The Irish Earl
Page 18
He arrived in Dublin in the late afternoon, and went directly to see her.
He rapped the brass door knocker hard enough to be heard in the next county. After a moment the door swung open, revealing a footman.
“Yes?” the footman prompted with a faint sneer.
Kilgarvan was suddenly conscious of how he must look, fresh from the road with the dust on him, and his clothes wrinkled. No wonder the footman thought him a disreputable character. Perhaps he should have stopped first at a hotel, to change his attire and wash up. But he had been too impatient to stop, too anxious to arrive.
“Is your mistress at home?”
“Yes, but—”
He did not need to hear any more. Kilgarvan stepped over the threshold, brushing aside the slightly built footman. “I am Lord Kilgarvan,” he said frostily.
The servant stared at him, gape-mouthed. Kilgarvan doffed his hat and handed it to the footman, who accepted it and closed his mouth with an audible click. Then he removed his coat and handed that to the footman as well.
The sounds of feminine laughter drifted down hall. He then realized that Felicity had guests, but having come so far he was not willing to be turned away.
He left the footman behind him and ventured down the hall. The sounds of conversation grew stronger, and then through an open door on the left, he glimpsed a salon.
As he stepped into the salon, the women’s voices hushed, and he found himself the focus of a dozen pairs of eyes.
He recognized only two of the women present: his mother, who looked pleased to see him, and his wife, who did not.
Felicity appeared every inch the elegant woman he had met in London. Her amber silk gown was of the first stare of fashion, as was her elaborately styled coiffure. Her expression was carefully neutral, giving little hint of her feelings.
“I beg your pardon, ladies,” he said with a short bow. “But I must speak with my wife. Felicity, if you would be so kind?”
The ladies began to whisper among themselves as his identity was revealed, but he had eyes only for Felicity. She looked at him, then back at her guests. At last she seemed to make up her mind.
“Ladies, if you will excuse me for a moment,” she said, rising from her chair. “And, Mother, if you would pour?”
“Of course,” his mother said.
Kilgarvan waited as Felicity threaded her way among the chairs.
She offered no word of greeting, no inquiries after his health or the difficulties of the journey. He followed her down the hall, noting her anger in the stiff set of her back, and the way her head was held unnaturally high.
She led him to a library at the end of the hall.
“Why have you come?”
He had imagined this moment a thousand times. But now that he was here with her, so close he could touch her, all of his carefully rehearsed speeches flew out of his head.
“I came to fetch you back to Kilgarvan. Where you belong.”
Her eyes were wary. “Kilgarvan is your home, not mine. You made that abundantly clear to me.”
He winced at the pain in her voice. He reached out a hand to touch her, but she stepped back, out of reach. “I can think of no reason to return,” she said.
“Because I need you. Kilgarvan needs you,” he said.
“You have the money. That is all you wanted. Any housekeeper could take my place at Kilgarvan.” She turned, and he felt desperation as he realized she could walk out of his life forever.
“Then come with me because I love you. Because I am lost without you.”
She turned back toward him, hope warring with disbelief plain to read in her face.
“If you loved me, then why did you let me leave?”
“Because I was a fool,” he said honestly. “Because I could not see past my pride and my fears. I was afraid that I was not worthy of my responsibilities, afraid that I could not cope with the burden of the estate. I was afraid of becoming just like my father, whose plans had ruined the estate instead of saving it.”
He took a deep breath, his head bent down. “And there you were, everything that I was not: sophisticated, cultured, far more knowledgeable than I in the ways of managing great wealth. Every time I looked at you, I felt I did not measure up in your eyes.”
“But I never said that. I never even thought that,” Felicity said. “All I wanted to do was help.”
“I know now. It was my own self-doubts that poisoned the atmosphere. I could not bear the rejection I read in your eyes, so I pushed you farther and farther away, until in the end I forced you to leave. I know I must have hurt you terribly.”
“I thought you did not care,” Felicity said. “I thought you had no feelings for me.”
He shook his head slowly, then reached out and took her hands in his. “No, it was that I was blind. I did not know what I had lost until you were gone. Arlyn Court is empty without you. I cannot exist like this. Please tell me that it is not too late to put things right.”
Felicity felt her heart swell with emotion. There was a burning hope in Kilgarvan’s eyes that matched the rising hope within her own breast.
“What of the harvest?” she asked.
He blinked, nonplussed. “The harvest? I imagine they’ve started it by now. But why do you ask?”
He had left Kilgarvan at harvesttime to come to her. He could have waited, but instead he had placed his need for her ahead of his responsibility to the land.
“I have my own share of stubbornness and pride,” Felicity warned him.
He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “And you know all the worst of my faults,” he said. “But I promise you, if you come back with me to Kilgarvan, I will prove to you that you are loved and cherished.”
Cherished. She liked the sound of that word.
“And I promise to love you in return,” she said. “And I will come with you to Kilgarvan, for I think our son should be born among his people.”
It took a moment for her words to sink in.
“Son?”
“Or daughter,” she affirmed. “In the spring, if all is well.”
Kilgarvan laughed, wrapping his arms around her in a fierce hug, then covering her face with kisses.
“You don’t know how happy you have made me,” he said. “I just hope my son doesn’t inherit my faults.”
“Take me home,” she said.
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