Duke Du Jour

by Petie McCarty

  Wakefield took a long swallow of his brandy. “I was fortunate. My Nora came to love me as I loved her, but Ari will get the chance to love her husband right from the outset.”

  “But what if she chooses a bounder?” Jared argued. “You will not step in?”

  “If she chooses a bounder, I shall redeem him.” Wakefield’s expression went stony. “The hard way.”

  Judging by the earl’s menacing expression, Jared could believe him. “But will you still be around? According to Ariana, your health has not been—”

  The smug smile reappeared. “I am healthy enough, only tired of waiting for grandchildren. Thought I would hurry things along a bit.”

  “No matter whom she picked,” Jared said drily.

  “I told you. I am not worried. My daughter is an excellent judge of character. I trust her to choose wisely.” He took another slug of brandy and smacked his lips. “Now, why are you so worried about Dalton’s courtship, Reston? Are you planning to offer?”

  Jared had known he would face questions with this confrontation. Thought he would be ready, but answers evaded him. “I only wanted…I need for her to be…”

  Damned Wakefield was giving him that bloody hopeful look again. He stopped and sucked in a deep breath. “I just want her to have someone who loves her and will take care of her.”

  “Not you, I take it.” The hope flashed out like a snubbed candle flame.

  “No, not me.” The hardest words Jared ever had to say.

  Wakefield glowered. “And why is that?”

  “I have to go away for a while—”

  “So? Marry her when you get back.”

  “For a long while.”

  Now the earl glared. “How long?”

  “Maybe…Possibly…” Jared swallowed hard. “Probably forever.”

  A gasp sounded at the doorway.

  Jared spun around. The look on Ari’s face cut into him.

  Betrayal…

  You lied to me…

  She sprinted for the front door.

  “Ariana, no!”

  He felt like his heart had been sliced out of his chest.

  Wakefield’s shout of, “You bastard! You broke my girl’s heart!” echoed through the foyer as Jared raced after her.

  “Ari, wait!”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Ariana streaked out the front door, magically opened by Malcolm in time. She never slowed, leaping the last two steps to the entrance drive. She heard Jared yell for her to wait and forced her legs to pump faster. If she could just get to Medusa, she could get away. She wouldn’t stop to saddle her; she rode bareback all the time. She could race her mare into the hills, then Jared would never see her tears. Tears that slid down her cheeks the faster she ran.

  He told her father he wouldn’t marry her. He had said, “No, not me.”

  He was going away for a long while, probably forever. Was that to avoid her? Had she driven him away from his home? Oh, why had she told him how she felt? This new and improved Jared harbored all the honor the original Jared had lacked.

  Footsteps thundered on the path behind her. She dared a glance back over her shoulder. Jared was gaining on her. His legs hammered like a bellows pounding all out, as though his life depended on catching her. Willing her legs to go faster failed, for she had nothing left. The stable beckoned, a mere twenty yards away. She had to make it. Her arms pumped in tandem with her legs to gain momentum, and she concentrated on putting one boot in front of the other.

  Relief swathed over her, like the swirling stable shadows, once she passed the great double doors. She had made it! With the next breath, two large hands clamped onto her arms.

  “Now, I’ve got you!”

  “Let me go!” she raged as momentum stumbled her and Jared forward.

  “Never!” His big hands tightened and pulled her back against him.

  Horses tossed heads over stall gates, nodding in confusion. Others stomped their displeasure at the wild interruption to their quiet repose.

  Ari fought, tried to pull free, but she had used every ounce of her strength trying to outrun him.

  “If you get free, I will just run you down again. Now stop struggling!”

  The same cluster of grooms and stable lads, who had met their arrival an hour earlier, now surfaced from every nook and cranny in the stable at the disturbance, some armed with rakes and pitchforks. Her humiliation was now complete. Her unwanted heroes would see her tears, too.

  “Get out!” Jared roared. “All of you! Out!”

  The stable lads scattered, but Barker, the head groom, remained. “Lady Ari?”

  She wouldn’t look up, could not let him see. He would never leave otherwise, even though Jared easily outsized him.

  “Go,” she ordered Barker. “Please.” The groom faded into the shadows.

  Jared’s breathing sounded labored. At least, she had not made her capture easy.

  “Please let me go,” she tried.

  “I can’t.” His voice faltered. He cleared his throat. “Not until I have explained things. Told you the whole truth.”

  The whole truth?

  Tears be damned. She turned in his grasp to face him, watched him wince at the sight of her tears.

  “Oh God, Ari—” His voice cracked, and he crushed her to his chest. His muscular arms banded tight around her as though he would never let go.

  He had to care. He could not hold her like this and not care. She relished the feel of his protective embrace, nuzzled at his cravat. Pride be damned. She needed this. If he left forever, this may be all she would have to remember him.

  He pulled back just enough to gaze into her eyes. “I am not who you think I am.”

  “I know.”

  Shock throttled his features.

  “You are a much better man than you were before.” She sniffed back another onslaught of tears. “That is why you have to leave.”

  His eyes widened. “How did—”

  “This is because I told you how I felt. You think this is best for me—for both of us—if you just leave.”

  “Oh, Ari,” he groaned, holding her tight again, “not best for me, but I have no choice in the matter.”

  “I know.” She tried to pull free.

  He yanked her back. “No, you don’t know. This is not because of what you said or how you feel. I was overjoyed when you told me you loved me, but I cannot allow it, because I—”

  He let her go so suddenly she stumbled back two steps. Jared was happy she loved him?

  He took three paces toward the door, spun around, and marched back. “I am—” He cleared his throat. “I am from the future.”

  She stared. What the devil did that mean?

  “I do not belong here. I am not the Reston you know.”

  “Not Jared?”

  “Not the right Jared.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “How could you? I don’t understand it all myself.” Regret seeped into his expression. “I am not the seventh Duke of Reston. You are looking at Jared Philip Bartholomew Langley, thirteenth Duke of Reston. From the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth.”

  She felt faint, stumbled backward two steps.

  He was there in a breath, grabbing her arms to steady her. “It was the fountain at Haverly that caused all this. I wandered into an overgrown section of my back garden—in my century—fell into a fountain and hit my head. My eyes opened here in 1816.”

  She didn’t say anything. What could she say? I want to believe you, even though I don’t understand? She just stared for long minutes. His eyes were guileless. Whether or not his tale was true, one thing was certain—Jared believed it.

  He never moved, just held her arms, and let her absorb his truth.

  She swallowed hard and tugged her arms free. He let her go.

  “Traveling through time is impossible. That is the stuff of magicians and charlatans.” She repeated what her head told her. Her heart watched his eyes.

  Jared sighed. �
��Trust me. I am no magician or charlatan. I never believed in time travel either, but I am here in 1816 and I belong in the future. So, I have no choice but to believe time travel is possible.”

  “You were dressed oddly that first day,” she recalled.

  He nodded eagerly. “Proper attire for my century.”

  “You did not care for Padwick. Hated his leeches.”

  Another eager nod. “Leeches will disappear from doctor’s bags soon enough in this century.”

  “Jared—the real Jared—”

  “Was killed at Waterloo, hopefully not guilty of conspiring against the crown.”

  She had known something was not right about Jared from the beginning, but she certainly had not expected this. “I was so afraid your memory would come back, and you would return to your old ways. I guess you never really lost your memory.”

  He shook his head. “I knew the estate and the surrounding area—even the London townhouse. It still exists in my time. The people are what threw me. Obviously, I couldn’t know any of them, so I fabricated the amnesia as a cover.

  “And you are going to return to your old ways.”

  He nodded slowly. “To my proper time.”

  “Forever,” she whispered, feeling tears prick at her eyelids.

  He went deathly still for a long moment, then he cupped her face in his big hands. “I cannot risk changing the course of history.”

  She tried to turn away, did not want him to see her tears.

  Jared held fast, his eyes roaming her face as though memorizing her features. “Ari, I would take you with me if I could, but I can’t. Leaving you is tearing me apart.”

  She wanted to beg him to stay, but how could she be so selfish? He was right. He did not belong here, and he had to go home. To his home. She trembled with the wanting of him, nonetheless.

  Slowly he pressed his lips to hers, lightly as though to gentle her like a fractious horse. He nibbled her lower lip, and she leaned against him, felt his arms come slowly around to lock behind her back. She hugged him tight, wanted to melt into him.

  The tip of Jared’s tongue teased along her lips, and when she parted them, sank into the depths beyond. He pressed his tongue to hers over and over, and in his kiss, she could feel him open his heart, to convince her he spoke the truth. His hands eased into her hair and held her in place while he took her mouth in a wild surge of emotion. He would take her with him if he could.

  She kissed him back with all the fear and torment of a future without him in it. Kissed him hard, her tongue silkily meeting each thrust of his. To tell him if this was forever, this kiss had to last. Their tongues tangled over and over with need and desperation and love. Yes, love. She could feel his love in this kiss, whether he had told her the words or not. His honor would not have allowed him to tell her, so he showed her. Joy suddenly filled her at this, the saddest moment of her life. Jared would depart her time, but he was leaving his love behind. She refused to let this kiss end—the memory would have to last her forever.

  Too soon, Jared pulled back, panting and trembling just as she was. He rested his forehead against hers. In a voice hoarse with need, he said not the three words she wanted to hear, but the two she did not. “I’m sorry.”

  She had to get away before she crumbled. There would be no I love you. She had to make this easy for him since his honor had left him no choice. She would send him home regret free.

  She took one careful step back. Then two. She gazed at his handsome face, tried in the seconds that remained to memorize his features. He studied her, waiting for her to say something.

  Measured words. She needed carefully measured words, nothing to make this harder for either of them. Her next words could make this departure easy for him.

  “Well, that’s it then. You and I are both left with no other choice.” She tried for a normal smile and failed miserably, so she turned and slowly put one foot in front of the other until she passed the heavy outer doors and reached the footpath—and left her broken heart behind in the stables.

  Moments later, she heard Jared thunder out of the stables on Hammer. Down the entrance drive at a fast gallop, he roared for Harry to follow. The giant wolfhound’s barks echoed through the trees.

  Ari never looked back.

  ****

  Jared never slowed Hammer until he reached Haverly. He was still seeing red. Ari had said, “You and I are both left with no other choice.”

  What the hell had she meant? Another man was her choice? One of her unworthy suitors?

  “Oh…sorry, Jared. You are leaving, so I have no choice but to pick someone else,” he grumbled.

  Just like that?

  He had wanted to roar and rage at her, but he could not utter a word in his defense. He was leaving, and he had caused all this. He could only roar and rage at himself.

  He cleared the corner of the manor house on the big stallion, much to the dismay of his own grooms, Dart and Wink, who streaked from the stables to lend a hand. He never slowed or cast them a wayward glance. Good-byes were painful, and he had the headache to prove it. Damned if he would suffer any more good-byes this day.

  Reaching the border to Cook’s herb garden, he rolled his eyes heavenward with a thank-you that the small area lay deserted. He dismounted at the gate, and the big wolfhound came up alongside, his tongue lolling out in a hard pant from trying to keep up with Hammer all the way from Wakefield Manor.

  “You stuck with me, boy.”

  Harry looked up with all the love a dog can give, shining in his eyes, and Jared fought back the lump forming in his throat. He would need all his strength to do what must be done, and this was one good-bye he didn’t need to say.

  “No reason you can’t go with me.” Harry licked his hand.

  Two strides into the little garden, he froze. There it was. The source of the upheaval in his life. The old fountain had indeed been repaired, and the cherub statues happily dispensed their water to the contained depths.

  A cry sounded in the distance. Jared ignored it.

  If Seven truly had died now and Jared went back, who would father Eight through Twelve? A Reston duke, he knew, but who? The cousin Bullen hated? He had found no journals past that of Six. Hell of a time to worry about all this. And why had he not tried harder to discover the particulars before ending up here. He would find his cousin Jackson Langley. Maybe his cousin would know. That would be his first task upon returning.

  If he made it back…

  At least, Bullen had been taken care of. He would be a viscount. Jared could leave comforted, knowing that his brother would be fine and his Haverly tenants would be fine. His friends would be fine as well. And Jared? He was going home a better man. True and loyal friends make you a better man, and he truly had those.

  The lump in his throat was expanding, so he strode forward, stared down into the shallow fountain pool. The water looked like…water. Nothing magical. He sat on the low retaining wall and beckoned to Harry.

  “Come on then. Time to go.”

  The wolfhound padded forward, then stopped a few feet away. Jared motioned him closer. Harry whined and inched forward, still leaving a couple feet between them.

  “Jared, no! Don’t do it!”

  His head jerked up. Bullen raced down the hill toward the kitchen garden. Jared waved him back. The last thing he wanted was to say good-bye to the only brother he had ever known—true or not, brief time or no.

  “I have to go!” he hollered at Bullen, then grabbed for Harry and toppled backward into the fountain.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Jared opened his eyes or tried to. Water ran off his forehead and hair, blurring his vision and forcing his eyes closed again. He swiped the wet hair back from his face with one hand and the water from his eyes with the other. Hell, he was all wet. He blinked several times to clear his vision, then searched the small garden for his brother.

  No one.

  He was alone. And the garden was…overgrown.

  My God! I
did it!

  He had gone back or rather forward in time. He stood up and wrung the water out of his jacket, waistcoat, shirt, and breeches, as best he could while still wearing them, and sat down on the edge of the fountain to remove his boots and dump the water from inside. He struggled to put them back on and grinned. Where was Wiggs when you needed him? That thought preceded an unmistakable stab of pain right near his heart.

  In the distance, up on the slight rise stood the ivy-covered manor house looking as ancient as ever. But he felt no joy at coming home. This did not feel like home. No Bullen, no Dexter—dear God, no Ari. The three of them and all his quirky servants and tenants had made Haverly and his time there feel like home.

  What have I done?

  Given up his only chance at happiness? Come back to continue a long line of men who made lousy marital choices? Spent their married lives miserable, only to produce the cursed one heir, no spare who would repeat the disreputable process all over again?

  He vowed at that moment to change his life. To make a difference with his life. He would make sure his children made a difference as well. He vowed he would have a spare.

  Shoulders back, he stood and looked around for Harry.

  He was all alone—like always.

  Damn.

  Filled with good intentions and notions about changes he would make to his life, Jared fought through the brambles and weeds to reach the manicured portion of Haverly’s gardens. He had made it halfway across the main garden before Ari’s image flashed before his eyes, and her smile almost brought him to his knees.

  He stopped to take several deep breaths and try to slow his racing heart. He had come all the way back to the future. If he was going to survive here, he would have to leave the past two hundred years behind him. His memories had to be buried, or he would go crazy stuck here and would never fulfill his good intentions. Right there in the middle of his garden, he mentally filed away the images of his friends into a vault deep in his soul. Sharp pains tugged and pulled at his heart when he locked the images away, but he must never reopen that vault. He couldn’t. That way lay disaster for his peace of mind.