Tall, Dark and Royal

by Vanessa Kelly

  Dominic backed up a step with mock alarm. “Oh, God, don’t tell me you’re going to apologize again. I swear, Chloe, you’ll reduce me to a bundle of nerves if you do.”

  She stared at him for a second, then she burst into laughter. “Actually, I was, although I understand how irritating it can be when someone constantly apologizes. But I do owe you an apology, Dominic. I was a terrible coward this afternoon, and I’m so sorry for it.”

  “Chloe,” he began, starting to feel a little desperate.

  “Let me pour you a nice cup of tea,” she said in a soothing voice. “Then we can talk.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “My dear, you do not need to try to manage me.”

  “The way you always try to manage me?” she asked dryly.

  “I am entirely innocent of that accusation, madam.”

  Trying to hide her smile—not very successfully—Chloe placed his cup of tea on the small table between the two high-backed chairs in front of the fire. With a funny little sigh that pierced Dominic’s heart, she subsided into one of the chairs.

  “No tea for you?” he asked.

  “No, but if you don’t intend to finish that brandy, you can give it to me.”

  He retrieved the glass from his desk. “Careful,” he said after she took a generous sip. “You don’t want to get drunk.”

  “Maybe I do,” she muttered, cradling the glass in her slender fingers.

  He sat in the other chair. “Are you in need of some liquid courage?”

  She let out a dramatic sigh. “You’ve always been able to anticipate my thoughts, haven’t you?”

  “Chloe, you need never be afraid to say anything to me. And if anyone should apologize for this afternoon’s discussion, it is I. I was a boorish, impatient fool. Feel free to box my ears if I behave like that again.”

  She leaned forward, her expression terribly earnest. “But that’s just it, Dominic. You had every right to be impatient. I’ve been running away and hiding for almost as long as I can remember. It’s become a habit, and not a good one.”

  He leaned close, too. “My sweet, no one could blame you—not after all the harm that’s been done to you. I only wish I could make all that ugliness disappear.”

  She blinked several times, her gaze soft and misty-eyed, but then she unleashed a dazzling smile. It ripped his heart from his chest and dropped it at her feet. “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve so generous and kind a friend. You quite humble me, Dominic.”

  Christ.

  She was destroying him, and yet she had no idea. That she should feel humbled after everything she’d suffered made him want to tear the world apart and make it over for her.

  “That’s simply nonsense,” he said gruffly. “Now, was there something you specifically wanted to tell me?”

  She smiled. “Not specifically, no. But what I’d like you to do is ask me whatever question you want. I promise to answer as honestly as I can.”

  His mind went momentarily blank. Then he had to struggle through a sudden swarm of questions flooding his brain.

  “Anything,” she gently repeated.

  He sucked in a breath. There was so much he wanted to know, starting with how she truly felt about him. But he suspected he wasn’t yet ready to hear that answer. “Very well. I never fully understood why you agreed to your uncle’s demented scheme to fake your death after you finished your schooling.”

  Her quiet sigh held legions of sorrow. “Yes, I know it must seem inexplicable. But the simple answer is that Uncle Bartholomew insisted it would be best for Griffin. He was convinced that any contact with me would fatally taint my son with my fallen nature—”

  “Bastard,” Dominic muttered.

  “Indeed. But at the time, all I had was the hope that Griffin would be spared my shame. My uncle said that if I insisted on being part of Griffin’s life, he’d refuse responsibility for the both of us. I was only seventeen and would have been alone in the world. How could I possibly take care of myself and a little boy?”

  Dominic straightened. “But you had me, as well as Sir Anthony and Lady Tait. They would have been happy to take you in.”

  She flinched as if he’d just slapped her. “Dominic, I hadn’t heard from any of you for almost two years. I wrote whenever I had the chance, but after the first few replies, you never wrote again. Neither did Lady Tait. What other assumption could I make but that you had no desire to maintain contact?”

  Dominic frowned. “I wrote to you every week, Chloe, without fail. It was you who stopped corresponding with me.”

  For an infernally long moment, they stared at each other. Then bitterness flattened Chloe’s mouth into a tight line. “Uncle Bartholomew must have told the staff at my school to intercept our letters.” She shook her head. “What an unhappy, angry man he was to deny me even that consolation.”

  Dominic spat out another, riper term for the old bastard. Chloe’s eyes widened with shock, but she let out a reluctant laugh. “Well, I think I must agree with you, at least in this case.”

  Disbelief pushed him to his feet. “I can’t believe I didn’t demand that Sir Anthony take me to Leeds to see you. He said it was best to wait until you finished school before attempting to contact you again, but then we received word that you’d died of a fever.” He stared down into her beautiful, haunted gaze. “Chloe, you thought you were all alone when the opposite was true.”

  He turned away, not wanting her to see how his hands shook with guilt-fueled rage. As he stared blindly into the fire, he heard the rustle of her soft skirts before she rested a gentle hand on his back.

  “The fault lies only with my uncle, Dominic. He was a hateful, bitter man who caused us all a great deal of harm. But he’s gone now, and it serves no purpose to give in to anger and regret.”

  Dominic slowly unclenched his hands and turned to face her. “I wish I could accept that as easily as you.”

  She shrugged, her calm gravity restored. “I’ve had many years to reconcile myself to my circumstances, Dominic. It was how I survived.”

  He understood that choice, at least for a young girl who thought herself alone in the world. But what about later? “You did more than survive. You ended up a wealthy woman who had a great deal of control over her fate. Once you were free, why didn’t you try to take Griffin back or contact me?”

  He finally acknowledged that he wasn’t just angry with himself, or even with her uncle. He was angry with Chloe for giving up on him. On them.

  She seemed in perfect control as she studied him, but Dominic sensed her mentally backing away. “Don’t do that, Chloe. Don’t retreat from me again.”

  She blinked, clearly surprised, but then she gave a cautious nod. “Yes, of course. That is what I do. I apologize. Please sit down and I’ll do my best to explain it to you.”

  When he held his ground, she flashed him a rueful smile. “Please sit, Dominic. You can be quite unnerving when you loom over me in that intimidating fashion. It’s not necessary to manipulate me in order to extract information.”

  He felt a flush creep up his neck. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.”

  She let out a soft laugh. “I think part of you wants to do exactly that, but we’ll let it pass for now.”

  Unfortunately, she was probably right. In his line of work, intimidation and manipulation were his stock-in-trade. Chloe, however, was the last person he wanted to bully into compliance.

  “I did try to see Griffin after I came into Mrs. Lamotte’s inheritance,” she said as they resumed their seats. “I wrote to Uncle Bartholomew, pleading for a visit. But he was adamant that I stay away. He said Griffin was perfectly happy without a mother, and that the shock of my reappearance in his life could only be harmful.”

  “Not an unexpected response, was it?”

  “Believe it or not, I was surprised by it. I had hoped that with the passage of years, my uncle would have forgiven me. Such was certainly not the case.”

  The pain in her fawn-colored eye
s made him want to snatch her onto his lap to comfort her. “Why didn’t you push the bastard?”

  “I worried that he would make a fuss and feared it might result in some ugly gossip that might reach Griffin’s ears. Instead, I decided to wait to make contact until my uncle sent him away to school, which he promised to do—at my expense. That way, I would have better control over the circumstances of our meeting.”

  Dominic nodded. “But then he died and Griffin ran away to London.”

  She grimaced. “It took me a year—with the aid of a very expensive Runner—to find my son. By that time, he was working at The Cormorant and you had your eye on him. It appeared that Griffin was settled in his new life and, from what I was able to glean, he was adamant in refusing help from you or anyone else.”

  When he remained silent, her eyes pleaded with him. “Truthfully, I didn’t know what to do. Griffin was fifteen years old and believed me dead. What would be the consequences of my sudden resurrection? Given what he’d been told about me, would he even wish to know me or face the scandal that would result if my identity became widely known?”

  Her beautiful mouth twisted with a delicate sneer. Dominic hated seeing that expression on her face.

  “Just think of it,” she continued, “the Duke of Cumberland’s former lover rising from the dead. I can’t begin to imagine the public reaction to that bit of news. If Griffin had remained in the Yorkshire countryside, we might have been able to avoid damaging gossip. But in London . . . well, it seemed better to remain at a careful distance. Close enough to keep an eye on Griffin but far enough away to prevent him or anyone else from stumbling onto my secret.”

  “You were never Cumberland’s lover,” Dominic growled. “He seduced you once when you were little more than a child. Besides, Griffin already knew by then that you were alive, since your uncle had confessed to the entire ruse on his deathbed.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t know that,” she said in a calm tone.

  Her controlled manner spiked his frustration, but he reined himself in. He knew how difficult this conversation must be for her.

  “I can appreciate your logic regarding Griffin,” he finally said. “But why did you never attempt to contact me? Surely you didn’t think I’d gossip about your scandalous past.” He invested that last phrase with heavy irony.

  She let out another heavy sigh. “No. But you had moved on with your life, and I still believed you didn’t know I was alive. You seemed consumed by your work and, as far as I could tell, spent a great deal of time in Portugal and Spain. It seemed wrong to burden you with my situation given the difficulties in the Peninsular War I knew you must be dealing with.”

  “Bloody hell, you should have been a spy. Is there anything you didn’t find out about me?”

  She flashed a cheeky grin. “A great deal, in fact. But I did know that you moved in the highest circles.” Her grin faded. “Those circles included considerable contact with the Court of St. James and with some of the royal family.”

  That, of course, was at the heart of the problem. It was the reason she’d stayed away from him and from the other people in her past. “You wanted to avoid Cumberland, and you feared knowing me would bring you into that circle.”

  She paused, as if running through answers in her head. “Partly,” she finally said.

  He leaned forward, bracing his hands on his knees. “Did you really think I would do that to you? Force you to spend a moment in that bastard’s company?”

  She shook her head, but her lips remained firmly closed.

  “What, then?” he exclaimed in exasperation.

  “I was afraid of the potential for scandal. It would have made my work more difficult, for one thing. But honesty compels me to admit that I was, quite simply, afraid of drawing so much attention. I know that makes me a coward, and I’m sure you must be terribly disappointed in me.” She wrinkled her nose at him, as if trying to make light of the heartbreaking confession.

  “Chloe, you have more courage than anyone I’ve ever known. You were betrayed and abandoned by your family and torn from those who would have protected you. Despite that, you’ve created an admirable life.” He took her slender fingers. They were cold and shook slightly in his hand. “I would have revealed none of your secrets,” he said. “Never.”

  She squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you, Dominic, but I’d lost the knack for it, you see. I know that’s not much of an excuse, but it’s the truth.”

  “And do you trust me now?” he asked quietly.

  When she withdrew her hand, his gut clenched.

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “But . . .”

  “But what?” he prompted.

  “I don’t really know you anymore.” She blew out a frustrated breath. “And you don’t know me, not after so many years. It’s disconcerting, knowing how much we’ve both changed.”

  Dominic wanted to argue that she hadn’t truly changed. She was still the sweet, loving person she’d been as a girl, kind and generous to the core. But that wasn’t what she needed to hear.

  “What do you want to know about me, Chloe?”

  She seemed to stop breathing for several fraught seconds. Then she folded her hands primly in her lap and looked him straight in the eye. “Have you been involved in many relationships, Dominic? With women, I mean.” Though her voice ended with an uncharacteristic break, she held his gaze.

  “Do you mean have I ever had a mistress?” he asked, testing her boundaries.

  Her cheeks pinked a bit. “Yes, or availed yourself of other opportunities.”

  He frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean by that.”

  “I should think it obvious. My son ran a gaming house and brothel, and you were no stranger to either establishment.”

  His mouth sagged open. “How the hell did you find that out?”

  Though she waved a dismissive hand, her cheeks were now more red than pink. “Please just answer the question.”

  He was torn between satisfaction at the jealous tone to her voice and irritation that she thought he would sleep with prostitutes. Still, a great many men in the ton did so without second thought, so he supposed he couldn’t blame her.

  “No, Chloe, I never slept with any of the girls at The Golden Tie or any other brothel, for that matter. Nor have I ever kept a mistress.”

  She exhaled a relieved breath, but then her eyes went wide. “Do you mean to say you’re a . . .” Her voice climbed into a squeaky register before breaking off.

  Perplexed, he stared at her for a few seconds before understanding thundered through his brain. “Good God, Chloe, I’m not a saint.”

  She winced. “Of course not. I was silly to even think it, much less ask. Forgive me.”

  He studied her, trying to deduce the best way forward. Chloe was obviously trying to explore what might exist between them, but she was having trouble getting there, too hampered by her past hurts to see a clear path forward.

  “As I said, I don’t claim to be a saint,” he repeated quietly, “but I’ve done my best not to take advantage of women.”

  She gave a slow nod. “I should have known that, of course. Please forgive me for assuming otherwise.”

  “You have nothing for which to apologize. Is there anything else you’d like to ask me?”

  Chloe hesitated for a few moments, as if gathering her courage before asking the next question. “Why have you never married?”

  “Because I couldn’t imagine loving anyone else but you, and the news of your death simply tore me apart. Then, as you noted, I threw myself into my work. I had neither the time nor the inclination to think of marriage or a family.” He paused to gauge her reaction, taking in her wide-eyed gaze. “And then Griffin told me you were still alive. After that, there was never a possibility of anyone else.”

  She sucked in a shocked inhalation, her gentle curves pressing against her trim-fitting bodice. Dominic’s muscles coiled tight with an instinctive reaction. His life had been leading inexorabl
y up to this moment, and he practically shook with desire and longing.

  When the tip of her pink tongue swept over her lips, he had to hold back a groan. What he couldn’t hold back was the swell of his cock at the thought of Chloe, naked and wrapped around him. “Sweetheart, surely you’ve always known how I felt about you?”

  She raised a trembling hand to her forehead. “It’s been so many years, and we were just children.”

  “We’re not children anymore.”

  Her nervous laughter echoed softly in the quiet. “No, we’re certainly not.”

  But like her, Dominic was fully aware of the passage of years and what might have happened in the meantime.

  She frowned. “What is it?”

  “What of you?” he asked, dreading the answer. “Have there been men in your life?”

  Her eyebrows winged up. “You mean lovers? Truly, Dominic, what would have been the benefit for me in that?”

  He could think of a few, but clearly they had not occurred to her. “We’re not all bounders and reprobates, Chloe. Some of us want nothing more than to cherish the women in our lives.”

  She stared at him, her body straight and unmoving, her face pale and still. But her eyes blazed almost golden in the firelight that washed over her. “Is that what you want, Dominic? To cherish me?” Her voice was a sweet mix of uncertainty and longing that arrowed straight into his heart.

  “I’ve never stopped loving you,” he rasped. “And that will never change. But now I want more. I want what any man wants from the woman he loves.”

  The muscles in her throat rippled as she swallowed. The tense, high set to her shoulders reminded him of how difficult this must be for her.

  “I know you’re afraid,” he said gently. “Afraid of opening yourself up to another man after everything you’ve been through—”

  He broke off, stunned by her sudden, dazzling smile. She slipped from her chair and came to her knees before him, resting her hands on his thighs.

  “Dominic, do shut up,” she ordered in a gruff little voice. “And after you’ve done that, please kiss me.”