There was only one thing, however, he could do.
Heath started for the door.
“What are you going to do?”
He didn’t break stride. “The right thing.” His heart breaking, Heath wound his way through his family’s estate. The same corridors he and Emilia had stolen down these past days together. Emotion stuck in his throat. Damn it all.
At last, he reached his father’s office and froze with his fingers on the handle. “…and this particular box was gifted to Nelson by his personal secretary, Unwin,” his father was saying. “I have it on good authority—”
Heath let himself in, and it was hard to say who was more relieved to see him—his father or Renaud.
“That particular box was gifted during a dinner party in Sicily in ’98,” Heath finished.
“It is good to know someone listens around here.” His father thumped the desk in a primal mark of paternal approval.
“Father, may I have a moment?” he asked quietly.
The older duke was already moving out from behind the desk. Not bothering with a parting greeting, he paused alongside Heath. “Your mother will hang me by my feet if you allow that one free reign of these halls.”
Yes, Heath’s mother was nothing if not loyal. Loyalty seemed to be the bane of the Whitworth existence.
“And another thing”—his father tossed a suspicious look over at Renaud—“watch my snuffboxes around that one. Don’t trust a gent who won’t honor his word.”
When his father had gone, Heath closed the door and stared at the panel for a moment, unable to face his friend.
“You needn’t feel badly about that. I quite deserved it,” his friend called over in somber tones that brought Heath around to face him.
No, but there were all manner of other things he did and should feel horrid over. Betrayals that spoke to Heath’s blackened soul. “You’re here,” he said needlessly.
“It is overdue,” Renaud said, glancing around the office. A small smile formed on his lips, though sad and empty. “Nothing has changed here, I see,” he murmured, directing that to the duke’s snuffbox collection.
Everything had changed here.
“My parents are insistent that you leave,” Heath said, tired of sidestepping the reason for his friend’s visit.
Renaud’s shoulders came back. “And what of you, Mulgrave?” he returned, coming to the middle of the carpet. Suspicion darkened his friend’s life-hardened gaze. “What do you want?”
Heath fisted and unfisted his hands. For, God rot his soul, he wanted Emilia. He wanted Renaud gone. And he wanted to go back to the joy he’d known with Emilia. Heath met the man he’d known since Eton in the middle of the room. “It’s been ten years, Renaud.”
A muscle ticked at the corner of the duke’s right eye. “I don’t need you to tell me how long it’s been since I’ve seen her.” He took another step toward Heath. “Just as I don’t intend to let your parents”—he gave Heath a hard look—“or you prevent me from seeing Emilia because of some misbegotten fear of what the ton will say about our meeting.”
He started past Heath.
“Before you do, there’s something I’d say to you,” he said after Emilia’s former betrothed.
The duke stopped and wheeled slowly around. “What is it?”
Nihil durat in aeternum…Nothing lasts forever…
Chapter 13
All you need is love. That is, the love of a good, honorable gentleman.
Mrs. Matcher
A Lady’s Guide to a Gentleman’s Heart
On the morning of her wedding, when she’d been in her full bridal regalia and on her way to meet her bridegroom, her carriage had been stopped midway through the journey to the cathedral. That was when a servant of the Duke of Renaud delivered the note that had changed the rest of her life.
From that moment on, Emilia had learned to brace herself when something unexpected happened.
That was why, as she stood outside and caught sight of Barry striding down the steps of Lady Sutton’s terrace with a hunting rifle in hand and their mother following close behind, unease formed in her belly.
“Where is he?” Barry demanded, his impressive display of fury ruined as he reached the bottom step and skidded on ice.
The rifle tumbled from his fingers.
“Barry,” their mother cried. “Have a care with that.” Yes, their mother would be panicked at the possibility of any accident befalling the Gayle heir. “You are going to require that shot.”
Emilia’s stomach churned. Bloody hell, this was bad indeed. Of all damned times for her brother to become a protective sort. “I assure you both,” she said in even tones, “that I’m quite old enough to make decisions for myself.”
Her brother inspected the chambers of his weapon. “Oh, with all due respect reserved for someone of your advanced years, I couldn’t care less about what you want,” he informed her quite cheerily. “This is more about what the gentleman deserves.”
Squinting, Barry aimed the gun at the terrace.
Growling, Emilia gripped the weapon and forced it sideways until the barrel pointed safely at the ground. “I’ve had enough of your theatrics. I am here because I want to be here.”
Her mother released a shuddery gasp and pressed her fingertips to her lips. “You do not know what you are saying.”
How could they continue to judge him still? “I know very well what manner of man he is, Mother. And he deserves far more than this treatment.”
“Your father and his blasted gout,” Mother muttered to herself. “He leaves me to deal with all this.”
Emilia pursed her mouth. “I beg your pardon?”
“Your judgment has been forever flawed where gentlemen are concerned, Emilia Aberdeen,” her mother charged, giving a toss of her hair. The plait her maid had clearly not had time to tend flopped over her shoulder. “Well, since your father couldn’t bring himself to be here, I’ll make the decision.” The decision? Her mother turned to Barry. “You have my permission to shoot him.”
“You are impossible,” she cried out, throwing her palms up in the air. “He is all that is good and—” Her gaze collided with that of the tall figure overhead. “Oh,” she whispered. They hadn’t been speaking about Heath.
But for the wind whisking through the countryside, only silence met her utterance.
Early on, after his defection, all of her thoughts of the Duke of Renaud had come with rage and hurt. In time, her feelings had shifted, and she’d wondered who he’d become. She’d wondered, given the way she had been forever altered by the way their betrothal ended, if he too had changed.
Standing here before her now, he was a stranger… in so many ways.
More muscular and broader across the shoulders, he had a raw, bearlike quality to him different than the strapping rogue who’d caught her eye and then her heart. His hair, always unfashionably long, now hung even longer past his neck. Gone was the half grin he’d worn as effortlessly as his own skin. In its place was a somber, terse line of hard lips.
In the end, the likeliest of their quartet broke the impasse. The duchess stepped between her daughter and the man who’d broken her heart a lifetime ago. “Leave this instant, Renaud. My daughter has nothing to say to you—”
Emilia rested a hand on her mother’s arm. “Mama,” she murmured, but her mother continued over that interruption.
“—now or e—”
“Mother,” she repeated in firmer tones that at last penetrated her mother’s diatribe.
Renaud started down the steps.
Barry shifted so he stood shoulder to shoulder with Emilia.
At last, he reached the assembled Aberdeens.
In the earliest days of being jilted, Emilia had thought about what would happen when she again saw Connell. She’d alternated between scripting hateful invectives and pleading for him to love her as she’d loved him.
But now, all these years later, there was a peculiar… nothingness to this meeting.
This man with a distant, impenetrable stare was, and always had been, a stranger. The time they’d shared had been thrilling and exciting, but also… empty. She’d not allowed him to see the hopes she’d carried, because at that point, she’d been a girl who hadn’t yet known what those hopes were.
Unlike Heath. Heath, who didn’t eye her as a peculiarity for speaking Latin, but rather, conversed with her in those foreign tongues. Heath, with whom she was capable of laughing. Heath, in whom she’d freely confided the work she’d done and received no recrimination.
“Emilia,” Connell finally said, removing his hat as he did.
Her brother raised his hunting rifle as if the man opposite him had just declared war.
“I’ll have a moment with His Grace.” Emilia issued the directive without taking her gaze from her former betrothed.
“Are you sure you’d not rather I shoot him?” Barry offered. “I’m a far better shot than when I was as a boy.”
Going up on tiptoe, Emilia kissed his cheek. “Go.”
Her younger brother glared menacingly at the stoically immobile duke before allowing the duchess to tug him along. Emilia’s devoted kin reached the top of the stairs, and each sent one last scowl at the duke before disappearing.
Emilia stared at her former love. What did one say after all these years?
There was a certainty that, of anyone, this charming, affable rogue would be the first with a word, and it would always be the right one.
Only…
She peered at him.
He no longer had those words. Just as she’d been changed, so too had Connell been marked by the passage of time and life.
“This meeting is overdue, Emilia,” he finally said, tapping his hat against his leg, the only hint that he was uneasy in this meeting.
“Yes,” she said simply. “Yes, it is.” Years overdue.
“I should have called upon you.”
“There was a lot you should have done, Connell.” She paused. “And just as much you shouldn’t have done.”
The jilting.
Except… had he not jilted her, they’d even now be married, and Heath would have remained a stranger, and Emilia would have never discovered herself… and the man who filled her life in ways she’d not previously realized she was missing.
Connell roamed his gaze over her face before wandering over. “No. I shouldn’t have left you. I owed you the truth.”
The truth…
He stared at his hat for a moment, flexing the stiff brim. “Two years before we met, I was named guardian to a young woman. I was just twenty and far more interested in my own pleasures and pursuits than in caring for the orphaned daughter of my late father.”
In this telling, her former betrothed unveiled another part of himself that had been a secret. “You never mentioned her.”
“I wouldn’t have,” he said tersely. “My obligations were met financially, and the fact that a sixteen-year-old charge had been placed in my care didn’t at first concern a young man wholly besotted.”
Besotted.
Yes, she could see now that that was the correct word to capture what she—what they—had felt for each other. As a young woman who’d just made her Come Out, however, there had been only the excitement to be found in a whirlwind courtship with a gentleman more exciting than any other she’d known before him.
“And… this young woman,” she ventured. “She is the reason you broke off our betrothal.” A legal contract that, had her family pursued it, would have seen Connell answer to the law for violating the arrangement.
“She is the reason,” he said quietly. “The night prior to our wedding, I learned a dastard had taken advantage of her.” Emilia didn’t move. As Connell went on with his telling, there was a rote quality to his voice, as if he’d divorced himself from his connection to their long-ago relationship. “The young lady was painfully shy and trusting and… innocent. And during my time in London, I was wholly preoccupied with my own happiness.” He paused and glanced at Emilia.
He was speaking of Emilia.
“Because of that,” he resumed in the same grave tones, “I failed to properly look after the young woman. She found herself with child. And I found myself… with new responsibilities.”
He hadn’t trusted her. He had either believed her incapable of standing beside him through the heartbreak his sister had endured, or hadn’t cared enough to have Emilia stand beside him and his family.
“There are no excuses for my having simply left. I was young, and yet, that is not an excuse. At the time, I made what I felt was the only decision I could make.” His eyes glinted with sadness. “It is a decision I would make again. But I would have told you before I left. That is the difference, Emilia.”
Shivering, Emilia folded her arms and turned away, rubbing to bring warmth to the chilled limbs. He’d abandoned her to save another. Her heart wrenched for the young woman who’d known pain. What suffering the lady had known. And on the heels of that, there was something else…“You didn’t trust that I would stand beside you and your ward?”
His expression revealed nothing. “I made the decision I thought best at the time.”
In short, his was a non-answer that said everything and nothing all at the same time—he’d never seen her as his partner in life. What future could she truly have had with a man who’d been unable to confide in her? A man whose opinion of her had been so low that he’d not trusted she’d have been there for him? To Connell, she’d been a pretty ornament. Whereas Heath? Heath listened to her, and spoke with her and to her about her dreams and beliefs. “Why should you tell me this now?” Why, when he hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her then?
“I thought we might… begin again,” he said quietly, his voice coming just over her shoulder.
She weighed her response a moment. “Why?” she asked curiously, glancing back. Why, when nothing in his tone or words bespoke love or even fondness?
“Because I wronged you.”
Guilt.
“Because I loved you,” he added as an almost secondary afterthought.
Loved. As in formerly and no more. He didn’t love her. Not truly. Perhaps he had all those years ago. Or perhaps he hadn’t. Either way, there was only one certainty: He was not her future. He never had been.
“Oh, Connell,” she murmured, bringing herself to face him. “A lifetime has passed since I was that girl at Almack’s and you were the one squiring me about London. It was exciting. We were young loves, hopelessly infatuated, but now?” she added gently. “We’re both entirely different people.” He was a shadow of his former self… just as she’d been. Until this house party. Until Heath had reminded her what it was to smile and laugh and love again.
“You no longer love me,” he said flatly, giving the first indication that her change in feelings might matter to him.
She’d no wish to hurt him, and yet neither could she withhold the truth from him. “I fell in love with another.”
He tensed. “Who?”
Emilia hesitated. This was Heath’s best friend. She’d no wish to be the divide between them, and yet there had been too many mistruths between all of them. “It is Heath.”
Connell gave no outward indication he’d heard her. And then, he spoke. “Heath?”
She nodded once.
“I…see.”
What did he see? His gaze was dark and hard and empty.
“I love him,” she said softly.
Her former betrothed rocked on his heels. “He makes you happy?”
“He does.” Heath had brought her more joy than she’d ever believed herself capable of.
“I see,” he repeated, in those deadened tones that hammered home the indefatigable truth: He was a stranger. Connell knocked his hat against his leg and then placed it atop his head. He remained silent for a long while. Lingering as if he wished to say more. And young girl that she’d once been, Emilia would have traded her soul to hear words of love from his lips. The woman she’d become ha
d found happiness and love…with another. Connell abruptly stopped that distracted tap. “I wish you every happiness, Emilia.” Sketching a bow, he left.
Emilia remained where she was long after he’d gone.
It was done.
And there was something freeing in his having at last come. Retying the strings of her bonnet, Emilia made the long climb to the terrace—and froze at the top of the steps.
Heath stood there, sans jacket, just as she’d left him in the conservatory.
“Renaud came,” he said.
“He did,” she said needlessly, hating that he wore a stone mask that she could not read. Her family and his family would have all sent Renaud to the devil if they’d had their way. “You sent him to me.” It was a prediction she knew to be fact before he even gave the slight nod of confirmation. “Why?” she asked, drifting over to him.
“Because I knew,” he said quietly. “I knew that his reasons and decisions long ago, though… faulty, were also honorable.”
Honorable. Heath was the singularly most honorable person she’d ever known, and as such, he’d kept Connell’s confidence and had also been willing to turn her over to another. The thought sent agony sluicing through her. “And so you’d just… l-let me g-go,” she stammered, the tremble to her voice a product of cold and hurt.
Heath walked toward her and stopped once only a handbreadth separated them. “Before I sent Renaud to you, I told him that I love you, but I also knew how you both felt toward one another.” His chest heaved with the force of his emotion. “I vowed to him that I’d not be the man who stood between you and your happiness, Emilia.” His face spasmed. “Because even as it would cost me my heart losing you, I’d not have you on a lie. I’d not even have you if it ensured my happiness, because the only joy I can know is if you are happ—”
Emilia kissed him into silence. “I love y-you,” she whispered, her voice breaking. She captured his beloved face between her gloved hands. “You infuriatingly loyal, honorable, clever, witty man. I love you.”
Joy and disbelief together glinted in his eyes. “But—”
A Lady's Guide to a Gentleman's Heart Page 15
