Her eyes filled with tears. “Please, Percy,” she said, “if you care for me at all, let me go. I have to leave!”
There was such panic in her face, in her voice, that it chilled his blood. He released her arm at once. “Of course,” he said. “Whatever you wish.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. “I’ll see you at dinner.”
He watched numbly as she finished dressing, then headed out the door. For a long time, he just stood there, staring at the emptiness she’d left behind.
Then anger seized him. He did not deserve this. She’d been perfectly eager to lie with him in his bed until he mentioned marriage, and then she’d run off.
She did tell you she meant never to marry again.
Yes, but that was only because of her worry that no man would want a barren wife. He’d already made it clear that he didn’t care. Why, just now when she’d asked about it, he’d told her again that he didn’t care. He’d even pointed out that she might not be barren at all. That ought to have given her new hope, not sent her running out into—
There was always another doctor who gave him new hope that I could be fixed . . .
And just like that, he understood.
Oh God. He was a fool. Here she’d just unburdened herself about the years of misery her late husband had put her through trying to ensure that she conceived and then Percy had gone and made her think he would do the same. That he wouldn’t accept the “inevitable.”
That he’d lied when he said he didn’t care if she could bear him a son.
He dropped into the chair. Had he lied? Did he care? Clearly he hadn’t examined that point thoroughly enough. But if he were to have any chance with her, he had to be sure of how he felt about being married to a woman who could not give him children.
Because there was always the possibility that she was barren. And if he couldn’t accept that, couldn’t accept her for who she was, then he had no business courting her.
♦ ♦ ♦
BY THE TIME Dorinda was dressed for dinner, she’d already made up her mind to sever all ties to Percy, whatever it took. She’d believed him when he’d said her barrenness didn’t matter, but he’d been lying. Or at least lying to himself. Clearly it did matter or he wouldn’t have started discussing the possibility that she might not be barren. And talking like a doctor, too, with a doctor’s certainty that everything could be fixed with the right nostrum or food or way of life.
She didn’t want to be fixed. She wanted children, yes, but not at that price. So tonight she would have to make that clear. And there was only one way to do that, one way to be sure that he wouldn’t plague her and prevaricate until he wore her down and got what he wanted.
It was a coward’s way, but after her marriage to Edgar, she was a coward. She couldn’t go through all of that again, even if it meant cutting herself off from the man who’d made her feel alive for the first time in a long while.
You’re a beautiful, intelligent woman with a heart as wide as the sky at sea, and a courage deep enough to withstand Fate’s many arrows. That’s all that matters to me.
He was wrong. She wasn’t brave. Not enough for that, anyway.
She made sure she waited until right before dinner would be served to go down to the drawing room, so Percy would have no time to get her alone. Thank God she had, too, for it was clear from the way he looked at her that he would have tried.
But before he could do more than greet her, Lisette, a stickler for promptness, announced that dinner was served and hurried them all toward the dining room.
Leaving the duke talking with Percy, the duchess fell behind to take Dorinda’s arm. “Do forgive me for being so shatter-brained this morning. I completely forgot to tell you that the doctor was still in town after all.” Lisette cast her a sly glance. “I hope it wasn’t too much of a shock.”
“Of course not,” Dorinda said, determined to follow Percy’s original plan for the evening. “It was actually very . . . enlightening.”
“Was it, indeed?” Lisette’s eyes lit up as they entered the drawing room and the duke came over to accompany her to her chair. “You’ll have to tell me all about it later.”
Dorinda forced a smile. She ought to, if only to shame the woman into minding her own business. But Percy’s way was gentler, and it wouldn’t force Dorinda into having to reveal the shame of her barrenness to the duchess.
Percy approached to lead her to her chair. “We need to talk,” he murmured as he laid his hand on the small of her back.
“No. We don’t.” She hurried ahead to take her seat, then added loudly, “Thank you, Dr. Worth.”
She could feel his presence behind her, feel him looming over her. But thankfully he must have known that she dared not speak more of it in front of the duchess. Still, she let out a long breath when he left her side and went to sit opposite her in his usual seat at the long, impressive table.
Normally, there were more people at these dinners than just the four of them. Sometimes Mr. Cale and his wife came, sometimes the Duke’s Men attended, and sometimes all of them at once. Lisette was far more social than Dorinda, and His Grace indulged his wife shamelessly.
Besides, the duke seemed to enjoy having people around. By all accounts, he’d lived a very lonely life before Lisette came along. The same sort of lonely life that stretched before Dorinda.
She winced. It didn’t matter. Better a lonely life than a life spent trying to meet a man’s impossible expectations.
But, oh, it was so hard to look at him and know that this was their last night together, that she had to avoid him from now on. He was wearing one of the two evening coats he seemed to own, and a cravat that was woefully under-starched. He needed a wife—badly. And she wanted desperately to be the one to marry him.
As soon as the soup was served, Lisette smiled knowingly at Dorinda. “So, Dr. Worth told me that you were kind enough to work on organizing his office anyway.”
“He asked me to,” Dorinda said. “How could I refuse?”
“Especially after she saw what a state it was in,” Percy put in. “She could tell at once that only an expert could take my mess in hand.” Percy’s gaze locked with hers. “I’m surprised she didn’t just run screaming from the place the minute she saw the chaos. But then, the widow isn’t the sort to run from trouble. She meets it head-on.”
She stiffened at the note of rebuke in his voice. He didn’t understand. He would never understand. “Sometimes meeting trouble head-on is the wrong approach. Some sorts of trouble can’t be set to rights, and it’s best just to avoid them.”
“Clearly you don’t have enough faith in your abilities,” he countered. “You set things beautifully to rights in my office. And within a remarkably short time, too.”
“Indeed?” Eyes gleaming, Lisette took a sip of soup and surveyed them both. “It mustn’t have been too short a time, for Dorinda came home only an hour ago.”
“Have you been spying on me?” Dorinda said pointedly. When Lisette blinked, then colored, Dorinda cursed her quick tongue. “But you’re right—it did take me the entire day.”
“Which enabled us to become better acquainted,” Percy said. “I have you to thank for that, Your Grace. I’m very grateful I had the chance to come to know your cousin so thoroughly.”
The lovely words, so typical of him, made her heart twist in her chest. Until belatedly she caught the double entendre in the words “know your cousin so thoroughly.” She stifled a snort. “Dr. Worth has a skeleton in his office,” she said blithely, determined to change the subject. “His name is Seymour.”
“I’ve met the indomitable Seymour,” the duke put in. A smile crossed his lips. “I trust he did not give you any trouble.”
“Only once,” Percy said quietly, “when he fell into a slump, jealous of me for having the company of the beautiful Dorinda.”
Lisette exc
hanged a meaningful glance with her husband at Percy’s use of Dorinda’s Christian name.
Dorinda could have strangled Percy for that. “Poor Seymour wasn’t jealous.” She glared at Percy. “He was probably just tired of being jerked this way and that to suit various doctors’ whims.”
Percy gazed steadily at her. “Or perhaps he was kicking himself for being so oblivious to what was really going on.”
“I doubt that,” Dorinda snapped. “He was probably just yearning for a place to breathe. Or even a spot of exercise.” She cast Percy a triumphant look. “Perhaps he wanted a brisk walk in the clear air, where no one has any expectations of him.”
“We are still talking about a skeleton, aren’t we?” Lisette said, looking bewildered.
“I daresay you could use some exercise yourself, Dr. Worth,” Dorinda went on. “It’s very invigorating.”
The duke was watching them now, too, with eyes narrowed.
Dorinda couldn’t mistake the stiffening of Percy’s shoulders before he shot her a fiercely determined glance. “I prefer riding, myself. There’s no more wonderful exercise, in my opinion.”
Tamping down a quick stab of disappointment that he’d taken her meaning and was going along with their original plan, she said stoutly, “Riding is too dangerous. Walking is much safer.”
“Nonsense.” The sudden softening in his eyes caught her off guard. “I suppose you’re thinking of those doctors who claim that a woman will hurt her chances to have children if she rides. But it’s not true.”
She caught her breath, pain slicing through her. He would bring that up here? Before her friends?
“Of course it isn’t true,” Lisette put in, blithely unaware of the tension in the room as she shot her husband a coy glance. “I used to ride all the time, and clearly it didn’t stop me from . . . well . . . you know.”
“I wasn’t thinking of the dangers to a woman’s conceiving,” Dorinda said through gritted teeth. “I was thinking of how often a rider sometimes takes a wild leap and ends up broken.”
“Well, of course riders must be careful—” the duke began.
“Better to take a wild leap than to cower in a corner, wouldn’t you say?” Percy snapped, his gaze hot on her.
“I don’t want to cower in a corner,” Dorinda shot back. “I want to walk. Alone. For exercise. Because it is better for my health than riding.”
He stared her down. “Come now, Dorinda, I know that you enjoy riding. I’ve heard you speak of it in glowing terms.” With a stubborn gleam in his eye, he added, “And not just riding horses, either. All kinds of riding. Why, just this afternoon—”
She leapt to her feet. She had to put a stop to this before he ruined her reputation before her friends! “Dr. Worth, may I have a word with you in the drawing room, please?”
Triumph lit his face. “Certainly,” he drawled as he rose. “I’d like a word with you as well.”
“Is everything all right?” Lisette called out anxiously as Dorinda marched off without waiting to see if Percy followed.
To her surprise, it was the duke who answered. “Leave them be, dearling. You’ve done enough.”
“But Max—”
Dorinda didn’t hear the rest. She was already halfway down the hall. She could feel Percy hot on her heels, and she braced herself for a fight.
As soon as they’d both entered the drawing room and he’d closed the door, she whirled on him. “You refuse to let it go. You refuse to just—”
“Yes, I do,” he interrupted as he approached. “I can’t let it go. I love you, Dorinda.”
The words caught her entirely off guard. For a moment, her heart soared. But then she realized that it changed nothing and her heart plummeted. Curse the man! She should have known he would pull out a dirty trick like that.
“Even if you don’t love me now,” he went on, “perhaps in time—”
“Of course I love you!” she burst out, unable to pretend otherwise, not when her heart was breaking. “Do you think I would let just any man make love to me? But there’s no point to it. I can’t have children and that’s what you want—children. Don’t try to tell me that you don’t, because no matter what you say, I know the truth.”
“You’re right,” he said softly. “I do want children. I won’t deny it. I just need to know one thing. Do you want them?”
The cruelty of that question made her want to cry. “Yes, of course!” she choked out. “But not if it means torture and horrible remedies and—”
“It doesn’t.” Walking up, he seized her hands in his and wouldn’t let go. “I shouldn’t have left you with any fear that it might. I handled our last discussion very badly; I admit that. But I meant what I said before. I would never put a woman I loved through that.”
“You claim that now, but—”
“Let me finish. After you left, I thought about everything you’d told me. I thought about what I wanted, and I realized that I do want children. I do want to make a family with you.” When she stiffened, he added hastily, “But I don’t care if our children come from your womb or from the foundling hospital down the street. As long as you don’t care, we can take in urchins from Spitalfields.”
She stared at him, stunned, and he drew her closer. “It’s you I want, you whom I need in my life. And I will do whatever I must to convince you of that.”
Try as she might to resist them, the tender words crept under her defenses to steal around her heart. He would take in foundlings? Or urchins? For her? “You’d still have no real heir. The laws of England don’t allow for true adoption.”
“Why does that matter?” He cupped her head in his hands. “It’s not as if I have a large entailed estate or a title that must go to my male heirs. I can still leave my possessions to whatever children we do take in. As long as we have a child to love and hold, to raise and teach, we’ll have exactly what we want.”
Tears started in her eyes that she tried fruitlessly to contain. He was offering her hope, for the first time, that her life did not have to be as Edgar had dictated it. She could be what she pleased . . . with him.
He rubbed her tears away with his thumbs. “I see now that I tried to rush you into something you weren’t ready for. You’re skittish about doctors, and I didn’t understand until tonight how deeply that fear ran. Not until you walked out and left me—” He sucked in a ragged breath and lowered his voice. “I don’t want to lose you, sweetheart. Not now that I’ve found you.”
“Oh, Percy,” she murmured, finally beginning to believe him.
“I realize you have no reason to trust me not to hurt you. So all I ask for now is that you give me a chance. Let me court you properly. Let me show you that I can be trusted.”
It was the sweetest speech she’d ever heard, and it dawned on her suddenly that Edgar would have been incapable of it. He could no more have taken in a foundling than he could have leapt up to the moon. And he certainly never would have admitted to handling anything “badly.” Edgar really had been an arse.
What’s more, when she’d married Edgar, she’d had no inkling of his urgency for an heir. They’d courted a month without her knowing. So if Percy wanted to court her for weeks and still hide something from her, he could. More time together wasn’t going to tell her more than she’d already learned during their months of friendship. He was a good man. She knew it to her bones. He wouldn’t lie to her. Indeed, he hadn’t lied to her yet.
And staring up into his dear face, she knew the truth. None of it mattered, anyway. She loved him. She wanted to marry him. It was time to stop being a coward. It was time to take a chance.
She covered his hands with hers. “I don’t think a courtship is wise. For one thing, you still need someone to see about hiring you a maid of all work. For another, you would always be trying to tempt me into your bed anyway, so it makes much more sense for us to get the legalities
out of the way so that we can begin—”
He blotted her words out with a kiss that had her head reeling and her toes dancing. When at last he drew back, he was grinning. “So you will not sentence me to a life alone with Seymour, after all?”
With her heart full, she shook her head. “Seymour knows very little about buying tea trays,” she said lightly. “And absolutely nothing about organizing jars of emollients.”
“I was thinking about getting rid of Seymour anyway. Wouldn’t want to scare the patients.”
“Or our children,” she said softly. “Whoever they may be.”
His grin faded and he pulled her closer still. “Never walk out on me again, love. I don’t think I could bear it.”
“I won’t,” she promised.
This time their kiss was gentler and more intimate. The kiss of a man and his wife-to-be. When it was over, he murmured, “I suppose we should tell the duke and duchess.”
She arched an eyebrow. “This success will just encourage Lisette to meddle even more, you know.”
“Good.” Tucking her hand in his arm, he drew her toward the drawing room door. “She does it very well. And Seymour could use a wife, don’t you think?”
As she burst into laughter, they walked out into the hall and into their new life. Together.
Love historical romance by Sabrina Jeffries?
Find out just how steamy things get between Lady Zoe and Tristan after she hires him to find her real birth parents in the third book in the Duke’s Men series
HOW THE SCOUNDREL SEDUCES
2
TRISTAN GAPED AT the woman, then burst into laughter. When Dom and Lady Zoe glared at him, he quipped, “Oh, you were serious, were you?”
She looked down her pretty little nose at him like the pampered aristocrat she was. “Perfectly serious, I assure you.”
Dom shot him a quelling glance. “Perhaps you should explain, my lady.”
Tristan crossed his arms over his chest. “If you can. Last I heard, your ‘real’ mother was dead, and your ‘real’ father lived at his Yorkshire estate. Though I suppose he’s at his London town house now, given that you’re here plaguing us with your nonsense.”
Dorinda and the Doctor Page 4
