“Turner,” he said casually. “I trust you remember Jack?”
Any other moment she would have fixed on that slightly jeering edge. Now she could hear nothing past the buzzing in her ears as he casually spoke about that gentleman. Another friend from long ago. They’d been so close, Jack had given them the name, “Les trois Mousquetaires.” Cheerful, boisterous, and clever, he’d treated her no differently when she’d revealed the truth of her birth to him and Graham.
Until, he’d forced his kiss on her, proving precisely the manner of man he was. The bitter irony of it not lost on her in this moment. Graham had cut her so easily from the fabric of his life, and yet, remained friends with the same man who’d attempted to woo and win her in his absence. What would Graham say if he learned of that truth? As soon as the thought slid in, she scoffed. No doubt he wouldn’t care. A man who’d had his father hand her a note with an offer to make her mistress was hardly a person who’d much bother with actions of a then twenty-year-old Jack Turner.
To give her trembling fingers a task, she forked another bite of egg into her mouth. The food sat heavy and flavorless on her tongue. Yes, Graham and Jack’s friendship had carried on, while everything that had ever existed between her and Graham had been so easily thrown aside. She swallowed past the bitterness clogging her throat as reality intruded and washed away the shared intimacy of last night. The lie his father had forced her to fabricate. And, a young widow who upon his return from war, had rushed to see Graham, risking her post at Mrs. Belden’s, he’d repaid that devotion by offering her nothing more than a place in his bed. On the heel of that came a slowly dawning realization: does he know my past? Did Graham’s father break his oath and share the truth with Graham? If the world discovered she was not just a bastard but a whore’s daughter, she’d never find respectable employment again. One whisper of the truth and the rug of security under her feet would be yanked free with no hope of employment.
Fighting back the fear swirling in her mind, Rowena drew in a deep breath. No. For, even with her bastardy, if Graham knew the whole truth, he’d certainly not force her into the post of companion to his ward. She instead focused on the immediate crisis within her control. She’d be damned ten times to Sunday before she answered to Jack. “No.” Even she had her limits, and no demands Graham, Mrs. Belden, or God himself that challenged them would she blindly adhere to.
Graham paused, his glass halfway to his mouth. “I beg your pardon?”
She tried to determine any hint of emotion within that query, but he was an icy mold of his father just then. And that stark reminder gave her strength. “You’ve required I leave behind my post and serve in your household.” His shoulders stiffened. Did he have qualms in hearing the truth stated aloud? Mayhap he did have a conscience after all. “I will set out my own terms of service, Your Grace.” Rowena held her breath, braced for a seething fury. Instead, the ghost of a smile hovered on his lips. She squinted. Or was it merely a trick of the dim lighting?
Setting down his glass, Graham leaned back in his chair. That slight shift brought their knees touching under the table, briefly stealing her breath. Don’t be a silly girl where he’s concerned... I am a woman... It’s merely a leg. A long, heavily muscled—
Graham winged a dark eyebrow.
She spoke on a rush. “You’re the girl’s guardian. Any questions I have, any matters requiring discussion, needs that must be met, I answer to you. No other.” And certainly not Jack Turner. She’d sooner crawl across glass on bended knee to beg her parents to take her back than ever have any dealings with Jack again. The threat to her past would never go away, but this would be some small mastery over her future. Rowena angled her chin up, daring Graham to deny that claim.
He dusted a hand over his chin, contemplating her through thick, hooded lashes. Then, he let his hand fall to the table. “I should think you’d want as little time with me as possible, Mrs. Bryant.”
Mrs. Bryant. She welcomed that barrier he willingly kept in place with that formal address. Her mind, however, raced with the seeds of questions contained within his inquiry. For the truth was, under any other circumstances, he was indeed correct; she didn’t want anything more to do with him. Graham threatened her security and thrust all the oldest doubts and fears back to the surface. He, however, aside from the nightmare that had gripped him in the carriage, had never lifted a hand to her in violence. Nor did she believe he ever would. He was cool, unfeeling, and rigid, but not cruel in the way Jack had proven himself to be.
“Mrs. Bryant?” he prodded, leaning forward in his chair.
“You have a responsibility to Miss Hickenbottom,” she said, settling on only one of the truths. “It was not Jack Turner who received guardianship... but you.” At his silence, she made a desperate appeal. “If you do not agree with my terms, I can always return.” She’d be spared from all possibility of any additional people learning the lies she’d built her life on. “Mrs. Belden will gladly see you with another instructor who—”
“No,” he said brusquely, killing that fledgling hope. In a bid to spare herself Jack’s company, she’d only traded one devil for the slightly less dangerous one. “It will be you.” There was an air of ducal finality in that pronouncement that stirred both annoyance and unease.
What game did he play? Why was he so insistent that she be the one? Was it about a need for control and mastery over her?
Unnerved, Rowena shoved to her feet. “There is nothing further to discuss, then.” Not now. Talks of her charge would come later, when she had regained control of her thoughts. With the stiff, practiced movements Mrs. Belden expected of her charges and instructors, she inclined her head. “I will leave you to your morning repast... Your Grace,” she added, maintaining that much needed protective wall.
He frowned, the jagged scar at the corner of his mouth whitening at the movement. She dropped a formal curtsy and, turning on her heel, started for the carriage.
The sooner she arrived in London and began work with her charge, the better it would be for all involved. No. The safer it would be. For, then, Graham would be drawn back into his ducal responsibilities, and she would be the mere servant in his employ, and everything would resume just as it had been for the past eleven years.
And, then, she would be free of him, at last.
Except, as she allowed the liveried driver to hand her up, why did it feel as though she’d never truly be free of Graham Linford?
Chapter 9
She’d not spoken in the nearly two hours since his carriage had pulled away from the Fox and Hare Inn. Nay, to be precise... they’d not spoken.
In their time apart, Rowena had become... silent. She cloaked herself in a quiet that was safe for Graham’s peace of mind, and beneficial for the model she’d set for Ainsley Hickenbottom. In several fleeting moments, she revealed glimmers of her former spirit. Prior to their departure, she’d put demands to him that since his father’s passing, no single person, not even Jack, had dared to. She’d given him an ultimatum. In the crystal windowpane, his grinning visage reflected back. The first real smile he’d managed in... more years than he could remember.
His smile slipped. He craved a dignified, steady existence, so why did he want to see the lively Rowena unafraid to go toe-to-toe with him and not be the stoic stranger across from him? Shifting his focus from the passing countryside, Graham studied her now. Seated with her body stiffly held, Rowena’s attention was reserved for the small leather book at her nose. The only sound in the otherwise silent carriage the rumble of the wheels and her periodic turn of a page.
The same thick tension that had blanketed the conveyance yesterday morn when they’d departed Mrs. Belden’s remained as heavy today. If possible, even more so. It was as though there had been no shared discourse in the taproom about her family and the exchange between the wall had never happened. Which was as it should be.
The lady had been, in fact, correct. Who Rowena had transformed into, and what he had become—a mad-monste
r—had no bearing on her presence in his life now. She would serve the role of respectable companion and him, her employer. It was a mutually beneficial role grounded in logic, precisely as it drove Graham’s every decision. Which is why he could not suffer another break in control and do something as outrageous as kiss her. Even as I wanted to do so much more... He thrust aside that mocking reminder dancing at the back of his mind. He’d become many things since he’d gone off to fight: a killer for the king, a detached, unfeeling lord. But even he had some scruples.
While they’d been living, his father and brother had both made a habit of bedding maids and servants in their family’s employ. Graham had only been filled with loathing for gentlemen who’d take their pleasures with members of their staff. He’d vowed to never follow in the steps of either reprobate. As such, his and Rowena’s shared past mattered not when presented with the role she now served as companion to Miss Hickenbottom. To touch her again put him in the same ranks as his lecherous kin, and it also defied the careful role of impassive duke he’d cultivated over the years. She was off-limits in every way. That reminder rang like a litany in his head.
A gust of wind knocked hard against the carriage, distracting him from his musings. The conveyance lurched, and with it the contents of Graham’s stomach.
Hold tight, men... it’s going down...
Graham drummed his fingers. Taptaptap-tap-taptaptap-t—
Rowena swiftly lowered the book. “Must you do that?” Annoyance danced in her eyes.
Yes, he really must. He battled back nausea and proved himself a shameless bounder, for cracking the wall of her indifference was vastly safer than giving in to the nightmares. “Forgive me,” he murmured. She narrowed her eyes on his face. Did she seek the veracity of that apology? With a quiet grunt, she returned her attention to the book in her lap.
Her upside-down book. That endearing truth chased away the darkness tugging at the edges of his mind.
At the intent manner with which she devoted her attention to that page, a grin pulled the muscles of his lips up. His scar protested the strain of that unfamiliar movement. He swiftly smoothed the expression of mirth, making his face a careful mask. “You have an additional talent since I last saw you, Rowena,” he dangled.
As though a rod were being inserted in the lady’s spine, her back straightened, and she lifted her flashing gaze. “What—?”
Graham motioned to the small leather volume held in her hands. She jerked her gaze down and color exploded in her cheeks in an enchanting blush. Hastily, she flipped her book right-side up. Her eyes threatened to bore a hole through those pages. They did not, however, move.
Again, another smile pulled. She peeked over the top of her copy and then swiftly returned her gaze to that miserable tome. And he was left once again with the wind buffeting against the carriage. It swayed violently—
Taptaptap-tap-taptap—
Rowena swiftly snapped the book closed with a firm click and set the volume onto the bench beside her. “Have you become such a bored nobleman you must spend your time annoying me? Can you not ride outside as any polite gentleman would and allow a young woman, a young woman in your employ, the right to your carriage?”
“I was injured,” he said quietly. His own shock stared back at him, in her eyes, and a dull heat climbed up his neck. His cravat suddenly tight, Graham tugged at the silk fabric. Where in blazes had that admission come from? It was a detail she, of course, would have known about him had she been there when he’d returned, broken and a day away from death. By that point, however, she’d already been married—one, two years?—to a man he’d never met. A man who’d not been besieged by madness, and one step from Bedlam.
Rowena opened and closed her mouth repeatedly. “What?”
Reclining in his seat, Graham gestured to his left thigh. “During battle, I was shot through the leg.” He grimaced recalling the sharp pain that had brought him flying over his horse where his fall had been softened by the pile of dead soldiers stacked upon one another. That agony nothing compared to the bayonet plunged into his thigh by a Frenchmen who’d brought his blade back for another final thrust. A blow that, had it not been for Hickenbottom, would have ended him. Absently, he rubbed the tight muscles of his thigh. That particular injury had landed him in a miserable field hospital fighting to retain his leg and his life. And in fate’s mocking irony, his brother had succumbed to a wasting illness that very same week. That news had seen him plucked from the Continent and returned home to convalesce. His throat tightened, as all the oldest horrors whispered forward.
“Graham,” she whispered, and that soft utterance brought him back from the brink. Her skin leeched of color, Rowena touched quivering fingers to her lips. “I knew you were...” She let her hand fall to her lap.
“What did you know?” he asked curiously, more than half-expecting her to decline answering.
“I knew you were injured.” She’d known, and yet, she’d not come. Bitterness burned through him. Her gaze grew distant as she dropped her eyes to his leg. “I did not know how badly. That it causes you h-hurt still.” That slight crack in her voice had the same affect her tears always had on him. The kind he’d cut himself open for if it would spare her that hurt.
That evidence of her caring moved something in his chest. For even though she’d broken her promise to him, he’d once loved her more than any other. The sight of her suffering would always cut him to the quick. He grinned wryly in the more familiar, empty expression of forced humor. “It hardly hurts.” He lied for her benefit. The twisted and mangled flesh where the bullet and shrapnel had shredded him made him wholly useless in ways he’d always been in control.
A sad smile pulled at her lips. “You’re a rotten liar, Graham Linford,” she said, tossing back those familiar words they’d teased each other with as children long ago.
“Yes, well, it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it did when I”—his mouth hardened—“first returned.”
With a handful of words, the barriers of their past went back up.
She angled herself toward the window and he believed she intended to end their discourse, but she simply fiddled with the red velvet curtain. “How little we know of one another anymore.”
He scoffed. “Come, Rowena. We never truly knew one another,” he taunted, wanting her to give him the fight he desired. So he could heap every deserved accusation upon her ears and damn her for the schemer she was.
Alas... she sat primly, hands folded upon her lap silent. Once again, she embodied the perfectly grim companion who, because of that hardness, would fit splendidly in his household. And damned if he did not want to shake that rigidity from her, too.
Refusing to let her determine the end of this volatile discourse between them, he leaned forward. “Tell me,” he stretched out those two syllables. “Were you happy when I was gone?” When she met that with nothing more than a mutinous glitter in her eyes, he persisted. “Was Mr. Bryant,” she flinched. “a devoted husband?” he asked, not knowing from whence the question came but needing to know the answer. Had there been happiness before life had found her cheated of a husband and forced to work in that cheerless finishing school? He was filled with resentment for both the failed Mr. Bryant and her for having ultimately chosen that unworthy bounder who’d left her reliant upon her role as instructor.
Fire lit her eyes, and he reveled in that glimpse of the Rowena Endicott of his past. “He was far more devoted than any gentleman I knew before him.”
He jerked as that barb struck a mark. “He did not see you well-cared for, though, did he?” It was petty and cruel, this need to castigate her.
She lifted her chin a notch. “I don’t require anything that any gentleman can give me, Graham. I have employment. I teach young ladies full of hopes and dreams. I’ve found my own security. What more could I want?”
I want at least five babes...
That was what she’d wanted. Graham wished he might have been the man to give her those dark-haired
children with her fiery spirit. But that right had belonged to another and could have never belonged to him. He stared vaguely at the opposite carriage wall, as wonderings about her late husband knocked around his mind. In their short marriage, Mr. Bryant had not given her children, but he’d known both Rowena’s heart and body in ways that made Graham want to gnash his teeth like an angry beast.
“What of you?” she began hesitantly, and where his inquiry had been intended to punish her and himself, Rowena’s emerged calmly as if they were two friends discussing a past. “Have you been happy?”
He’d not known a single moment of peace or happiness since he’d marched off to war. Her face reflected in the windowpane revealed her tightly closed eyes. He wanted to spew lies about the grand time he knew in London as a duke. There had been countless widows and miserably married ladies to warm his bed as well as endless nights of entertainments. “I—”
The carriage lurched sideways, and his hoarse shout blended with Rowena’s cry. Jolted from her seat, she flew forward, landing hard against his chest. She folded her arms about him as the carriage skidded and careened through the rain-slicked roads, and with every slide of the wheels, he was dragged deeper and deeper into the past. He clenched his eyes as his ears rang with the ping of bullets striking the conveyance. Penetrating the wood. Cutting down the men who’d saved him. Rowena gripped him hard, pulling Graham from the edge.
Then the carriage came to a jarring, miraculous stop.
Silence descended, punctuated by the heavy falls of their mingled breaths. She layered her cheek against his chest, and their hearts matched in a like, panicked rhythm.
With a curse, Graham ran his hands over her arms. “Are you hurt?” he asked as he continued his search lower down the curve of her hip. That searchingly intimate gesture seemed to penetrate her own fog. Rowena hurriedly pushed herself from his lap and scrambled onto the opposite bench. “Fine. I am fine.” Was that faint, breathless quality of her whispered words a product of fear? Nervousness?
Schooling the Duke (The Heart of a Scandal, #1) Page 11
