When the Duchess Said Yes (35 page)

Resolutely she began to decide what things she needed
to take with her. The old saying was that absence made the heart grow fonder. She could only pray that it was true.

Determined to prove his point, Hawke did not return home for five days. He had intended to teach Lizzie A Lesson, the way that men were always supposed to, and he had planned to spend at least a week carousing in expensive brothels to prove that he intended to do whatever made him happy, no matter if he was married or not.

But it had taken less than an hour in the first expensive brothel for him to realize that independence wasn’t necessarily as excellent as he’d imagined, at least not in London. The brandy he was served was abysmal, and the company around him—callow boys down from university, old bachelors, and other straying husbands like himself—was not much better. Even worse were the women sent to tempt him, women whom he’d recalled as being wondrously tempting, but who now seemed weary and unenticing compared to Lizzie.

To Madame Mosley’s disgust and contempt, he had soon departed, and instead spent the night and the next four besides sleeping staidly at his club. Among his old friends, he knew that this probably raised more eyebrows than if he’d stayed with the whores, but so be it.

Five nights away from home was the recommended time for A Lesson. To Hawke’s surprise, however, it also proved the correct time for a bit of self-reflection.

He was shocked by how much he missed his wife. Not a minute of the day seemed to pass in which he didn’t wonder what she was doing, think of what her reaction would be to something, or imagine her charming, chuckling laughter. The five nights in that Spartan bed at the club were even worse, because his thoughts of Lizzie had taken a decidedly more lustful turn, so much so that
real sleep became impossible. What man desired his wife like this, anyway?

He had always believed that love did not last. He knew it from his own experience, and he’d only to look at the marriages of his parents and his acquaintances to see equal proof that wedded love—especially when the marriage was arranged—had as little chance of lasting as a guttering candle’s flame.

He’d been determined to be as civilized about it as his parents had been. Once the thing was done, he would retreat to Bella Collina, and Lizzie could do whatever she pleased here in England. He’d make sure she and the children had a sizable income for expenses, and so long as she was relatively discreet in her activities, she’d be free to do as she pleased. What more could she wish? How could any husband be more understanding, more obliging, than that?

Yet when at last he climbed the steps to the Chase’s front door, it took all his willpower not to take those steps two at a time. Mr. Betts himself opened the door to him, greeting him with his usual impeccable demeanor.

“Where is Her Grace?” Hawke asked, already striding toward the staircase. “In her rooms?”

“No, Your Grace,” Betts answered. “Her Grace is not at home.”

“Ah,” Hawke said, hoping he kept the surprise from showing on his face. All the time he’d been away, he’d imagined her pining for him, alone in her bedchamber.

“Here you are at last, Hawke.” His cousin Brecon stood in the door that Betts had not yet closed.

“His Grace the Duke of Breconridge,” Betts announced.

“Thank you, Betts, I can see him well enough,” Hawke said crossly. In ordinary circumstances he would have welcomed Brecon, but now his smiling cousin was bound to ask too many questions Hawke would rather
not have to answer. “Good day, Brecon. You have caught me on my way to my bed. A damnable headache.”

“That’s what comes of late hours at Madame Mosley’s house, you know,” Brecon said, handing his hat to Betts. “The brandy she serves would give a dog the headache.”

“I wasn’t there last night,” Hawke said. “Which you most likely know already.”

Brecon’s shrug was wonderfully noncommittal. “If you are too ill to see me, then I’ll console myself with the company of your far more agreeable wife. Betts, please send word to Her Grace that I am here to attend her.”

“Lizzie’s not at home,” Hawke said curtly. “You can’t see her, any more than I can.”

“How disappointing,” Brecon said. “Where is she, pray? I have just come from Marchbourne House, and March and Charlotte haven’t seen or heard from her in days, either. They’re rather concerned, you know.”

“They haven’t?” Hawke said, instantly anxious. “Betts, where
is
Her Grace?”

“She took the traveling coach to Halsbury Abbey on Monday, sir,” Betts said. “Beyond that I cannot say.”

Hawke swore. “Did she leave me a letter or message?”

Betts managed to look properly gloomy. “No, sir. There has been no further word from Her Grace.”

“But what in blazes would she be doing at Halsbury?” Hawke exclaimed. It made no sense. Lizzie had never been to Halsbury Abbey. All she’d known of it had been what he had told her in passing. He hadn’t been there himself since he’d returned to England, and God only knew what state the place was in. “I must go bring her back to London directly. Betts, have the stable bring round a fresh horse. I’ll leave as soon as it can be arranged.”

“Not before we have a small conversation, cousin.”
Deftly Brecon stepped to block Hawke’s path up the stairs. “I suspect there are a few things that you need to hear before you go charging off on the public highway.”

“You are delaying me, Brecon,” Hawke said. “What use could any small conversation be to me now?”

Brecon smiled, not moving. “You have been married perhaps a month. Yet you have been seen amusing yourself among Madame Mosley’s whores, and your wife has fled from town without your knowledge. A conversation does appear in order, Hawke, and somewhere more private than your front hall.”

Hawke sighed impatiently. “Very well, then,” he said, “but you must be brief, if I’m to make any distance by nightfall.”

He went striding toward the ballroom, not so much leading Brecon as permitting him to follow. He wasn’t particularly in a humor for picture gazing, but the ballroom was nearby. It wasn’t until they’d entered the room that he realized it was also the last place he’d seen Lizzie, the place where he hadn’t found the courage to say good-bye when he left.

“What is it you wished to say, Brecon?” Hawke said as he yanked open the curtains to the tall windows himself, scraping the brass rings along their rods. “How exactly do you intend to meddle in my life?”

“Not to meddle so much as to observe,” Brecon said, sitting in one of the two armchairs. “From what I know of Lizzie, she is not a lady who would run off like this without provocation.”

“Then you do not know her at all.” Hawke dropped heavily into the other armchair. Last week’s breakfast dishes had been cleared away from the little table, but nothing else had been disturbed since then, as were his orders for this room, with the chairs and leaning pictures exactly as he’d left them. He could almost see Lizzie as she’d sat in that chair beside the window and
fussed with her chocolate, her yellow striped dressing gown falling softly over her body. “She has a history of bolting.”

“But you do not deny the question of provocation.” Brecon rested his elbows on the arms of the chair and made a small tent of his fingers before him. “That is good, because from what I have heard from others, you provoked her most grievously. Given her spirit, you are fortunate she didn’t take a pistol to you.”

Hawke grunted. “That’s not very amusing, Brecon.”

“It’s not intended to be,” he said. “You announced at Lord Merton’s house that you intended to return to Italy and abandon your wife, which she in turn was forced to hear from Lady Merton the following day.”

“That wasn’t my meaning, not at all.” He shoved himself free of his chair, unable to sit still any longer, and began pacing back and forth before Brecon. “What I meant was something far more agreeable and civilized. I suggested that when the love and passion between us die away, as they inevitably must, then we part amicably, to seek our own contentment wherever we each should please.”

Brecon’s expression didn’t change. “Which for you would be a return to that winsome villa.”

“It would,” Hawke said. “I will not deny it. But I was willing to grant Lizzie the same freedom, too, to remain here with her sisters and our children, or wherever else she pleased. My parents followed much the same path with success, and without the distress of those spouses who remained together in misery.”

Brecon nodded, lightly bouncing his fingertips together as he listened. “What did you think of your parents’ decision when you were a boy? Did you share their happiness when your mother was often in the country with her lover, and your father here in town with his, and with Parliament as well?”

“I was only a child,” Hawke said, surprised Brecon would ask such a question. “My opinions were of no consequence to my parents. I had my nurse, my governess, and my tutors, and then I was sent to school, as was expected.”

Brecon raised a single brow. “Yet as soon as you came of age, Hawke, you left England and your parents far behind. Only your father’s will—and not he himself—could bring you back. Nothing will persuade you to embrace his interests or values. Would you want your own son to have so little regard for you?”

Abruptly Hawke stopped his pacing. He had always thought of his son—the son he must have with Lizzie—as only his heir, a nebulous, formless being who lived in the future. He’d never imagined his son as an actual boy like he himself had been, strong-willed, independent and, if he was truthful, rather selfish. Now, because of Brecon, he could suddenly imagine his son in every detail, down to his feeling the same bitterness and resentment toward his always absent father, the father who was always too busy to bother with him.

As imaginings went, it was not enjoyable. The more Hawke thought of his as-yet-unborn son, the more he wanted to make things different for him. He would teach the boy to ride, himself, and not leave it to the grooms. He would show the boy the secret passage he’d discovered at the Chase one rainy afternoon, something he’d never showed anyone else. He would take the boy to the oldest apple tree in the orchard at Halsbury Abbey, the one with the sweetest apples in the county. He would—oh, he’d do scores of things with his son, all the things his father had never done with him, and he’d do them with his daughters as well, so Lizzie could come along, too.

His sons and his daughters. No,
their
sons and daughters, half Lizzie and half him. His heart and his thoughts
were racing headlong toward this future. Why had he never let himself think of these children before? He wouldn’t be like his father in the House of Lords. What had made him believe he’d be as wretched a parent, too?

“I know that every marriage is different, Hawke,” his cousin was saying. “My dear wife and I followed our own particular path to happiness, just as March and Charlotte have found another, and your father and mother followed theirs. But knowing Lizzie, I do not believe she’d be content with the particular model developed by your parents, living apart from you and going her own way. Nor, truly, do I believe you wish it, either.”

Blast Brecon. How could he know?

Because during these last five nights away from Lizzie, Hawke’s conscience had plagued him most grievously, as if it had wished to teach him a lesson of its own. Again and again he’d thought of his last glimpse of Lizzie, crumpled on the floor of the ballroom, and each time he’d felt like the most boorish, inconsiderate husband in all creation.

He’d tried to tell himself that it was his wife’s youth that had made her so starry-eyed about love and that, once she was older and more experienced, she’d understand the wisdom of what he’d advised about their future. But as justifications went, it wasn’t a good one. He’d known the truth, known it from the first night at Madame Mosley’s.

He hadn’t been able to make his explanation clear to Lizzie because he didn’t believe it himself, exactly as Brecon said. He saw that now. He’d bungled badly. Even worse, he’d hurt Lizzie, something he’d never, ever wished to do.

“Damnation, Brecon,” he said, raking his fingers through his hair. “I’ve made as great a mess of things as a man possibly can. How can I ever set this to rights with Lizzie? What can I possibly say to her?”

“Go to your wife and tell her you love her,” Brecon advised. “That will go a great way toward mending whatever fences you might have broken down.”

But Hawke shook his head, turning away to begin his pacing again. “Perhaps that would be sufficient with an ordinary woman,” he said, “but with Lizzie, I do not—”

He stopped, both his pacing and his words, struck completely speechless by the sight before him.

The painting of Naples from Bella Collina sat in the exact place he’d left it five days before. But now the bright blue sky was a muddy gray and the once sparkling bay was dull and gray as well. Splatters of dried coffee grounds clung to the painting’s surface, with murky stains in the carpet below where the coffee had dripped. The coffee had been methodically applied, with every inch of the canvas covered, and if Hawke had had any doubts how this might have happened, the silver coffeepot had carefully been left upside down, its four silver feet standing up before the painting.

“Oh, my, my,” Brecon said, coming to stand beside Hawke. “Lizzie’s handiwork?”

“I have no doubt of it,” Hawke said. “That is Lizzie all over.”

In humble silence they stared down at the damaged painting. A week ago Hawke would have been furious at what she’d done. But now, in some peculiar way, it seemed only fair, a kind of Lizzie justice. For what he’d said to her, he deserved it.

Besides, he’d already made up his mind. The next time he saw the view from Villa Collina, he wanted it to be the real version, not a painting, and he wanted Lizzie at his side to see it with him.

If only she would forgive him.