Under A Duke's Hand (26 page)

“You ought to thank her horse,” said
Townsend. “But you are welcome. Eira is fine, by the way. We went
to check on her after luncheon. She’s being spoiled rotten with
brushing and treats.”

“I almost got rid of that horse. She was so
difficult to train.”

“Why don’t you sit down?” said Barrymore,
when Aidan resumed pacing. “Rest for a moment.”

Instead, Aidan walked over to the large,
rectangular parcel propped near the doorway, leaning against a pair
of chairs.

“What is this?”

“Oglesby’s painting of you and Gwen. It came
a couple days ago, the night...” Townsend didn’t finish the
sentence.

Aidan turned to them. “You haven’t looked at
it?”

The men exchanged glances. “It didn’t seem
the thing to do,” said Warren. “With her struggling so terribly
upstairs.”

“She’s not going to die.” That was what they
meant, that they hadn’t looked at it because they might be looking
at a ghost. He hated Warren in that moment, hated them all for
having healthy, happy, well-adjusted wives. “Gwen’s going to
recover. We’re going to hang this damned thing over the
fireplace.”

“Of course you will,” said Barrymore. “We
just didn’t want to look at it without you.”

Aidan tore the wrappings back. Barrymore came
over to help him, collecting the paper, and holding the painting
while he studied it.

Master Oglesby had a gifted hand. He had
captured Aidan’s likeness exactly, and Gwen’s too, down to the
otherworldly luminescence of her gaze. He stepped back to study the
two of them, taking in every detail. His medals, her curls, the
drape of his cape, and the tension of her gloved fingers upon her
lap. Her expression, which was not quite a smile but not quite a
frown.

“It’s handsome,” said Warren. Townsend and
Barrymore agreed.

Aidan said nothing. He did not find it
handsome. He found it far too representative of the chasm between
them. She sat directly beside him, beneath him, and yet she might
have been a thousand miles away. His expression was one of haughty
disconnectedness. Lord of his manor, master of his wife. He
shuddered and shut his eyes, and opened them again. It looked the
same, only worse. The painter had captured everything that was
wrong between them.

Without thought, on pure impulse, he attacked
the horrid thing. He tore at it, shredding the image and ripping it
from the frame. The canvas rent in great swaths, across his chest,
down to her lovely sad face. Bits of paint peeled away, melting on
his fingers. He realized he was shouting at it,
no, no, no. Damn
you.

His friends pulled him away, hauled him back
by his flailing arms and pinned him to the floor.

“Easy, man,” said Warren as he kicked to be
let free. “Rest a minute. You’re beside yourself.”

He saw Barrymore’s white face beyond him, and
the butler’s. Townsend brought a drink but he wasn’t thirsty. “Let
me up,” he yelled.

“In a minute,” said Warren. “When you’re
calm. I think you haven’t been sleeping, Aidan. I think you ought
to go to bed for a while, and see how you feel after a few
hours.”

“She’s not going to die.” He said it loud
enough for the whole house to hear. He wanted them to know it.
“She’s not going to die from this. I won’t let her.”

“No,” said Townsend on the other side of him.
“But you have to rest, for your wife’s sake.” He helped him up with
Warren’s assistance. “Rest here before the fire. We’ll have the
painting taken away.”

“No!” It was all he had of her, the only
likeness, aside from the sketch he’d made in the meadow. “Don’t
take it away. Put it up in my room.”

“You’ve shredded it, man.”

“I don’t care. I still want it.” He made it
to the sofa and lay down, then lurched up and grasped Warren’s
coat. “You come and get me if she needs me. Tell Mrs. Fleming. And
wake me up in an hour.”

“Yes. We certainly will. Sure you won’t have
a drink?”

Townsend held it out again and Aidan took a
deep swig to mollify him. Beneath the burn of the brandy, he
detected the sweetness of laudanum. Aidan glared at his friend, too
furious to speak. “Just a little,” Townsend said in apology. “The
tiniest bit.”

“I’ll have you arrested,” he said.

“Later. You can have me arrested later. For
now, get some sleep.”

Chapter
Sixteen: Love

Aidan woke in the dark, in the early morning
hours. Someone had pulled the curtains and banked the fire, and
piled him with blankets. The portrait was gone from the corner. He
sat up with his wife’s name on his lips.

His head spun at the movement, and his
stomach lurched. A servant looked in on him from the door. “Water,”
he rasped. “And something to eat.”

At once, the servants produced an ewer of
fresh water and a basket of bread, cheese, and currant cake. The
bland food settled his stomach while the water worked to clear his
head. His friends were right, he had needed a rest, but now he
needed to go back to his wife.

He climbed the stairs with nervous urgency.
They would have woken him if she’d taken a bad turn. The whole
house would not be abed, so silent, if Gwen was in crisis. He
reached his rooms and went inside, and found Minette bathing Gwen’s
forehead and cheeks.

“Where is the housekeeper?” he asked. “You
should be resting in your condition.”

“I don’t mind helping,” said Minette with her
typical cheer. “Your wife is better now. The fever has broken, but
she’s very tired.”

“I must sit still, for Jack,” Gwen whispered.
Her eyes were closed, her head heavy upon the pillow. “I must be
still.”

Minette soothed her gently. “Of course you
shall be still.”

“Where is Jack?” Her eyes fluttered open but
she didn’t seem to see them. “I’m being still.”

“That’s good, darling. Rest a while, and then
we shall have some tea.” Minette looked over at Aidan. “Will you
speak to her? I think she’d like to know you’re near.”

Aidan didn’t think she would want him near.
She wanted Jack, for all his poor behavior. She’d already fallen
back into sleep, dreaming of the meadow, perhaps.

“I met Gwen two days before we were to
marry,” he said to Minette. “In a clearing, by a lake. I sketched
her there. I was dressed in common clothes, and I told her my name
was Jack.”

Minette clutched her chest. “What a relief.
She’s been speaking of this fellow Jack ever since the fever broke.
I didn’t know what you would make of it.” She wrung out the cloth
and laid it over the edge of the bowl. “Would you care to sit with
me a while?”

“You ought to be resting,” he said again.
“Have you had breakfast?”

“Yes, and I am in fine health. Women do not
become weak and pitiful creatures just because they are with
child.” She patted Gwen’s hand as Aidan took a seat on the other
side of the bed. “As for your wife, I think she is on her way to
recovery. She’s very strong.”

Aidan studied Gwen’s face, her eyelids
twitching in sleep. “She’s strong enough to leave me,” he said.
“And almost die in the attempt.”

Minette gave a subtle shake of her head. “I
don’t think she was leaving you. I think she only meant to get your
attention.”

“She has my attention. She’s had my attention
from the start. I’ve tried to be a good husband, but she’s never
liked me.”

“She calls you ‘Sir,’” said Minette quietly.
“When she talks about you to others, she refers to you as ‘the
duke.’”

“Well, I am a duke, as much as she abhors me
for it. I can’t change who I am, or who she is, or where she came
from. She is my wife now, and calls me ‘Sir’ as a measure of
respect.”

“And that is important to you?”

He gave her sharp look. “For her to respect
me? You respect your husband. He surely requires it.”

“I respect him and I love him. But I never
call him ‘Sir.’” She returned his look very directly. “Perhaps that
is your way of distancing yourself from a wife whom you feel,
perhaps, too far below you.”

He had known Minette since she was a
child—and he had never heard her speak so bluntly. Worse, her words
had a ring of truth. Not just a ring, but many bells tolling.

“She believes I feel that way,” he said. “But
I only like to cleave to proprieties.”

“You’ve always been a stickler for manners
and such.” She studied him a moment. “I wonder if you’ve been
raised too properly, so now your marriage is too cold and proper. I
wonder if you don’t know how to be a simple man.”

A simple man, like Jack, the man Gwen called
for in her sleep.

“I’m not a simple man.” It always came back
to this. “I’m a duke, Minette. It’s who I am. It’s my duty, my
purpose, my responsibility.”

“Your title and responsibilities will always
be part of your life. But Gwen and her needs must be part of your
life now too.”

He made a low, gruff sound. “That would be
fine, except that I don’t understand her needs, and she refuses to
understand mine. I married her because the King of England told me
to. I have an image to maintain. A sacred legacy.”

“What image? What sacred legacy? That you’re
a greater fellow than her? That you’re too lofty for such trifles
as love and caring?”

He crossed his arms over his chest, defending
himself from Minette’s incisive words. “I care for her. I take
exquisite care of her, for all the good it does me.”

“Do you love her?”

Aidan leaned forward and put his head in his
hands. He would have given anything for the Minette of his
childhood, toddling around their ankles and eating cakes.

“I want to love her,” he admitted between his
fingers. “But there is this distance between us. Perhaps I’ve put
it there. I only wished for her to respect me. I only wanted her to
accept me as I am.”

“As a duke? What about plain old Arlington?
Or Aidan, if you will? The kind, caring friend we all know?”

“I’ve tried to be kind,” he burst out,
looking up at her. He lowered his voice as Gwen stirred in her
sleep. “I’ve tried to be kind and caring, but she wants something
more. She wants love, this sweet, romantic ideal that she dreamed
of as a child. I don’t know how to give it to her.”

He was stunned to see tears in Minette’s
eyes. “Don’t you remember?” she said. “Don’t you remember how I
wished for Barrymore to love me, and how much it hurt me when he
refused to?”

Good Lord. All of them had suffered, watching
that misery. It never occurred to him that he was doing the same to
his wife.

“He thought he was doing what was best, and
what was good,” Minette continued. “He had his reasons, but it was
the worst sort of torment, being denied love by my husband. All I
wanted was a smile, a kiss. Some sign of true affection. When
Barrymore wouldn’t give himself to me, I thought I wouldn’t
survive.”

“Our situations are not the same,” Aidan
said. “You loved him and you wanted him. Gwen doesn’t want me.”

“Do you think she would have ridden out into
the icy night if she didn’t want you? If she wasn’t desperate for
your love?” Minette clasped her hands so tightly together that her
knuckles whitened. “I know a little of being a desperate woman,
Arlington. I recognize myself in her.”

Minette’s throat worked as she fished out a
handkerchief. Aidan bowed his head.

“So what do I do?” he asked, feeling more
desperate by the moment. “Help me, Minette, since you’ve been
there. What can I do to save us? How did you finally get through to
Barrymore?”

“I threw a porcelain swan at him,” she said,
wiping her eyes. “It shattered everywhere.” She fluttered the
handkerchief with a tinkling laugh. “I don’t imagine that is
helpful advice. But I threw a swan at him and shrieked that he had
to love me. I behaved like a madwoman.” She gave him a pointed
look. “Some might say Gwen behaved like a madwoman too.”

Was it true? Had her flight not been an act
of rebellion, but a cry for love?

“She knew she could not get to Wales,” said
Minette. “She is not an idiot. She was making a calculated move.
Now, I suppose the next move is yours. And you know, I don’t think
you told me the truth earlier. I think you do love her. I think you
love her as desperately as she loves you.”

“Yes,” he admitted. “I love her in a
completely unreasonable way.”

“Why unreasonable?” asked Minette.

“Because there is no basis for it. Only that
she is mine, but you see...” He leaned forward again and rubbed his
eyes. “I’m afraid that beneath all my richness and finery, and
grand title, there is nothing to appeal to her, nothing I can give
her. We are nothing alike.”

“Oh, goodness.” Minette chuckled and adjusted
Gwen’s blanket. “Barrymore and I are nothing alike, as you well
know, but I love him with all my heart and soul. He puts up with my
chattering, and I put up with his brooding. I appreciate the things
that are special about him, even if he’s nothing like me.” She
tucked away her handkerchief, her chin tilted in a thoughtful way.
“Gwen has spoken of Jack on numerous occasions, even as she fought
the fever. And Jack is you, without all your richness and finery,
and grand title. Perhaps it would please her to wake to a husband
more like Jack, and less like the Duke of Arlington.”

“But I am the Duke of Arlington.” He
swallowed against the emotion in his throat. “That’s always been
all I am.”

“If you truly believe that, dear friend, it
makes me sad.”

Minette stood and felt Gwen’s forehead as
Aidan fought to compose himself. Why was he so afraid to look
beneath his riches and his titles? Who was he, truly?

He was a man who had behaved badly toward his
wife, and was ashamed to admit it. He was a man who had made
terrible mistakes.

He was a man who would have to start all over
again, and try to make things right.