The Duke’s Obsession Bundle (54 page)

“Well, who’s to see to it if you do not?” Lady Tosten drew herself up. “Miss Farnum has a modest livelihood, my lord, and we do not begrudge her that as long as she keeps to her place, but it’s no secret the Farnum women are no better than they should be, and if young Bronwyn isn’t to follow in those same lamentable footsteps, she must be protected from pernicious influences.”

“I see.” The earl tried counting to ten; he tried counting to ten again, and all the while the damned woman blathered on about her willingness to advise him and good intentions and unfortunate realities. She was smiling at him indulgently, and he was strongly reminded of a time in Spain when he’d nearly fainted from heat exhaustion. All the sounds around him had blended into one undifferentiated roar, like the sound of a waterfall, making no sense but nearly driving him to his knees with the sheer, miserable volume of it.

“Hush, madam,” he said, his words coming out much more loudly than he’d intended. “You dare to tell me how to care for a child when that child has run riot in your own backyard for the past two years? You’ve not lent her a pair of shoes, not spared her a sip of water, not permitted her to even learn the names of your sons and daughters, and then you think to tell me how that child should go on?”

He paced over to glare down at Lady Tosten. “Emmaline Farnum has shown Winnie the only thing approaching Christian charity since the day the child’s mother died more than two years ago. Not you, not your pretty vicar, not the servants in this household,
no one but Emmaline Farnum
has given a thought to the child’s health or safety in all that time. Winnie is an orphan, Lady Tosten, a bloody, damned orphan, and you begrudge her simple human kindness, yet you consider it your Christian duty to advise me to take from the child the one person she might still trust. For shame. You will excuse me if I do not heed this kind advice. Steen will see you out. Good day.”

Having made his grand exit, St. Just stayed in his room for most of the afternoon, trying to write letters but experiencing aftershocks of temper that undermined his concentration. A soft tap on the door interrupted his latest effort to write to his brother, and so he crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the hearth.

“Enter.”

Of all people, Emmaline Farnum poked her head around the door. “I don’t mean to intrude.”

“Come in,” he said, getting to his feet, while some of his temper abated at just the sight of her. He’d kissed her just this morning. Kissed her thoroughly then pleasured himself on her bed thoroughly, before mucking up his day thoroughly.

“You are still in a temper,” she observed, surveying the evidence of his failed attempts at correspondence. “I am sorry.”

“What have you to be sorry for?” His back was burning, though he wore only a half-unbuttoned shirt; his muscles ached, and worst of all, he felt like a fool.

“You were defending me,” she said, withdrawing the little silver tin from her pocket. “And you meant well.”

“Was I yelling that loudly?” he asked, scrubbing a hand over his face.

“You were not,” she replied, fleeting humor in her eyes. “At first. Winnie forgot her carrot, though, so I was much closer to the terrace than I might have been otherwise, and Lord Amery was approaching from the hallway, so he heard you, too. You meant well.”

“Oh, famous. You will both see to it that on the tomb of my social ambitions, it is clearly engraved: He meant well.”

“It isn’t like you to pout.” She frowned at him and glanced at the tin of salve. She arched an eyebrow, and he nodded, shrugging out of his shirt.

“It never used to be like me to rant at trivialities, either,” he said, closing his eyes when her cool fingers went to work. “I was a steady fellow at university, quiet, bookish, and fond of horses.”

“Something happened,” Emmie commented, working the soothing cream over his back.

“Something, indeed. I do not sleep well. Until I got here, my appetite was indifferent. I drink my way through thunderstorms, and I cannot abide to be near harbors that use cannon for their signals. The gun I fired on Helmsley was the first one I’d aimed at a live target in more than two years, and my temper…”

She let her hand drift up to work gently over his nape.

“You and Winnie both,” she said thoughtfully. “You’ve just described her, you know. She wanders at all hours and feels much safer out in a storm than trapped inside. She has tantrums like a younger child, and all of her strong feelings tend to express themselves as anger. She is only now regaining the habit of sitting at table, but for two years after her mother died, she would not sit down to eat.”

“You describe an eccentric child,” he said, closing his eyes as she shifted to treat his face.

“An eccentric child trying to cope with too much, and without an adult to take an interest in her. She had a nurse, at first, but Helmsley did not pay consistent wages, and so Winnie became… feral.”

“And I am a feral earl, I suppose.” He opened his eyes. “I’m surprised you trust me after the way I behaved this morning.”

“I could have stopped you,” she said, handing him the tin. His arms, back, neck, and shoulders felt better, but he understood her trust went only so far. She stepped aside and cocked her head, and he applied salve to his own chest.

“You have no outward scars,” she remarked, taking a seat on his hassock. “At least not that I’ve seen.”

“I suffered no wounds worth the name, though I think you imply I am not yet recovered from my years of soldiering.”

“Do you think you are?”

“God, I hope not. I hope it is not my fate to rail at matrons for minor provocations, to leave my bed after two hours slumber and find memories rising up to trap me, seeming as real as the day I first experienced them.”

“Your memories haunt you.”

“I wouldn’t say haunt.” He frowned, putting the tin down and slumping back into the desk chair. “They are just too real, too powerful when they arise. Like the dreams you don’t initially realize are dreams.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, her expression as bleak as he felt. “You talk about those children in Spain, robbed of a real childhood, but things have been taken from you, as well.”

He nodded, his throat abruptly constricting to the point where speech was too risky.

Seeming oblivious to his dilemma, Emmie went on. “I wanted to thank you for what you said to Lady Tosten, but also to let you know I don’t entirely disagree with her.”

“What do you mean?” He was immediately on guard, ready to reengage his anger to defeat her arguments.

She smiled. “At ease, Colonel. I do not want to say I warned you.” Her gaze ranged around the room.

“No, that is Douglas’s forte.”

“I did tell you I am not received in this little slice of Eden, and association with me will not benefit Winnie beyond a certain point.”

“Were I to take you from Winnie now, the child would be inconsolable. She would likely be wetting her drawers and sheets regularly, pitching tantrums at the table, and sleeping in the hay barn every chance she got. I have not even Douglas’s limited experience with parenting, Emmie, but I understand that for now, Winnie needs you.”

And I need you.
While part of him conducted this very adult, necessary conversation with Emmaline Farnum, another part of him, part soldier, part orphan earl, part healthy man, wanted to haul her over to the bed and cover her body with his own. He wanted to bury his face against her shoulder and bury his cock in her soft, wet heat. Wanted to hear again those sweet, yearning sounds she made when aroused, wanted to feel her hands questing on his back for ways to be closer to him.

Those feelings, he told himself, were like many of his emotions, disproportionate to their cause. He’d shared a lovely kiss with Emmie, but that was all. And she wasn’t asking him to repeat the moment.

Emmie was regarding him curiously, and St. Just had to hope what he felt did not show on his face. She broke what was becoming an awkward and charged silence.

“Perhaps it is not time for Winnie to start developing other associations, but sooner or later, it will be in her best interests to do so. When that time comes, I will understand and do what I can to help her.”

“She will never stop needing you, Emmie. She can develop all the associations in the world, and she will still know you loved her when nobody else did. Children don’t forget.”

“And I will not forget you spoke up for me today.” She smiled at him, a sweet, pleased benediction of a smile, one that lit his flagging spirits with warmth.

“I am your good knight,” he replied, smiling back and coming to his feet.

“Will you be down for dinner tonight? Winnie is a little concerned for you, but we can send up a tray, if you like.”

“I’ll be down,” he decided, completely at variance with his earlier plans. “Send up Douglas, and I’ll treat his back for him before we change.” He walked her to the door, feeling an ease that had eluded him all afternoon.

“You should have seen Mrs. Davenport,” he said, thinking back. “Put me in mind of a goose, flapping and carrying on, not knowing whether to gloat or commiserate with her familiar. I had the distinct impression Ophelia was trying not to snicker.”

“Naughty man. I will see you at dinner.” She rose up on her toes and kissed his cheek, then patted his sunburned shoulder very gently and departed.

Now why, the earl wondered, was that one little peck on the cheek warming his insides just as effectively as all his panting and pawing had done earlier? He was still leaning against the door, half clad and musing, when Douglas found him a quarter hour later.

“I come seeking relief,” Douglas said, pulling his shirt from his waistband. “You smell as if you’ve just been dosed, sparing me the burden.” He presented his back, which was, if anything, more pink than it had been hours earlier.

“How are we to sleep tonight?” St. Just asked as he worked salve over Douglas’s shoulders. “I still ache, my skin stings, my lips feel chapped, and I’m bone tired.”

Douglas sighed as the earl got to his nape. “I suspect we could order up tepid baths, maybe open up a bottle of whiskey, lace it with a tot of laudanum. God above, that feels good.”

“Douglas?” St. Just leaned in, resting his forehead on the back of Douglas’s neck.

“Devlin?” Douglas waited, though St. Just realized his friend had already given him the entire afternoon to brood.

“I fucked up today.”

“Well.” Douglas held his ground. If he was appalled by St. Just’s display, he wasn’t showing it in word or deed. Steady nerves, Amery had. The steadiest. “Did you, now?”

St. Just nodded against his friend’s back. “I tore into old Biddy Saint Tosten like she was a recruit who had just wasted ammunition, shooting at steeple bells. I am ashamed, as I keep expecting my temper to be less ungovernable…”

“But”—Douglas reached behind him and drew one of St. Just’s arms around his waist—“you keep having lapses, and you keep wondering if maybe you didn’t shoot Helmsley as a function of just such a lapse. If maybe you have crossed that line, from soldier to killer.”

St. Just nodded again, feeling at once awkward as hell to be all but holding on to another man and yet relieved as hell, too. Douglas laid his hand over St. Just’s, and the relief obliterated the awkwardness.

“Every time it snows,” Douglas said, tipping his head back to rest it against St. Just’s shoulder, “I am out of sorts. The morning my mother died, we had one of those fairy tale snows that dusts everything in white, pretty as a picture. Both of my brothers died on snowy days. I’ve come to dread snow, though snow had nothing to do with any of their deaths. I know it isn’t rational. You know your brother’s wife is safe, and you know Helmsley wanted her anything but safe. You also know you would not have put the burden of killing that vermin on your brother.”

“Bloody hell.” St. Just sighed and stepped back. “That is part of it. I would do anything for Gayle or Val. I would die for them.”

“And you would kill for them,” Douglas said, regarding him gravely. “By far the harder choice, particularly for a man who has done more than his share of killing.”

“You know, it’s odd.” St. Just went to his window and stared out across the drive to the pastures. “Nobody talks about the killing. The night before a battle, you might talk about what it’s like to die. You write those maudlin if-I-die letters; you make all kinds of promises to comrades. You don’t talk about the actual killing, the taking of one life after another after another. Shooting a man on purpose, with intent to put a period to his entire existence. In the hospital, after Waterloo, I overheard some Frenchmen talking about the same thing, and a few of the Dutch fellows allowed as how it was the same with them. We pray to the same God, using the same prayers, asking for the same things. It makes no sense, but we don’t talk about it.

“And what would you say?” he went on then fell silent.

“You would say,” Douglas said quietly from right beside him, “that it hurts like blazes. Seeing the light die in another’s eyes, the confusion and pain and bewilderment, knowing you did that. It hurts beyond anything.”

St. Just nodded silently, and Douglas left him there alone, bare to the waist, staring unseeing across the lovely green hills of Yorkshire.

Emmie took to avoiding the earl, and in fairness to her, he understood exactly why. No young lady appreciated a man who tore a strip off his neighbors when first they ventured to call on him. He’d behaved badly, and no matter Lady Tosten had deserved every word of his tirade, he’d still bungled the encounter.

Lady Tosten, however, was
not
avoiding him. Three days later she was back, Elizabeth in tow and no Davenports in sight. On that occasion, Douglas, perhaps thinking the earl required closer supervision, bestirred himself to join the group. The unfortunate result was that Lady Tosten could maneuver so the earl was forced into Elizabeth’s company as they strolled the cutting gardens.

For St. Just, it was a form of torture.

“You are doing much to bring Rosecroft back to its former beauty, my lord.” Elizabeth peeked over at him from under her bonnet. “Tell me, do you believe you might revive the commercial aspect of the property, as well?”

“I know little about raising and selling flowers,” he dodged, though he’d been considering just this project. “The work you see out here is the result of my houseguest’s enthusiasm for gardening, as well as Winnie’s efforts with Miss Farnum.”

“So you, yourself, do not garden.” Miss Tosten nodded, approving no doubt, as her prospective husband must not be in trade. “But I understand you are fond of horses?”

Fond of them? He’d supported himself very well buying, selling, and training them, thank you very much. He owed his life to horses many times over, and his passion for them eclipsed mere genteel fondness.

“I am,” he replied, vowing he’d not disgrace himself with unruly speech again.

“As am I.” She nodded again, gaining momentum. “They are so pretty and useful.”

“That they are,” he allowed, thinking of the emaciated, scarred, weary animals he’d seen littering countless battlefields. “But what are your other interests, Miss Tosten?” He most assuredly did not add “or may I call you Elizabeth?” because he could already see her beginning to plot in earnest:
The earl is interested in my accomplishments, Mama!

“I play the pianoforte a little, of course.” She wrapped a second hand around his arm as they walked along. “I sing and have modest talent with watercolors. I have not yet been to Paris, but Mama says we shall go next spring before the Season for some fittings and to polish my French.”

“But what of the seasons other than spring, Miss Tosten? How do you fill the hours then?”

“One corresponds, of course.” She blinked and frowned as if in thought. “And we pay calls, and Mama is very active in local charities. I strive to learn from her example. Just this week, she motivated the Ladies Charitable Guild to investigate the state of widows and
orphans
here in the parish. Mama is a most charitable lady, and I hope to follow in her footsteps.”

“I wish you every success,” the earl said, his sarcasm apparently lost on her.
Oh, Mama
—he mentally winced—
the earl was most enthusiastic about the Orphan’s Fund. How clever of you!

Miss Tosten would never come to him with a new recipe that needed perfecting. She would never tear across the gardens barefoot in pursuit of a laughing child. She would never make soft, yearning sounds when he kissed her.

“Rosecroft.” Douglas sauntered up behind them, Lady Tosten hanging on his arm. “I was just explaining to your guest we will not be able to attend their assembly, as I am going south in the next week or so, and you might well accompany me.”

“Just so.” The earl could have kissed Douglas on both cheeks. “My niece, Rose, is Lord Amery’s stepdaughter, and I have yet to make her acquaintance. I might have time to jaunt south and still be back here before harvest.”

“Oh, never say it.” Lady Tosten waved a hand. “Your niece has her entire life to make your acquaintance, but we have only the one summer assembly, your lordship. You must both stay.”

“In our family,” the earl said, gently disengaging Miss Tosten’s arm from his, “we do not take one another for granted. As Rose is only recently out of mourning for her own father, she needs her uncles, and I’m thinking she might enjoy making Winnie’s acquaintance, as they are already corresponding.”

He watched as Lady Tosten registered that Winnie would be introduced to the Duke and Duchess of Moreland and all their progeny. “For the present, ladies, I must beg you to excuse us. There was a deal of correspondence delivered with the morning post, and it does not answer itself.”

Lady Tosten almost hid it, but he saw her disappointment that again, no luncheon invitation would be forthcoming.

He’d no sooner dispensed with the Tostens, though, when Hadrian Bothwell presented himself, having arrived again on foot. Douglas excused himself, muttering something about drains and fall calves, so the earl rang for refreshments and wondered how anybody got anything done when the damned knocker was up.

***

“So will you really come south with me?” Douglas asked the earl over dinner. “Or was that merely an evasive tactic?”

Emmie glanced up at him sharply, as did Winnie.

“I don’t know.” The earl frowned at his soup. “It’s tempting, but I don’t want to ask one of my geldings for that effort again so soon… and I would miss my Winnie.” Winnie’s face creased into a bashful smile, but she said nothing. “Though I would be gone only for a few weeks, I suppose. Could you spare me, Win?”

“Would you come back?”

“I would come back. I give you my word I’d come back, and before winter, too.”

“You’d go to see Rose?” Winnie asked, brow knit. “I suppose that would be all right. She is your niece.”

“And you are my Winnie,” the earl reminded her, but beside Winnie, Emmie was blinking hard at her soup.

“Emmie?” The earl turned his gaze on her. “Will it suit for me to make a short trip south?”

“Your roof and your stone walls are well under way,” she said, “and harvest is still some weeks off. I’m sure Rosecroft could manage without you for a few weeks.”

But what about you
, the earl wanted to ask. He honestly could not tell if she was angry with him for contemplating this journey, or relieved or indifferent or… what?

“I will think about it,” the earl said, his eyes on Emmie. She’d been keeping her distance from him all week, and he’d been content to let her. They were together at meals, and he frequently crossed paths with Winnie during the day, and hence, with her cousin. What he had not sought—had not felt welcome to seek—was privacy with Emmie.

***

After the earl’s disconcerting announcement at dinner, Emmie successfully eluded him for the rest of the evening. She should have known her efforts were doomed. He breached all protocol that evening and knocked on her bedroom door once the house was quiet.

“My lord?” She opened the door halfway but did not invite him in.

“I’d like a word with you, if you’ve the time?”

“In the library?”

“This won’t take long,” he said, holding his ground. She took the hint and stepped back, closing the door behind him. When he turned to face her, Emmie saw his green eyes go wide at the sight of her hair loose around her shoulders. Down and unbound. Not braided, bunned, or otherwise confined.

“You were brushing your hair,” he guessed. “Which means you were almost ready for bed. I apologize for intruding.” He wandered to her vanity and picked up a brush inlaid with ivory.

“It was a gift from the old earl,” she said, watching him fingering her belongings. He ran his thumbnail down the teeth of her comb and picked up a blue ribbon coiled in a tray of hairpins.

“I have been considering how best to apologize to you,” he said, winding the ribbon around his finger, “but I’m not sure exactly what label to put on my transgression.”

Call it a kiss
, Emmie silently rejoined.

“And was an apology the purpose of this conversation?” she asked, not knowing where in the room to put herself. She wasn’t about to sit on the bed, and not on the fainting couch by the cold hearth either. She also didn’t want to sit at her vanity, not with him standing there, acquainting his big, tanned hands with her belongings.

“I’m not just here to apologize.” He smiled a slow, lazy smile at her. Not one of his company smiles, not a smile he’d give to Winnie or Lord Amery either. “Come sit, Emmie.” He patted the low back of the chair at her vanity. “You are uneasy, wondering when I’ll say something uncouth or alienate another neighbor. I regret that.” He patted the back of the chair again, and on dragging feet, Emmie crossed the room.

She seated herself and expected the earl to take the end of the fainting couch or to slouch against the mantel. He caught her completely off guard by standing behind her and drawing her hair over her shoulders.

“I miss doing this for my sisters,” he said, running the brush down the length of her hair, “and even for Her Grace when I was very young.”

“She raised you?” Emmie asked, knowing she should grab the brush from him.

“From the age of five on. You have utterly glorious hair. Winnie will be the envy of her peers if she ends up with hair like this.” He drew a fat coil up to his nose and inhaled, then let it drop and resumed his brushing.

“You should not be doing this,” Emmie said, but even that weak admonition was an effort. “I should not be letting you do this.”

“I interrupted you. It’s only fair I should perform the task I disturbed. Besides, I wanted to talk to you about this trip Douglas has proposed.”

Emmie rolled her eyes. “The one he proposed at the dinner table. In front of Winnie. What was he thinking?”

“He was thinking”—the earl kept up a slow, steady sweep of the brush—“to alert you to the possibility and to give you a chance to comment on it. But you did not.”

“I said something.” Emmie frowned, trying to recall what. Her common sense told her she needed breathing room—right this moment she needed breathing room, and in the days and weeks to come. She’d been trying to keep her distance from him, to avoid the near occasion of sin, but she couldn’t keep him from her thoughts if he was always underfoot.

“You said nothing that told me what you think of the idea,” he remonstrated. “One braid or two?”

“One. You should do as you please,” she said, trying to rouse her brain to focus on the conversation.

“I hadn’t planned on traveling south again until spring, perhaps when Gayle and Anna’s child has arrived.” He fell silent when the brush found a knot in the heavy abundance of her hair.

“So why go now?” Emmie asked when she ought to be telling him to go and stay away until spring.

“I’m not sure.” He eased the brush through the knot. “I miss my family, for one thing. I didn’t think I would. I spent much of the spring in Westhaven’s household, and I saw a fair amount of Her Grace and my father then, too.”

“But not your sisters, and you have yet to meet Rose, and your father is recovering from a heart seizure.”

“He is. Easily, if my brothers’ missives can be trusted. But what of Winnie? She is my family now, too, and I won’t go if you think it would upset her too much. She’s had a great deal of upheaval in her life, and I would not add to it.”

“Winnie has given you her blessing.” Emmie steeled herself against a lassitude that was making it difficult to keep her eyes open. “And Winnie is not a creature who ignores her own preferences. Just for God’s sake do not fail to return, or I won’t answer for the consequences.”

“Will you miss me, Emmie Farnum?” He paused in his brushing, and Emmie felt his hands settle on her shoulders. She wanted to bolt to her feet and wrap her arms around him, to tell him not to go. She wanted to bolt to her feet and order him from her room, to tell him to go and not come back.

She sat in her chair, stock still, and watched in the mirror as he hunkered behind her chair and pushed her hair to the side, exposing the side of her neck.

“I told myself,” he murmured, his thumb caressing the spot just below her ear, “I could behave if I had to track you to your lair tonight. I told myself that lie, and I believed it.”

He leaned in slowly and pressed his open mouth to the juncture of her shoulder and her neck. His breath fanned over her skin, and Emmie had to close her eyes against the sight of him in her mirror. He rose, but only to let his hands drift down her arms and back up.

“You aren’t stopping me, Emmie,” he whispered.

“I will,” she said, hoping it was true. But his long fingers were busy with the ties at her throat, and she felt her wrapper fall open as he bit her earlobe. Soon, she thought, soon I will stop him, but not just…

A large, warm hand settled gently over one breast, and Emmie could not prevent a little whimper of pleasure. Through the sheer fabric of her nightgown, she could feel the heat of him. His thumb eased across her nipple, coaxing it to firmness, and Emmie felt what little resolve she could claim evaporating.

“Rosecroft…” she murmured.

“Devlin, or St. Just, or my love, but not the bloody damned title.” He shifted so he was kneeling before her and threaded his hand through her hair at her nape.

Another kiss
, Emmie thought, her heart kicking into a gallop.
Just this once more, and then I’ll be good.

He made it a feast, that one kiss, by grazing his nose all over her jaw, her cheeks, her brow. Everywhere, he inhaled her scent and teased her with his own. She tried to capture his mouth, but he evaded such headlong behavior. His hand remained on her breast, cupping, teasing, and learning the shape and heft of her.

“St. Just,” Emmie panted, “
Devlin
, please just kiss me.”

He growled, a sound that held amusement and satisfaction, but he didn’t capitulate to her demands until he’d undone the ties to her nightgown. Not until he fused his mouth to hers did he ease the material apart, though, and then he let his hand drop to her lap, leaving Emmie to focus on the way he plundered her mouth, stole her wits, and sent her best intentions and common sense begging down the lane.

***

Emmie opened for him immediately, her hands stealing around his shoulders, and those sexy little sounds starting up as soon as he touched his tongue to hers.