“Kind of the way you want me to go to that party and pretend I’m your happy wife?”
“Yes. Why don’t we do that? I’ll pretend I love you, and you pretend you’re happy. Will that do well enough?”
Her bottom lip trembled, her expression set to crumble again. “I want to go home. I want to go back to Wales.”
Perhaps it was that trembling lip that set him off, or perhaps it was the way she stood there in her grand velvet gown, with her black locks tumbling over her shoulders. His fairy queen had never been his queen. She didn’t want to be. He felt like a toad, him, the Duke of Arlington, whom everyone had always admired. He was not good enough for her, no matter what he did, no matter his commendable attributes. It infuriated him.
“You know what? Go then,” he shouted. “Pack your bags and go to Wales. If it will fucking make you happy, then go. Leave tonight if you want, in the rain and the ice. Get out of my damned house, if you hate it here so much.”
“I can’t wait to get out of your house,” she shouted back.
He went to the door, yanked it open, then spun to face her with a skewering gaze. “Only use the back door, would you? The door for the servants and common people.”
That was too cruel, wasn’t it? But he didn’t stop to apologize, or take her in his arms. He went down to the dinner party and sat at his place, and told everyone his wife had unfortunately exhausted herself planning the event. He avoided Minette’s gaze, and those of his friends.
Gwen had made him exactly what she accused him of being: a cold and haughty tyrant without any heart.
Chapter Fifteen: So Cold
Pascale had made herself scarce while she and the duke were arguing, and so Gwen undressed herself, taking off the ruby necklace and earrings and placing them in their specific drawers. All must be in good order for the duke, excepting his own wife, whom he seemed to believe a lost cause. He had told her to get out. She knew he hadn’t meant it, that he had only been ranting and waving his arms in anger.
She was still leaving. Tonight.
She squirmed out of her gown by pure determination. She heard a seam rip at some point, but she didn’t care. She laid the dress over a chair and went to one of her trunks from home, and pulled a drab gray traveling gown from the bottom. A bonnet, gloves, even a coarse wool cloak that was perfectly nondescript for her purpose.
She would indeed take the back door. In fact, it was the easiest way to slip out without being noted. The servants were busy with the party, and the kitchen was in an uproar of pots and trays. Gwen pulled her hood about her face and snuck out as the cook was calling for more wine to be served. The stables were equally busy, managing the horses and carriages of the guests. She went to Eira’s stall and saddled her for riding. She’d always saddled her own horses at her father’s manor. Eira snorted with pleasure to see her, and regarded her with great shining eyes.
“We are not really going to Wales,” Gwen assured her, stroking her mane as she led her out the back way, beneath the shadow of night. “But you must take me away from here, as far as you can go.”
The London streets were quiet because of the holiday, or perhaps because of the miserable weather. Everyone seemed to be at home, inside, out of the icy cold elements. The air hurt Gwen’s throat, but she trusted her cloak would keep her warm enough on this journey, wherever it took her.
She did not have a specific plan. She only knew she would ride west as far as Eira could take her before her legs tired, and then Gwen would find a respectable lodging and use some of her pin money to hire a room. While she was there, she would write an explanatory letter to her father and ask his advice, and this time the duke would not be able to stop her from sending it. She would tell her father she was too homesick to stay here. Perhaps he would come and meet with Arlington, and realize the duke didn’t really want her. Perhaps they could create some arrangement where she only spent part of the year with her husband, enough time to fall pregnant, and mollify the king.
Even as she thought it, she knew Arlington would never agree to any such arrangement. How many times had the man named himself her owner and master?
Perhaps she could hide at an inn long enough for him to give up on her, or consider her dead. Perhaps she could ride all the way to Wales, if he was not able to find her. Perhaps she would meet a farmhand there who loved her, and live in his shambling cottage and sweep his hearth and bear his babies. She would not mind to do it.
Perhaps she was an utter fool.
It was so cold. She hadn’t imagined England could be so cold. Her anger’s heat warmed her at the outset, but now, a mere half hour into her journey, she couldn’t stop shivering and she couldn’t get warm. She had not gone far enough to take a room. The duke would find her before sunrise if she stopped hereabouts. She grasped the reins with stiff fingers and urged Eira to a canter.
“We might go to Wales,” she whispered, patting her mane. “I ought to. I might meet a handsome stranger there.”
But she had already met a handsome stranger. She lived in his house, ate his food, entertained his friends, wore his priceless rubies.
“I want a different handsome stranger,” she said to Eira. “One who loves me for who I am.”
Are you sure he doesn’t love you?
Who had spoken those words? The horse? Gwen was so cold now, she was hearing things. And what a ridiculous question to ask. If he loved her, he wouldn’t scold her, and punish her with birchings and spankings and canings, and make her feel something less than what she was. He wouldn’t use her body the way he did, holding her down and hurting her, and...
You love the kind of hurt he gives. You crave it. Even now, you crave his touch.
“I don’t,” she whispered. “I know I don’t.” It had started sleeting again, the moisture chilling her face and seeping into her cloak. She couldn’t control her shivering. She’d long since ceased to feel her feet, and now her hands felt frozen about the reins. She tried to shake them, to waken them and reassert her grip, but Eira took it for a signal and lurched into a gallop. The mare lost her footing a moment later, and Gwen slid from her back. It barely hurt. In fact, it all happened rather like a dream, as she tumbled into an overgrown hedgerow. It felt almost like falling into a bed.
She was so tired and cold, she could not pull herself out of the waxed leaf branches. She tugged her cloak around her and put her hands over her face, and looked around for Eira, but the sleet had turned to great flakes of snow. She wanted to cry but her tears felt frozen, so she prayed instead, the way her mother had taught her. Ask the heavens for what your heart wants...
“Please,” she whispered. “Please help me, Mama. I don’t know what to do.”
* * * * *
They only found her because of the horse. The shivering beast had stayed beside her mistress in the frigid cold, so that the snow-dusted hedge revealed itself to be more than a hedge. It was a lost, fallen duchess, half-frozen, wrapped in a common wool cloak.
Fifty men had spanned out, and they had found her in time to save her. Townsend had opened his own shirt and held her hands and face against his skin, and carried her back while the others went to fetch Aidan.
Now Townsend was suffering from the cold too, and the house was in an uproar. Most of the guests were still there. Ladies were crying, servants were scurrying to and fro with water and towels and more wood for the fires. Aidan carried his wife’s limp figure toward the stairs. “Are you the physician?” he barked at the nearest stranger.
“No, Your Grace. I’ve a delivery, promised today. The painting you commissioned from Master Oglesby.”
“Damn your painting. Get out of the way.”
He carried Gwen upstairs as fast as he could without risking a tumble from his iced-over boots. They said she was alive, but she was so still. She ought to at least shiver, as Townsend had shivered when he brought her inside.
“Where is the physician?” he roared as he took her down the hall to his chambers. “Where are the blankets? Who
is building up the fire?”
The housekeeper and butler hovered about him, but he didn’t hear any of what they said. He kicked off his boots and threw off his cloak, and stripped his wife of her sodden clothes. The housekeeper came behind to wrap her in a blanket. Pascale wept in the background, praying in French. He stripped down to his breeches and got into bed beside her, and pulled her against him so he could warm her. Servants brought hot bricks and more blankets, but she was still too cold.
Get out of my damned house. He had shouted that at her earlier, mere hours ago. He deserved the torture of her cold flesh against his. He deserved more, much more. At last she moved, and trembled, and began to shiver. Around that time the physician arrived, and checked Gwen over, listening to her heart and rubbing her hands and feet. Now and again he murmured “hah” and “hmm,” and Aidan had to bite his tongue against shouting at the man.
“She’s lucky, Your Grace,” he said when he finished. “She’ll survive unscathed, although she may be weak and feverish for a spell.” He poked at her wool cloak on the floor. “If she’d ridden out in a fine silk cape, I fear she might not be with us, but this servants’ garb is hardier stuff.”
Aidan recognized her traveling clothes, and her cloak from home. “It’s not servants’ garb,” he said tautly.
The doctor pulled the blankets closer about her. “Well, Sir, you must keep your wife warm, and feed her hot tea and broth until she regains her strength. Don’t overheat her, lest you give her body a shock.”
“Why won’t she wake?” Aidan asked.
“I warrant she is exhausted. She must conserve her energy.” The silver-haired doctor packed up his instruments.
“She has to get better,” Aidan said. “You have to make her better.”
“She has to rest,” said the physician firmly.
“Is there no medicine? Nothing you can give her?” He rose from his sleeping wife’s side and pulled on his shirt. “The fire is not warm enough. Are the guests still downstairs? They must go home.”
The housekeeper curtsied as he piled logs onto the fire. “The guests have gone, except for your friends,” she said. “They are belowstairs. The ladies have asked if you will move the duchess into her rooms, so they can help tend her.”
“She’s not moving anywhere. She’s warm where she is.” He didn’t want her out of his reach, not when she was so wan and lifeless. He’d come so close to losing her, and it was all his fault. If not for that bloody horse, they would be planning a funeral. They would never have found her in that blasted hedgerow, not until daylight had melted the layer of snow.
He went back to the bed and helped the housekeeper clothe Gwen in her warmest flannel gown, a red, beribboned nightmare that made her look even paler than she already was. Gwen stirred as they laid her back down, the first sign of life she’d shown since he brought her inside. He lay beside her and caressed her cheek, and fought back terror.
“As soon as you are better,” he whispered, “I’m going to kill you.”
“It’s c-cold,” she said in a hoarse stammer. “So cold.”
* * * * *
A fever afflicted Gwen in the middle of the night, raging hot and relentless. She suffered paroxysms that terrified him, and then fell into a torpor-like sleep. The physician came again and checked her heart and listened to her lungs, and told Aidan he must control the fever and make her drink. So Aidan spooned liquid into her mouth, bit by bit, weak, cool tea and broth which she would not keep down. He sponged her and soothed her, the ladies taking over for him when he thought he would lose his sanity.
It went on like that the entire next day too. Her long, slender limbs trembled and her cheeks burned. He lay beside her on the bed and whispered that she had to recover, that he couldn’t live with himself otherwise. He watched her chest rise and fall and imagined her breath extinguished. When the fever let her sleep, he held her hand and prayed in a mindless terror, Give me another chance. I’ll try harder this time. I’ll never stop trying, if you’ll only let her live.
But his prayers seemed to do nothing. He ate and drank only to sustain himself enough to tend her. She suffered into the night, until the ladies had to rest, and the housekeeper took over with her trusted staff.
“When will you sleep, dear man?” asked Aurelia before she left with the others.
“When she is better.”
“When she is better, she will need you to be strong and rested.”
“No. She needs me to be strong now,” he said. “Now, when she is in danger.”
“She is in good hands with Mrs. Fleming. At least go down and speak with Townsend and the others. They’re worried too.”
He’d forgotten his friends were even here, but of course they would remain until the end of the crisis. He still hadn’t thanked Townsend for finding his wife. He took a last look at Gwen and headed downstairs to the parlor. Exhaustion dogged him but he couldn’t sleep, not until her fever broke. The men looked up at his appearance.
“How is she?” Warren asked.
“Struggling. She won’t drink. She can’t keep anything down, and the fever won’t break.”
“She’s a strong woman,” said Townsend. “She’ll pull through this.”
Aidan started to pace. “Damned little fool, setting off in the cold of night like that.” He turned back to Townsend. “Thank you for warming her the way you did. The doctor said she might have lost her fingers to frostbite otherwise. Thank you for…bringing her back to me.” His voice went ragged on the final words.
“You ought to thank her horse,” said Townsend. “But you are welcome. Eira is fine, by the way. We went to check on her after luncheon. She’s being spoiled rotten with brushing and treats.”
“I almost got rid of that horse. She was so difficult to train.”
“Why don’t you sit down?” said Barrymore, when Aidan resumed pacing. “Rest for a moment.”
Instead, Aidan walked over to the large, rectangular parcel propped near the doorway, leaning against a pair of chairs.
“What is this?”
“Oglesby’s painting of you and Gwen. It came a couple days ago, the night...” Townsend didn’t finish the sentence.
Aidan turned to them. “You haven’t looked at it?”
The men exchanged glances. “It didn’t seem the thing to do,” said Warren. “With her struggling so terribly upstairs.”
“She’s not going to die.” That was what they meant, that they hadn’t looked at it because they might be looking at a ghost. He hated Warren in that moment, hated them all for having healthy, happy, well-adjusted wives. “Gwen’s going to recover. We’re going to hang this damned thing over the fireplace.”
“Of course you will,” said Barrymore. “We just didn’t want to look at it without you.”
Aidan tore the wrappings back. Barrymore came over to help him, collecting the paper, and holding the painting while he studied it.
Master Oglesby had a gifted hand. He had captured Aidan’s likeness exactly, and Gwen’s too, down to the otherworldly luminescence of her gaze. He stepped back to study the two of them, taking in every detail. His medals, her curls, the drape of his cape, and the tension of her gloved fingers upon her lap. Her expression, which was not quite a smile but not quite a frown.
“It’s handsome,” said Warren. Townsend and Barrymore agreed.
Aidan said nothing. He did not find it handsome. He found it far too representative of the chasm between them. She sat directly beside him, beneath him, and yet she might have been a thousand miles away. His expression was one of haughty disconnectedness. Lord of his manor, master of his wife. He shuddered and shut his eyes, and opened them again. It looked the same, only worse. The painter had captured everything that was wrong between them.
Without thought, on pure impulse, he attacked the horrid thing. He tore at it, shredding the image and ripping it from the frame. The canvas rent in great swaths, across his chest, down to her lovely sad face. Bits of paint peeled away, melting on h
is fingers. He realized he was shouting at it, no, no, no. Damn you.
His friends pulled him away, hauled him back by his flailing arms and pinned him to the floor.
“Easy, man,” said Warren as he kicked to be let free. “Rest a minute. You’re beside yourself.”
He saw Barrymore’s white face beyond him, and the butler’s. Townsend brought a drink but he wasn’t thirsty. “Let me up,” he yelled.
“In a minute,” said Warren. “When you’re calm. I think you haven’t been sleeping, Aidan. I think you ought to go to bed for a while, and see how you feel after a few hours.”
“She’s not going to die.” He said it loud enough for the whole house to hear. He wanted them to know it. “She’s not going to die from this. I won’t let her.”
“No,” said Townsend on the other side of him. “But you have to rest, for your wife’s sake.” He helped him up with Warren’s assistance. “Rest here before the fire. We’ll have the painting taken away.”
“No!” It was all he had of her, the only likeness, aside from the sketch he’d made in the meadow. “Don’t take it away. Put it up in my room.”
“You’ve shredded it, man.”
“I don’t care. I still want it.” He made it to the sofa and lay down, then lurched up and grasped Warren’s coat. “You come and get me if she needs me. Tell Mrs. Fleming. And wake me up in an hour.”
“Yes. We certainly will. Sure you won’t have a drink?”
Townsend held it out again and Aidan took a deep swig to mollify him. Beneath the burn of the brandy, he detected the sweetness of laudanum. Aidan glared at his friend, too furious to speak. “Just a little,” Townsend said in apology. “The tiniest bit.”
“I’ll have you arrested,” he said.
“Later. You can have me arrested later. For now, get some sleep.”
Chapter Sixteen: Love
Under A Duke's Hand Page 19
