The Scandalous Love of a Duke (33 page)

“Come on, John, come back to bed.” She moved, trying to pull him with her, but her arm and his just stretched wider. He didn’t budge, just sighed.

She tugged him more gently.

He moved.

She climbed on to the huge bed, kneeling and looking up at him as she still held his fingers and his attention.

The mattress sunk as he sat and then he rested back against the headboard, leaving his fingers resting in hers.

“Was it the same dream?” Her question was cautious. She was still unsure of her ground with John. He could just as easily get up and walk out instead of answer.

His fingers let hers go, but they lifted to her cheek and then they were in her hair, pulling her forwards.

He kissed her. It wasn’t lustful. It was as though he was clinging to her and anchoring himself. When the kiss broke, he held her tightly. “I hate arguing with you, Katherine. Must we keep doing it? You are the one person I truly trust. I feel like I have no foundation when you are angry with me.”

“Then if you trust me, tell me what your dream was about.”

She felt him shake his head.

Her fingers pushing against his pectoral muscle, she broke the embrace, looking at his dark silhouette.

A gust of wind threw rain at the windowpanes.

“You can trust me.”

“I know that.” She heard a catch of emotion in his voice.

“This is me, John.”

“I am not afraid.” The response was a deep rumble, and the words seemed an answer to himself.

Her brow furrowed. “John, just tell me. If you do, it may even go away. I am presuming it is the same dream. How long have you had it for?”

Sighing, he looked up at the canopy of the bed. “Years, sometimes it goes away for months, and at other times it haunts me every night.”

Her fingers dropped to lie at his stomach, resting on his silk dressing-gown. “What is it about?”

He sighed again and one knee rose.

She watched him, her bottom pressing down on her heels as she knelt, while his arm rested on his bent knee. He was silent.

She said nothing, somehow knowing he was gathering courage, and drawing on the anonymity of the darkness.

“I am a child, about ten years old. My mother has recently married Edward. They’d fetched me from Eton in the middle of the night. We’d fled halfway across the country to escape my grandfather. I do not remember seeing my mother before then. I’d lived with them for two weeks. It felt like a dream. I, like any other child. Like any other family. I’d begun believing it was real. Then one morning my grandfather appeared, angry as hell and spitting fire – if a man can achieve that when he has the presence of stone. I had not escaped him. He took me away, and they let me go. In the dream, I’m that boy who looks from my grandfather’s carriage, watching my mother run after it and cry out…”

His breathing was ragged when he finished the story, fighting emotion he sought to hide.

She didn’t know what to say.

“It is ridiculous, isn’t it? I know. A grown man with the fears of a child. But it never goes away, and when I wake up I feel like I did then all over again, lost, alone, and unloved.”

“You were not unloved, they love you. All your family are fond of you, look how they rallied about you tonight.”

“I know that,” he whispered, his voice bitter, “in my head. But in my soul… No. My soul remembers all those empty years when my aunts and uncles tried to fill the gap my mother had left, and failed. She left a hole in me, and it remembers the old man’s coldness and nothing else. If you knew the things I did to please him, to make him like me, even if he would not love me. I was a pathetic child. And then he sent me away to sing in the chapel at Eton, out of sight and out of mind, to toughen up, truly alone.”

His fingers were shaking as they dropped to grip hers.

“I know where she was now.” His words fell into the darkness between them as the rain hammered against the windowpanes. “He’d taken me from her, after my father died. Disowned her and left her to starve. He told me, like everyone else, she was dead. She prostituted herself to survive. My grandfather was a heartless bastard. And do you know what makes it worse? He made me the same as him. I don’t want to be, but I am. I cannot be myself. You told me I was spoilt. I was not spoilt, I was beaten until I bent to his will, and now I don’t know how to straighten up again.”

Katherine hugged him and kissed his cheek. “That’s not true, John. You’re not like him, not with me.”

The weight of his palms rested on her hair and her back as, outside, the wind cast the rain at the windows, whistling through the cracks in the frames.

“The dream has changed,” he whispered to her hair. “Before we wed, the woman chasing the carriage became you, and now a child is there, our child. What if I cannot love the child, Katherine? What if I cause my son or daughter the pain he caused me? When my mother married Edward, I was glad to have a father, I looked up to him and loved him, and Mary, she was a novelty, as was Robbie, but by the time the others came, I was already disengaged. I look at them now, my brothers and sisters, and there is no feeling. What if I feel nothing for my own child?”

She pulled away, her fingers framing his face in the darkness. “You said yourself Mary and Robbie were new to you. You haven’t connected with the others because by then you were not at home. Your own children will be new to you, and you will not be away from them, you will bring them up, share their lives. So you will not feel distant because you will not be distant.”

His hands gripped hers and squeezed her fingers.

She realised then he had not only been closing himself off from her at times, he’d closed himself off from their child too.

“John, I believe you love me. You will love our child.”

A breath sucked into his lungs as his fingertips tentatively touched her stomach.

She moved and straddled him as his knee slid down to allow it, and her fingers framed his face, giving him the anchor she knew he needed as she kissed him.

His fingers slid up her thighs underneath the shirt she wore, reaching to cup her buttocks as he broke the kiss. “You are wearing one of my shirts.”

“I did not wish to leave this room in case you thought I would not sleep here and locked the door.”

He laughed. “I would not lock you out.”

“You shut me out at the ball, John.”

“And that is why you were angry…” She felt his muscle tighten again. “I wasn’t shutting you out. I was shutting
them
out…”

Another gust of wind thrust the rain against the window.

“And holding me at a distance too. I wish to be your friend and your helpmate as much as your wife, John—”

“I’ve told you more than I’ve told anyone. I told you about Egypt, about Elizabeth and now my grandfather. Believe me, I never thought I’d tell anyone what I’ve just spoken to you.”

“I know. But still you only tell me and show me what you wish, John. I realise now you weren’t shutting me out, but yourself in. You let me see what little you choose, like I am placed in some compartment of your life until you deem to visit it. I feel as though half the time I am standing at a window looking in at you.”

She took a breath. She had to tell him how she felt. “You will not speak of your business with me, as though it would be beyond me. Thrice you’ve told me I would not want to know. I have asked, does that not tell you I do. You avoid me in the day, because God forbid anyone may think you put me first. Or do you do it because you do not like my company unless we are in bed? In the evening, on the two occasions you’ve taken me out, you set such an expression on your face that people wonder why you married me. They certainly do not think you happy, nor in love. Which, considering my birth, leaves only indecent possibilities.” And of course there was still the yellowed, fading bruise on his cheek to add weight to that view.

She stopped, but only to draw another breath. “I was propositioned thrice tonight, by men who think you too cold to warm my bed…”

His fingers clawed on her back.

She sat back, freeing herself from his hold.

“That part of you
is
like your grandfather. It is like you wear a ducal shroud. I want you to share everything with me and let others see beneath your mask. I want them to know you love me and that you are caring and kind. You must show yourself, if you do not want to be like him.”

He sucked in a deep breath.

She knew he was angry again. She could feel his irritation.

Pushing her aside, he then climbed from the bed, and, without a word, walked out of the room.

She did not call him back, or try to prevent him from going. He needed to hear what she’d said. He had just told her he suffered with nightmares because he could not be who he wished to be. He had demons to deal with that were far greater than her.

But she was right and he knew it.

She heard him stop within his sitting room and then turn back.

“There is a new rule in this marriage, Katherine,” he said from the door. “You are not to dance with anyone without my permission, understood.”

She didn’t answer and he didn’t wait for her to. It was a ducal command.

He slammed the door.

Her hand covered her stomach. He could love the child, she knew he could, but only if he allowed it, and he had a stubborn vein of iron running through his soul.

She prayed he would allow it. He’d married her. She had to believe that given time he would make the right choice again.

~

When Katherine woke, for the first time in days she lay in an empty bed.

She missed him. She had become used to him silently setting the chamber pot next to her and then bidding the maid enter.

A second knock struck the door.

Katherine called the maid in, sitting up.

The bed felt strange empty, there was only the indent of his head in the pillow to say he’d been there.

The maid set down the tray she carried and turned to leave.

“His Grace?” Katherine asked tentatively.

“Is out riding, Your Grace. The Duke left an hour ago.”

As luncheon loomed he’d still not returned, and Katherine fretted. Yet neither his mother nor Mary seemed to think it odd.

When his Aunt Jane arrived to accompany them to her friend’s fundraising luncheon, Katherine was in turmoil, terrified she had pushed him too far, but she hoped the social event would distract her.

It did.

After luncheon they were shown about the orphanage, to view the children at their desks, working on slates. They were well fed, clothed and cared for, but they lacked a mother’s love. Something she and John both knew could affect a young, helpless soul.

In a room full of children at their lessons, Katherine stopped to sit with a girl. John’s aunt and mother kept going, following the group, as Katherine lingered, listening and learning about the children’s days.

When they came back for her later, Katherine knew she was in love with all of the children here, and the charity which kept them. She had found the thing to fill the void in her marriage. But just handing over sums of money would not suffice for her. She would come here and help during the day, when John shut her out. She would have love and a place here, to avoid the sense of loneliness.

When the other ladies bid each other farewell, returning to their carriages, Katherine turned to Jane and Ellen. “Would you mind if I stay a little longer? I wish to speak with the Matron about helping more significantly. I don’t wish to delay you.”

Looking at her in earnest, Ellen hesitated. “I’m not sure, Katherine. I don’t like leaving you. Why not come back tomorrow, I can come with you then?”

“We are committed tomorrow; we are to go to the Duchess of Arundel’s. I can stay alone. You may send the carriage back, or I can hire a hackney. One of the grooms can wait with me.”

Ellen smiled, “Who is teaching who how to go on, Katherine?”

“You are teaching me, and I am very grateful. But I can manage to hire a carriage and get home without support.”

John’s aunt Jane smiled too.

Gripping Katherine’s forearm, Ellen smiled more broadly. John had inherited his blue eyes from her, but hers were never cold. “You do please me, Katherine. I know John can be a trial, but you are very good for him.”

Katherine smiled too, but felt tears in her eyes. “I wish him to be happy.”

Ellen’s smile fell and her fingers tightened on Katherine’s forearm. “He is stubborn. I just hope he can make you happy too.”

Oh dear
, his parents knew how things stood.

Blushing, Katherine saw the torment John was in was not his mother’s fault. It was his grandfather’s. Ellen loved him. Yet Katherine also knew the only person who could reach him now was her.

Once the others had gone, sitting in a small office, Katherine discussed the things she could do to help, agreeing to read and play with the children, and teach them their letters, and perhaps seed their everyday lives with the occasional trip to a park or museum to help them flourish.

She spent a good hour with the Matron. It was nearly four when she finally stepped out onto the pavement with John’s groom.

Two children barrelled about the corner and collided with her.

She caught the arm of the younger boy. “Stop. What’s this?” She saw fear in his eyes as he looked up.

“Miss, let me go, I gotta get ‘elp for me Ma. She’s ‘avin’ a baby, an’ it ain’t goin’ right, Miss. She said come an’ beg ‘ere f’r the midwife. She needs ‘elp, Miss.”

There was no time for thought. Katherine, thrust her reticule at the groom, ordering him to go immediately with the eldest boy and get a doctor. The youngest she bid to hurry into the orphanage to find the Matron, certain the staff would help until the doctor came. Katherine could find a carriage by herself. She was hardly a cosseted female, and Finch would settle the amount when she reached home.

Having watched the groom hurry off about the corner, Katherine turned around, only to find herself looking up into a familiar face. “Mr Wareham?”

He lifted his hat and bowed slightly. “Miss Spencer, what a fortuitous surprise. What brings you to town?”