The Duke of Nothing (The 1797 Club Book 5)

by Jess Michaels

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Helena stood at the window beside the settee she’d called a bed and sighed as rain streaked down the glass. It was a fitting thing, the storm. It matched the rioting emotions in her own heart. She rested her head back and shut her eyes with a shiver.

  How had things come so far from a night counting stars on the terrace to…this? With a guillotine hanging over her head and her future so uncertain? Not that she’d change a thing. She’d had those stolen moments with Baldwin, and they meant the world to her.

  There was a light knock on the chamber door behind her and Helena stiffened. After the past twenty-four hours, she wasn’t equipped to deal with any more drama. Not that drama normally knocked so gently.

  She moved to the door and opened it, and was surprised to find Walker standing there. The butler smiled. “I’m sorry to trouble you, miss, but His Grace has requested that you join him in his study, if you are not otherwise occupied at the moment.”

  Her heart throbbed as she tried, and failed, to read Walker’s expression. “His Grace wants to—to see me,” she said.

  He nodded. “At your earliest convenience. Do you have a message to return to him?”

  “I will join him momentarily.” Her voice shook, and she blushed, for it was very noticeable.

  Walker inclined his head. “Very good, miss. And you know where the study is?”

  “Yes,” Helena whispered as she thought of the night she had shared with Baldwin there. The butler smiled again and then slipped away.

  She stood staring into the empty hall for a moment, then shook off her surprise. She had no idea why Baldwin would call her to him. It was ten in the morning, early by the standards of many. Her cousin was still abed, after all.

  After their last encounter, he could want to say anything to her. He might want to check on her. Or perhaps he wanted to tell her that Tyndale disapproved of what he’d walked in on the previous day. He might even want to end their affair.

  “Oh, do just go down,” she snapped out loud to herself. “Standing up here and running over the possibilities is no help.”

  She moved to the mirror and quickly checked herself. Aside from looking like she’d had no sleep, which she hadn’t, she was presentable. She drew a deep breath, and marched out of the room and down the stairs. As she meandered through the hallways, she tried to stay calm and finally resorted to counting the number of doors that were between her and her fate.

  At last she reached Baldwin’s office door. It was open a crack and she quietly stepped inside. He was standing at his window, his hands clasped behind him. She drank in the sight of him for the briefest of moments. He was so handsome. So strong. For just a flash of time, he’d been hers.

  Letting him go was going to be crushing.

  She shook away the last thought and cleared her throat to draw his attention.

  He turned, and she caught her breath a second time, though for a far different reason. Baldwin’s face was filled with…light. She’d never seen him thus, and it shocked her. He always had a sense of melancholy around him, responsibility that was drowning him every day.

  Now it was different. It was as if he had been brought to life. She couldn’t help but step toward him and that light, to feel healed by it and lifted by it.

  “Helena,” he said, crossing the room to her. “Thank you for coming.”

  She jerked out a nod. “I…of course, Baldwin. Of course. Has something happened?”

  He tilted his head and examined her face with another of those little smiles that were so lovely to see. “Why would you think something has happened?”

  She drew in a shaky breath. “You’re changed. I don’t know, there is something different in the air around you.”

  He laughed as he moved to shut the door and gave them the privacy she so longed for. The privacy they likely shouldn’t have. But she ignored that.

  She wanted to be alone with him. She had no idea how many times she would get to do so. There were only two days left at his house party. Perhaps a week or two before she’d be shuttled back to America.

  She pushed the thought away as he returned and caught her hand, drawing her to the settee and taking a place there beside her. Too close.

  “Leave it to you to recognize even the most subtle of shifts in me,” he said, reaching out to trace a finger down her cheek.

  She swallowed hard and tried not to lean in to the gentle warmth of his touch. “Has something happened?”

  He nodded, and his expression grew more serious. Not melancholy, just serious. “It has, Helena. Not all at once, but in little increments. Little shifts over time that take a man from a certain place to another in a way that he hardly notices, before one day he wakes up and he’s…here. With you.”

  “I-I don’t understand,” she whispered.

  “I know you don’t. I’m going to explain.” He shook his head with a small laugh. “I’m actually quite nervous, though, so I hope you will be gentle with me.”

  She drew back. “You? Nervous. I can hardly picture that.”

  “You do that to me,” he said. “You always have. I should have known that first night.”

  Her hands had begun to shake and she gripped them in her lap as she stared into his face and saw all her hopes and dreams reflected there. Only they couldn’t be. “What should you have known?”

  He leaned in closer, holding her stare with his. Never letting her look away. He smiled once more. “I love you, Helena Monroe.”

  She froze. This was a dream. There was no other explanation for Baldwin sitting across from her, telling her he loved her. Except when she pinched herself, she didn’t wake.

  “Please don’t,” she said, jumping up to distance herself from him. “Please don’t say that to me.”

  Baldwin watched as Helena staggered across the room, holding her hands up to ward him away. She did not look happy at his confession—she looked horrified.

  Slowly he got to his feet and smoothed his jacket. “Not the reaction I was hoping for, I admit,” he said, trying to keep his tone calm. “Do you not care for me?”

  He braced himself for the answer, though there was no bracing for her rejection. Just the thought of it made his stomach turn.

  She shook her head over and over. “You know I do,” she said at last, her breath short, her words trembling. “But it’s cruel to tell me this when we both know the situation. I’ve accepted that we can’t be together. Please don’t make me say those words out loud. I will drown in them.”

  His relief nearly buckled him. She didn’t know his decision yet. She didn’t know his offer. Her fear kept her from him, not a lack of feeling.

  He stepped forward. “Say the words,” he encouraged. “I will not let you drown.”

  Her face crumpled. “Please.”

  “Say them,” he repeated.

  “I love you,” she whispered, ducking her head. “I have loved you from the first moment I met you. But we both know I have nothing to offer you.”

  He frowned at how easily she accepted that she would lose. That was the place she had been placed for so long. By her family and friends…by him. When they were married, he would help her with that. He knew she could find her confidence. Emma had, after all, and she had been very similar to Helena when she and James first wed.

  “You have yourself,” he said softly as he tucked a finger beneath her chin and made her look up at him. Tears sparkled in her eyes, and they broke his heart. “You are worth more than gold.”

  “I am not,” she said. “And that isn’t what we’re talking about.”

  “No, we’re talking about money,” he said with a sigh. “A topic that should never have to be mixed with love.”

  “But it is!” she burst out, stepping away from him. “I know your position, Baldwin. I have accepted it as best I can. Please don’t rip my soul to shreds like this. I can hardly bear it.”

  “Helena, listen to me.” He caught her hands so she couldn’t pull away, and she instantly stop
ped trying. She stared up at him and the first tear began to fall. She had been so strong, so good when it came to what he could and couldn’t do for her.

  Now he saw how much of a struggle that had been. How cruel it had been to her. He hated himself for making her suffer even for one moment.

  “Matthew offered to marry you,” he said.

  She jerked back, her eyes going wide. “What?”

  “I explained everything to him after yesterday after he saw us together in the parlor. Everything about my financial situation, about you and the cruelty your uncle’s has shown to you. I told him why I couldn’t be with you, despite my feelings, and he rightly called me out for what I am: a coward. He offered to marry you and save you from what your uncle could do—will do, if left to his own devices.”

  Her breath was so short now he feared she would collapse. “I-I don’t understand. Tyndale would marry me?”

  He nodded, and his stomach churned with even the memory of that moment. “Yes. When he made that offer my entire world shattered. I knew it would solve your problems. That it would allow me to see you safe. But it killed me to think of it. And I knew, without a doubt, that I could not live in a world where you weren’t mine.”

  Her lips parted in shock. “Baldwin…” His name was a whisper on her lips, barely audible.

  He continued, “I’ve kept the secret of my father’s bad behavior, and my own, for years. But for you I’ve told my family.”

  She drew away. “You told your family?”

  “Everything. Ewan has offered to help. And if he does, then there is some hope for me. I cannot promise you the life that Tyndale would. He has funds, he could make you a princess if you wanted to be treated as such. You deserve that. But the life that I will promise you is filled with love, Helena. I will not lie and say it wouldn’t be a struggle. It would be austere. There may be scandal if some of those debts are revealed. But I love you.”

  “You are offering me a future?” she asked. “Baldwin, that is throwing away everything you could have! Many of the prospects would help get you out of the situation entirely. You could rebuild, you could—”

  “I want you.” He cupped her cheeks gently. “I love you, Helena. And that has come to matter far more than anything else in this world. I love you and I want to marry you.”

  She was blinking. Just blinking. Like she didn’t understand. Like she couldn’t.

  “You would give up everything for me?” she whispered.

  He drew back, for he had long ceased to think of marrying her as giving anything up. It would be gaining everything. And yet she still didn’t understand that. “I would walk across the sun for you,” he said. “I would swim across the sea. I would give up my title, my name, any small thing I had left. I would die for you, Helena Monroe. And I will live for you if you just stop looking at me like I’ve gone mad and tell me that you’ll be mine. My wife. For the rest of my days, be they short or long. Please, please say you’ll marry me.”

  She was trembling now, her façade cracking. “And what if you come to regret it?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I never could. Don’t you understand? You are the only person in this world who I can be who I am, truly who I am, around. You lighten my every load, how could I ever regret that? Please. Please, Helena.”

  Her breath drew in on a sob, and she nodded. “Yes. Yes, I love you, and the idea of being away from you, of being alone without you, has broken me into so many pieces. If you are sure, then yes. I will marry you, Baldwin.”

  The joy that flooded him was so powerful and so foreign that he nearly buckled under it. He drew her in and kissed her, his fingers smoothing over her cheeks as he tasted her tears, tasted his own. She wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted against him, flattening her body to his like she feared she would lose him. That this was a dream or a fantasy.

  And it was. Just one that they would get to live out together forever. In that moment, he fully put aside his worries and surrendered to the gentle passion of her kiss. To the realization that she would be his now. Forever.

  He leaned in, laying her back against the settee. She shifted and he lowered himself over her, loving the feel of the length of her body beneath his. No one in his life had ever stoked this kind of passion in him. This need to claim and have and love forever.

  He could think of no better way to celebrate their engagement than this. To make love to her without the barriers that had been between them the last time.

  She must have read his mind, because of course she could read his mind. She pulled away slightly. “We won’t be…interrupted?”

  He smiled. “No. It’s early still and I locked the door.”

  “You did?” She laughed. “I was so caught up I didn’t notice.”

  “I was crafty,” he said, brushing his lips against hers. “I’ll find my ways when it comes to being alone with you.”

  “I suppose we have the rest of our lives to figure out how to be crafty together,” she said, and her face was lit up with the same wonder that he felt on his own.

  They were going to be together. Forever. He grinned as he covered her mouth again. But the playfulness quickly faded as desire rose in him. She gave so completely, so openly. Despite her past, Helena had not lost her sweetness or her passion. He had never been so glad of anything.

  He began to rock against her as his hands roved down her side, then across to gently squeeze her breast. She let out a sound of pleasure and her hips nudged his, sending a jolt of awareness and sensation up his already hard cock.

  “The things you do to me,” he murmured as he slid his mouth from hers to her neck.

  “Show me,” she whispered, her voice shaking in the quiet of the room.

  He lifted his head and caught her hand, drawing it between them and pressing it to his cock. She groaned as she touched him, cupped him, began to stroke him through the suddenly too-heavy fabric of his trousers.

  “I need you,” he grunted.

  She nodded, and her hand slid to unbutton the front placard of his trousers. As she did so, he pushed her skirts up, bunching around her hips. She parted her legs and he settled between them, his heat finding hers. His cock sliding home as she gasped out his name in pleasure.

  He couldn’t be so verbose. When her tight, slick heat pulsed around him, he lost all ability to think, let alone form coherent words. He was animal in that moment, lost in the sensations of pleasure that ordered him to take. To claim. To make his in the most permanent way he could imagine.

  He thrust, short and hard, and her fingers tightened against his back. He watched her face as he took her. Her mouth parted with pleasure, her eyes fluttered shut. He memorized every twitch and moan, guiding his motions through her reactions. He watched her build to orgasm and he loved every moment of that journey as they slowly took it together.

  At last her eyes flew open and went wide. She let out a garbled cry and her sheath began to pulse around him, milking him with her pleasure, demanding he merge it with his own. And he did, thrusting harder through her crisis, reveling in the way his balls tightened. Electric sensation shot through him. He slammed his mouth to hers, letting his cries of pleasure be lost against her lips as he pumped hard and hot into her clenching body.

  He collapsed against her, pressing kisses to her neck as she smoothed her hands over his back. She was his. Truly his in a way he hadn’t allowed before. A way that ensured there would be no going back, not that he wanted to do so.

  Because she was the love of his life, and he couldn’t wait to tell the world.

  “That was wonderful,” she murmured, pressing her mouth to his neck. “Every time is wonderful. I never imagined it could be like that.”

  He rolled a little, balancing precariously on the edge of the settee so he could face her. Their bodies parted with the motion, and she let out a little sigh of displeasure that made him smile. “Just think of how wonderful it will be when we aren’t sneaking around. Or fraught with danger and potential loss.”r />
  She slid her fingers into his hair, massaging his scalp gently. “I might miss fraught with danger,” she said with a laugh.

  He arched a brow. “Noted, Miss Monroe. I can certainly make sure there is a little after we’re married. I’ll make love to you by lakes and in side rooms at parties if the fear of being caught makes you mewl my name so prettily.”

  Dark pink color filled her cheeks. But there was also a little interest in her eyes at the idea, and he chuckled. He would definitely file this information away.

  “Now, I would very much like to exploit the potential danger the study puts us in. However…” He sat up and drew her up with him. They shifted around, putting clothes back in place. She laughed as she smoothed down his hair and he tucked her errant curls back into place. Soon they both looked somewhat more reasonable.

  “We have one unpleasantness we must face, I’m afraid,” he said at last.

  Her expression twisted and she snuggled a little closer to him. “My uncle.”

  He nodded. “Your uncle. I want you to understand I’m not going to ask him for your hand. I’m telling him I’m taking it. It’s a courtesy he isn’t owed.”

  Her lips pursed and he could see all her anxiety return. How he hated it. He hoped someday she would no longer feel any of it.

  “When you do this,” she said, her voice shaky, “just be prepared. He is entirely awful, especially when crossed. He may not be able to threaten you with a return to Boston as he did me, but he’ll do anything in his power to make this as terrible as he can.”

  Baldwin jolted. “He threatened to send you to America?”

  She nodded slowly. “A promise, really, more than a threat.”

  The rage he’d felt before, when he’d come upon Peter Shephard berating her in the parlor, lifted again. Only this time he had more tools to protect her.

  “I will never let him hurt you again,” he said softly.

  She smiled, and it lit up his world in endless color. In that moment, he realized this was how his life would be from now on. The difficulties made easier by this woman’s enormous heart, by the light she carried with her so effortlessly.