When she reached the chapel about a half a mile from the house, she walked around to the back, where the Earls of Norsey and their families had been buried for hundreds of years. Among the stones, she easily found her son’s little one.
She knelt beside him and set to work arranging the flowers beside his stone, tears streaming down her face.
* * *
The air was growing cooler by the time Rob approached the chapel behind Norsey House. It was almost dusk, and when he and Mackenzie had arrived, he’d learned that Claire had come here hours earlier and hadn’t been seen since.
Rob’s breath caught when he saw her. She was so beautiful. And at the same time, the way she knelt beside their son’s grave was so heartbreaking, his gut clenched so hard he nearly doubled over.
The grave was covered with white and blue flowers. He couldn’t read the headstone from here, but he knew what it said:
James Robert Campbell
died 12 July, 1814
aged 2 weeks
Life how short, Eternity how long.
Rob had held Jamie, wrapped tightly in a plaid, for the first time moments after he was born. Staring down at his tiny face, Rob was certain he was the bonniest and most perfect babe to ever be born into this world. But soon it grew clear that there was something wrong. That Jamie was struggling for each breath he took.
The doctor said he’d been born with weak lungs, but after watching the lad battle bravely through a few days, he’d given them hope that Jamie might survive. By the tenth day after his birth, however, Jamie’s fingernails and lips had turned blue with his struggle. One the evening of the fifteenth day, Rob had been holding him for the last time as he’d taken his final, weak breath, and the life had whispered out of his wee body.
Now, swallowing hard, Rob approached Claire. The crunch of his feet on the grass must have alerted her to his presence, but she didn’t turn away from their son’s grave.
He lowered himself to his knees beside her, wishing he’d brought flowers like she had. But he had nothing.
She didn’t look at him. He swallowed, trying to gather some moisture into his dry throat. “It’s his birthday tomorrow,” he whispered.
She placed a hand on the edge of the grave, a possessive gesture. “You haven’t mentioned it. I was sure you had forgotten.” Her voice was hoarse from lack of use.
He’d deserved that. He clasped his hands in his lap and looked down at them. “I shouldna left you like that this morning.”
She shrugged. “I expected it.” She turned to look at him for the first time, frowning. “But I didn’t expect to see you here. Why are you here?” Her voice was flat now, devoid of emotion. Which was almost as bewildering to him as her tears.
“For you,” he said, repeating her words to him at Waterloo. “And for him,” he added softly, placing his own protective palm on the grave.
She stiffened. “You should go.”
“Nay.”
“I want you to go,” she said.
“Not this time. I wilna leave you.”
“That is what you do, Rob. You leave.”
“Aye. I thought I was helping by leaving.”
She snorted. “How’s that, exactly?”
“Ye told me to go. The workings of a woman’s mind make no sense to me, Claire. Ye say ye wish me gone, but what you’re really saying is that ye wish me to stay.”
She dashed moisture from her eyes with the back of her hand. “Go. Just go. I don’t want to have this discussion. I just want to be with my baby. Leave me alone.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Go!” she shouted, her voice throbbing with an emotion he knew now not to mistake as anger. No, it was pain, thick and deep, that surged through her.
“Nay.”
She pushed him, but he held firm, catching her arm and bringing it gently to her side. When he let go, she pushed him again. And then she hit his chest. When that didn’t move him, she hit him again and again, crying loudly, punching him with as much power as her wee body could muster. He grabbed her, encircling his arms around her.
She struggled, trying to wiggle out of his grip. “No,” she sobbed. “Let me go. Leave me alone.”
“Nay, love. I’ll no’ be leaving you,” he murmured. “Shhh.” He held her tightly against him.
“Why are you here?” she demanded on a sob. “You don’t even care about him.”
Rob closed his eyes. “I loved him. I love him.”
“No, you don’t. You didn’t even cry when he died. And then…then you just left us. You left him, and you left me.”
He squeezed her to him. “I’ve never cared about anything the way I care about you and wee Jamie.”
“That isn’t true!”
“It is.”
She gripped his upper arms, her nails digging into the fabric of his shirt. “Then why didn’t you weep?”
“I…” He swallowed hard, the emotion boiling so strongly in his throat he could barely speak. “I wanted to be strong for you. You needed me to be strong for you.”
“I needed you to feel. To feel what I was feeling.”
“I did, Claire. I felt it all.”
“But you left.”
“You told me to leave.”
“I know I did! But—” The fight drained out of her all of a sudden. “I wanted you to stay. To be with me and mourn with me,” she said quietly.
“I was mourning with you, love.”
“But you didn’t show it.”
“And ye took it to mean I didna care?”
“Yes!”
He pulled her against him. “Good God, Claire. You canna know how much I cared. How much it destroyed me to see him, then to see what it did to you. And then when ye told me to go, I was at such a loss what to do. I thought the only way I could make it better was to do what ye wished for me to do, which was to leave you.”
She pressed her forehead against his shoulder. “I wanted to ask you to stay. I kept telling myself to beg you to stay close to me, to hold me. But you were so stoic, and I thought you must not be very affected, and I couldn’t bring myself to beg.”
He stroked her hair. “I hated to see you like that. Hurting so deeply. And I couldna do anything about it…and it made me feel so…” A breath hissed out through his teeth.
“I should have held on to you,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have let you go. Instead, I pushed you away.”
“Watching Jamie go and no’ being able to stop it… Then watching you suffer. I…I…” His voice wavered. “I wanted to be…strong. But I was weak. I couldna fix anything. I couldna save my son. I couldna help my wife. I’d failed. And I was a coward too. I ran.”
His chest convulsed. “I just…wanted him to live. I prayed so hard for it. And he didn’t…and…I didna ken what to do. I was…lost.”
This was the first time he’d said any of this aloud. It was the first time he’d allowed himself to think any of it.
The first tear slipped down his cheek. The first moisture to well in his eyes since his childhood.
And then he and his wife clung to each other and wept.
Chapter Fourteen
When darkness finally cast velvety shadows over the graves, they said good night to Jamie and walked back to Norsey House together, hand in hand. Claire felt raw and sensitive all over, as if she’d been scrubbed with a harsh brush. But she also felt cleansed.
Rob had loved their son. The truth of it felt like a precious gem that she’d found after years of searching. She took it and held it close to her heart. He’d loved Jamie.
He had grieved. She’d just been too stubborn and self-absorbed to realize that he’d grieved in a different way than she had.
And he loved her. No man on this earth, especially not one as tightly controlled, masculine, or as powerful as Rob, would expose himself like he had to a woman unless he trusted her and loved her beyond measure.
Grace and Duncan Mackenzie met them in Norsey House’s main salon. After taking o
ne look at their faces, Grace’s expression softened. She came to them and kissed them on the cheek, first Rob, then Claire. She squeezed Claire’s hand. “You both look exhausted. Shall I have a light dinner sent to your room?”
“Yes,” Claire said in relief. “That would be very nice. Thank you.”
They left Grace and Mackenzie and went to the room they shared whenever they came to Norsey House. The maids had already turned the bed down and laid out some fresh nightclothes, and within a few minutes, a small dinner was served.
Rob and Claire washed and changed in companionable silence, then sat at the small table where the meal had been laid out. Rob poured them each a glass of wine, then they shared a small portion of bread, cheese, and grapes.
She looked shyly across the table at her husband. “The doctor says I can bear you children, and I want that. But what if I couldn’t? Would you hate me because of it?”
He frowned. “I could never hate you.”
“But…”
“How could I be angry at something you canna control?”
“Because—”
“Aye, I’d like a brood of bairns. And I’d love ye for giving me one. But… Look at me, Claire.” When she looked up at him, his expression was grim. “Even if ye couldna give me one child, I’d still love you the same. You’d still be my wife… You’d still be my life. You understand that, don’t ye?”
She looked down at her plate. “A woman’s worth is often judged by her ability to bear children.”
“Not your worth,” he said softly. “I judged that long before I married you. And that had naught to do with your child-bearing hips.”
She smiled at that. “Thank you.”
“For not judging your child-bearing hips?”
“No, for judging I was good enough to marry.”
He pushed back from the table and held out his arms. “Come here, lass.”
She went into his arms, and he tugged her so she was sitting on his lap. He alternated from giving her loving little kisses to feeding her grapes and sips of wine and bread and cheese until she was pleasantly full and buzzing deep under her skin with arousal.
She wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder. “I will always miss him,” she whispered.
“I will too.”
“It’s never going to go away, though, Rob. It’s always going to be a part of me.”
“I understand, love. It’s a part of me too. It always will be.”
She closed her eyes, for the first time really feeling as if her husband understood. That he was here with her, in every way.
“I’m sorry I’m such a shrew.”
He laughed, his chest vibrating against her cheek. “I’ll be asking ye no’ to make a habit of it.”
“I’ll try not to. I fear I might just have a shrewish nature, though. So if it comes out once in a while, you can’t blame me.”
“If it ever does come out, brace yourself for the sting to your bottom.”
She pulled back, her smile widening. “Will you really spank me if I behave badly?”
He made that grumbling Scottish noise she adored.
“Then I should misbehave more often,” she said, laughing, burying her face back into his chest to hide her expression—which must have shown some combination of fear, excitement, and hopefulness. “Prepare yourself,” she murmured, her voice muffled against his chest, “for a great deal of shrewishness in the near future.”
And there it was—final proof she was an unabashed hoyden.
He stood suddenly, gathering her in his arms, and she squealed, clutching him so she wouldn’t topple to the floor.
He took her to the bed and dumped her unceremoniously on it. She scooted toward the head of the bed as he crawled atop it like a tiger after its prey.
When he reached her, he placed an arm on either side of her and flattened his hands against the headboard. “I’m going to show ye right now, wife, what happens to a misbehaving lass whose husband loves her beyond measure and never wants to spend another day apart from her.”
Her heart racing, she reached up to cup his cheek and looked into those beautiful ice-blue eyes. “This misbehaving lass loves her husband back beyond measure. She vows she will never again try to push him away.”
“And when she’s sad and when she weeps, he’ll be there, holding her safe in his arms,” he whispered. “He’ll never run again.”
She blinked hard. “Do you mean it, Rob?”
“I do. I love you, Claire. You are everything to me.”
“We’ve wasted so much time.”
“We have the rest of our lives,” he murmured. “And we’re no’ going to waste another day.”
And with that, Claire’s husband lay with her, cherished her, and taught her that nothing in the world would ever again come close to severing the bond they’d forged together.
About the Author
USA Today bestselling author Jennifer Haymore is the author of sexy historical and contemporary romance. Her books have been nominated for numerous awards, including five RT Book Reviews Reviewers Choice awards and the prestigious RITA® award for best historical romance.
You can find Jennifer in Southern California trying to talk her husband into yet another trip to England, helping her three children with homework while brainstorming a new five-minute dinner menu, or crouched in a corner of the local bookstore writing her next novel.
Connect with Jennifer
Website: jenniferhaymore.com
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Also by Jennifer Haymore
The House of Trent
The Duchess Hunt
The Rogue’s Proposal
The Scoundrel’s Seduction
The House of Trent Novellas
Devil’s Pearl
His For Christmas
One Night with an Earl
The Donovan Sisters
Confessions of an Improper Bride
Once Upon a Wicked Night (a short story)
Secrets of an Accidental Duchess
Pleasures of a Tempted Lady
One Night with an Earl (a novella)
The James Series
A Hint of Wicked
A Touch of Scandal
A Season of Seduction
Sugar Cay
The Remix
The Reunion
Standalone
Never Let Me Go
The Duchess Hunt
The House of Trent, Book 1
by
Jennifer Haymore
Simon Hawkins, duke of Trent, is no stranger to scandal. Rumors and innuendo have darkened the House of Trent for decades, and it has fallen to Simon to restore his tattered family name. He lives by a strict code of honor, but when he is called home to investigate his mother’s disappearance, the distinguished duke will tangle with temptation. For there waits the only woman he has ever loved-and the last woman he should desire...
Sarah Osborne has spent her life dreaming of Simon’s touch. But dukes do not long for lady’s maids—or so Sarah believes, until a stolen kiss sparks a passion that could be her ultimate undoing. As the couple begins a forbidden romance, a cunning enemy plots to destroy the duke and everything he loves. Now, caught in a blackmailer’s web, Simon faces an agonizing choice: sacrifice his family’s future or break Sarah’s heart.
"Emotional, sensual and enchanting, this tale of forbidden love is a romance to savor. Appealing characters, a beautiful, unconventional love story and family dynamics—as well as deft plotting and depth of emotion—make this a keeper."-4 1/2 Stars and a Top Pick from RT Book Reviews
Enjoy the Following Excerpt from The Duchess Hunt
Simon’s eyes met hers, held her steady in his gaze. “I would have liked to see you dance. I would have liked to dance with you.”
“I do not stand at
Lady Esme’s side as her equal, Your Grace,” Sarah reminded him gently. As Lady Esme’s companion, she could not encourage invitations to dance. Her duty was to be an observer, a protector of her lady’s interests.
He was quiet for a moment, staring down into the liquid he swirled in his glass. “I know Miss Farnshaw taught you how. I watched you once, years ago.”
“Did you?” she breathed.
“I did.” He raised his gaze, met her eyes. “I watched you dance a minuet in the parlor.”
“Oh.” Something about the way he was looking at her sent a soft heat flushing through her from the inside out.
“I wanted to dance with you then. I wanted to dance with you tonight, too. Did you not wish you had danced this evening?”
She considered this. She would have liked to dance, yes, to take the place of Miss Stanley on Simon’s arm. But how could she tell him that?
Suddenly, firmly, he set the glass on the side table and rose. He held out his hand to her.
She stood without thinking, reached out to take his hand. Like when he’d helped her into the carriage earlier, his grasp was warm and strong, but now was different. Now she touched his bare skin, felt the roughness of his fingertips under the sensitive flesh of her palm. His hand was warm and dry. Intoxicating. Touching him like this, skin to skin, was a heady feeling, indeed.
“A minuet,” he murmured. “Dance with me, Sarah.”
He stepped back and bowed formally to her. Entranced, she curtsied back. They both took a step, and he swept up her right hand once more in his firm grip. They turned to face the closed door at the other end of the room, and as he hummed the notes, they danced forward then began the figures and turns of the minuet. Throughout it all, Simon’s lips pressed together, humming the notes in a low tenor, and his eyes never left hers.
A Highlander's Heart: A Sexy Regency Romance (Highland Knights Book 1) Page 11
