Page 63 of Five Nights to Claim His Duchess

“If I go home and open my mouth and tell her the whole of it,” said Valentine, “and she looks at me and says she does not want it. That she does not want the child.”

He stopped.

“Then such is love, they tell me.” Phillip shrugged. “You will have to listen to what she says and make of it what you can, like everybody else who has ever been fool enough to try. But I will tell you what is beneath you, Rosewood, and that is sitting in my drawing room drinking my claret like a coward.” He settled back. “It is a little pathetic. I say it as your friend.”

Valentine sat quite still for a moment.

Then he stood up.

“I am going home.”

Phillip raised his glass. “And Rosewood — my congratulations. You are to be a father.”

Valentine paused in the doorway.

It ought to feel light, he thought. A man is told that and it ought to lift him. By why did it feel heavy?

The house was dark when he came up the drive, which was wrong; it was not late enough for that.

Mrs. Fletcher was waiting in the hall with a candle.

“Your Grace. Her Grace went out at noon, sir. She has taken Miss Arabella, and Betsy with her, and the small trunks. She is gone to her father’s house.” The old woman held the candle steady. “She said to tell you, a few days. She did not say how many.”

Valentine stood in his own hall and felt the floor go a long way down.

“I see,” he said. “Thank you.”

He had got as far as the foot of the stairs.

“Your Grace. Might I speak?”

He turned. “Say it.”

Mrs. Fletcher looked at him for a moment.

“Her Grace had tears in her eyes when she went out that door,” she said. “She held them till the carriage. But they were there. And I will say one thing more, sir, and then I shall hold my tongue and you may dismiss me for it if you choose.” Her chin came up. “Do not go chasing after her. Not tonight, nor tomorrow, neither.”

“Mrs. Fletcher⁠—”

“She is a clever lady and a brave one, and I have not seen her equal in this house in my lifetime. But I have never in all my days met a person with so much dignity in her, sir, and folk like that do not thank you for running them down in the road. She would only close up. Give her the days she asked for.” Her voice softened by the smallest degree. “And then go and fetch her home properly, and do it right when you do it.”

Valentine found, unaccountably, that his throat had closed.

“Thank you,” he managed. “Good night.”

He went up.

He did not go to his own chamber. He went along the passage past the nursery, into Diana’s chamber. The door was standing open, the bed stripped, the wooden chest of marbles sitting on the mantelpiece where it had been left. Then he lay down on her bed in his coat and his boots and put his face into her pillow and breathed in.

He lay in the dark with his hand on the cold pillow beside him.

Did you ever love me at all?

Or have I only been the least of the men who have had the disposal of you, the one who at least was kind about it?

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“My lord, please. Please do not ignore me any longer. I am begging you, I am begging you⁠—”