“Because I didn’t want them to suffer for my mistake,” she answered honestly. “I am to blame for what happened, not them. I alone will bear the burden. Please know, Your Grace, that it was never my intention to cause you so much upset.”
“Upset,” he spat. “That is a tepid word for what I’m feeling right now, madam.”
Beneath his fury and ice, Joceline sensed the depth of his sadness. It was there in the shadows of his blue-green eyes. He wasn’t a wolf or a beast at all in that moment. He was a man devastated by grief, haunted by the wraiths of his past, determined to seal his emotions away the same as he had his dead wife’s room.
“I’ll restore the chamber, Your Grace,” she reassured him quietly. “You may return to the library.”
His lip curled. “Do you truly have the temerity to order me about in my own home, Mrs. Yorke?”
Had she been ordering him? No, she rather thought she had been encouraging him. But he was in a desperately dark mood, and there would be no appeasing him in this condition.
“Of course not, Your Grace. I beg your pardon. I merely wished for you to know that there isn’t a need for you to worry a moment more about this unfortunate incident. I’ll rectify matters on my own.”
With a curtsy, she attempted to move past him, intending to apply furniture coverings and put everything back in its proper place. But he blocked her with his big, impassive frame.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
“Your Grace should not be tasked with such a duty,” she countered. “I am at fault. Allow me to?—”
“I said, I will do it,” he interrupted, his voice harsh and cold. “Leave me, Mrs. Yorke.”
She had no choice but to obey him. The stony, bleak expression on his face told her that she didn’t dare to defy him in this.
Joceline nodded. “Of course, Your Grace.”
She dipped into a curtsy before gathering up her skirts and fleeing just as the maids had done some minutes before.
Leaving him to the memories he had sealed inside his dead wife’s room and the pain of the past. And though she knew she had no right to feel it, Joceline couldn’t shake the sensation that she was abandoning him as she descended the servants’ stair. Her foolish heart gave a pang, but she tamped it down, along with old hopes she’d believed long gone.
CHAPTER 6
Quint didn’t know how long he’d been sitting in Amelia’s bedchamber, surrounded by the disarray of her personal effects, which had been moved about by well-intentioned maids in their efforts to dust, uncover, and organize. She had used the room whenever they’d been in residence, which hadn’t been often. Amelia had far preferred London or Sedgewick Manor in Buckinghamshire to Blackwell Abbey, which was admittedly a crumbling relic from centuries past. The northern clime had been a source of displeasure for her, along with the cumbersome train journey.
It had been her dislike of the estate that had led him here, after the fire at Sedgewick Manor, which had ravaged the eastern wing and taken Amelia’s and their baby’s life in the process. A place of fewer memories. Four walls that would not smell like smoke or be a daily reminder of all he had lost that day. He had forgotten, in fact, how many of her belongings had remained when he had given the order to his then-housekeeper to seal the room and its contents away.
For two years, it had remained untouched. Undisturbed. And now, it had been reopened, its curtains tied back to allow sunlight to stream into the mullioned windows, the coveringsremoved from the furniture and wall hangings. Amelia’s picture stared back at him from a small gilt frame atop a table. Her watercolors, all ethereal landscapes she had painted during her time at Blackwell Abbey, dotted the walls. A case of her jewelry was laid out as if she were preparing her toilette, a bottle of her scent nearby. He had no doubt that if he inspected the wardrobe, he would find more bits and pieces of her remaining—warm winter gowns, underpinnings, God knew what else, and Quint didn’t have the heart to look.
He had been an idiot to think this day would never come. He realized that now as he stripped the leather gloves from his hands and laid them aside. The door was closed, and he had no fear of his hideous scars being viewed. No one had dared return, not even the intrepid Mrs. Yorke, who had invaded his home just as she had this room, upsetting his peace.
Ah, Mrs. Yorke.
She infuriated him. She irritated him. She intrigued him.
The woman was a problem. Earlier, when she had come to him in his library, he had been seized by the wild, incredibly stupid notion that he should invite her to sit with him. That they might discuss books or poetry or anything of interest. He hadn’t known just how hungry he was for female companionship, how very starved for it, until her arrival. He knew it now, thanks to her. Knew it as he sat in the midst of his dead wife’s room, surveying all that remained of her.
And he hated himself for that weakness, for the betrayal of Amelia’s memory. He hadn’t been able to save her from the fire that awful day. The least he could do was remain constant to her in death, yet he had been caught in the thrall of his housekeeper, of all people. He had been thinking about kissing, touching, and Lord help him, so much more than that.
Quint closed his eyes and heaved a heavy sigh, scrubbing a hand along his jaw. “Forgive me, Amelia. Forgive me for failing you in every way.”
He opened his eyes, and no one was there but the watercolors and the picture, Amelia dressed in a beautiful Worth gown, flowers in her hair, eyes sparkling with the vivacity he had forgotten how much he missed. Once, there had been lightness in his life. There had been laughter and picnics and discussions of Shakespeare. There had been walks through the countryside and rides on Rotten Row and dancing with her in his arms beneath glittering chandeliers. There had been the hope of a family, about to begin before her life had been taken far too soon, the new life in her womb going with her.
Now, there was an empty room filled with objects. There was the grief that threatened to consume him. The guilt that he had failed her and their child both. There were two long years, a yawning fissure between his old life and the man he was now.
There was the closed door clicking open and Mrs. Yorke standing at the threshold, her eyes wide with shock.
“Your Grace,” she said. “Forgive me. I thought you were no longer within the chamber. I will leave you to your peace.”
Quint didn’t know what prompted him to shoot to his feet, but he was suddenly standing. “Wait.”
