Douglas: Lord of Heartache (8 page)

“Guinevere?” Douglas’s faint frown had shifted toward puzzlement.

Gwen was mortified beyond endurance when a tear slipped down her cheek.

His lordship lacked the sense to flee. Instead, Douglas put a hand on each of Gwen’s shoulders. Gently, he drew her one step closer and took one step closer himself. His arms came around her, and Gwen found, to her guilty pleasure, their heights matched such that she could rest her head on his shoulder.

His hands slipped around her back, and he held her against the warmth and strength of his body. On a sigh, Gwen leaned into him more heavily. The lump in her throat eased, and she closed her eyes and let herself have this moment of… comfort.

“Forgive me,” Gwen murmured against his shoulder, inhaling a steadying breath before she organized herself to regain her balance.

“Hush.” Douglas brought his hand up along her back and pressed her gently closer when she would have moved away. She allowed it. For long, stolen moments, she allowed him to simply hold her.

She’d known the pleasure of a man’s embrace, also the folly and danger to be found there, but never had she felt this sense of sheltering and consolation. Before she began babbling or fell asleep in Douglas’s arms, Gwen drew back, and this time, he let her go.

“You are tired,” he said, picking up his candle before Gwen could offer some trivializing inanity. “It is late, and I will see you in the morning. I appreciate your making this journey, and I wish you good night.”

Without touching her anywhere else, he kissed her cheek, lingeringly, as if asking a question or making sure she grasped the answer to one, then left her in the chilly shadows of her bedroom.

***

Strong spirits consumed in quantity might dampen a man’s ability to act on his desires, but Douglas doubted the entire Linden cellar held enough brandy to erase from his mind the feel of Guinevere Hollister, tired, pliant, and so, so female in his arms.

An hour after Douglas had bid her good night, he lay on his bed, letting her haunt his body and his imagination. She had been in want of a simple embrace, and he had been able to provide that without making advances toward her. Now, recalling her lithe curves and the floral fragrance of her hair, he wondered where his resolve had come from. She was a lush, lovely armful and clearly in want of a man’s touch.

Though she was in want of respect more. To have attempted liberties with her tonight would have been… ungallant. Not only bad timing, but also bad form.

Still, a part of Douglas, a wicked, long-dormant, lusty-young-male part of him wondered if he might have seduced her—if even
he
could have persuaded her to allow him intimacies. He would have used her fatigue, her loneliness, and her long sexual deprivation to patiently lure her into his bed, and then…

She was a woman who would appreciate patience, in bed and elsewhere. The images aroused by that realization had Douglas closing his hand around his already erect cock as he lay alone amid his covers, and bringing himself to a languorous and gratifyingly intense orgasm.

Guinevere Hollister was not amenable to even discussing marriage, which preserved Douglas from all manner of interesting conundrums, though it also puzzled him. He had no interest in an emotional entanglement, and the begetting of an heir wasn’t something he would take on in the near term.

But of all women, he found himself attracted to Miss Guinevere Hollister, and he suspected if he were respectful and careful and did not presume on her privacy, Guinevere Hollister might allow herself to desire him in return.

Though only for the duration of a brief, mutually satisfactory affair.

On that intriguing thought, he drifted off, only to dream more of the same lovely, arousing, intriguing thoughts.

***

“Why is Amery writing to
you
?” Andrew Alexander, Earl of Greymoor, asked as David Worthington, Viscount Fairly, passed him a single sheet of paper.

“Read the postscript,” David said, switching Greymoor’s infant stepdaughter Lucy to his other shoulder.

“My, my, my…” Greymoor murmured as he read. He folded the letter and tapped the crease against his lips in time with the rhythm of the chair in which he rocked. “Our Gwennie has bestirred dear Douglas’s protective instincts—at the least.”

“My reaction precisely, but the woman is your cousin, while neither Gwen nor Rose is related to me by blood. I thought I had best alert you before I take my curious little self down to Sussex.”

Greymoor’s blue-eyed expression was thoughtful as David slowly paced the room with the sleeping baby. “Are you sure you want to interrupt them? I continue to believe Gwen can take care of herself.”

“Just as you believe she can take care of Rose, Greymoor?”

“For your rubbishing information—and Amery’s too,” his lordship retorted, “we established a trust for Rose before I married your sister. Heathgate and I contribute to it regularly in equal amounts. You are welcome to go shares with us, but I have not found the proper circumstance to inform Gwen of its existence.”

“Coward.” David cuddled his niece closer and tried not to feel jealous of her step-papa, who was permitting David the indulgence of putting the child to bed. “Get me the details, and I’ll be happy to contribute. As for the rest of Douglas’s Epistle to the Philistines, I thought your mother was supposed to chaperone this expedition to Sussex.”

“So did I,” Greymoor said on a frown. “Do you suppose that’s the point of Douglas’s letter, to let us know Gwen is without a chaperone?”

“That is exactly the kind of self-defeating thing he would do,” David said, nuzzling the wee bundle on his shoulder. “Alerting us to the situation with Rose seems to be the more apparent agenda. What a prince old Douglas is.”

Greymoor let his chair come to rest. “Douglas is an odd duck. You like him?”

“I don’t know him well enough to really say. I think I would like him, were he to allow it. I can admit to respecting him.” And to worrying about him. Any man who’d buried two brothers in the space of a year deserved some worry—a lot of worry.

“I can admit to respecting him as well, as can Heathgate.” Greymoor’s dark brows drew down on this uncomfortable admission. “We’re half hoping Amery and Gwennie take a liking to each other. They’re both… a bit lost. The ladies endorsed this scheme wholeheartedly.”

David suspected his sisters had, in fact, come up with the idea, and deftly allowed the menfolk to think the notion their own.

He pressed a kiss to the baby’s downy crown. “Amery is so damned alone, he provokes one to protectiveness. His mother is said to be enjoying a permanent if dramatic decline out in Kent, and his late brothers were a pair of useless, barely decorative ciphers. How they both managed to come to grief by virtue of misuse of firearms is a damned unfortunate mystery. I admit myself pleased that you, Heathgate, and my sisters have taken him in hand. He has no people left worth having, and I know how that feels.”

Greymoor slouched lower in his chair and propped his chin on his fist. “But your sisters married brilliantly, so Heathgate and I can now keep you from the worst of your follies.”

David ignored that small, familial jab, bloody true though it was. Why did babies always smell so good—except when they didn’t? “This prevention of folly works in both directions, Greymoor.”

“So you’re off to Sussex to look after Douglas? He won’t appreciate it.”

More to the point, Douglas wouldn’t
recognize
caretaking, though perhaps Gwen Hollister might introduce him to the concept. “I’ll look after Douglas, Gwen, and Rose. I shall be an honorary relative to all and sundry. And I must say, Greymoor, my dear little niece seems to be thriving. I do think she’ll keep the fair good looks she no doubt inherited from her uncle David.”

David gave the child’s fuzzy head one more nuzzle, put the baby back in her crib, and turned to Greymoor, who watched him silently from the rocking chair.

Which had the unusual result of provoking David to a spate of quiet babbling. “You might at least wish me safe journey, tell me my sister will miss me, or offer some familial sentiment to keep me warm as I slough through the autumn downpours.”

“I might, but instead I’ll warn you to keep your hands off my cousin,” Greymoor said, getting to his feet. “Gwen has been unwilling or unable to journey from Enfield for years, and she doesn’t need you meddling with her newfound courage. Do not tempt Douglas to reckless imbibing, and don’t you dare risk your horse trying to make time on the muddy roads.”

As familial sentiments went, that would have to do. David blew a kiss to the sleeping baby and preceded his host out of the nursery.

***

“Rose seems to be settling in nicely,” Douglas remarked as Gwen’s daughter went shrieking past them down the banister.

Rather than reply to that helpful observation, Gwen stomped down the stairs, just as another little girl went hurtling past on the banister, landing on a giggling Rose at the bottom of the steps. Two more little girls joined the tangle of arms, legs, and laughter, leaving a horrified Hester at the top of the stairs.

“Oh, dear me,” Hester muttered, bustling down the steps past his lordship. “Oh, dear goodness… ma’am, milord, I am so sorry. You girls!” Douglas stood silently by as Gwen took turns with Hester, scolding and fussing over the four little girls who had found such hilarity in disobedience.

“But, Mama,” Rose protested, “you never said we couldn’t slide down the banister.”

Douglas sauntered down the steps, hands in his pockets, and drat the man if his expression didn’t reflect curiosity as to how the ever-competent Miss Hollister—his latest sobriquet for her—would handle this situation.

“I am telling you now.” She was nearly bellowing it, in fact.

“And I,” Hester added, shaking a finger at her younger sisters, “have told you and told you not to slide down the banister at the rectory.”

“But this isn’t the rectory,” one of the twins pointed out.

“Barristers, the lot of them,” Douglas muttered loudly enough for Gwen to hear. He sank onto the bottom step rather than take his observant self elsewhere. “As I recall, sliding down forbidden banisters is thirsty work, though it does leave such a nice polish on the wood. Of course, once one knows a banister is not for sliding upon, one would never,
ever
again make the same mistake, would one?”

“No, Cousin Douglas,” Rose said, sneaking a measuring glance at Gwen.

“Miss Hester,” Douglas said, “if you take the miscreants off to the kitchen for some cider, I’m sure they’ll be much better behaved in future.”

And off they went, a band of small female rogues beaming smiles over their shoulders—at Douglas.

Gwen sat on the step beside him as the girls departed, drew her knees up, and dropped her forehead in defeat. “Sometimes, the hardest thing about being a parent is not laughing.”

Douglas slipped an arm around her and squeezed her shoulders. “If you say so, though from what I hear, motherhood doesn’t exactly start with a walk in the park.”

“No. That would be fatherhood.”

“Temper,” Douglas remonstrated. “Having quelled the native insurrection, shall we get back to those inventories?”

Drat the blasted inventories, the natives, and the humor in Douglas’s blue eyes.

Gwen nodded, but made no move to return to the library. After several days inspecting Linden on horseback, she was confident the estate had much to recommend it. The stables were nothing short of lovely, and the other outbuildings in good repair.

But problems lurked, as well. The home farm was small, the home wood, by contrast, large and overgrown. Little of the land was under cultivation, most of it having been overgrazed by the ubiquitous sheep. Fencing was an issue, as was irrigation. Both were expensive and necessary, as Gwen had gently indicated to Douglas.

Douglas huffed out a sigh and lifted his arm from Gwen’s shoulders. “I am usually good at following figures through a transaction, but with the accounts we’ve seen, I am flummoxed, for there’s no telling if this estate is profitable or not.” He rose from their step and held out a hand to assist Gwen to her feet.

She did not glare at his hand, did not drop his fingers as if they were unclean, and did not sniff her grudging thanks—wasn’t even tempted to, come to that. She let him haul her upright and tuck her hand over his arm.

When and how had his civilities become charming? When had they become endearing? For she would miss them when she was back at Enfield, riding acres that did not belong to her, keeping a house she would never own.

“Linden
is
profitable, Douglas,” she assured him as they moved into the library. “These books do not show any large disbursements to Greymoor’s accounts. The money is here somewhere, we just have to find it.” And she badly wanted to find it for him.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps we have to admit the books are rotten, the land is tired, the house an expensive little jewel I do not deserve, give up, and go back to Town.”

He settled beside her on the sofa, and Gwen thought, not for the first time, she was coming to be at ease with, even to like his proximity.

Not simply like his probity and mannerliness, but to like
him
.

“Guinevere?” Douglas regarded her, his expression puzzled. “Where in the world did you get off to?”

She’d drifted, caught up in the memory of Douglas grabbing her bare hand when they’d shared lunch the first day she’d met him; of him holding her, tired and weepy, in the bedroom upstairs; tucking her hand around his forearm as they went in to dinner; and gently interrogating her while deftly dodging her own queries.

Douglas had asked her something, but Gwen was distracted by an abrupt physical awareness of him, sitting so close their thighs touched. So close she could catch a whiff of sage and cedar over the scent of the wood fire in the hearth. “You were saying?”

“Nothing of any moment, apparently.” He sat back and stretched his arm along the back of the sofa.

Which left Gwen with a dilemma. If she sat back too, his arm would be almost around her shoulders, but she couldn’t exactly hunch away from Douglas or stand up without appearing rude.