All I Want for Christmas Is a Duke (6 page)

Chapter Four

You know me by heart; you simply do not know me by name.

—Mister X

The rustling of her gown and the rhythmic echoing of their booted feet in the vast corridor was the only sound drifting around her. Jane could hardly breathe knowing Martin’s large bare hand still held hers in what felt like possessive adoration.

In his younger years, he had never once tried to hold her hand. She had always been the one grabbing his hand, as a sister would. But there was nothing brotherly about the way he gripped her now.

Except for the occasional echoing steps of servants in the far distance, silence hummed.

Pausing at the half-open doors of the study, Martin released her hand and fanned open both doors wide. He wordlessly gestured for her to enter an oak-paneled room with lofty ceilings.

She swept past him, her snow-dampened skirts dragging against the inlaid wooden floor. She paused in the middle of the large study where Archer lay cozily stretched by a massive stone hearth decorated with garlands of freshly cut evergreen that fragranced the air.

Archer glanced toward them, his large tail pounding against the wood floor with a thump-thump-thump, but otherwise, he didn’t bother to leave the warmth he had found.

It was like coming home.

Everything was just as she remembered it.

The walls on the far end of the room were lined from floor to ceiling with shelves and shelves of old leather-bound books. Martin had always had one of those books in his hand. Always.

On the other side of the room, a large mahogany desk with a pristine, gleaming surface held stacks of papers and several glass inkwells and quills.

It was a quiet place for a quiet man.

A footman in red livery entered with a silver tray bearing a large decanter of brandy and two crystal glasses.

“Set it on the desk,” Martin obliged.

The footman did so and departed.

Near the desk, where the tray of brandy had been placed, her gaze fell upon the only painting to grace the room. She wandered toward the gilded frame hanging on the embroidered silk wall. She blinked up at the sweeping garden at sunset with roses bent against the wind and blades of grass tangling over a stone path. She could almost feel the summer wind against her face and smell the grass.

She paused. Little pale faces with green impish eyes hidden within the bending roses made her draw closer and tilt her head in an effort to determine if she were actually seeing those faces. What were they?

She glanced back at Martin, who had walked over to his writing desk, and pointed up at the painting. “The illusion is stunningly clever. What are they?”

“Faeries.”

“Faeries?” she teased. “How charming. I didn’t realize you had a penchant for faeries.”

He rolled his eyes. “I hardly have a penchant for faeries. You were the one who wanted them in there.”

She peered back up at the painting, noting there were more faces hidden among blades of grass. “I did?”

“Yes. You did. You told me that painting needed faeries. So I hired a painter to do it.”

She pulled in her chin. “I don’t remember that.” She turned toward him.

“It was a long time ago.” His hand slid along the smooth, gleaming surface of the desk as he rounded it. “When we first met.” Removing the crystal stopper from the decanter, he poured brandy into each glass before setting it aside.

He paused beside a drawer, then opened it and removed a sizable yellowing stack of letters bound by a white sash. He set it on the edge of the desk and tapped it. “This is long overdue.” He held her gaze. “I owe you an apology, Jane. I was stupid and had no understanding of the consequences it would bring. My only hope is that in time you will forgive me for being unable to confide the truth.”

Her brows came together and she drew closer to the stack of letters. “The truth? About what?” She glanced down and undid the sash, picked up the folded parchment atop.

Martin’s jaw tightened. He lingered, waiting. “Open it.”

Unfolding the parchment, she paused as her eyes fell upon her writing and in particular, the scribed words, It appears my only remaining weapon, my beloved X, is to bribe you. As such, should you come to me tonight, I promise you will find me most willing.

Her breath hitched as she frantically crumpled it against her chest in disbelief and snapped her gaze to Martin. “Where did you get this? Who gave these to you?”

His expression tightened. “You gave them to me.”

She gaped. “No, I didn’t. I gave these to the messenger Mister X always sent.”

“Yes. I know. Stephen.”

She still gaped. “How did you know the messenger’s name?”

“Because I hired him. Every Thursday night I would write a letter in response to yours so it was ready to be delivered by your next performance.”

She gasped and stumbled back, still clutching the letter in disbelief. It wasn’t possible. Those letters had been written by a much older soul and were overly passionate and bold and sweeping and— Everything Martin had never been. “You wrote those letters?” she breathed out.

He nodded. “Every one.”

The room momentarily swayed. It was like Twelfth Night all over again. When she had discovered Philip wasn’t—

She set a trembling hand against her corseted waist, trying not to buckle to the floor.

Martin stepped toward her. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“But you did. How could you—” Her throat tightened. “I trusted you. I trusted you more than I trusted myself. You were like a brother to me.”

Martin swiped his face and grabbed the ends of the desk, leaning into it. “I didn’t want to be a brother to you.” He stared her down. “I wanted you in the way I knew you would never want me due to our age difference. Which is why I sought to change that by writing those letters. I didn’t know what else to do.”

She glared at him, her cheeks feeling ablaze. “So you let me make an utter fool of myself? By making love to me through words? By pretending to be someone you weren’t?”

He leaned toward her, shifting his weight against the edge of the desk, and fiercely met her gaze. “I wasn’t pretending. Mister X was real. Everything he wrote was real. That was me. All of it. I only withheld my name because I wanted to know if you and I could ever step beyond the friendship we had. And we did. You wanted me. As much as I wanted you.”

Oh, God. To think of all the letters she had written in response to his. Letters that had been as equally romantic as they had been erotic. She had even written one letter confiding how much she longed to be touched by him. In that way. It was…humiliating. She had been writing to a seventeen-year-old boy all along.

Scrambling toward the desk, she gathered the piled letters in a blur, bunching them into her arms, and hurried toward the lit hearth. “I’m burning these. They have no right being in existence.”

“Jane!” he boomed, his booted feet darting toward her.

Tears blinded her as she frantically tried to get to the fire before he reached her. Large hands grabbed her waist from behind and yanked her back hard before she could fling them onto the coals.

Her letters scattered everywhere as Archer jumped up and barked, equally startled.

A sob escaped her as she turned and shoved him away.

He jerked her back harder toward himself, molding her tighter against the solid warmth of his body. “Jane.” His fingers buried themselves in her shoulders as he set his shaven chin against her head. “Don’t destroy them. I have suffered well enough and won’t have you burn the last of what we shared. I won’t.”

She tried shoving herself out of his grasp again, but he tightened his hold, the scent of his hair tonic and the crisp mint from his clothing drowning her ability to breathe and think.

She shoved again, but to no avail. “You must think me quite the whore after everything I wrote. No wonder you invited me here for brandy. You probably thought I was going to—”

He shook her. “Cease! For God’s sake, I never thought that. Not once. I didn’t invite you here for that. I’m not that sort of man. Never have been and never will be.”

“Then what did you invite me here for? What did you—”

“To get to know you again. In the way we used to know each other. You and I used to be—”

“Used to be! You abandoned me, Martin. Even as a friend! You took off on tour for…for years. Without so much as even saying good-bye to me! Why? Why did you—”

“Because I couldn’t pretend anymore. I just couldn’t.”

“So you created an illusion and then abandoned me to it?” She glared. “You ought to be ashamed of the letters you wrote, given how intimate they were. You were a boy! How could you—” She reached up to smack him, to smack out the anger and the shame and agony of knowing it had been him all along, but he caught her wrist, jarring it.

He searched her face for a long moment, his dark eyes heatedly holding hers. His fingers around her wrist tightened. “Yes, I was seventeen,” he rasped. “What of it? Even a seventeen-year-old knows passion and love when he feels it. It doesn’t make it wrong or any less real. And given your reaction, it’s fairly obvious I did the right thing by not making myself known.”

Yanking away her wrist from his hold, she released a sob in a desperate effort to let the anguish go. The anguish of knowing that Mister X had been real and that it had been Martin all along. “You should have told me. Not…not left me to wonder what I did to make you leave. You were the only true friend I had. The only one I thought I could rely on for everything. Only you—”

“Jane.” He released her waist, his hands jumping to her face. He cradled her face, the tips of his fingers gently smoothing away her tears. “I tried to tell you. I tried and I couldn’t. It was obvious you were already in love with another. And it wasn’t me.”

She stared up at him through tears, remembering his unexpected visit to her dressing chamber at the opera house. He had dawdled about the candlelit room, listening to her talk and talk about Philip before eventually excusing himself by giving her a kiss on the hand and leaving. It was the last she had seen of him. He went on tour and didn’t bother to even write. She had cried and cried knowing he had left without offering a single missive and didn’t understand what she had done wrong or why her dearest and most ardent friend, whom she knew she could trust with anything, no longer wished to associate with her. She was convinced it was because his father didn’t approve of her scandalous independence.

Now she knew why he had left. He left because of Philip.

His brow pinched in concern as he leaned in closer. “Nothing has changed. Even after all these years, I have been unable to recover from this passion I feel for you.”

She tried to swallow back whatever remained of her tears, but they slipped down her cheeks. She felt like she was fading into a realm she didn’t understand.

“Don’t cry,” he whispered, dragging his fingers from her cheeks to her lips. “Please don’t.”

She stilled against that intimate touch. Something about the way he touched her so possessively, yet tenderly, and held her gaze frilled more than her body. It frilled her soul.

A breath escaped her. She wasn’t thinking right. He was the reason why she hadn’t been able to move on. He was the reason why she had been unable to get back onstage, for she knew somewhere in the crowds the faceless Mister X would be watching and judging her for having given her heart to another man.

Jane jerked away from his grasp. With what little strength she had left, she choked out, “You and Philip destroyed the perception I had of myself as a person, as a woman, and as a singer. I wanted to disappear. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t sing. I hated myself knowing I had submitted to not one but two passions that weren’t real.”

Those dark eyes and lean face tightened. “My passion for you was real. Let there be no doubt in that. Piecing together words on a page was the only thing I was ever good at. It was the one thing of worth I had to give. The only thing of worth I still have to give.”

Her lips parted, knowing he believed it. Even after all these years. Even now that he was duke and his father was dead. “You are an utter fool. Your father, unfeeling that he was, made you believe you had nothing to offer merely because you were different. Whilst he roared, you whispered. Whilst he smoked, you coughed. Whilst he shot three bucks, you couldn’t shoot a single one. But what of it? Did it make you any less of a man? In his eyes, maybe, but in my eyes, you offered up gentleness when he had none. If you mean to compare yourself to your father, Martin, you are wasting your breath, your mind, and your soul. Because the one thing you always had that he never had, that you learned to embrace from your mother, was the ability to be compassionate and kind. And that, I assure you, is the only worth to take pride in. And you are not only good at it but incredibly good at it. And you needn’t be good at anything else. For nothing matters more.”

He stared, a muscle visibly flickering in his jaw. His expression was one of raw intent. After a long moment of silence, he said, “You were the only person in my life who believed in me. The problem is, I didn’t believe in me and in turn, it cost me the one thing I wanted. Which was you. Am I sorry that I walked away from you and never revealed myself? No. In many ways, I was too young to have been the man you needed me to be. Am I sorry that in doing so I unknowingly hurt you? Yes. A thousand times yes. It is the only thing I regret.”

Those words and their tone were exactly that of her beloved Mister X. Tortured, romantic, and real. It was overwhelming. It was like the real Martin had finally stepped forth. The real Martin he had never given her a chance to know, due to his quiet ways.

He slowly made his way toward her, never once breaking their gaze. “I’m ready to be everything you need me to be. I’m ready for this. I’m ready for us. The question is, are you?”

She edged back, her heart pounding. He meant it. There was no doubt wavering in those words. Her booted foot stopped against one of her scattered letters. She glanced down, confused. A part of her wanted to believe that he was still the same Martin she had once known and loved and trusted.