“Goodness, Grace, what in the world happened?” Cassie was at her side, staring at her, mouth wide open.
Grace couldn’t speak. She couldn’t find the words. No one knew the extent of what had happened between Evan and her—the lovemaking, how she’d set it up for him to find his fiancée in the arms of another man, or her rebuking of him at the assembly. She couldn’t bring herself to admit what a fool she’d been at every turn.
Fresh tears pricked the backs of her eyelids. As foolish as she felt, she still loved him.
“Grace, please,” Cassie whispered. “People are staring.”
It took all her willpower not to turn on her little sister. Who the devil cared if people were staring? Who cared about anything? Didn’t Cassie know the turmoil she was in?
Of course not. She was only eleven years old. It would certainly be bad form to ream her little sister in public all because of her own ill-advised decisions.
“I’m sorry, Cassie,” Grace finally said, though she still had trouble choking anything out over the lump in her throat. “I didn’t mean to…that is, I’m just…” She took a deep breath, attempting to calm her nerves. “How about I take a walk and you can keep shopping? I think I need to be alone for a few minutes. Here…” She handed over a few coins in case Cassie wanted to purchase anything. “I’ll be back soon.”
She hurried down the wooden sidewalk toward the little cemetery. It was the quietest place she could think of to sit and sort her thoughts.
Fifteen
Evan approached Hedley House with the slightest bit of apprehension. His entire future rested on the conversation he was about to have with Lady Alicia, which was why his heart raced at a dangerous speed. He’d not been this nervous since the day he sailed back to England after being abroad for fifteen years. It was only the unknown that frightened him, and now, just like then, he had no idea what was about to happen. Although, he had a feeling Alicia would be rather glad for the news he was going to bring her.
He knocked upon the door and while he waited, he slid his hands down his trousers in an attempt to dry them. Not an easy feat in the rain. Damn. He hated to feel like this. A man such as him ought to have a bit more confidence, or perhaps care less about—he took a large gulp of air just to think the word—love. But then, wasn’t it the most precious thing in the world? So rare it was to find one’s soul mate. He’d been so very lucky, and with just a little more luck, he’d discover that Lady Alicia had found hers in that footman.
The door swung open a moment later to reveal a stout butler with a pug nose.
“May I help you, sir?” he asked.
He handed over his card. “I’m here to see Lady Alicia.”
The butler’s eyebrows shot up and his lips pinched together. “Please come in, Your Grace.” He opened the door wider to allow Evan entry, then closed it behind him. “Wait here while I see if the lady is at home.”
Damn, he hadn’t thought of that. What if she refused to see him? Would he have to throw pebbles at her window in the middle of the night to speak with her? He was one of the few she was allowed to see during this time—surely she would jump at the opportunity for human interaction.
Much to Evan’s surprise, the butler returned moments later and led him to a sunroom, decorated entirely in yellow. Lady Alicia was there. Alone, thank God. When he entered, she didn’t stir, she didn’t even look at him. She only sat, still as a statue, upon the yellow tufted divan. Her face, so classic in its beauty, was turned toward the window, watching the rain as it spat down on her garden. Or perhaps she wasn’t watching anything at all. It seemed her mind might be miles away.
At the click of the door, she spoke. “I suppose you’ve come here to tell me what a naughty girl I’ve been,” she said, her tone emotionless, her face impassive as she stared out one of the many windows. “Perhaps to remind me to take a bath?”
“Actually,” Evan began, unable to suppress his chortle. “I’ve come to thank you.”
Lady Alicia’s head popped up and her brown eyes widened to an almost impossible size. “Thank me?”
He nodded. “May I sit down? I’ve something very important I wish to discuss with you.”
She gestured daintily to the sofa opposite her. Once he was seated, he took a deep breath and then launched into the speech he’d spent all night going over in his head.
“Lady Alicia, I have just as much desire to marry you as you do me—none at all,” he said. She blinked a few times, but said nothing. “As a matter of fact, I’m in love with someone else.”
“Miss Clarke?”
It was Evan’s turn to be surprised. “Was I that obvious?”
Alicia shrugged. “I saw the way you watched her at the Courtenay musicale. You were trying to be discreet—so was she—but it was obvious there was something between you two.”
“We sat five rows behind them,” Evan said, unable to believe she’d picked up on their attraction for one another in a mere glance or two.
“You never looked at me that way,” she went on. “But Roger does. I know the look well.” She turned a bit wistful at the thought of her paramour. But they were getting off topic.
“Well, yes. It is Miss Clarke that I hold a penchant for, but I was foolish. I was going to marry you anyway, because it was my duty…because it was the honorable thing to do. Because I felt guilty for making you wait all those years. And because I didn’t want to face my mother.”
“How romantic!” Alicia teased. “Such declarations of love—I’m nearly swooning.”
“Yes, well, I did get quite an education in love and romance while I was in Paris. Do you think it’s paid off?”
They both laughed, and then Evan turned serious again, ready to be over with this meeting and get on with his plan to marry Grace.
“Alicia, if you would be so amenable, I would like to dissolve our contract.”
She sat very still, perhaps too afraid to hope. “We will upset our parents terribly.”
He nodded. “We will.”
“We might be shunned from Society.”
“That is also true. But were you not willing to take those chances before, when you headed to Gretna with your Roger?”
A little smile broke out on her lips. “I wasn’t thinking,” she said. “Truly, I wasn’t.”
Evan would have been lying if he’d said he wasn’t getting a bit nervous. He wished she would just come right out and tell him if they could dissolve the contract or not. How he proceeded rested greatly on that.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think, being locked up in this house ever since my return.” She turned her face to the window again. “I love my father, with all my heart. After my mother died, we only had each other. I’ve always done everything I can to please him—to make him proud of me. To be the daughter my mother would have wanted me to be.”
Evan held his silence, praying she’d get to the point very soon.
“But I’m not that girl.” She finally turned to him, a serene smile on her peachy lips. “I never will be. I’ve tried. I’ve tried to care about money and titles and the silly things young girls should be interested in. Not that I’m so young anymore,” she laughed. “But even when I was, all I wanted was to be loved. To find a romance that trumped everything else. And now I have.”
“Is that why you wanted me to kiss you that night?” Evan ventured. “To see if you could love me?”
She shrugged her delicate shoulders. “Or to see if you loved me,” she said, turning on him with a sly smile. “That was a rather pathetic excuse for a kiss, you know?”
Evan closed his eyes and nodded. “I assure you, I do. But I was feeling a bit manipulated that night. I wasn’t willing to let myself go for you. No offense.”
“None taken.” She batted her long lashes. “I’m sorry for what I put you through.”
“Likewise.”
They shared a silent moment of understanding. They’d both found a way to make the other’s life difficult, and they’d both easily for
give the other now.
“I wish you and Grace all the happiness life has to offer,” she said.
Evan nodded in gratitude. “The same to you and Roger.” He stood, preparing to go. “Will you tell your father, or will you attempt another go at Gretna Green?”
Alicia’s lilting laugh filled the room. “I think I shall take a cue from my good friend, the Duke of Somerset, and finally tell my father the truth. That I am madly in love with a footman, and I will marry him, with or without his blessing.”
Evan took her hand in his and raised it to his lips. “Roger is a very lucky man,” he said.
“And Grace is a very lucky woman. Goodbye, Somerset.”
“Goodbye, Lady Alicia.”
~*~
Though Evan’s actions of late might paint him as something of a coward, he rather liked to think of himself as a changed man. He’d hidden from his destiny for so long, it had only felt natural to continue hiding, lying to himself, pretending he could outrun or outsmart his fate. But had he just had the bullocks to stand up for himself, tell his parents the truth, or at the very least, tell his mother he had no desire to marry Lady Alicia, maybe, just maybe, things might have been a bit easier for him. But guilt and duty and honor did horrible things to a person’s conscience, and for the first time possibly in his entire life, Evan felt free of all those things. Free to make his own decisions. Free to be a man, a duke, a husband and, hopefully one day, a father.
Of course, that didn’t mean he wasn’t positively shaking in his Hessians when he went to see his mother that afternoon. His meeting with Lady Alicia had gone better than he could have hoped, but he was too smart to assume a meeting with his mother would go as well.
He found the duchess in her private chambers, lounging on her settee by the fire, drinking tea and eating little nibbles of the cake she loved so much.
“To what do I owe this pleasure?” she asked, clearly not at all happy to be disturbed.
“Aren’t you going to offer me some refreshment?” Evan asked. He’d hoped for the opportunity to ease into the conversation rather than coming right out with it when he’d barely gotten through the door.
“Of course not,” she bit back. “I’m not in the habit of entertaining anyone—not even my son—in my chambers. Now, what is it you want?”
Fine. If that was how she wanted it…
“I’ve come to tell you Lady Alicia and I have decided to dissolve our contract.”
The duchess, who had been mid-bite, took a moment to chew and swallow, then she took a sip of tea, set her cup down on its saucer, and then finally raised her beady eyes to him. “I beg your pardon?” She said these words slowly, and methodically.
“You heard me. We’re dissolving the contract.”
“And what, pray tell, has made you decide to do this? Is she blackmailing you?”
Evan laughed. “With what, Mother? I’ve nothing to be blackmailed with.”
Eager to try another tack, she said, “This has been in place for years, Somerset. Years. You cannot simply decide in the course of an afternoon that the person you’ve been betrothed to for nearly twenty years is no longer for you. There are other things at play here.”
“Really?” This was news to him. “Like what, Mother?” Not that he cared, but he was curious.
His mother grew a bit sheepish at this question, and her skin flushed an unseemly shade of red. She started to fidget—something the Duchess of Somerset had surely never done before—with her bombazine skirts, her bony fingers plucking nervously at the fabric. “Well, I…it’s just that…” She was speechless. That was a first.
But Evan didn’t have time for this. “Mother, if you cannot procure a reason good enough, then I shall see you in a few days, when I return from Braintree.”
“He blackmailed us!”
Evan stared at his mother, in a state of complete and utter shock. What was she talking about? “Pardon?”
Her wrinkled eyelids closed over her black eyes, and she took several deep breaths. Finally, she said, “Hedley is blackmailing us.”
“Us?” Evan thought he would know if he were being blackmailed.
“Your father and I,” she clarified. “That’s how you came to be betrothed to Lady Alicia.”
Perhaps he ought to be sitting down for this. He rounded the blue velvet chair and plopped into it. “Go on.”
Another deep breath. “I cannot tell you all the details. To do so would sully your father’s memory forever, and I’ll not have you thinking ill of him.”
A swirling sickness came over Evan. What could his father have done that was so very horrific? “Mother, whatever he did…that is to say, nothing you tell me could change my opinion of him. But I need to know. Every detail.”
The duchess met his gaze straight on. There was a sadness there he’d never seen before, tinged with a bit of fear. A secret so deep she’d not spoken of it in twenty years. “Somerset was not exactly the kind of husband that…well, how to put it? His preferences ran in a…different direction.”
“A different—?”
It took Evan a moment to realize what his mother was talking about, and then, much to her surprise, he burst into laughter. He didn’t mean to—it wasn’t really a laughing matter—but he just couldn’t help himself. He’d gotten all worked up to hear that his father was a murderer or highwayman, but it turned out, he simply cared more for men than women. If Evan’s years in Paris had taught him anything, it was that love, in all its forms, could be beautiful. Furthermore, what people did behind closed doors was none of his business.
“I hardly think this is funny.” The duchess sat ramrod straight, staring down her nose at him, fury in her black eyes.
“No, of course not,” Evan said, even as he laughed. “And I’m very sorry for you—that can’t have been easy being married to someone who…well, you know.” He really didn’t care to get into the details of bed partners with his mother. “Nonetheless, I assure you I don’t think any less of Father. He was a good father to me, regardless of his preferences.”
“Good,” his mother said. “And I’ll have you know it wasn’t so terrible being married to him. He was kind and considerate, and we had a good marriage, even if not a very passionate one.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” He paused, turning serious again. “But what does any of this have to do with Lady Alicia?”
The duchess shook her head and waved a hand dismissively. “Hedley caught your father in the act—and no, I do not know the details, so do not bother asking—and promised to keep his secret as long as he promised to make his daughter a duchess one day. And thus, the contracts were signed.”
Evan nodded gravely. This meant the truth of his father might be exploited for all the ton to know. But Evan couldn’t be held captive by the possible soiling of his dead father’s reputation.
“You love this…Miss Clarke?” the duchess asked, refusing to look him in the eye and tainting Grace’s name with a fair amount of disdain.
“More than life itself,” he replied. Every time he admitted to this, his heart lifted a little more, as did the weight he’d been carrying on his shoulders for so long.
The duchess rolled her eyes. “No need for dramatics. You’re a duke, not a bloody poet.”
He gave a little chortle. “So sorry. Yes, I do.”
“Much better.” She took a breath so deep she made the black lace of her collar rise high enough to graze her wobbly chin. “And what of Lady Alicia?”
“She has no desire to marry me.”
Another thoughtful moment passed before his mother gave a definitive nod and said, “Well, there’s nothing to be done for it then. I suppose I’ll have to get used to the idea of my son being married to a…ahem…commoner.”
Evan smiled and crossed the small space between them. He planted a kiss on his mother’s wrinkled forehead and whispered, “There’s nothing common about her,” before taking his leave. He had an uncommon girl to propose to.
~*~
It wasn’t a terribly rare thing to hear carriage wheels passing by the cottage early in the morning. The house sat rather close to the road, and most mornings, the rumbling and neighing of the horses didn’t disturb Grace’s sleep. However, the longer she stayed at the cottage, and the closer it came to Evan’s wedding day, the more restless she became. In the beginning, she’d cried herself to sleep every night and slept well into the morning from her exhaustion. But now, weeks later, her nerves felt on edge. Her stomach churned, her heart clenched, her jaw tightened. And no matter how many deep breaths or cleansing walks she took, she still felt as if she wanted to jump out of her skin. The words she’d heard from those silly girls in the sweet shop still resounded in her head. She came back. Every time Grace repeated that moment, she nearly tossed up her accounts. If she had only accepted Evan when he’d come to the assembly and not turned him away. If only…if only…
Blast, but this was frustrating. Perhaps if she went back to Town, she’d feel better. But what if she saw him? Would they take their honeymoon immediately? Or would they linger about Town? Either way, everyone would be talking about the Duke of Somerset’s marriage, wouldn’t they?
No. She was better off here. And this would go away eventually, wouldn’t it? This gut-wrenching, heart-tearing pain had to go away sometime. Surely she wouldn’t pine for him forever.
The rattling and rumbling of another carriage sounded from down the road. Grace listened carefully, wondering if she could determine what kind of conveyance it was. It was a nice exercise to help take her mind off of Evan.
It wasn’t a curricle—there was definitely more than one horse. But not a dogcart either—not dogged enough. She was about to declare it a town coach when she realized the carriage had stopped, and as much as she was loathe to extricate herself from beneath the warmth of her covers, she was curious who would have stopped outside their cottage at such an early hour.
Grace padded across the rug to the window and promptly collapsed to the floor when her eyes met with the Duke of Somerset’s.
The Temptation of the Duke (Regency Romance) Page 14
