She knew this because, even now, however impossible, she wished she could be the woman meant to forever safeguard his heart.
ChapterEight
Before tragedy thrust the Duke of Hurtheven into his title,His Gracehad been an honorific reserved for—and fully embodied by—his father.
His father...a man whose quick, clipped footsteps echoed across the hall and through the corridors of Hevenhyll in a reassuring manner, whose booming laugh set all to rights, and to whom everyone in the world—or at least Hurtheven’s world—petitioned with their concerns, because his father could solve any problem, no matter how large.
The young heir’s sphere had been safe. His father was in charge.
Until he wasn’t.
In the months of the newly minted duke’s convalescence, those closest to him—mainly the people whose livelihood depended on the ducal estate—had treated him with patience and care.
Still, he’d understood, without being explicitly told, that his duty was to recover quickly and then subsume his father’s role. By stepping into the prior duke’s shoes, he would givethemback the world they understood, even if his own remained irreparably shattered.
Those expectations hung off his fever-shrunken limbs in much the same manner as his father’s court robes had hung off his body, even as the wind and the cold and the hard, shock of that night haunted his every hour.
His solution?
Banish base emotions—the messy, human kind of sentiments that made one prone to careless mistakes.
Mistakes like driving out into a threatening storm becauseyouwanted to reach home. Because your beautiful, loving duchess would have acquiesced to anything you desired. Because neither you nor she would have paid the slightest heed under any circumstances, let alone a simple summer storm, to the concerns of a coachman, never mind your young boy.
He’d boxed up his fear and his anger and mimicked a sovereign’s stride.
Stoically—and under his godfather’s guidance—he’d refitted his father’s mantle. And, as for the grief engendered by his sudden, inexplicable loss, he’d lowered the wick until the burn dulled to a barely discernable glow.
But in the library—he tremored—rage had reappeared as a white-hot broadsword, severing him from his dedicated control in one, stunning thwack.
She’d painted his character with what he’d perceived as casual cruelty, unknowingly making a mockery of every sacrifice he’d made in the name of his honor and his father’s memory before wounding him where he was still most tender—that ephemeral landing place of the second and third strikes.
The very seat of his emotions.
Still, he’d regained his center, and made the offer he’d decided to make that night in the inn. An offer which she’d rejected. As he tossed in his bed, he wondered anew why she’d refused to be his duchess but agreed to be his doxy.
Not just agreed—suggested. On extravagant terms, no less.
He’d fallen asleep bedeviled, lost in Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors, unable to discern the real from the reflected. Vividly, he dreamt of smiles, soft sighs, red spiral curls, and her hand in his own. He awoke to a grey morning damp with drizzle convinced again she would soon be his wife.
Her extravagant requestsdid notreflect her nature.
He’d missed something.
He pondered the mystery as his newly arrived valet fitted him into his country clothes. He further mulled as his steward—the excellent Mr. Irving—explained to him the urgent business he must attend...not only an inspection of the drainage problem caused by the compromised dam, but other issues that had arisen in his absence.
First, he’d seen the dam and resolved to divert the river by rebuilding in a slightly different location. Next, they met with the bailiff. Then, they settled disputes among tenants which Mr. Irving had not been able to smooth over on his own. Finally, on the home farm, he’d looked over crops of potatoes and beets and beans before discussing a price for the sale of feeder lambs.
She, however, was never far from his thoughts.
By midday, his cheeks were wind-burnt, his boots muddied, and his lungs full of earthy, clean quintessence—the kind utterly unimaginable in town. He was, without knowing, gaining succor from his roots. And, as he cantered toward the village, his head was finally clear.
He was able to imagine what Mrs. Montrose might have been feeling.
Hera—he corrected—not Mrs. Montrose.
Hera to his Zeus.
Herahad entered the library wholly ignorant of his true intention. And, he now accepted, she had good reason for her suspicions.
