“You didn’t come to me, Jack, as you said you would.” A very soft reproach.
“No. I broke my word.”
“Yes, you break your word just like everyone else. Just like me.” She smiled and came toward him.
Wait. His knees weren’t weak. His mouth wasn’t dry. His cock wasn’t hard. Had he become a stronger, better man in the intervening weeks? Was it because he was duke now? Did the title really confer that willpower?
No.
It was because of Scotland. It was because of Helen.
Because what was Elizabeth, after all, to him? Only a woman who had not deserved him. No, no, that was wrong. He likely had deserved her and the duplicity and the lies.
She was just a woman who had wanted a duke. As other women did. As another woman did.
She stood in front of him and her hand was reaching out to touch him. He caught it in his. Lightly. He wanted there to be no indication that there was passion in this room. Because there wasn’t. Not on his side.
“I won’t be bedding you, Elizabeth. And I won’t be marrying you.”
Startled violet eyes. The trill of a laugh. “Oh, Jack. Women like the chase, too, you know. You can’t put me off that easily.”
“Nonetheless, it’s true.” He released her hand and stepped away. “You’re not welcome as a caller here. Ever again.”
She betrayed herself with a single twitch above an eyelid. Then the appearance of a tendon in her neck. A sneer curling her full upper lip. “There will be things to discuss. Property. My dower. The town house.”
“I will appoint someone to handle those things for me.”
A clenching of her hands by her side. “You won’t cheat me, Jack.”
“No. I won’t. Goodbye.”
He left the room. “Show Her Grace out,” he said to his butler.
He climbed the stairs, intending to go to his study and read his post. He wondered if Helen might write to him even if she didn’t need to and how soon a letter might reach him.
No, she wouldn’t write. She was too proud for that. He would be a fool to hope for a letter.
He stopped on the second flight of stairs, halted by a chest ache at the thought of Helen’s pride, an ache which had been conspicuously absent when he had been in the drawing room with the woman who had broken his heart five years ago.
Or at least he thought she had.
He stood there and listened to the sounds of Elizabeth Hamilton MacNaughton leaving his house for the last time. Then he climbed the rest of the stairs, two at a time.
After he had attended to the letters which had come in the weeks he had been away, he would go find Phineas or Edmund in the club. Or George Danforth. He would make George teach him how to play chess. Or he would watch Sir Matthew Elliot doze off in a chair as he often did in the afternoon. Or he would seek out Will Dagenham in a gaming hell and play vingt-et-un with the viscount and Rhys Vaughan until dawn tomorrow morning.
He would surround himself with men. His men friends. He didn’t need any other friends. Certainly, not a woman friend who ate him with her savage eyes and made his cock hard with hermo luranand told him he was like the stars on a summer night.
That was far too difficult a thing for him.
And too much responsibility.
Sixteen
Jack remembered now why he hadn’t wanted to be duke. Because it was all difficulties and responsibilities.
“Come on, Jack, it’s just like being the captain of a ship. But you’re on land. And there’s no excitement or danger.”
Phineas’ words helped him to remember that, of course, he knew how to lead, how to assess a situation and look for a solution. He was capable of making the hard decisions.
