Douglas: Lord of Heartache (13 page)

“You won’t buy the property now?” And did she want him to? This corner of Sussex was not close to Surrey, not as close as London was.

“I don’t know,” Douglas said, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Have you considered buying it?”

“Me? I haven’t the money, and Andrew isn’t offering it to me.”

Douglas regarded her steadily. “As trustee of Rose’s funds, you could certainly use them to provide a home for her.”

“Good heavens.” Was he exhorting her to put the money to that use? Was he relieved to think she might be distant from him when their task—journey, whatever—was complete? “I could. But I won’t.”

He tossed the quill on the desk. “Why not? If not Linden, then why not find some nice, pleasant little estate and become not simply its steward but its de facto owner?”

“I’ve never considered such a thing.” Dreaming about something was not the same as considering it. “Enfield is our home, and Rose can use the money to choose her own home, or for her settlement, should she marry.”

“By the time she marries,
if
she marries, that trust will hold far more money than Rose would need as a settlement, and you have more expertise than she will have at choosing and maintaining a valuable property.”

Gwen wanted to argue—she also wanted to kiss him. Douglas was relentlessly rational but also not… not wrong.

“What you’re politely implying is that I, as the fallen woman, will have more need of the funds than Rose, who may find a decent man to overlook the shortcomings of her antecedents.”

But being a proud fallen woman, a stubborn fallen woman, she’d made it impossible for her cousins to provide her any wealth directly.

Douglas picked the feather up and stared at it as if he’d no notion how it had fallen to his blotter. “And if I offered to marry you?”

The question was quiet—Douglas dealt his most telling blows quietly. “I’ve already told you I have no interest in even discussing the word. None.”

How convincingly she lied, for the notion of marriage to Douglas fascinated her.

Douglas took a seat beside her on the sofa, hunching forward so she saw his face only in profile. “I’d be a bad bargain, anyway, though I don’t like to think of you alone for the rest of your days, subsisting through your daughter, serving the Alexander family business without reaping much reward from it.”

She rubbed his back between his shoulder blades, a gesture she’d never offered a grown man. “You would not be a bad bargain, and my life at Enfield is good. I have security and meaningful employment, and the Alexander family business is what has allowed Rose’s trust to be so generously endowed. You are in a strange mood.”

“That feels good,” Douglas said, his shoulders relaxing under her continued touch. “And I am feeling a bit off. Fairly was good company, but he has a disconcerting habit of seeing one too clearly and wanting to discuss what he sees. Still, I had expected to be relieved at his departure.”

“One misses one’s friends,” Gwen said. Like she was going to miss Douglas. “Particularly when they are few in number.”

“And then what does one do with the… loneliness?” Douglas asked, the note of bewilderment in his voice suggesting the question had taken even him by surprise. “I was defined for so long by the conviction that if I were a decent fellow and occupied myself with the family’s finances assiduously, then my life would unfold as it should.”

He would describe the archangel Michael as a decent fellow, and refer to slavish devotion as mere assiduousness.

“And now,” Gwen said, “despite your efforts, the family finances are in difficulties, but what do they matter, when you have essentially no family left worth claiming?”

Douglas glanced at her over his shoulder, a self-mocking acknowledgment of her question in his gaze.

“Somewhere, Douglas,” Gwen said, her hand drawing slow patterns on his back, “you lost sight of, or were not permitted to keep in sight, the person you are. You like animals and sweets and taking care of things. You have a good, rational head for business, and you are shy, but people like you too. You are a gracious host and inspire loyalty in your staff. You are patient, kind, and honorable, every inch a gentleman.”

His shoulders dropped on a sigh. “I don’t know this paragon you describe, for he exists only in your imagination. I’m trying to get under your skirts, so you must attribute virtues to me I don’t have.”

And sometimes, he was not so rational after all. She tugged on his earlobe.

“That’s my point. You don’t know this paragon, you don’t appreciate him, you don’t take pride in what he has accomplished and in what he plans to accomplish. You don’t love him; you don’t protect him from the abrasiveness and carping of your more critical self.”

Gwen dropped her forehead against Douglas’s back, wondering where on earth such blunt words had come from. “I’m sorry, Douglas, I have no right to speak to you thus.”

He drew her arms around his waist.

“Don’t stop now, Guinevere. Whoever this fellow is, he sounds like an improvement on your present company. I should like to meet him.”

“Oh, Douglas,” she whispered, squeezing him tight. “You are an awful man, an awful, lovely man. And you are not trying to get under my skirts.”

“Not at the moment, no. Though we could lock that door and remedy the oversight.” He sounded utterly serious—but then, Douglas always sounded utterly serious.

“In broad daylight, in the
library
?”

Douglas got up and locked the door. He turned, his expression…
exceedingly
determined
.

“I will not importune you for favors you are unwilling to give,” he said as he stalked closer. “I will stop if you ask it of me, and I will not cause you pain.”

“Here?” Gwen repeated, her insides going to riot. “Now?”

Though
why
not?
She’d surprised her menials in all manner of unlikely locations—also her married cousins.

“Not here,” Douglas replied, sitting on the low table before her, “and not now, because I won’t have our first consummation in one of the public rooms of the house, when anyone could knock on that door.”

“Then why…?” Gwen glanced meaningfully at the library door.

“I want to kiss and cuddle a bit.”

“You don’t look cuddly, Douglas.” Many a baby had no doubt been conceived in the midst of
kissing
and
cuddling
a
bit
.

“Then you shall have to help me acquire the knack.”

***

“Fairly claims there’s billing and cooing going on in rural Sussex, though he saw no direct evidence of it.” Andrew passed the letter to his brother, a proposition made dicey when his horse refused to stand still in the chilly air of an autumn afternoon.

Heathgate stashed the epistle in the pocket of his riding jacket and nudged his gelding forward. “If there’s no direct evidence, then how does Fairly reach his conclusions?”

Andrew’s horse, Magic by name, chose to passage along next to Heathgate’s less athletic—or excitable—mount. “Gwen kissed him good-bye.”

A low-hanging branch momentarily interrupted conversation.

“If kissing Fairly would inspire him to leave, I might have to try it myself,” Heathgate said. “One does worry about our Guinevere, though.”

Heathgate was head of the Alexander family, which position gave him a warrant to worry about all and sundry, though he’d seldom admit as much in words.

“One worries about Douglas, too, but mostly, one worries for Rose.” Andrew could say this only because of the little blond, blue-eyed sprite ruling over his nursery—and over his heart. “Do you realize that in five years on earth, Rose has probably never been to Sunday services, never been farther from home than the village on market day, never galloped her pony beyond the bounds of Enfield?”

“She’s too young to gallop.”

“She’s our kin,” Andrew said, slowing his horse to a point approaching the trot in place known as piaffe. “She’s not too young to gallop, though Daisy is too old.” And getting older as the days turned chillier. Andrew had cleaned his horse pistol even as he’d also prayed fervently for a mild winter.

“Children raised in the country often stick close to home until they’re older,” Heathgate said. “Will you stop showing off?”

“Piaffe is not showing off,” Andrew said, then he collected the horse further, into a few seconds of the crouching rear called pesade. “
This
is showing off.” When Magic’s front hooves dropped to the ground, Andrew petted the gelding soundly on the neck, which only provoked the beast back into passage.

“To look at that animal, one would never suspect him of the potential you’ve found in him,” Heathgate said. “Well done, baby brother.”

Heathgate had seen the horse first and given him to Andrew, though if Andrew made that point, an argument would ensue. Magic was a sensitive fellow and did not care for argument of any kind.

“Magic puts me in mind of Douglas,” Andrew said as they approached the fork in the trail at which his path would diverge from his brother’s. “One tends to underestimate them both.”

“We’re back to the billing and cooing,” Heathgate said, bringing his chestnut to a halt. “A crooked pot needs a crooked lid, and if Felicity says Douglas and Gwen would suit, then I believe her.”

“Douglas and Gwen are not crockery. Fairly says Gwen kissed him good night too, readily took his proffered arm, was heard to laugh when playing cards, and has allowed Rose to make the acquaintance of the hooligans from the local vicarage.”

Heathgate was a papa too, several times over. Also a quick study. “Rose hasn’t had playmates before, has she? Not from outside the family.”

“No, she has not, and Heathgate, that is not right. Gwen is a good mother, but the longer I think on it, the more remiss I believe we have been in caring for our cousin. Astrid agrees with me, too.”

“Good mothers allow their children to form friendships,” Heathgate admitted. “Good mothers take their children to services. Good mothers know that a child needs to see more of the world than one rural estate. Why didn’t we notice these things sooner?”

The obvious answer—that both brothers were more at ease focusing on their wives and families than on Gwen’s uncomfortable and lonely existence—need not be stated. Then too, Gwen had kept Rose a secret, even from them, until the girl was several years old.

“What is Gwennie afraid of?” Andrew wondered aloud. “What is she so terrified of, that she can allow herself to flirt and smile only when she’s off with Douglas, visiting an estate I’ve barely kept staffed?”

Heathgate turned his horse toward the left fork in the bridle path, while Andrew aimed Magic toward the right. “And how will Douglas fare when dear Gwen drops him flat at the end of their rustic idyll?” Heathgate asked with a wave good-bye.

On that unpleasant question, Andrew urged his horse into a flowing canter as Heathgate’s gelding disappeared around a bend in the bracken and bare trees.

Before Andrew reached the comforts of home, his musings had circled back to their origin: Gwen and Douglas were billing and cooing now, but Andrew doubted that their attraction, no matter how strong, could overcome Gwen’s determination to resume a life of rural obscurity.

Someone had stolen from Gwen the future she was entitled to, and unless Douglas could earn a permanent place in Gwen’s heart, Rose would also be victimized by that larceny.

***

Douglas poured Gwen a glass of red wine midway through dinner. He knew exactly how to twist his wrist so not a drop spilled, and he absently served her the exact portions appropriate to her appetite.

His attention to detail—his competence—impressed Gwen in a way she would not have noticed had she not embarked on a more intimate acquaintance with him. Thoroughness was a part of him, a vigor of the mind and spirit that could also be a bit intimidating.

Maybe more than a bit, at times.

Over the fruit and cheeses and more expertly poured wine, they planned a reconnaissance mission in the village for the next day, and finished the evening with Douglas escorting Gwen to her room and accompanying her into her chamber.

“If I get into the bed with you, Guinevere,” he said as he lit her candles, “I will not answer for the ensuing events.”

Gwen did not want to deny him, and yet she was also not ready for the events he alluded to. She needed to be alone, to think, to come to some understanding of what was passing between them. Douglas must have seen something of her thoughts on her face, because he drew her into his arms and pressed her head to his shoulder.

“We are in no rush, sweetheart,” he reminded her gently. “I know you are accustomed to doing without a lady’s maid, but would you allow me to brush out your hair?”

Douglas’s surprising request restored some sort of balance for Gwen, and she suspected it did for him as well. They touched, they talked, and they spent time together without enflaming each other’s passions—as they had earlier in the day in the library—or tempers.

To which the selfsame library had been witness when they had debated the virtues of wheat versus oats. Marvelous rooms, libraries.

Gwen closed her eyes and wondered if Douglas would offer this attentiveness to his viscountess when he married—for a man with a title must marry, eventually.

“Your hair,” Douglas mused as he drew the brush in sweeping strokes from her crown to her bottom, “is almost as lovely as your eyes.”

“I’ve always wished I had my cousin’s blue eyes.”

“You are partial to blue eyes?” Douglas asked, putting the brush down to braid her hair.

Gwen watched him in the mirror, and in this as in many things, his competence was easy to miss for its very quietness and lack of fuss. “I like your eyes, Douglas. They are honest and kind—and a very handsome blue.”

An unforgettable blue.

In response, he busied himself with the considerable length of her hair.

“I recall the first time I did this,” he said after he’d organized three skeins. “I had walked in on you at your bath, and suffered paroxysms of mortification over my equally intense paroxysm of lust.”