Once a Wallflower, At Last His Love (Scandalous Seasons Book 6) (28 page)

“What do you want?” The angry little voice called from across the room. The insolent girl remained seated in his desk chair, looking impossibly small in its familiar folds.

He took a step forward. “Forgive me—”

If looks could kill, the young girl would have smote him with the fire in her eyes. “It’s not my forgiveness you should beg for.”

The spirited child would surely be the bane of some poor future husband’s existence. He folded his arms across his chest. “A pleasure to meet again, Miss Rogers—”

She snorted cutting into his polite greeting. “I imagine if it was such a pleasure you’d have not abandoned my sister.”

It was not every day the powerful Duke of Mallen was shamed…by a child, no less.

Addie hopped up from her seat.
His
seat. And came around the desk, unaware of how her innocent charge gutted him. She ran her thumb over her lips and then, in a very Hermione-like way did a slow, steady circle about him. “Hmm,” she said, a wholly unimpressed glint in her young eyes. “You seem far more brooding than the last time we met.” She looked him up and down, the way eerily reminiscent of his first meeting with Hermione once upon a lifetime ago. “You don’t appear very duke-like.”

It was his lot to have his life graced with insolent women not at all possessed of a suitable deference for the title. “I beg your pardon?” he blinked as just then a niggling of doubt crept in. Would a lady who’d never fawned over him truly have desired the role of duchess above all else?

“Well.” Addie began to tick off on her fingers. “You’re all rumpled. That’s not at all duke-like.” His valet would agree on that regard. “Your office is entirely too cheerful.”

Sebastian glanced around with a critical eye at the Chippendale furniture, the leather sofa and wing-backed chairs, the wide mahogany desk. “Cheerful?”

At his interruption of her very important list, she pursed her lips. “You need more of those ornate gold lions.”

“Ahh, yes, of course,” he said somberly and her child’s ears were too innocent to detect the droll tone.

“May I proceed?”

He inclined his head. “Please do.”

“Your eyes are green and your hair is golden-blond.” She let out a beleaguered sigh as though that offense were the greatest of all the others.

He frowned. “What is wrong with my hair?” Not that it particularly mattered what a ten or elevenish-something girl thought about his hair.

She shrugged. “Everyone knows dukes should be dark and brooding and you, Duke…” She gave him another insolent up and down look, “are just a bit brooding.” She muttered something under her breath that sounded a good deal like ‘I told Hermione one preferred a dark, brooding duke’.

He swiped his hand over his mouth. What was there to say to the girl’s charge? He chose nothing, and instead focused on the more pressing question. “What business do you have in my office, Miss Rogers?”

“Hermione’s office.”

He cocked his head.

“You left and it is therefore Hermione’s office, though Hugh pointed out that you own everything and Hermione was at your mercy and as a result we’re all at your mercy…” She ceased prattling and went silent.

Sebastian frowned, not at all liking this young girl’s assessment. Did she believe him capable of turning both she and Hermione and her brother out?

Then, you’ve not given this trio of siblings much reason to trust you,
a voice needled.

The whisper of a memory followed on the heel of that.
My brother…we…there were no funds for him to attend Eton…
A woman who’d sought connection to his title and wealth hadn’t asked for gowns or jewels. The sole request she’d put to him was for her brother’s education. Why would she do that? Why, unless there was more to her… “Shouldn’t you be abed?” He knew little about the habits of children, but he knew at this late hour Addie should be asleep.

She pointed her gaze to the ceiling. “I’ve reading to do,” she said as though he were a child incapable of comprehension.

“Of course,” he said schooling his features into a serious mask. He glanced at his immaculate desk. Or rather, his once immaculate desk. Pages upon pages of sheets lined every corner surface space of the massive mahogany piece. He wandered over then picked up a random sheet and scanned the page.

She loved him. Loved him in spite of what she must do. Loved him even as he could never love her…

“I imagine you find Gothic novels silly,” she called from over his shoulder, pulling his attention away from the page.

“Hmm?” he murmured, throwing a glance back at her.

She gestured to the page. “Hugh says gentlemen are too intelligent to ever appreciate such drivel.” She flung herself into one of the leather wing-backed chairs in front of his desk and hooked her legs over the arm of her seat. “Do you believe it’s drivel?”

He perched a hip on the edge of the desk. “I believe at one time I was so arrogant. But then I read a story at the insistence of…”
Hermione
. He recalled the bold challenge in her eyes, the displeased frown on her bow-shaped lips and pain scissored through him. God how he’d missed her.

Addie stared expectantly at him.

“Your sister,” he supplied. “I read a story at the insistence of your sister.”

“Annnnnd?” she asked in an exaggerated manner.

“And they are quite entertaining.”

She gave a pleased nod. “Of course they are.”

He returned his attention to the odd collection of pages.

Alas, Addie appeared unwilling to allow him some quiet. “She really doesn’t like me to read the story as she writes, insists I wait until she’s completed. So, I sneak down when she falls asleep and read…” She wrinkled her nose. “But she works long hours, so I have to stay awake until she seeks her bed.”

Perhaps it was the advanced hour or the nearly entire bottle of brandy he’d consumed, or perhaps it was just little Addie herself, but God help him, he was having a dashed hard time following the young girl’s thoughts. He glanced up from his reading. “Who?”

“Who what?” Then she gave her head a shake. “Oh, you mean Hermione? I have to wait until she seeks out her bed. When she sleeps, she’ll sleep quite hard so there are no worries about waking her.” Pain squeezed like a vise about his heart. He wanted to know all those small details that made Hermione, Hermione.

Addie shoved herself upright and glanced around as if despite her assurance about Hermione’s sleeping habits, she still feared the older sister would discover her presence here.

He returned his attention to the page.

Dukes never wed impoverished young ladies, one step away from societal ruin…

Is that what she believed? Is that what she’d
been
?

Suddenly, Waxham’s warning blared through his mind.
Desperation will drive people who are not normally desperate to do desperate things…Not everything is always as it seems.

The vise tightened all the harder and he crushed the page in his hands. Had Waxham been correct? Had the bold, spirited Hermione Rogers been driven because she’d felt there had been no other choice? His insides churned with the idea of her feeling the desperation Waxham had spoken of, that she felt no other choice but to coordinate her own ruin. He closed his eyes a moment, far preferring the idea of her as a fortune-hunting schemer to the now, niggling possibility there really was more here, more to account for—

“Is that why you left?” She jerked her chin toward his white-knuckled grip upon Hermione’s page. “Because you disapproved of Hermione’s writing?” He lightened his hold upon the sheet. The little girl continued on a rush. “She really is quite remarkable and it would be unpardonable for you to ever stop such beautiful stories from being told.” A strand of hair toppled over her eye. She blew it back, the move so patently Hermione’s. “Hugh said you’d never allow it. Hermione’s writing,” she clarified.

Hugh was a miserable little bugger who needed a stern talking to. Then Addie’s words registered. “She writes,” he blurted, knowing he must appear a total lack-wit with his mouth agape.

Addie pointed her gaze skyward once again. “Well, yeeees,” she said once more with her exaggerated tone. “What do you think you’re reading?” His gaze fell to the words in Hermione’s hand and then back to the girl.
What in hell…?
Addie blinked. “You didn’t know?”

“I don’t…She didn’t…” He gave his head a slow shake and tried for words. How much more did he not know about his wife? “What does she write?”

Addie scooted forward and ignored his question. “You mustn’t tell her I’ve told you.” She squared her small shoulders and in the manner befitting a proud new papa and said, “She’s Mr. Michael Michaelmas.”

The air left him. And at last it all made sense—her dashing notes upon her empty dance card, sneaking about her hosts’ homes and ruffling through their desks in search of empty sheets. She was a writer. He recalled
The Entrapped Earl
and
The Mad Marquess
. She was a
brilliant
writer.

Hardly the quality of writing to rival Chaucer or Aristotle…

Sebastian swiped a palm across his mouth. She was the brilliant author whose work had captivated him enough to humble himself before his brother-in-law, all to read a copy of those expertly crafted words. And he’d disparaged her so. God he hated himself in that moment.

“You were to be her duke,” Addie said softly.

He was to be Hermione’s duke. And instead of fighting for a place in her heart, he’d walked away, like a sulking child to lick the wounds of his hurt pride and broken heart. Instead of talking to her and trying to set their uncertain union to rights, he’d run.

A true hero did not flee. Not in the way Sebastian had.

Addie wrinkled her nose. “Of course, Mr. Werksman and I told her no one wants an affable, charming type.” She continued prattling on.

“Mr. Werksman?” he asked, mind racing as he tried to put her words into some semblance of order.

“Her publisher,” Addie said as though it were the silliest thing in the world that he had no idea as to who the famed Mr. Werksman was. “Everyone knows all readers prefer their heroes dark and brooding.”

“Undoubtedly,” Sebastian said somberly.

Addie hopped to her feet. She tugged the forgotten page in his hand free and moved her blue eyes quickly over the words. “Do you know, I doubted Hermione? After she met you, she assured me that a charming, kind-hearted gentleman would be the perfect hero and I quite disagreed.” There was nothing charming or kind-hearted about him. He’d been nothing more than a petulant child. Shame twisted in his belly. Addie held the page up. “Then I read her latest work, and it is really quite brilliant. One of her best.” She yawned.

Desperately needing some solitude to put to his tumultuous thoughts to rights, he said quietly, “You should be on to bed.”

With a beleaguered sigh, she handed him the sheet. “Just like Hermione.” Addie skipped to the door and cast a suspicious look over her shoulder. “You shan’t tell her I told you.”

He marked an X upon his heart. “Your secret will remain with me.” And it would. He’d not break the girl’s confidence. Not to Hermione, anyway.

She smiled and hurried from the room.

Sebastian turned his attention to the neat stacks of sheets upon his desk eying them in stunned disbelief. Noisy footsteps sounded from outside his office, calling his attention away from Hermione’s work. Addie peeked her head around the door.

He looked at her quizzically. “Addie?”

“I think Hugh is wrong. I don’t think you’re a black-hearted bastard.” With that, she spun around and hurried from the room.

Yet, as he stared at the door she’d just disappeared behind, he had to admit, in this moment, it felt very much like the angry boy Hugh was indeed correct
. I am a black-hearted bastard.
Sebastian sat down.

And began to read.

C
hapter 26

The End.

H
ermione sat back in Sebastian’s desk chair and stared at the two words; words she’d once considered more beautiful than any others. They signified accomplishment and the completion of a story she’d pulled from her heart to tell. Now, a wedded woman and jilted wife, she could admit there were words far more beautiful, but in the absence of those precious three, these lone two would have to suffice.

She stared at the neat stack of pages and with steady fingers tied the blue satin ribbon about the pile. She smoothed her hand over the top page.
Her Charming Duke.
It was done. She quickly and efficiently placed the hundreds of sheets within the leather folio and tied it closed.

For the pain of her broken marriage and all the lies that had brought her to this moment, she could say one thing of beauty had come from it. His story. No,
their
story. A pang struck her heart. Or rather, part of their story. The rest she’d re-written to be an ending she’d so desperately needed in her own life. The door opened. “It is finished,” she said, studying the title. “At last, I’ve…” She picked up her head. And the words died on her lips. She blinked several times. How many days had she spent wishing he’d return, hoping he’d return? Had dreamed it so many times that surely this was just another one of those wishful dreams.

Sebastian closed the door with a soft click. “Hello, Hermione,” he said quietly.

Except, dreams did not talk. Certainly not in that deep, mellifluous baritone. Nor did they walk toward you with bold, determined steps. Then, hadn’t she once written
…Noblemen in possession of those bold steps…they always returned…

The last words he’d tossed her before he’d taken leave more than a month ago however, stuck like painful barbs in her memory.
There is the matter of an heir…
Is that why he’d returned, because of his need for an heir and the proverbial spare?

He stopped in front of his desk. “Hermione.”

In the loneliest days of his absence she’d imagined that carrying his child would be enough—to have a piece of him, and a babe of her own to love. Now she knew that was no longer enough. She wanted all of him.

Not knowing where the stoic calm came from, Hermione greeted him. “Sebastian.” She rose slowly and welcomed the reassuring presence of the desk between them; a comforting barrier. Not because she feared him, never that, but because it lent her an artificial courage to face him. “You’ve returned.” She smoothed her palms over the front of her skirts. “That is not to say you’ve returned to see me. As a duke you surely have business that requires your attention here.” She curled her toes painfully into the soles of her slippers.
Stop talking, Hermione. Stop prattling on like a ninny.
“Have you come for your heir?” she blurted.

Alas, she’d never been one to prevaricate.

He stilled. For the span of a heartbeat, the resentment and fury she’d last detected in his eyes was replaced by some emotion far gentler, far warmer. Then he shifted his attention to her leather folio. “No, I’ve not come for an heir.”

A twinge of regret pulled at her heart. “Oh.” Selfishly she’d have any part of him that he’d allow her.

He took a step toward her, his gaze fixed on his now disorderly desk.

Hermione’s heart hammered painfully. She hurried out from behind the piece of furniture and his intense stare followed her, the damning pile of pages of her just completed story forgotten. “W-why have you come?” She silently cursed the faint tremor to her words, wishing she could be one of those boldly courageous women, undaunted even in the face of her greatest loss.

Sebastian took a step toward her and she backed up. He continued coming. This time she remained fixed to the spot where she stood. He cupped her cheek. “What an odd question of a woman who summoned me,” he murmured.

“Th-that was two days ago,” she whispered, leaning into his touch and hating herself for craving all of him even as he’d never want her. His absence these two days had spoken more volumes than any books she could write in her life.

“I decided your story was worth hearing, Hermione.”

She blinked at his words. Then she widened her eyes. “M-my story?” Her heart fluttered wildly.

He quirked a golden eyebrow once more. “You asked me to come and listen to whatever it is you would say about your actions, madam.”

Her heart fell somewhere to her belly and then continued sinking all the way to her toes. “Oh,” she said, her tone flat. His implication quite clear—any word she uttered would be construed as nothing more than a work of fiction. Her lips twisted bitterly. By his own admission, even as unwitting as it had been, her work would never inspire.

He brushed his knuckles along her jaw. “Hermione?” he prodded.

She drew in a shuddery breath. It was time to tell him everything. Everything. And as it was quite difficult to ever pick up a story and begin at the middle, she chose the very obvious start point—the beginning.

“I have an elder sister.”

Several moments passed following Hermione’s admission, which really wasn’t an admission that said much at all. Sebastian believed Hermione would say nothing else of it. He waited. Her tight lips turned down at the corners, the stiff set to her shoulders, hinted at the tension in his wife’s frame.

“Her name is Elizabeth,” she said quietly. A sad little smile played upon her lips. “She is beautiful in every way. I was quite envious of her golden blonde curls as a girl.”

He would wager his right to the title Mallen the young woman could never rival Hermione in graceful beauty. Then, no woman could. Hermione had ruined him for all women. Now, he vastly preferred ladies with midnight hair and a mischievous glimmer in their blue eyes. No. Not women. Only her. It had only ever been her.

“We were just girls. Elizabeth but fourteen.” A spasm of pain wracked her face and she took a step away from him. “I was just eleven when we fell ill with a fever. Not much older than Addie now.” She spoke that last part more to herself.

The muscles of his stomach contracted, hating any world, then or now in which Hermione knew pain.

“I’d been upset that morning and swore to never sketch again. Elizabeth knew how much I loved to draw,” she said almost wistfully. “You didn’t know that of me.”

You didn’t ask why she stopped painting…

“You’re wrong,” his gruff words surprised her. She looked wide-eyed at him. “I saw your painting.” He tightened his fists as he remembered back to the image hung proudly in her father’s office. That child’s work; a glimpse into the girl she’d been.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered.

How much they’d not known about each other.

“But then I fell too ill to complete the image.”

The string-less violin in the painting.

“Elizabeth’s fever raged for days.” She drew in a slow breath and wrapped her arms about herself as though seeking warmth and comfort all at the same time, accustomed to relying on only herself for both. “Her fever climbed until she was no longer lucid.”

He ached to take her in his arms; to be that which she deserved, but he’d lost that right when he’d walked out of her life.

“She began to convulse, shake uncontrollably…” Tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them back. “And by the grace of God,” her words dripped with more bitterness than he ever remembered of her. “We both lived.” She ran her hands up and down her arms, despite the warmth of the room. “She was not the same afterward, and that was the last image I ever painted,” she added as though it were an afterthought.

He strained to hear those faint spoken words.

“The fever left her…” She met his gaze squarely, almost challengingly. “A child, at least in her mind.” Something dark flashed in her sapphire eyes.

Sebastian swallowed a ball of emotion. He thought of Emmaline; happy, wedded, with a family of her own. And then Hermione’s sister. That one unfair act of fate had transformed her family. It had been easy to be a brother to Emmaline, but if the circumstances had been reversed, would he have been the loyal, loving, devoted sibling Hermione had become these years? “I am so sorry,” he said even as the words left his mouth he realized how wholly inadequate they were for the great tragedy that had befallen the golden-haired angel described by Hermione.

Her shoulders lifted up and down in a little shrug. “As a child, I remember Mama and Papa’s sadness. Mama cried and cried, but I didn’t know why. I only knew Elizabeth was my sister. I knew she always had a smile and a laugh.” A wistful look stole across her face, driving back the earlier darkness. “Oh, that is certainly not to say Elizabeth doesn’t have bouts of temper. She does. The worst times can rival my younger sister and brother combined.”

How much sadness she’d known. With one unfortunate twist of fate, her family had been shattered and his brave, resilient Hermione had been trying to put the pieces back together since. He held a hand out. “Oh, Hermione,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion.

She firmed her jaw and met his gaze. “I don’t want your pity.”

“I don’t pity you.” Just the opposite. She had his admiration for her strength in the face of her family’s great struggles. It occurred to him how not unalike they’d been; elder siblings who’d taken on the mantle of responsibility by the sheer order of birthright. But how much greater the burden would be for a woman amidst a broken, shattered family.

“We were quite happy,” she said it almost as though she sought to convince herself to the truth of that.

“Then why did you never paint again?” he asked quietly. Why, if she’d truly been happy?

Hermione trailed her fingertips along the back of the mahogany arm chair. “Whenever I touched another brush or charcoal, I remembered the day we fell ill, and it just seemed such an ugly reminder of such a dark day.” She looked at him and shrugged. “Why would anyone ever want to remember that?”

Why, indeed.

Her expression grew pensive. “From our illness, I also learned that happiness was fleeting.” A needlelike pain stuck into his heart as he realized she spoke of their happiness together as well. He’d spent the past month thinking only of his own heart and his desiring for more, all the while failing to realize everything she’d endured. He was humbled by the depth of such self-centeredness. Why should she have confided in him?

“Then my mother died,” Hermione said, her words running together; words he ventured she’d never told anyone, until now. “My father loved her desperately and he fell into a deep despair. His…our,” she amended, “finances fell into disrepair.” Who had she shared this burden with? Who had been there to support Hermione through her great losses? Her brother and sister would have been mere babes. Pain knifed through him at just how alone she’d been. She continued on composed, even as each revelation threw his world into tumult. “And Elizabeth needed caring for.” She began to pace. “We let most of the servants go, but were forced to keep on her nursemaid. I use the mon…” She shook her head so hard she dislodged a single strand of dark hair. She brushed it back.

The money she earned as Mr. Michael Michaelmas went to care for her sister.

Ah God, he could not bear to think of the weight of the world the baronet had thrust upon Hermione’s diminutive but capable shoulders. She’d been forced to become a parent to her younger and elder siblings, relying on no one but herself. And he, in his unwillingness to listen and his abandonment, he was no better than her father. The thought ravaged his conscience. Nearly bringing him to his knees with the weight of his own shame.

Hermione folded her arms tighter about her waist and rocked forward. “I have lied to you,” she whispered.

It mattered not that she was Mr. Michaelmas. As his duchess, she could write all day, every day. “It doesn’t matter, Hermione. It—”

“No,” she said with such adamancy, the protestation withered on his lips. She met his gaze. “I should have told you. It was unpardonable, but I’d have you know the whole truth.” The muscles of her throat worked. When she spoke, her words emerged on a faint whisper. “There was a gentleman.”

There was a gentleman
. A black haze descended over his vision. Someone who’d come before him. The world ceased spinning and he stood in a quagmire of jealousy and resentment, nearly consumed by the force of his emotions.