Once a Wallflower, at Last His Love

by Christi Caldwell

  “Mallen?”

  He paused.

  “I took the liberty of having your carriage called for.”

  He fisted his hands. It wasn’t Waxham’s place to interfere—in any of this.

  Waxham’s lips turned up in a half grin. “No thanks are necessary.” Then his smile slipped, replaced with his earlier solemnity. “Oh, and Mallen, do remember, pride is a dangerous thing.”

  With his friend’s words trailing after him, he wound his way through the club, ignoring the greetings shouted at him. He made his way out into the quiet, dark London streets and stared at the occasional carriage as it rattled along. Then, in feeling closer to her just for the letter tucked against his chest, he touched a hand to the front of his jacket. From across the street, his driver hopped down from the top of his box and pulled the door open. Sebastian strode over to the black, lacquer carriage and climbed inside. The servant closed the door behind him. A moment later, the conveyance rocked forward.

  With Waxham’s words and warning dancing around his mind, he withdrew Hermione’s note once more, and unfolding it, read.

  Dearest Sebastian,

  By now, you’ve already learned the truth about the woman you married. I am not the good, honorable lady you deserved as your duchess. If you believe nothing else, please believe my impulsive actions at Lady Brookfield’s, though unpardonable, were not driven for a love of your title.

  I love you. I miss you. You owe me nothing, as you’ve already given me everything, but I’d ask you to come home and listen to me.

  Ever yours,

  Hermione

  He again folded the page then stuffed it inside his jacket and yanking back the red, velvet curtain, he stared out at the passing streets. Having had a month to set aside his embarrassment at having been trapped in marriage by a woman he’d come to care for—nay love—he could at last meet Hermione and attempt some semblance of a companionable relationship.

  Liar. He wanted more than that cold, emotionless entanglement.

  As the familiar row of townhouses in the fashionable Grosvenor Square district pulled into focus, he let the curtain flutter back into place. His carriage pulled to the front of Sebastian’s townhouse and rocked to a slow, steady halt.

  ….come home…

  Sebastian didn’t wait for the driver but shoved open the carriage door. He leapt from the carriage then strode forward, hating this foolish eagerness that filled him at the prospect of seeing Hermione once again.

  The butler pulled the door open. “Your Grace,” he drawled and it may as well have been ten o’clock in the morning and not ten o’clock in the evening as casually as the servant greeted his long absent employer.

  “Have you seen…?” His words trailed off as Carmichael glowered at him and then all but sprinted from the quiet foyer with a speed born of men many years his junior. Sebastian frowned and started for his office. His boot steps echoed noisily upon the white, marble floors and he continued down the empty corridors.

  The flicker of a candle’s glow peeked out from the slight space at the base of the door. He touched the handle, only… Now that he was here, he didn’t know what he’d say to Hermione. So much had come between them, was there even a possibility of repairing a broken marriage or restoring a shattered trust?

  Still, for that, he needed to see her. Wanted to see her.

  Sebastian pressed the handle and stepped inside. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dimly lit space. He glanced about the room in search of his wife. And started. His gaze collided with a frowning child with piercing blue eyes—seated behind his desk. “Hullo,” he said tentatively. She may as well have been a daughter of Hermione. He balled his hands into fists at the idea of sweet, smiling babes who bore a resemblance to his wife and the sudden hungering for that child with her.

  “What do you want?” The angry little voice called from across the room. The insolent girl remained seated in his desk chair, looking impossibly small in its familiar folds.

  He took a step forward. “Forgive me—”

  If looks could kill, the young girl would have smote him with the fire in her eyes. “It’s not my forgiveness you should beg for.”

  The spirited child would surely be the bane of some poor future husband’s existence. He folded his arms across his chest. “A pleasure to meet again, Miss Rogers—”

  She snorted cutting into his polite greeting. “I imagine if it was such a pleasure you’d have not abandoned my sister.”

  It was not every day the powerful Duke of Mallen was shamed…by a child, no less.

  Addie hopped up from her seat. His seat. And came around the desk, unaware of how her innocent charge gutted him. She ran her thumb over her lips and then, in a very Hermione-like way did a slow, steady circle about him. “Hmm,” she said, a wholly unimpressed glint in her young eyes. “You seem far more brooding than the last time we met.” She looked him up and down, the way eerily reminiscent of his first meeting with Hermione once upon a lifetime ago. “You don’t appear very duke-like.”

  It was his lot to have his life graced with insolent women not at all possessed of a suitable deference for the title. “I beg your pardon?” he blinked as just then a niggling of doubt crept in. Would a lady who’d never fawned over him truly have desired the role of duchess above all else?

  “Well.” Addie began to tick off on her fingers. “You’re all rumpled. That’s not at all duke-like.” His valet would agree on that regard. “Your office is entirely too cheerful.”

  Sebastian glanced around with a critical eye at the Chippendale furniture, the leather sofa and wing-backed chairs, the wide mahogany desk. “Cheerful?”

  At his interruption of her very important list, she pursed her lips. “You need more of those ornate gold lions.”

  “Ahh, yes, of course,” he said somberly and her child’s ears were too innocent to detect the droll tone.

  “May I proceed?”

  He inclined his head. “Please do.”

  “Your eyes are green and your hair is golden-blond.” She let out a beleaguered sigh as though that offense were the greatest of all the others.

  He frowned. “What is wrong with my hair?” Not that it particularly mattered what a ten or elevenish-something girl thought about his hair.

  She shrugged. “Everyone knows dukes should be dark and brooding and you, Duke…” She gave him another insolent up and down look, “are just a bit brooding.” She muttered something under her breath that sounded a good deal like ‘I told Hermione one preferred a dark, brooding duke’.

  He swiped his hand over his mouth. What was there to say to the girl’s charge? He chose nothing, and instead focused on the more pressing question. “What business do you have in my office, Miss Rogers?”

  “Hermione’s office.”

  He cocked his head.

  “You left and it is therefore Hermione’s office, though Hugh pointed out that you own everything and Hermione was at your mercy and as a result we’re all at your mercy…” She ceased prattling and went silent.

  Sebastian frowned, not at all liking this young girl’s assessment. Did she believe him capable of turning both she and Hermione and her brother out?

  Then, you’ve not given this trio of siblings much reason to trust you, a voice needled.

  The whisper of a memory followed on the heel of that. My brother…we…there were no funds for him to attend Eton… A woman who’d sought connection to his title and wealth hadn’t asked for gowns or jewels. The sole request she’d put to him was for her brother’s education. Why would she do that? Why, unless there was more to her… “Shouldn’t you be abed?” He knew little about the habits of children, but he knew at this late hour Addie should be asleep.

  She pointed her gaze to the ceiling. “I’ve reading to do,” she said as though he were a child incapable of comprehension.

  “Of course,” he said schooling his features into a serious mask. He glanced at his immaculate desk. Or rather, his once immaculate desk. Page
s upon pages of sheets lined every corner surface space of the massive mahogany piece. He wandered over then picked up a random sheet and scanned the page.

  She loved him. Loved him in spite of what she must do. Loved him even as he could never love her…

  “I imagine you find Gothic novels silly,” she called from over his shoulder, pulling his attention away from the page.

  “Hmm?” he murmured, throwing a glance back at her.

  She gestured to the page. “Hugh says gentlemen are too intelligent to ever appreciate such drivel.” She flung herself into one of the leather wing-backed chairs in front of his desk and hooked her legs over the arm of her seat. “Do you believe it’s drivel?”

  He perched a hip on the edge of the desk. “I believe at one time I was so arrogant. But then I read a story at the insistence of…” Hermione. He recalled the bold challenge in her eyes, the displeased frown on her bow-shaped lips and pain scissored through him. God how he’d missed her.

  Addie stared expectantly at him.

  “Your sister,” he supplied. “I read a story at the insistence of your sister.”

  “Annnnnd?” she asked in an exaggerated manner.

  “And they are quite entertaining.”

  She gave a pleased nod. “Of course they are.”

  He returned his attention to the odd collection of pages.

  Alas, Addie appeared unwilling to allow him some quiet. “She really doesn’t like me to read the story as she writes, insists I wait until she’s completed. So, I sneak down when she falls asleep and read…” She wrinkled her nose. “But she works long hours, so I have to stay awake until she seeks her bed.”

  Perhaps it was the advanced hour or the nearly entire bottle of brandy he’d consumed, or perhaps it was just little Addie herself, but God help him, he was having a dashed hard time following the young girl’s thoughts. He glanced up from his reading. “Who?”

  “Who what?” Then she gave her head a shake. “Oh, you mean Hermione? I have to wait until she seeks out her bed. When she sleeps, she’ll sleep quite hard so there are no worries about waking her.” Pain squeezed like a vise about his heart. He wanted to know all those small details that made Hermione, Hermione.

  Addie shoved herself upright and glanced around as if despite her assurance about Hermione’s sleeping habits, she still feared the older sister would discover her presence here.

  He returned his attention to the page.

  Dukes never wed impoverished young ladies, one step away from societal ruin…

  Is that what she believed? Is that what she’d been?

  Suddenly, Waxham’s warning blared through his mind. Desperation will drive people who are not normally desperate to do desperate things…Not everything is always as it seems.

  The vise tightened all the harder and he crushed the page in his hands. Had Waxham been correct? Had the bold, spirited Hermione Rogers been driven because she’d felt there had been no other choice? His insides churned with the idea of her feeling the desperation Waxham had spoken of, that she felt no other choice but to coordinate her own ruin. He closed his eyes a moment, far preferring the idea of her as a fortune-hunting schemer to the now, niggling possibility there really was more here, more to account for—

  “Is that why you left?” She jerked her chin toward his white-knuckled grip upon Hermione’s page. “Because you disapproved of Hermione’s writing?” He lightened his hold upon the sheet. The little girl continued on a rush. “She really is quite remarkable and it would be unpardonable for you to ever stop such beautiful stories from being told.” A strand of hair toppled over her eye. She blew it back, the move so patently Hermione’s. “Hugh said you’d never allow it. Hermione’s writing,” she clarified.

  Hugh was a miserable little bugger who needed a stern talking to. Then Addie’s words registered. “She writes,” he blurted, knowing he must appear a total lack-wit with his mouth agape.

  Addie pointed her gaze skyward once again. “Well, yeeees,” she said once more with her exaggerated tone. “What do you think you’re reading?” His gaze fell to the words in Hermione’s hand and then back to the girl. What in hell…? Addie blinked. “You didn’t know?”

  “I don’t…She didn’t…” He gave his head a slow shake and tried for words. How much more did he not know about his wife? “What does she write?”

  Addie scooted forward and ignored his question. “You mustn’t tell her I’ve told you.” She squared her small shoulders and in the manner befitting a proud new papa and said, “She’s Mr. Michael Michaelmas.”

  The air left him. And at last it all made sense—her dashing notes upon her empty dance card, sneaking about her hosts’ homes and ruffling through their desks in search of empty sheets. She was a writer. He recalled The Entrapped Earl and The Mad Marquess. She was a brilliant writer.

  Hardly the quality of writing to rival Chaucer or Aristotle…

  Sebastian swiped a palm across his mouth. She was the brilliant author whose work had captivated him enough to humble himself before his brother-in-law, all to read a copy of those expertly crafted words. And he’d disparaged her so. God he hated himself in that moment.

  “You were to be her duke,” Addie said softly.

  He was to be Hermione’s duke. And instead of fighting for a place in her heart, he’d walked away, like a sulking child to lick the wounds of his hurt pride and broken heart. Instead of talking to her and trying to set their uncertain union to rights, he’d run.

  A true hero did not flee. Not in the way Sebastian had.

  Addie wrinkled her nose. “Of course, Mr. Werksman and I told her no one wants an affable, charming type.” She continued prattling on.

  “Mr. Werksman?” he asked, mind racing as he tried to put her words into some semblance of order.

  “Her publisher,” Addie said as though it were the silliest thing in the world that he had no idea as to who the famed Mr. Werksman was. “Everyone knows all readers prefer their heroes dark and brooding.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Sebastian said somberly.

  Addie hopped to her feet. She tugged the forgotten page in his hand free and moved her blue eyes quickly over the words. “Do you know, I doubted Hermione? After she met you, she assured me that a charming, kind-hearted gentleman would be the perfect hero and I quite disagreed.” There was nothing charming or kind-hearted about him. He’d been nothing more than a petulant child. Shame twisted in his belly. Addie held the page up. “Then I read her latest work, and it is really quite brilliant. One of her best.” She yawned.

  Desperately needing some solitude to put to his tumultuous thoughts to rights, he said quietly, “You should be on to bed.”

  With a beleaguered sigh, she handed him the sheet. “Just like Hermione.” Addie skipped to the door and cast a suspicious look over her shoulder. “You shan’t tell her I told you.”

  He marked an X upon his heart. “Your secret will remain with me.” And it would. He’d not break the girl’s confidence. Not to Hermione, anyway.

  She smiled and hurried from the room.

  Sebastian turned his attention to the neat stacks of sheets upon his desk eying them in stunned disbelief. Noisy footsteps sounded from outside his office, calling his attention away from Hermione’s work. Addie peeked her head around the door.

  He looked at her quizzically. “Addie?”

  “I think Hugh is wrong. I don’t think you’re a black-hearted bastard.” With that, she spun around and hurried from the room.

  Yet, as he stared at the door she’d just disappeared behind, he had to admit, in this moment, it felt very much like the angry boy Hugh was indeed correct. I am a black-hearted bastard. Sebastian sat down.

  And began to read.

  C

  hapter 26

  The End.

  Hermione sat back in Sebastian’s desk chair and stared at the two words; words she’d once considered more beautiful than any others. They signified accomplishment and the completion of a story she’d pulled fro
m her heart to tell. Now, a wedded woman and jilted wife, she could admit there were words far more beautiful, but in the absence of those precious three, these lone two would have to suffice.

  She stared at the neat stack of pages and with steady fingers tied the blue satin ribbon about the pile. She smoothed her hand over the top page. Her Charming Duke. It was done. She quickly and efficiently placed the hundreds of sheets within the leather folio and tied it closed.

  For the pain of her broken marriage and all the lies that had brought her to this moment, she could say one thing of beauty had come from it. His story. No, their story. A pang struck her heart. Or rather, part of their story. The rest she’d re-written to be an ending she’d so desperately needed in her own life. The door opened. “It is finished,” she said, studying the title. “At last, I’ve…” She picked up her head. And the words died on her lips. She blinked several times. How many days had she spent wishing he’d return, hoping he’d return? Had dreamed it so many times that surely this was just another one of those wishful dreams.

  Sebastian closed the door with a soft click. “Hello, Hermione,” he said quietly.

  Except, dreams did not talk. Certainly not in that deep, mellifluous baritone. Nor did they walk toward you with bold, determined steps. Then, hadn’t she once written…Noblemen in possession of those bold steps…they always returned…

  The last words he’d tossed her before he’d taken leave more than a month ago however, stuck like painful barbs in her memory. There is the matter of an heir… Is that why he’d returned, because of his need for an heir and the proverbial spare?

  He stopped in front of his desk. “Hermione.”

  In the loneliest days of his absence she’d imagined that carrying his child would be enough—to have a piece of him, and a babe of her own to love. Now she knew that was no longer enough. She wanted all of him.