An Earl for the Broken-Hearted Duchess

by Lucinda Nelson

  “I came as soon as I read your letter. I would have come last night, if my head of house had only woken me.”

  She started to smile. The tenderest of smiles. And in a moment of utter foolishness, she put her arms around his neck and held herself to him.

  He was like stone in her arms. Warm, wonderful stone. And she didn’t care that she had shocked him. She didn’t care that she had stepped out of line.

  When she came to her senses, after several moments of feeling his heart beat so near to hers, Margaret’s arms slid free of him. Her fingertips drifted along his neck before they came free of his skin.

  Nathaniel’s eyes were unblinking and fixed upon her burning face.

  Neither of them spoke. She only whispered, “I will wake Ezra.”

  With that, she ascended the staircase once more. And left him there, still staring, still silent. Still so entirely mesmerised.

  ***

  Lord Nathaniel Sterling, Earl of Comptonshire

  As quickly as she’d come, she was gone. And Nathaniel was left standing there like a fool, with his lips faintly parted and his skin prickled with warmth.

  His neck, where she’d touched him, felt charged with electricity. In an instant of pure fancy, he touched his fingers against his throat. He closed his eyes and imagined her arms around him again.

  He didn’t think he’d ever felt anything like that before.

  When he heard footsteps on the stairs, he opened his eyes and blinked himself back into reality. At the top of the stairs, doing his absolute best, Ezra hobbled his way down each step.

  It was tricky with the crutches and Nathaniel could see how anxious the Duchess was. She kept trying to take him by the elbow, but the boy wasn’t having any of it. Nathaniel could understand that. He was just the same as a boy. Always wanting to do everything himself. Wanting to prove to his father that he was capable, strong, and clever.

  Thank God he’d gotten past that desire, though he hadn’t done so quickly by any means.

  “My Lord,” he said. “I am so sorry to have woken you.”

  The boy was breathing heavily. It was clear that he’d dressed as fast as he could. He looked as disheveled as Nathaniel. It warmed him that the boy was so excited to see him. “No, no, I was awake.”

  Nathaniel caught the Duchess smiling as they came to the bottom of the stairs and knew that the boy was lying. Nathaniel did his best to stifle his own smile.

  “I would have come later,” he said. “I only could not wait to see you. I am sorry I have not come sooner. How is your leg faring?”

  The boy stood in front of Nathaniel. He was so tiny that he had to tip his head right back in order to look up at Nathaniel’s face. “It’s okay,” he answered, though his voice seemed suddenly lacking.

  “I had hoped you might join me today, at the schoolhouse.”

  Ezra frowned, as did his mother. “The schoolhouse?”

  “Yes. It is newly built, with stables.”

  Ezra’s lips sank further still. “I cannot yet ride.”

  Nathaniel nodded. “Neither can I,” he reminded the boy, with a soft smile. “But I do love to pet the horses. I thought you might like to join me. Perhaps if you befriend one now, you may want to ride it when your leg is fully healed.”

  His solemnity disappeared and was replaced by a bright and boyish smile. He nodded eagerly, before looking to his mother hopefully. “Can we go?”

  ***

  Lady Margaret Abigail Baxter, Duchess of Lowe

  When her son asked her if they could attend the schoolhouse, Margaret looked to Nathaniel’s face. In truth, she hadn’t imagined leaving the house.

  She had spent so very little time in the town, because she was so afraid of the scandal having spread to Comptonshire.

  But as she looked between Nathaniel’s steady countenance and Ezra’s keen one, she realized that her son needed this. Drastically.

  “Of course, my love.”

  “And you will come too?”

  He might have struck her and she would have been less surprised. She met her son’s look. His expression was so innocent and sincere. He truly wanted her with him. It was all she could do not to cry from the relief of it.

  “If Lord Sterling does not mind terribly,” she said.

  His face was a beacon of honesty when he said, “I would mind terribly if you did not.”

  Her belly gave a flutter and she swallowed.

  Thank goodness her son was but a young boy. Had he been much older, Margaret felt sure he would have felt the sizzle between her and Nathaniel. And what would he think of her then, so soon after his father’s death?

  Margaret looked down at her hands. It was too easy to fall into those eyes of his. Too easy to forget that she was mourning a man who she had loved more than anything in the world, at one time.

  It still hurt her to think of his face, as it was on their wedding day, when her heart had belonged to him entirely.

  Even if his hadn’t belonged to her.

  They took a carriage into town together and during the ride Ezra talked Nathaniel’s ear of. He was a most gracious listener and continued to prompt Ezra until the boy’s throat must have become sore from all the talking.

  Margaret could have listened to the sound of her son’s voice for a century. He had a chatty disposition, though he’d been so silent of late.

  Hearing him talk consoled her. Made her feel that he might actually stand a chance of recovering.

  With the Earl’s help.

  As the pair of them talked of riding, Margaret watched Nathaniel out of the corner of her eye, as secretively as she could.

  She watched his hands move as he spoke. Watched the flutter of his lashes when Ezra said something to make him laugh. The way he’d push his tousled hair back when the carriage would make it bounce into his eyes.

  He was, without a doubt, the most handsome man she’d ever seen. The Michelangelo’s David, sat so close to her that their legs brushed from time to time when the carriage bumped over fallen branches.

  The Earl’s eyes shifted and met hers. She looked away quickly and her cheeks colored. When she next looked at him, there was a small quirk at the edge of his mouth.

  When they arrived at the schoolhouse, Margaret wasn’t certain what to expect. She had spent some time in Comptonshire in the past, during their holidays away from Lowe, but she hadn’t heard much of the school.

  And what little she had heard hadn’t been good. Last she’d seen of the building, it was run-down with a leaky roof and littered with rubbish.

  “This cannot be the same school…” she murmured to herself as they approached. The building, and the grounds, were – quite simply – pristine.

  The old building had been fixed up and the little quirks of the old architecture had been maintained, to preserve its quaintness.

  But there was nothing small about it anymore. The schoolhouse had doubled in size, with an extension of lush red brick and huge windows making for an indoors recreational area. “Lord Sterling,” she breathed, in absolute astonishment.

  Though Nathaniel didn’t speak, she could feel his pride beaming out of him. His cheeks were rosier and his eyes were fixed on the school.

  “Your Grace, this is Miss Wilde. The woman I have entrusted this place to,” Nathaniel said, as they approached a young woman diligently watering the bright daffodils springing up around the outskirts of the school. They appeared to be wild, but well nurtured nevertheless.

  The young lady was very pretty indeed, with strawberry hair that was braided to the small of her back and freckles sprinkled across her nose and upper cheeks. She was dainty, with a lovely countenance. “My lord,” she said, with an awkward curtsy. “You flatter me. It is Mr. Windsor who-”

  “It is not Mr. Windsor,” Nathaniel interjected, with a soft smile. “It is you I have entrusted this place to, truly.”

  Pink as an unripe plum, Miss Wilde pushed a stray curl back over her ear and straightened her frock. She looked at Nathan
iel in such a way… such a way that Margaret could not blame her for.

  At that age, before she’d married, Margaret would have certainly looked at him in that way too.

  Still, she felt an unwelcome twinge of envy. That this girl should be so free to look at him with such amorous eyes and that he should be so free to return her attentions.

  But as she watched Nathaniel, she saw that he was not looking at Miss Wilde, who continued to stare at him as though he was God in the flesh. He was looking at Margaret.

  “Shall we go inside?” He said.

  Miss Wilde joined them, as bid by Nathaniel, and walked beside Ezra when he sped ahead of them towards the stables.

  “Miss Wilde, would you take Ezra to the stables while I show the Duchess the new classrooms?”

  “Certainly, my Lord,” Miss Wilde answered, to Ezra’s delight. He looked as though he couldn’t wait another second. It had been so long since he had been outside, since he had touched a horse.

  When they were at last left alone together, Margaret was not sure whether to be pleased or dismayed. Lord knew that being alone with Nathaniel Sterling could do no good for her.

  He was a disaster waiting to happen and she thought of their chemistry – or whatever it was between them – as a bomb waiting to blow.

  They walked in silence for a few moments before she spoke. “She seems very nice indeed.”

  Nathaniel blinked as though coming out of a dream. She would have killed to know what he was thinking about. “Who does?”

  She couldn’t tell if he was being false with her, or if he genuinely did not know. She answered nevertheless. “Young Miss Wilde.”

  “Oh yes,” he said. “Quite lovely. This place would be a disaster without her.”

  “Then Mr. Windsor…?”

  “He governs the school,” Nathaniel explained, as he led her into one of the classrooms. “But he plays truant more than he attends.”

  Her attention was stolen by the classroom and she fell silent.

  Margaret knew the state of the town’s affairs. She knew how stricken with poverty many of the young families were.

  Most of the children of those families could never have even dreamed of a public school like this. The tables were new and pristine. The chairs were too and were built for comfort.

  The blackboard was colossal and the room had big windows facing the East, so that the sun could spill in on the children throughout the morning.

  “Lord Sterling…” she murmured. “This is spectacular. You cannot imagine how grateful these children will be. I-” She lost her words and shook her head. “I am speechless.”

  “Nathaniel,” he said, ever so quietly.

  She looked back at him. He was still stood in the doorway, looking almost… shy.

  “Pardon?”

  “I wondered,” he said, in an uncertain voice, “if you might call me Nathaniel.”

  Margaret stared at him. “I will,” she said. “On the condition that you call me Margaret.”

  His shy smile turned unabashed and he suddenly looked younger than he was. As she’d told him during their second meeting, Margaret had heard a little of Nathaniel Sterling from her head of house, who’d gathered word of him in the town.

  But the Nathaniel she knew was nothing like that man, who had been described as stern-faced, inaccessible and incapable of joy.

  She’d seen this man smile more times than she could count.

  “It would be my pleasure, Margaret.”

  Why did her intentions come to nothing when this man was close? She’d meant to keep him at arm’s length and yet here she was.

  Alone with him, sharing a moment that was becoming too intimate to be called platonic. And neither of them appeared entirely blind to it, try as they might to seem to.

  He was watching her. So closely. With such a look on his face that she knew his intention long before he moved. But when he took that first step towards her, with his hands rising as though he meant to take her into his arms, her words hurtled out of her like a boat on the rapids; “Perhaps we ought to join Ezra and Miss Wilde.”

  Her voice had never been so unsteady.

  Nathaniel stopped in his tracks, his face a landscape of feeling that shattered apart when she spoke. He looked shocked, then embarrassed.

  He cleared his throat awkwardly and nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course,” he said, and stepped aside to clear her path to the door. When she passed him, she felt the heat of his nearness, but he avoided meeting her eye directly.

  For the best, she thought. Over and over she thought it. But her hands felt clammy. Her skin was prickled. The color was high in her cheeks and she was light headed.

  And for every moment that she managed to believe that this was truly for the best, she spent another moment reliving that moment and wishing she hadn’t stopped him.

  Wishing he’d kissed her.

  Chapter 13

  Lord Nathaniel Sterling, Earl of Comptonshire

  What a damned fool he was. A damned, damned fool. He hadn’t been so mortified in years. Not since he’d caught Tessa with another man at a ball, when he’d realized that she wanted nothing to do with him if she could not gain a title from him.

  He didn’t know what had compelled him to try and kiss her. The moment alone with her. The way she’d embraced him at the bottom of the stairs. What she’d said about the school, which held a special place in his heart.

  It hurt him a great deal to see poverty in his town and he’d stepped on many feet in order to erect this school.

  There were many individuals who thought the money would be better spent elsewhere and who openly criticized him for prioritizing the poor above his own people.

  To hear her kind words had broken apart his walls. And he’d wanted to kiss her so terribly that he hadn’t thought of right and wrong.

  What could be wrong about kissing her?

  A simple, childish thought.

  They did not speak as they walked, not until they joined Ezra and Miss Wilde.

  She had taken him to one of the paddocks where a lovely brown mare had dipped her head past the paddock fence so that she could snuffle at Ezra’s upraised hand.

  The boy was smiling from ear to ear.

  “This one,” he said, when Nathaniel and Margaret approached. “I think this is the one I would like to ride when I am well, if it pleases you my Lord?”

  Nathaniel smiled, but it was no more than the shape of his mouth. He could feel nothing but a keen sense of sadness. He had not realized, until this very moment, how much he had hoped to win Margaret’s favor. “Of course, my Lord. Any one you please.”

  Giddy with delight, Ezra asked if he might look at some of the archery equipment. Nathaniel led them to the archery grounds and lowered a bow into Ezra’s arms.

  He sucked in a breath when he touched it. “It is so very fine,” he murmured, as he stroked the curve from one end to the other. “Might I fire it, as my arms are well enough?”

  Nathaniel looked to Margaret for an answer but, again, would not meet her eye directly. There was an uncomfortable tension between the pair of them now. “You may,” she said. “If you are careful.”

  “I have never fired one before,” Ezra admitted, as he fumbled to pull the bow into position. It was a little too big for him and he struggled to draw it taut.

  “It takes practice,” Nathaniel assured him.

  “Can you fire it?” Ezra asked.

  Nathaniel nodded and Ezra’s face brightened again. He offered the bow up to him. “Might you? I would so love to see it fired.”

  He had never been so little in the mood for firing a bow. But he did not want to disappoint the boy. After a moment’s hesitation, he took the bow from him and pulled it taut. He notched the arrow and took aim at one of the targets in the distance.

  With the greatest ease, he fired.

  And hit the bullseye.

  ***

  Lady Margaret Abigail Baxter, Duchess of Lowe

  “The way he
shot it, mother!” Ezra exclaimed, for the fifth or sixth time. He had not stopped talking about Nathaniel Sterling since they had left the school. The carriage ride home was a noisy one, filled with enthusiasm and utter joy. Something she’d longed to hear from her son for the longest time.

  And yet, now that his rapture seemed to be returned to him at last… all she could think of was the look on Nathaniel’s face when she’d denied him her kiss.