A Man Above Reproach (17 page)

“What did you do now?”

“It is nothing of your concern,” she replied, stopping outside the door. “Perhaps I should just go, return as Sally requested.”

“Nonsense,” he said, shuttling her into the room. “Sally will be delighted. We are all discussing my future, you will find it entertaining.”

The scene within was strangely familial, Sally and Nicholas sitting together on a settee and Alessandra picking at a decimated plate of scones. The curtains were drawn over the windows and the lack of natural light created a kind of suspended world, blotted out the afternoon.

“Josie,” Sally exclaimed, rising immediately. “I’m sorry, I did not expect you today and we—the duke—has a bit of an emergency.”

Josephine noticed the duke’s eyes roamed too freely, not settling on any one thing, and there was a glaze to the pinpointed pupils. Panic bubbled in her throat. He was sick. That had to be it. She squeezed the arm she still held and he tried to focus on her, but failed. How had she not seen it? Pale, bedraggled—every terrible disease and affliction sprung to the forefront of her mind on a wave of horror.

“Emergency?” she croaked.

“No emergency. I am fine,” he said, even though it was clear to her that he was not fine, not at all.

“Miss Grant,” Alessandra said, joining them in a tight little circle. Elias broke off and stumbled to a corner near Nicholas and assumed a cockeyed leaning position. Josephine’s eyes followed him with worry. “It is quite serendipitous that you are here. None of us have been successful talking sense into Elias; you may be our only hope.”

“I assure you that I have had no luck in that area.”

Josephine had meant it as a lighthearted jab, but Elias’s face was turned to the wall and did not display any amusement. She was not sure he had heard.

“Do tell me what is happening,” Josephine said to Alessandra. Sally opened the door quietly to let in Mildred and the tea. That was accomplished in total silence, and then she looked directly at him again. “Lennox—please. Are you sick?”

“Darling—no—but did someone give me laudanum?” He wobbled and then elbowed Nicholas. “Nicholas.”

“You needed it,” Nicholas replied with a shrug.

“I am not sick.” His eyebrows drew together. “I have been drugged.”

“You were hysterical,” Nicholas said.

Sally laughed and Alessandra frowned.

“I do apologize, Miss Grant,” said the young Lady Addison. “It is uncommonly rude for them to go on as such without telling you of the situation that brought us here. Lennox is not ill; he is simply insisting on being too noble.”

“Then this is not an emergency. He is always too noble.” Josephine smiled. She could not help but find it funny, seeing the duke unable to comport himself in an upright manner. He was staring at the shadow of his hand on the wall.

Nicholas reached for the tea. “Funny, Miss Grant, but it is not so straightforward. Lennox has been trying to tell us that he is willing to marry a woman he does not love in order to secure his financial estate and make certain Alessandra’s reputation is snowy white.”

“I would rather he be happy,” Alessandra said softly. “He should not marry Miss Francis, no matter Mama’s wishes.”

“We ran this afternoon,” Elias said, “but you are both wrong in thinking we can outrun the duchess.”

Josephine had little idea what they were talking about and no context in which to answer. Sally saw the quizzical look on her face and took pity on her.

“Lennox’s mother wants him to marry the second daughter of an earl, one Miss Francis,” she explained. “This morning, her father came to Ashworth Hall unannounced, but Alessandra knew that the duchess had invited Lord Francis to talk to Elias about a happy union between the two. I believe Alessandra and Nic pulled the duke out of his house before he could entirely collect his thoughts, much less his clothing.”

“I am woozy,” Elias said, “but I know that we have made a fatal mistake. Mother is probably raging around the hearth, and it will be ten times worse that I was not there to be ambushed.”

Everyone, except him, was looking at Josephine.

“He is right,” she confirmed. “He must marry her.”

That pronouncement brought his eyes to her, sad and grateful. The motion of his head threw off his equilibrium again and his hand tried to find purchase on the wall, but slid. Josephine fought the urge to go to him, to hold up his unsteady, adorable frame and tell him that she…

Thankfully, he spoke before she could finish the thought in her mind.

“She makes more sense than the lot of you combined,” he said, nodding to them. “I feel seasick. Are we moving?”

“Josie,” Sally entreated, “you cannot be serious about the duke marrying Miss Francis.”

“I am quite serious,” she said, folding her hands tightly to stop the shaking. “Forgive me, but Lennox is not getting any younger. If this
heiress can provide a proper dowry and a suitable reputation to ease Alessandra’s introduction to society, then she is perfect. Your family will not allow the opportunity to pass. I assume that she is of childbearing age, Elias?”

He nodded mutely. No one in the room acknowledged the slip of his first name in mixed company—there was no longer a need to pretend that the assembled group did not know exactly what was going on.

“Then… she is perfect.”

“Madness,” Alessandra interjected, drawing up a regal bearing that was very convincing for a girl of fifteen. “I read your book. You hate that the world works this way.”

“Yes, but that does not mean I can change it. If Miss Francis is amiable, the duke has no excuse.”

“Miss Grant, you care for him.” Alessandra’s eyes glittered like her brother’s when she was incensed. “He cares for you.”

“Allie,” Elias warned from the corner.

Nicholas drained the rest of his tea and set the cup down with an authoritative click.

“You two are the most insensible sensible people I have ever known,” he said, getting up from the settee to scoop Sally into his arms. “Come, ladies, let us find less tedious activities while Miss Grant helps the duke right his wardrobe. He still looks a mess, does he not?”

The ladies giggled, nearly muffling Josephine’s reply.

“Oh, no, I must be—”

She felt her protest cut short by the electric touch of Elias’s fingertips on her forearm.

“Stay,” he said, only loud enough for her to hear. “Even if just a few minutes. I cannot go without telling you a few things if this is truly good-bye.”

When the gaggle of conspirators had left the sitting room, Elias pulled Josephine into his arms. He was still rickety and her face swam, but it was not unpleasant to give way to the drug running through his system. She was standing before him and he could enjoy that. He had mourned the past week, yes, and one of his prevailing thoughts had been that he had not said a proper good-bye. He had not told her the thing that he burned to tell her now, even if it seemed irrational and unwise. She was trembling, so he tightened his grip and just held her.

“I appreciate that you got them to listen to reason,” he said into her neck, the neck which he wished he could burrow in and hide, for a few lifetimes. “I appreciate it more than you can ever know. You are the one above reproach.”

“I cannot believe you brought your sister to a house of ill repute.”

“I did not,” he said, pulling back to look at her, appalled. “
They
practically threw me into Nicholas’s carriage. With the news of the arrival of Lord Francis and the fact that I had just awoken, I could not think straight. All I could think—”

“Yes?”

“I only thought: I do not want to marry the girl.”

“She may not want to marry you, either,” she said with a light flick to his nose.

“Virago,” he scolded. “Even if she does want to marry me, she will regret it.”

Because there will always be another in my heart
, his mind filled in as he ran a thumb along her soft bottom lip. He pushed down the urge to kiss her, knowing it would make the conversation all the more difficult. They stood entwined, but they may as well have been a million miles apart.

“That is not true. You will be a dutiful husband.”

“Of course I will.” He held her cheek, gazing down at the face he saw constantly in his fantasies. “I must. But know this—I do not love her. I think I am in love with y—”

She squirmed away, pointing a finger in warning.

“No. If
that
is what you needed to tell me, Elias, I plead that you keep it to yourself. It is the laudanum speaking.”

“Doesn’t matter, eh?” He savored the moment that she realized he had read and interpreted her little notes to herself, all around the Paper Garden. It ate up the air between them and she flushed. “Changes nothing?”

“Both are true and you know it as surely as I.”

“I do not,” he said, with more heat than he expected, grasping her forearms. “I do not know enough about you to know if I could change anything, if it matters. You will not trust me enough to do so, though I have done everything short of bring you the heavens. Now I must marry and the pretense of you being my mistress will not hold. Your lack of faith in me has made the situation impossible. I have thought it all over in circles. Even if your family had been involved in a most terrible scandal, you were indeed raised a lady, and we could have found a way. It cannot be just that. There is something else.”

He searched her face for a clue, but her lips descended on his before he could read her expression. He responded in kind to her kiss but pulled back much sooner than he wanted. The damn woman was always trying to control things.

“Unjust,” he lectured. “If you want to be equal with men, you need to stop wielding your feminine wiles so effectively.”

“That was your good-bye kiss.”

“Well then it was rubbish and we will have to do it again.”

“This,” she reflected, skittering her fingertips across his beard, just as he imagined she would, “is curious. It makes a pricklier embrace, but you do look dashing and dangerous.”

“Oh? I thought you might like it.”

“Do shave before you propose to Miss Francis.”

“Perhaps she will say no if I do not?” he asked hopefully.

“Perhaps. You look like an unrepentant rogue.”

“Do I now?” He raised an eyebrow. “An unrepentant rogue alone with a beautiful woman. I suppose I have no choice but to ravish you, as is my nature.”

She put a hand to his mouth to stop his swooping.

“You think I do not trust you, but that is not the right of it. I do trust you. I think you noble and loyal. I respect you. This is part of the reason why I cannot tell you everything. You gave up Oxford to fulfill the obligations of your station in life and quite honestly, my family history and current employment would negate that sacrifice. It would come with a mess of new problems that I have created myself.”

She kissed his temple and the hair that feathered there, barely a touch.

“I do trust you and I want to keep your counsel. I even want to tell you mundane things such as how annoying the birds outside of my window were this morning. I have more faith in you than any man I have ever known. I simply do not want to ruin your life.”

“Josie-not-Josie, woman,” he said, feeling the seasickness turning into something crashed on a shore. It loosened his tongue, gave it a beseeching tone, but he didn’t care. He would blame it all on the altered state later, but he would very well tell her his true feelings now. “Whoever you are, whatever you have done… by god, I cannot imagine never seeing you again.”

“Eli, please,” she said, with a new ache in her voice. She nestled her face against his and he felt her pointy little nose in his beard. “Your sister is right. I care for you. I also know to my very core that the only place I can occupy in your life is mistress. I could not do that. I will not do that. It would…”

Josephine didn’t finish her sentence right away, so he finished it for her.

“It would never be enough.”

This led to a vast and yawning silence.

“I do not want you as a mistress,” he said, soft enough to honor the quiet. “I thought that was clear. I want you, but I do not want that.”

“And that leaves us?”

“Back where we started.”

“Your clothes!” she exclaimed, as if it just occurred to her why they had been standing there, in each other’s arms. “Nicholas was correct, though it was a see-through ruse to get us alone. You are still a mess.”

He looked down at himself: cravat askew and barely tied or folded, pants not quite tucked into his boots, and dear god—his waistcoat was buttoned askew. Josephine noticed the same thing and snickered.

“Come on then,” she grinned, pulling the cravat by one end until it completely unwound. “We shall make you presentable.”

They both realized how provocative the action was when it was already too late. It made time stand still, stopped both of them from talking incessantly. Or at all. Neither of them ruined the moment with words, but in one unbroken motion he had swept her onto the settee. The linen cloth fell to the floor beside it in a coil.

Her fingers fumbled blindly at his waistcoat buttons.

“Better get this off, too,” she said into his kiss.