“I am trying very hard to keep sight of the girl I fell in love with. However, I am beginning to wonder if she was only a mirage.”
“That’s unfair. You wanted me to occupy a very limited space in your life. Now you’re changing the terms, expecting things from me that I can never give.”
“I am trying to love you, fully, completely. Not just as a well-cared-for plaything to occupy me when I am doing nothing else and to be set on a shelf at all other times.”
“That’s very insulting, David. I do not sit on a shelf waiting for you to come for playtime. I have my own interests, my own life.”
“Keeping yourself walled off from others? Spending your time alone, indulging your imagination purely for your own amusement—this is what you want from life? It is a miserable excuse for aggrandized self-pity and indulgence.”
“Aggrandized self-pity and indulgence? That’s how you term it? I call it peace and emotional safety.”
Her feckless approach to life began to pall. He’d never been able to shrink from life like that.
Duty. Service. Reputation. Honor. All these things had been impressed upon him from his birth. Beat into him, literally with a cane. His father, so cool and dignified in public. So demanding and full of rage in private. He had given David no quarter. The dukes of Hartley had always given of themselves to king and country. Mostly in politics.
David had given and given and given. Everything.
Now he wanted something for himself.
Jeanne.
“Be what I need you to be.” The duchess of Hartley must be as bound to service and duty as the duke. He had no choice in the matter.
“David…”
“If you loved me, you would.”
She blanched again and her eyes widened. “That’s unfair!”
Maybe it was. He knew he was being completely irrational. Dictatorial. Demanding. He couldn’t stop himself. “Before I met you, I had peace in my life.”
Now he was constantly unhappy. Unsatisfied with his life.
Her eyes narrowed. “You were not happy. You were bent on driving yourself into an early grave with your work.”
“I was happy,” he insisted.
“You were not happy. You had wrapped yourself into a shroud of grief and guilt. All over a woman who never truly cared for you.” Her face scrunched up in an expression of pure disgust. “Thérèse.”
She spat the name.
“You’ll take that back,” he demanded.
She fisted her hands at her sides. “I shan’t. I hate your Thérèse. You have made a martyr of yourself over her. You have taken a perverse pleasure in the self-punishment of it.”
He hated her for saying that. He hated himself for hating her. She was only speaking the truth. But he didn’t feel like giving quarter. “I had peace in my life before you. I was happy with my life.”
Hurt flashed in her eyes. It almost softened him. Then she lifted her chin. “I had peace as well. And I was truly with my life.”
“You are as much a liar as you accuse me of being.”
She folded her arms across her chest once more. “Well, at least we agree on one thing.”
“And what is that?”
“We are both unhappy now.”
“I can’t continue with you that way.” The words surprised him but it was the truth. He couldn’t continue with her as they were doing. He took a deep breath. “We’ve come to a crossroads, I see.”
“What are you trying to say to me, David?”
“I am saying that if you won’t even try to overcome your prejudices and fears, if you won’t take the smallest step to overcome the wounds left by your experiences with your father, then you aren’t the woman I thought you were.”
“You are putting very strange terms on our arrangement. I never led you to believe I would share your interests.”
He placed his hands on her shoulders. “I know it is not your fault. Neither of us is to blame.”
She shrunk from under his touch.
He shook his head. “Jeanne, I can’t keep living like this. I come here and I spend so many idle hours. I do it because I must have connection with you. But I am not a man who can long enjoy idle hours. I need the woman in my life to share my interests, to share my crusades. We don’t share anything but bedchamber interests.”
And if all that were true then she would never be the wife for him. He didn’t want only a mistress with whom he spent so many idle hours. He couldn’t keep spreading himself between two lives. He wanted and needed a true partner in life.
“What do you propose we do now?” Her voice sounded so strained that the pressure in his chest returned and increased as though his heart were being crushed.
“Perhaps I should offer you a pension and put your name on the deed of this house. Then you can have your isolated quietude and peace all the time.”
“And you can return all your energies to your political crusading.”
He couldn’t tell what she was feeling from her voice. She had resumed that old prickly, falsely hardened exterior. And if he left her, that is how she would go through her life. That hurt most of all. That he would bear the responsibility for her withdrawal, her feeling of a final rejection from men. From life.
But if he stayed with her and she refused to grow, he would begin to resent her. He knew this as sure as he breathed. He leaned closer to her and placed a kiss on her cheek. Her flesh was cool. Not even by a catch of her breath did she respond to the gesture.
He had bared his heart to her and made a plea that she come at least halfway and try to meet with him for a true sharing of their souls. And it had closed her off to him, made her hard again. That hurt most of all.
He pulled away from her and stood. He crossed the chamber and poured another drink. But when he put it to his lips, the taste was sour. He drank it anyway.
“What shall we do, David?” Her tone was flat.
“We should not make any decisions tonight. I shall go to Scotland and in the meantime perhaps we shall both sort out our thoughts better.”
“But you believe we shall part upon your return?”
If only she’d show some emotion about the subject. If only she’d try…
The detached look on her face was at odds with her lush, full-bosomed body, her full sensual pink mouth and large blue eyes. It was also at odds with his memory of her ardent responses to his lovemaking.
Yes, he could go to her and initiate some carnal activity. Give her discipline and she would perhaps cave to his demands. But this was something altogether different from their carnal life. This was something that must come from the most independent part of herself. She must give to him from that part of herself.
“David? Shall we part upon your return?”
“I cannot say. But it appears more a possibility than not at this moment.”
Chapter Twelve
Jeanne spent the morning after David’s departure in the parlor. Her morning chocolate had developed a film and long grown cold. Despite the fire, she huddled on the settee in blanket, shivering.
She had lied to David. She hadn’t been happy living alone in her garret. She had been numb. Dead inside.
Now he wanted to end their agreement. She was no longer enough for him. She could never be enough for him.
She would never be warm again.
“Miss Darling, there’s a gentleman here to see you.”
Listlessly, Jeanne looked up. Mrs. Wilson was wiping her hands on her apron, her nervous habit.
“A gentleman?”
“He says his name is Bernard Barrymore.” Mrs. Wilson sounded incredulous.
“Oh.”
“Miss Darling,” Mrs. Wilson had lowered her voice. “Is he really the Bernard Barrymore?”
There was a girlish gush to the matron’s voice. Any other time it would have made Jeanne hard-pressed not to laugh. “I didn’t realize you were fond of the theatre, Mrs. Wilson.”
“Oh, Miss, everyone adores Mr. Barrymore’s
plays. They are the best. Is he-he really the one?”
“Yes, he’s the one.”
“Shall I show him in?”
The last thing Jeanne wanted was to receive company, especially not an old lover. Her most bitter critic. But if she wouldn’t see him then he would think she was afraid to face him or that she cared one way or the other about his negative opinions of her. Better to face him and let him see that he was unimportant to her now.
Pathetic. She was behaving in a most pathetic manner. She didn’t need the approval of men. She’d known that before but had lost touch with it in her passion with David.
She let the blanket fall from her shoulders and straightened her spine. “Yes, bring him here.”
Mrs. Wilson nodded and hurried away.
Bernard walked the parlor slowly. Funny, how one expects to see changes after not seeing a former lover for a long time, but he looked the same. Dark brown hair, large, emotive black-brown eyes. “Good morning, Miss Darling.”
“Good morning, Bernard.”
“How are you doing?”
“I am fine,” she lied, smoothly she hoped. “Won’t you have a seat?”
She motioned to the wingchair opposite her settee.
He sat, placing his satchel at his feet. He was never without his satchel. How dedicated he was to his work. She envied that.
He addressed her again. “And how is your writing?”
“It’s fine.” Another lie.
“That’s excellent.”
“I am to believe you really think so?” She couldn’t prevent her bitterness from leaching out. So much for showing him how much his opinions didn’t matter.
“Miss Darling, please—”
This was bordering on ridiculousness. “Oh Bernard, please call me Jeanne.”
“It is allowed?”
“Of course it is allowed.”
“Then we are still friends?”
“Let’s hope we’re not enemies.”
He raised his brows. “I dare hope not.”
An awkward silence filled the space between them.
“What is on your mind, Bernard?”
“I think Ratherford was a fool to have let you go as he did. I think he treated you abominably and I told him so too.”
“I suppose I owe you thanks for that.”
“Your stories with will be such a success with the new publisher, he will be gnashing what is left of his teeth into bloody stumps with the frustration.”
She suppressed a shudder. “What absolutely frightful imagery, Bernard.”
“Oh, at least give me a smile. Surely an old friend is worth a smile.”
She stared at him coolly.
“Even a small one.” He pinched his thumb and forefinger with a tiny space between.
“What makes you think that Ratherford has lost anything more than the ill-conceived scribblings of a cold-hearted fraud of an authoress?”
Bernard’s face contorted as though pained. “Oh, Jeanne.”
“I don’t know why you’re here. Come to your point.”
“Yes, of course. But first, please let me explain. There is nothing wrong with your writing. It is exactly as one would expect from a girl your age.”
“You said it lacked feeling.”
“It had as much feeling as the life experiences of a twenty-one-year-old woman would imbue it with.”
Oh, it was well for him to put it like that. Bernard was all of twenty-five.
“Then why would you say those things to me?”
“Because I had finally admitted to myself that I would never inspire any passion in you besides that which you pretended. I was hurt. I wanted to hurt you. What I did was inexcusable.”
She gaped at him, not knowing what to say.
“I saw you at the theatre with your duke. I saw the way you looked at him—God, you were lovely, as though you had stars in your eyes—and I realized that no matter what either of us had done, you were never going to look at me like that. And then I knew that it had all turned out as it should have.”
She and David were likely never to share the same closeness and affection again yet she had to smile. Despite his attempts to present a veneer of cynicism, Bernard was always a fool for a happy ending.
There were no happy endings outside of a book or off of a stage. People couldn’t be what the other expected. Those foolish enough to love opened themselves up to disappointment.
“You’re wondering why I came here?” His voice was a bit shaky, as though he weren’t sure of her reaction. As though her reaction mattered to him. “I have completed a new play.”
“That’s grand, Bernard.” She returned his smile.
“Well, I hope it is—a grand thing. I am not sure. I tried to write something deeper, more meaningful than I have in the past.” He stood and walked to the window then stood there tapping the pane.
“I am sure if you wrote it, it is grand.”
“I wish you would read it.”
“What?”
He turned to face her. His expression was strained. “Would you read it, Jeanne, and give me your honest opinion?”
His request stunned her. She tried not to show it. “Of course.”
“You must be honest. You cannot allow me to make a coxcomb of myself.”
His earnest tone made her smile widen. “I would never allow that.”
“Good.” He held his hands at hip level and punched his fist into the opposite palm. “Sometimes, Jeanne, I really fear that I shall never be a great playwright.”
“You are a great playwright. A brilliant one.”
He shook his head. “I don’t mean simply that I could bring in audiences night after night. I mean being a writer whose work can stand up to the test of time. Don’t you ever think about that? Do you ever think about what generations from now will think of your work? And more importantly, will your work make them think?”
Her heart began to beat very hard. She didn’t want to think of this topic today, let alone discuss it with her old lover and mentor. “I don’t suppose I do.”
Bernard’s serious expression softened. He came to her and touched her face. “I forget how young you still are. However, you may think of these things someday. Or perhaps the love of your duke is enough for you. You are after all, a woman.”
Now she had neither her writing nor her dear, beloved duke. A lump formed in her throat and she looked away from. Her vision grew blurry. “You have such passion for your work, Bernard.”
“Not always, my dear. When I met you, I was going through one of the darkest winters of my writer’s heart. I was sure that I was finished as an author. I hated everything I wrote.”
“You’re jesting with me.”
“No, I am telling you the truth. Do you know, it is so much easier to talk with you now that we are no longer lovers?”
“Is it?”
“Yes, and I am glad for I wanted to tell you these things. I needed to tell you these things for you are my muse.”
“Your muse?”
“Yes, you broke my heart and woke me from my long, cold winter. My wounds taught me how to truly feel.” He pulled a manuscript from his satchel and handed it to her. “Here it is.”
“I shall take very good care of it.”
“I know you will.” He placed a kiss to her forehead. She heard the quickness of his breathing and knew it was one of his impulsive gestures. He would fret over having done so later. He was really quite a dear. “Now I know I shall never have any wife or mistress except my writing.”
After he left, she wondered at such passionate dedication. Would she ever feel it again? Bernard assumed that she might be content with David but she knew that she mightn’t have him any longer. And she wouldn’t know for certain until he came back.
He wasn’t coming back for weeks. How would she bear the waiting and terrible suspense?
She picked up Bernard’s manuscript and flipped through it. It was a vast honor to be asked to read it but her heart was not
in it.
“Miss Darling, there’s someone else to see you?”
What now?
“Yes, Mrs. Wilson?”
“Lord Toovey wishes to speak with you.”
Jeanne put a hand to her head. “Please tell him I am not receiving visitors.”
“He says it is quite urgent.”
“Tell him I am not available.”
Mrs. Wilson wiped her hands and wrung her apron. “Very well, Miss Darling.”
Jeanne glanced down at the manuscript.
The sound of boots on the floor made her look up. Charles Toovey smiled at her. “Good day, Miss Darling.”
Mrs. Wilson came running in behind him. “I tried to tell him no, but he insisted.”
“Very well, Mrs. Wilson.” Jeanne’s neck began to ache.
“Shall I bring tea and cakes?” the housekeeper offered in a conciliatory tone.
“No, that will not be necessary,” Jeanne said, holding Toovey’s gaze the whole time. “Lord Toovey won’t be staying long.”
Mrs. Wilson left them.
“Aren’t you even going to invite me to sit?”
“No, I am not. You are not welcome here.”
He sat in the wingchair opposite her settee.
Jeanne turned her attention to her book but she could feel his gaze burning into her. Her heart pounded. That he had pushed his way in here disturbed her. All right, it was frightening her considerably. Tom would be back soon but what good would that do? Was he going to toss a peer of the realm out on his arse?
“Why don’t you like me, Miss Darling?”
“Lord Toovey, the duke would not want you here and you know it. Will you please leave?”
“Ah, the mighty duke. Of course he has poisoned your mind against me. I am not guilty of everything Hartley is likely to have accused me of.”
“Oh no?”
“I didn’t give it to her.”
“What?”
“I didn’t give Thérèse the syphilis, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He had dropped his voice to a whisper.
Even so, hearing that word spoken in a public setting shocked her. A second wave of shock hit her as the meaning of his words sank in. “Thérèse has…syphilis?”
She whispered the very last part.
Her Mystery Duke Page 24
