The tension eased from her shoulders and that hope in her eyes burned like one of the stars winking down at them. “A tailor to fit you in the latest fashions will be summoned immediately.”
That was said with a pointed look at his throat, bare of a neckcloth. Earlier it had felt like a noose, slowly strangling the breath from his body. He’d removed it, and his family had all paused eating to stare at him as if he’d grown horns. Their priorities made no sense to him. He did not bother to inform the duchess he would never wear it around his throat again.
The duchess took a careful step closer, and James stepped away. The duchess attempted a small smile, one that did not reach her eyes.
“A study of Debrett’s and the top families in society,” she murmured.
“I will make myself available to learn.” James bowed. Some courtesies he did remember. “If you will excuse me.”
“Where do you go?”
He glanced toward the pitch-black woodlands.
Her lips flattened. “Of course, you go into the night…again.”
The soft rebuke and confusion in her tone did not deter him. James made his way from the drawing room outside into the night. He tipped his head to the sky, and as he inhaled the cold air into his lungs a modicum of peace infused his veins.
He walked away from the house, his shoulders tingling. A glance behind him showed all fifteen of his family members bundled on the balcony, watching him stroll into the forest. James couldn’t help thinking he didn’t belong.
Right at the edge of the forest, a thick blanket of grass covered the land. He shrugged from his jacket, dropped it to the ground, and then lay down with his laced fingers behind his head. This was where he slept sometimes. Out in the open, staring at the vastness of the sky, feeling the smallness of self, and conquering the fear that came with the realization of how insignificant one was when compared to the power of the natural world.
He closed his eyes, hoping sleep would come quickly. The forest noise, the sound of the grasshoppers, owls, and other animals did not soothe him as they had done the previous night. James felt an emotion that he was wholly unfamiliar with and could not name. That lack of understanding of himself gave the restlessness a sharper edge, and it dug into his gut, twisting like a blade. For years he’d hungered to be back with his family…and now that he was here…it was clear he did not fit. His perspective of the world had changed. James knew he wasn’t addlepated, but hewas…different.
The path stretched before him, and he accepted that for his family’s sake, he needed to become the duke. Perhaps in that transformation, he might once again understand life and find a purpose for himself that went beyond merely just surviving. Another odd sensation kindled within his chest, but he crushed it before it could fully form, knowing that a state of not feeling must be maintained.
It was in feeling that one could lose one’s sanity and sense of self. James blew out a slow breath and rotated his shoulders, using the emptiness to soothe the restless edge. After a few moments, nothing lingered within his thoughts but icy purpose. The best step forward was to study in private…and also procure himself a duchess.
A wife.
He stared at the night sky until his eyes ached and the stars blurred.
A wife. A woman. An image of pale skin and soft curves rose in his thoughts. A wife meant a lover…and intimacy. The cold bit even deeper into his bones. James inhaled the night, and the scent of the forest filled his lungs.
He barely recalled the experience with his only lover right before he’d set off on his ill-fated adventure. The memory flared through James’s mind—a younger, softer version of himself tumbling into bed with a young widow from the village, the shape of her body, the lush scent of her skin. She had been a few years older than him and a skilled lover and a charming conversationalist.
He remembered kissing her dewy skin, driving his cock into the wet tightness of her body, savoring her gasps and moans, reveling in the way she’d clung to his body and wrapped her legs high around his back. How he’d enjoyed the flushed satisfaction on her pretty face, and her heavy-lidded eyes. They’d been lovers for a few weeks, but when he tried to think of giving and receiving that pleasure now, no sensation or ache or need followed behind those visceral images.
If the truth of how he had lived for so long came out, his family would be terrified, society would be appalled. His father… James could not imagine what his father’s reaction might have been to his son’s emergence. He still recalled those lessons from his father on the importance of the role he would one day undertake. His duties and responsibilities had been impressed upon James at the age of five. And he had never forgotten the pride and honor of his father.
A memory of walking with his father along these very paths before him wafted through him.
He is gone without knowing I am alive.
A piercing sensation burrowed under his skin, clawing, and digging deep into that place he did not allow much and an aching wrench caused a hiss to slip from him.
You must be a man of courage, strength, and shrewdness. Always, my son, it is a part of being a duke.
Those early lessons imparted from his father had succeeded in helping James pull himself from the brink of the pit that had yawned before him.
You must be a man of courage, strength, and shrewdness.
It was not in James to ever give up on anything without attempting to scale those insurmountable odds. If he had been that type of man, he would have been dead within days of being lost. He would try to fulfill this duty even knowing it might damn well wrench him apart, knowing he might not even succeed.
I’ll become the Duke of Wulverton. I’ll damn well learn to dance, I’ll learn politics from the best masterminds of the political arenas. And find a suitable wife to make my duchess.
Only as he stared into the dark, mesmerizing beauty of the night, the vows echoed without a sense of truth in that empty place inside.
Chapter Three
