His family seemed to watch him keenly as if to ensure he was not a raving lunatic who might one day murder them in their sleep. Or so Uncle Hubert had muttered upon more than one occasion, pinning James with a gimlet and almost challenging glare. His mother regarded him with pain, guilt, and worry in her expressive eyes.
Weatherby, a cousin he’d never met, sent him bitter scowls, for he was no longer the presumptive heir. Felicity, his sister, could hardly meet his gaze, and whenever he moved too close to Cousin Eloise, she scuttled away like a frightened crab. His grandmother merely matched him, her expression inscrutable until her eyes would pool with tears and she would hurry from his presence.
There was nothing James could say or do to assuage his family’s anxiety, for he admitted he had long stopped feeling. It was in those complex sensations which lingered and twisted in the heart that he could lose a sense of his self. How did he then identify and connect with the myriad emotions and expressions that he saw in the eyes of his mother, sister, cousin, and aunt?
James could not. Still, the most pertinent truth gleaned from his family was that hemustbecome James Leopold Winters, the Duke of Wulverton, cloaking himself in the skin of a man who knew his power and position in the world. They all depended on him, his sister and the duchess more than all the others.
A duke.A title and honor he had not thought about in years.
“There might be a need to hire manyother tutors, one might assume. When did the boy stop learning? At fourteen years?” Aunt Margaret muttered with a sigh.
The varied voices rushed over themselves to contribute to the current discourse.
“I believe it was seventeen summers. He did not get the chance to study at Cambridge like all the previous dukes of our line. It is a terrible disgrace to the family.”
“Is it too late for him to enroll?”
This voice he recognized as Uncle Hubert.
“To attend university at eight and twenty? It is absurd, Uncle Hubert. Why, I cannot imagine the scandal of it!”
“A wife is what he needs, I say! A wife!”
“We can scarcely hope he might achieve more than a respectable alliance.”
His uncle’s wife, Aunt Clarissa replied, “He should be able to find a most excellent match.There are many mothers desperate to catch a duke in their matrimonial net. Do you deny it to be so?”
A huff sounded, and then contemplative silence lingered only for a few moments.
“Who will marry him? He…”
That unfamiliar voice dipped so low he barely caught the words “savage, inelegant, and unrefined.”
Ah, so they were fully aware that he stood only a few feet from them but only thought it necessary to be careful over some words which they were afraid for him to discern.
“He is a bloody duke, a rather wealthy one! Who will not have him?”
“Well, I for certain would not take him! We’ve been here almost two weeks and he has not deigned to speak with us. I do not think it arrogance but…”A great huff of annoyance sounded, then an affronted sniff. “Something unseemly must have happened out there in that mountain.It is rather frustrating that he will not tell us about any of it.”
Something warm tickled James’s chest and rose inside him. With a start he recognized it as amusement.
Something unseemly indeed.
The darkness of the forest and the wide-open space called to him, and he sensed the heralding rain on the air. His skin felt tight and unusual, and James wanted to get out of the clothes which felt as if they choked him. He vaguely recalled a time when he had been much concerned with the style of his hair, the complex and fancy knots of his cravats and neckcloths, and the cut of his coat. He’d even had a man who helped him get dressed and scrubbed his back if needed. But everything seemed different now—even the fashions for men had changed, felt more restricting and looked drabber and more pompous.
Now the very idea of having a valet was inarguably laughable.
The scent of jasmine wafted on the air, and an elusive sensation trembled through his entire body. The duchess approached. James did not remove his gaze from the distant tree line in the forest when she stopped beside him, the top of her head barely brushing his shoulder. His mother did not touch him, and he was careful not to step away from her.
That mattered. At their very first meeting after so many years, she had rushed toward him, and James had avoided that embrace, unable to bear the weight of her touch. Wounded eyes had pooled with tears, and he had stepped forward, recognizing a woman he’d never thought to see again in his lifetime. She’d attempted to touch him again, and his recoil had been dangerously instinctive. He did not like anyone too close to him, and that extended to the duchess.
She had not hugged him then, and since, had been very careful in the distance she placed between their bodies. James slowly permitted her closer, but he had not given any thought to allowing the duchess to wrap her slender, elegant arms around him. They stood in silence for several beats of his heart, the inane chatter of his family like busy magpies circling in the background.
“I apologize if I’ve overwhelmed you with tonight’s gathering. The doctor…” She hesitated and cleared her throat gently. “We thought a familiar setting might be helpful.”
Familiar…another fleeting memory of a large family outing on the sprawling lawns, much laughter and joy wafted through him.
Helpful to do what?
