The Reluctant Duchess

by Roseanna M. White

  Behind them, the others continued to discuss the Humphrey situation, but Brice ignored them all. He’d spend some time praying about it—again—tonight. Let all the questions swarm then. For now, Rowena. Lord, give me the words to talk to her. Give me the ears to listen.

  She tugged her hand free of his under the guise of lifting her skirt for the stairs. “Ye needna see me up, Brice. Go and tend to this. I know ye must.”

  “There’s little I could do just now anyway. And you’re more important.”

  “Am I?”

  He snapped his gaze to her, expecting her to have shrugged off her peakedness in favor of pique. But no, she still looked ill, tired . . . and emotionally weary on top of it all.

  Well, no wonder. How could he have been so blind to how he was treating her? He’d thought . . . He’d thought her wrong. Himself right. And so, all his prayers had been geared toward convincing her to listen to reason. “Of course you are.” Yet he knew she didn’t believe him. “I am very sorry if I haven’t made that clear.”

  She didn’t even look at him. “Oh, ye’ve made your feelings verra clear. Ye’ve let me ken exactly where I rank in your affections.”

  “Rowena.” He halted her on the landing, leaping before her to block her way. Wishing her eyes betrayed anger, uncertainty, disdain—anything but the disappointment that made them dull as smoke. “I’ve made a mull of this, but it wasn’t by intent. I want . . .” He wanted to hold her. To draw her to his chest and let their hearts beat in rhythm. To be given the chance to know her well enough to understand the sparks flitting through the smoke of her eyes.

  To make her nightmares go away—for good.

  With a shake of her head slight enough to prove the headache was still present, she stepped around him. “Why pretend anymore, Brice? I’m not what ye want. I’ll never be what ye want. I’m not . . . enough. Ye’ve no respect for me.”

  “That isn’t true! I realize I haven’t listened as I should, but it’s only because—”

  “Because ye know best?” She picked up her pace, though her face went even paler. “Oh, aye. Yer judgment is perfect. Except, apparently, when ye judged that ye had best marry me.”

  “Rowena.” He felt the puppy nipping at her heels as he followed her toward the family wing, mentally going over every memory from the past six weeks. All the times he had reacted from that basic assumption—he was right, she was wrong. All the times he had followed it up with a charming smile, thinking . . . what? That charm and flirtation would be enough for a marriage? That she would overlook where he ignored her thoughts if he showered her with attention in other ways?

  He was a blithering fool.

  “Darling, please. I’ve acted an idiot, and I’m sorry. I thought . . . I thought I was giving you time to see my side. I didn’t realize I was dismissing yours so fully.” They reached her door, though she didn’t even glance at him. “I won’t do the same now. I swear to you. But we must discuss the danger you would be in if you went to Catherine’s tomorrow with Lord Rushworth there.”

  He expected her to shut the door in his face. Instead, she left it wide behind her. He took that as an invitation, though he was careful to advance no more than two steps inside when he saw Cowan wasn’t within. The last thing he wanted was to put her in a panic.

  She finally came to a halt with her back to him, her hand pressed to her dressing table. “So ye grant he’s the problem, then? Not her?”

  “I . . .” He paused to draw in a careful breath. “I readily grant he is a problem. He is dangerous. I am not, however, as convinced as you that Catherine would be any better were she free of him.”

  “Why will ye not let me help her?” Tears burned her eyes, and panic burned her voice. The sweep of her arms was tremulous. “Ye canna ken what it’s like to be always under the control of a man like that. Ye canna. But ye helped me, ye got me free of Loch Morar, of Malcolm, of Father. Is that what you want to hear from me, Brice? Ye saved me. Rescued me. My noble prince, as Ella would say. But it means nothing—nothing—if I canna stand on my own. If I canna help another.”

  Given a century, he wasn’t sure he’d understand this woman. But in that moment, he knew for a fact that if he spent a century trying, it would be years well spent. The vulnerability made him want to shelter her forever . . . and the steel made him want to kiss her until it melted, and melted him along with it.

  Somehow he doubted that would go over well just now. He took the time to draw in a long breath and let it soothe the questions. Let it back out slowly, measuring the moments. “I appreciate that you want to help. I admire it. I would love to see you give aid to others who have suffered as you have. It is just that I am not certain Catherine is one of those women.”

  She shook her head, looking so very different from the first time he’d seen her. No hiding behind anyone now, no ill-fitting clothes, no arms folded protectively over her stomach. No bruises, thank the Lord above, marring her perfect ivory skin. Now she stood in the finest silk, her spine straight.

  Her eyes flashed, lightning dissipating the smoke. “I grant that ye saw my truth quick as a flash. But ye’re not infallible, Brice. Ye’re blinded, in this case, by yer dislike for her husband. But Lady Pratt is just a doting mother and a widow.” She tugged the gloves from her hands with enough force that he half expected the seams to rip. “One too long whispered about and judged. Too long reviled. One who could verra well be a fine woman if taken apart from the men in her life.”

  Cowan slipped into the chamber from the dressing room entrance, but Brice kept his focus on Rowena. “I realize you see yourself in her. But, darling, this is what she does. She appeals to one’s vulnerabilities in her deceptions.”

  Rowena slapped her gloves onto the table. “Why can ye not admit that perhaps ye’re wrong? Why can ye not see that she’s a victim, an outcast—”

  “An outcast?” He reached for the magazine his mother had handed Rowena earlier that day, flipped it open to an advertisement. “Does this look like an outcast to you? Would anyone pay her to pose and say that ‘Fuller’s Biscuits are the only biscuits I serve with tea’ if she were reviled? She has made herself into a celebrity, Rowena, and she revels in every bit of it!”

  She stared at the colorful rendition of her supposed friend, and a crack appeared in her wall.

  He strode a few steps nearer, now that Cowan was in the room to help her feel safe. “Please, darling. Please don’t be taken in. This is her skill—convincing whomever she’s with that she is like them, that she commiserates, that she’s the perfect friend. But she’ll betray you, just as she did Brook when—”

  “I am not Brook!” The questions, the crack he’d seen forming, snapped away, replaced by the anger he’d wished for five minutes earlier.

  Stupid request, that.

  She slashed a hand through the air. “One would think you would be the first to realize that, given how little you esteem me and how highly you esteem her! Tell me, darling, how much of the gossip is true? Exactly how close are you? Is it merely that you were in love with her once, or was your little trip to Whitby Park from Delmore that day not so innocent?”

  Cowan gasped and dropped whatever it was she’d had in her hands. “Rowena Kinnaird, mind yer tongue!”

  Now was not the time to correct the name, nor the fact that a lady’s maid oughtn’t to be using it. He didn’t even glance Cowan’s way. Instead, he covered the rest of the distance between him and Rowena, stopping just near enough to reach over and tip up her chin. Just near enough that she’d be able to see the fire in his eyes too.

  “Look at me, Rowena.” He waited for her to obey, though she did so with a clenched jaw and rebellion in her eyes. And that was his fault too, wasn’t it. His wife shouldn’t have to wonder whether he was in love with another. His wife should be secure in his affections. But she wasn’t—and how could she be? He may have spoken of finding love at some point in time, but then he had let this diamond business remain always between them.

 
No longer. It was time to realign his focus. To fall in love with his wife, and to convince her she could trust him with her heart too. “I have never, either before her marriage or after, been romantically involved with Brook. Look me in the eye and believe me. She is a dear friend, as is Stafford. Nothing more.”

  She averted her face, knocking away his hand. “It doesna matter.”

  Pressure built up in his chest. “Of course it matters. You are my wife, Rowena. You, no one else, and that is just as it’s meant to be.”

  She tugged off the ruby-and-diamond ring that matched the necklace and threw it to the tabletop. It bounced, slid, shot off the table and onto the floor, where Cowan scurried after it. “What does that even mean to you, Brice? That I must obey you, even when ye insist on something that everything within me screams is false? Does it mean I must fall in love with you just because ye compliment my eyes and hold my hand in public? Ye dinna trust me, ye dinna believe me, yet ye seem to think that ye’ve only to deliver a few lines of flattery like ye do with every other woman in Britain and have me falling at yer feet with the rest of yer adoring throng.”

  She slashed a hand through the air, her cheeks going pink over the pale. “Well, ye’ll not find me there.”

  His determination sizzled into frustration. “I don’t want you at my dashed feet, I just want you to give me half a chance to be something to you other than a stranger.”

  Rowena fisted her hands and looked ready to stomp. “Maybe I dinna want ye to be anything but a stranger! I dinna want to get sucked down into yer infernal charm, unable to see anything but what ye want me to see. I’ll make my own decisions, my own friends, be my own person—”

  “Good! If you recall, I told you weeks ago that I wanted you to be your own person. So why in blazes you now think otherwise, I cannot discern!”

  Her color rose still more. “Because ye willna accept me for who I am! I can only be the Duchess of Nottingham now, not permitted to wear wool or speak with a burr or believe what I have spent my whole life believing. I canna turn around without your oldest friend lecturing me on superstition or you calling me daft for believing in curses.”

  His usual gut reaction beckoned—spin away, refuse to engage in what he deemed a ridiculous argument. Hold tight the explanation, the understanding he was content with. But a quiet Stay resonated within him, and this time he didn’t think he was misunderstanding. He shoved his hands in his pockets to anchor himself. “I love to hear you speak. I care very little what you wear, so long as you have what you need and are happy in it.”

  She snorted. “Your society disagrees.”

  “Yes, they do. And you can either conform to their expectations or defy them. Whatever your choice, I will stand beside you. But I think it the other that really bothers you, and that is my fault. My failing. Your opinions and beliefs are worth no less than mine.”

  “Dinna—” She loosed a laugh that sounded half sob. “Dinna agree with me—when we both know ye dinna really—just to sound . . . perfect.”

  Stay. He clenched his hands within his pockets. “I know well I’m not perfect.”

  “But ye are, and I hate you for it! For yer perfect life and yer perfect faith and yer perfect plans. I hate you for yer perfect friends and yer perfect confidence and—and I hate you, and I wish I’d never met . . .”

  The color drained from her cheeks, her shoulders hunched forward, and she pressed a hand to her mouth. A second later she was dashing toward the lavatory attached to her dressing room. The sounds of retching soon filtered through the door.

  Brice sighed as the need to stay built, pressed upon him. He pinched the bridge of his nose and motioned Cowan to follow her mistress as she so obviously wanted to do. “Go ahead, see to her. Help her change. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  “Yer Grace.” Cowan, frown etched in her forehead, slid the ring onto the table. “She didna mean what she said. She doesna hate you. She just . . . She has so many years of hurt stored inside.”

  Though it took effort, he forced the strain from his countenance, forced a partial smile. “I know that—I assure you. And I’m not returning to argue with her more. I’m returning to prove to her she’s wrong. That I’m ready to listen.”

  He was going to stay.

  Nineteen

  Never, in a lifetime of humiliations, had Rowena ever felt as miserable as she did with her head hanging over the toilet and the bitter taste of her words to Brice overshadowing the sickness. Tears trickled down her cheeks as her stomach heaved again, and the cool, familiar hands that smoothed the curls away from her face did little to bring comfort.

  “There now, lass. It’ll be over soon.”

  No, it wouldn’t. The vomiting, perhaps, but not the bigger problem. She squeezed her eyes shut and sagged against Lilias, spent. “I’m a fool.”

  “Aye.” Lilias was never one for indulgence. “But he’ll forgive you for it. And ye need to let him. Rowena . . .” Letting out a long breath, Lilias held her tight and rested her cheek against Rowena’s head. “Dinna be like yer mother, lass. Dinna let yerself be so eaten up by regrets that ye do something glaikit.”

  Mother . . . foolish? Rowena could barely even call her mother’s face to mind anymore, but for when she pulled out the old, faded photographs. Nora had been beautiful, once upon a time. The enchanting American heiress out for an adventure, visiting the land her grandparents had fled in the clearances. By the time Rowena left for school, Mother had been as faded as those pictures.

  Was that her future, too, if she stuck to this course? “I’d never kill myself, Lil. Ye needna worry.”

  “’Tisn’t the leap from the cliff I fear you taking—it’s the years of waste leading up to it. The decision yer mother made to blame her husband for her own choices.”

  Rowena sat up, though it made her stomach roll again, and turned to see Lilias’s face. “How can ye speak so? My father suffocated her. Took the life from her long before she took her own. He beat her—”

  “I ken what he did, and I’ll make no excuses for him. But yer mother was no saint, Wena. That summer when he first lost his head with you both—it wasna just the visit to the duchess that set him off so. ’Twas who else was at Gaoth that year.”

  Else? Try as she might to send her mind back, Rowena could remember no one but Ella, Charlotte, and an eternal parade of guests that were all faceless to her. “Who?”

  Lilias pressed her lips together and shook her head, but then she sighed. “An old beau, from the States. He came to Scotland with the Carnegies, and when the Nottinghams and Brices paid their obligatory visit to Skibo, he came back to Lochaber with them. Because he kent yer mother was Lady Lochaber and wanted to see her again.”

  But Mother wouldn’t have . . . She wasn’t so foolish that . . . Surely not, under Rowena’s very nose, with Lilias—her husband’s own cousin—attending her . . .

  She lunged forward to retch again. All those times Mother had sent her to Gaoth, all those days Rowena had happily skipped along at Ella’s side—what had Nora been doing? Rowena spat out the last of the acrid bile. “Why? Why would she do that? Father doted on her then. On both of us.”

  Lilias passed her a washcloth and stood to run water into a glass. “She was never happy in the Highlands, lass. Not after the first year or two—after the romance of it wore off. She wanted her home. Her family. Threatened time and again to go back to them. That’s when yer father started cutting off communication. She pushed him for years, and then when he came home that summer and found the Nottinghams there . . . When he realized her old flame had been in his castle . . . Well, ye know the result of that.”

  “Aye.” She could still remember the utter shock the first time his fist struck her, when she heard Mother sobbing in pain from the other room.

  Taking the glass from Lilias, Rowena held it for a long moment as the older woman turned her to pluck pins from her hair. She stared into the clear water. “But . . . why did he take it out on me?” The words emerged as the barest
whisper.

  Lilias dropped a hand to her shoulder and squeezed. “He was blind with rage, Wena. And then . . . then he wanted to make you stronger. Wanted to ensure ye were like him, not yer mother. And that’s how his father taught him.”

  “But I’m not like him.”

  Lilias sighed and plucked out the last of the hairpins, her fingers then moving to the buttons down Rowena’s back. “Well and good. But dinna be like her either, lass. Dinna blame yer husband for everything wrong in yer life. His Grace is a good man. Better than yer father ever was. And he’d never betray you as ye accused him of doing. As yer parents did each other.”

  Cold air snuck beneath the silk. She shivered—and couldn’t seem to stop once she started. She set her water down and nearly tripped as she stepped out of her gown. Her fingers fumbled the hooks on her corset.

  “Poor lass. Ye look ready to fall over. Here, put on yer nice, warm flannel.”

  She did—though it did little to warm her. Praying her stomach remained steady, she headed for her toothbrush and powder.

  Lilias paused in the doorway with the silk in her arms. “Rowena . . . yer husband’s coming back in a few minutes. When he does, remember . . . ye’re not yer parents.”

  Coming back? Her stomach roiled, though thankfully it didn’t heave again. She brushed the bitterness from her mouth and hurried as much as she could back to her chamber. Turned off the electric lamp and crawled into bed with only the fire in the grate for light. Perhaps if she pretended to be asleep, he’d go away. She couldn’t face him now, with those words still echoing in her ears.

  “I hate you. I wish I’d never met you.”

  Her chest hurt as much as her stomach. It wasn’t true, had never been—certainly not in the moment when he stood there and apologized for all she had resented these weeks. Why had that pushed her to say such terrible things? Why could she deal better with his disregard than with humble attention? Nothing made sense anymore. Not her marriage, not her life . . . not what she thought was a budding friendship. It was all a muddle. Reasons and motives and goals all mixed up and as confused as Ella in the maze.