well?” She had wondered, mostly because Victor’s behavior on their elopement had been so very out of character, then she’d castigated herself for caring.

Westhaven’s brows twitched down. “Victor is not at ease with the way matters were left between you two, and he seeks to meet with you that he might address the issue.”

There it was, the gently worded command, the ducal gauntlet so politely dropped on the table, the beginning of the end of her freedom. “And if I refuse to meet with him?”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Westhaven said, looking less dignified and more… more bothered. “He will insist I continue to pester you, Miss Hollister, and I will comply with his wishes, until you capitulate simply to be rid of me.”

The last was said with a small thread of self-deprecating humor. Gwen wasn’t to be threatened overtly. At least not yet. She would instead—God help her and Westhaven both—be
charmed
.

“I don’t want to meet with him.” Douglas would have been proud of her for that understatement. “Nothing he has to say, nothing he can offer me, nothing he has, holds any interest for me. You may convey to him my complete forgiveness, if indeed there is anything to forgive. Victor and I were both foolish, selfish, and lacking in judgment, but I find no lasting harm, at least not to me.”

Westhaven looked pained at that speech, but he’d at least heard her out.

He set down his teacup precisely in the middle of its saucer. “How can you say you’ve suffered no lasting harm, when you had more than an understanding with a duke’s son six years ago, but because of his stupid schemes, you’ve spent the rest of your youth buried here in the country, not even taken into the household of your relations? Being deprived of a husband and children of your own constitutes harm in itself.”

Gwen parried out of instinct, though Westhaven’s condemnation of his brother was interesting, and his words confirmed that he knew nothing of Rose. “Where is it written, my lord, that a person, a woman, can be happy only with a spouse and children?”

“Probably in the Bible, for starters, and certainly in my father’s personal lexicon under the heading ‘contented females,’” Westhaven replied, the humor again evident in his eyes. “I hope I do not offend when I observe you are more strikingly lovely than you were six years ago, Miss Hollister, and you deserve to have a fellow about who can appreciate that. To the extent my brother stole such a future from you, you are an injured party.”

Such was the charm a man in expectation of a dukedom could dispense, so subtle, so casual, that the flattery felt deserved.

Gwen had neglected to pour herself a cup of tea, and remedied the oversight while she gathered her wits. “I appreciate your assessment, Lord Westhaven,” she replied, her voice gratifyingly steady, considering she wished he’d choke on his aristocratic charm. “Any harm I suffered at your brother’s hands was fleeting and easily rectified. I simply did not enjoy what I learned of Polite Society. My presence there was more a function of my aunt’s ambitions than any choice on my part.”

“So you won’t see him?” Westhaven asked, rising and ambling to the mantel, over which a portrait of Grandfather’s favorite bitch with a litter of puppies held pride of place.

“What can Victor Windham offer me, or want from me, that would improve our situation now? If he needs my forgiveness, he has it, though I’ve explained it isn’t necessary.”

Westhaven perused the portrait, and Gwen had the sense he was in truth inspecting the artistry with an educated eye. “I believe Victor intends to offer you marriage of a sort, but he hasn’t confided in me specifically.”

“Marriage of a sort?” Wasn’t “marriage of a sort” already the state of things between them?

Westhaven left off appraising the painting and turned to face her. “Victor is not the impulsive, reckless young man you knew. If he’s offering you marriage—and I don’t know for certain that he is—then he has reasons for it, well-thought-out reasons. He would provide for you generously, of that I am sure.”

“I have no need of his generosity,” Gwen shot back. “You can see I am quite comfortable in my home.”

“This is not your home,” Westhaven said gently. “This property is entailed with the barony that passed to your cousin Greymoor. Victor can offer you your own home, Miss Hollister, and security for the rest of your life.”