“My wife died in a fire at Sedgewick Hall three weeks before Christmas Day,” he said, the raw pain in his voice wrapping itself around her heart like a vise. “I had gone out for a ride that morning. I returned home to smoke billowing from the eastern wing. I rushed inside and was told by the servants that she had gone to that wing in search of the old nursery. She was expecting, you see. She’d taken an oil lamp with her because that part of the house wasn’t plumbed for gaslights. Somehow, it must have upended.”
“My God,” she said, pressing a hand over her mouth as horror unfurled. So much made sense, all the pieces of him coming together.
“I tried to reach her,” he continued, his gaze taking on a faraway look. “The footmen were gathering water buckets from the pond, but it wasn’t enough. By the time I raced to the east wing, the whole structure had begun to fail. The floor collapsed, and a burning beam fell across my chest, pinning me. It required all the strength I had to push it away. I was still intent upon finding her, but some of the footmen came and dragged me from the rubble. It was too late to save her. I hide my scars not justbecause they are hideous, but because they’re a reminder of my failure. They died that day because of me.”
Sweet heavens, the poor man. Little wonder he had been tormented. He believed he was responsible for the deaths of his wife and unborn child. Before Joceline could think twice over the familiarity of her gesture, she leaned forward in her chair and laid her hands over his on the desk. Beneath her work-roughened fingertips, the evidence of his valiant fight to save the woman he loved was smooth yet rippled.
“You tried to save them and were nearly killed,” she said softly. “You did everything you could.”
“I should have been there,” he insisted stubbornly. “If I hadn’t been riding…”
“If you hadn’t been riding, would it have happened any differently?” she asked, keeping her voice gentle.
For such a large, impassive, arrogant man, he seemed so very vulnerable in this moment of dark confession, as if he needed all the strength she could give him.
“I don’t know,” he admitted hoarsely. “The questions, what might have been, the guilt of being pulled from the flames alive when she and the baby she carried were left to burn…they haunt me as much as the scars do.”
“You’ve been punishing yourself, but you don’t deserve to do penance. I am certain that your wife must have loved you, and that she wouldn’t have wished for you to suffer in her absence.”
He stared at her, saying nothing, and for a wild moment, Joceline feared she had gone too far. That the price for her sympathy would be her situation, and she would finally find herself on the next train to London before the dowager arrived. That all her work here would have been for naught, and she would have scarcely anything to send home to Mama and her siblings.
But then he spoke at last, his voice as raw as she’d ever heard it. “You are too kind to me. I don’t deserve it.”
“Yes,” she countered, her heart breaking anew for him, “you do.”
“I’ve been a beast to you, and meanwhile, you have been nothing short of an angel, heaven-sent.” He moved suddenly, taking her hands in his and bowing over them, pressing a fervent kiss to the top of first one, then another.
“I-I haven’t,” she protested, breathless. “I can assure you I’m no angel.”
Sparks seemed to shoot past her wrists, skipping up her elbow, making her giddy. The touch of his mouth on her bare skin felt hot and forbidden. The sight of his proud lips on her work-chapped hand, the connection of his gaze searing into hers like a touch of its own, pulled her nearer, into his web. The air between them had shifted from grief to heated awareness.
“Joceline,” he murmured, turning one hand over and kissing the center of her palm, then higher still, to her wrist.
His mouth was a brand, burning, tempting. She wanted to revel in these stolen moments, in his touch, his lips. Wanted to throw herself across his desk and into his arms. But then she saw the slumberous cast of his eyes, his pupils dilated, and she understood that he was in his cups. That he had sought to drown his sorrows in brandy, and to allow a moment more of anything illicit to continue between them would be wrong.
She pulled her hands from his grasp and stood with haste, fleeing from the study without a thought for formality or the damage she might be doing to herself in running away. She didn’t stop until she had reached her small, cold housekeeper’s room.
And it was only then that she allowed herself to weep, shedding tears for the Duke of Sedgewick, for his lost wife and child, and for what could never be.
CHAPTER 7
Quint had made a grievous mistake.
He had known it the night before when he had been so caught up in the moment and in Mrs. Yorke—Joceline—that he had allowed himself to not just touch her hands, but kiss them. He had known it as he’d watched her flee his study in a swirl of dark, serviceable skirts and crisp white apron, her chatelaine jingling as if in reproach with each step. He’d known it later as he had lain awake in his bed, his lips still tingling with the memory of his mouth on her bare skin. He’d known it as his cock had hardened to thoughts of what he might do with her, were they anyone other than who they were.
And he knew it now as he awaited her in his library, surrounded by the merry Yuletide decorations she had festooned about.
Unable to remain still, he paced the Axminster, scrubbing at his jaw with a gloved hand, so many confusing, complex emotions roiling within him. There was guilt over desiring another woman, and one who was forbidden to him at that. There was shame over having made overtures when he did not know if they were welcomed. There was the anguish of his past colliding with the undeniable force of his future.
God, there was so much. So bloody much. And it threatened to consume him. He wanted Joceline. He could not have her. Everything that had been hateful to him was now somehow comforting and desirable—a woman’s touch, his skin on hers, the revelation of his scars, the Christmas greenery, a Yuletide season unmarred by loss and pain. Hell, he didn’t even mind that his mother was set to arrive soon. When last he had seen her, they’d had a row over his insistence upon hiding away in the north. She had wanted him to return to London and resume his duties. The notion had made him want to retch. That had been a year ago when she had ventured to Blackwell Abbey, only to return to polite society disappointed.
And now…
Well, now, the prospect of resuming his own life—albeit a very changed one—no longer seemed so intolerable. If anything, it felthopeful. He had Joceline Yorke to thank for that, a capable, beautiful, resilient woman who had upended his sheltered world when she had come to Blackwell Abbey. A woman he owed an apology to for his behavior the previous evening.
A knock sounded at the closed door, a sharp, distinct rap he had come to recognize as hers.
“Enter,” he called, turning on his heel so that he would be facing her.
