by Jaimey Grant
“It was not his responsibility,” he commented.
“No, but it salved his pride, I think.”
A few minutes passed in silence, each man caught up in his own thoughts.
Dare’s mind inevitably turned back to the bride he’d left behind. He was pondering the possibility of a future together when Adam said, “I have some bad news, Dare.”
His cousin’s tone was so solemn, Dare felt his heart stop. He knew, he just knew, what Adam would say.
“Jenny lost the baby,” Dare inserted prosaically.
Adam gave him a startled look. Dare shrugged one shoulder, a barely perceptible movement that spoke volumes for his rigidly held self-control.
“Dare, Jenny was pregnant with twins. She lost one of them. The other, little Miranda, is fine, if a trifle small.” He paused, allowing his words to penetrate before he added, “Your son didn’t make it.”
Worded in such a way, Dare felt his throat close up. His immediate instinct was to claw at his neck, try to open up his windpipe to let in a desperately needed breath.
But his countenance remained stoic. All the panic was within, threatening to destroy him—as it had been for the past six months.
The baronet continued before he could make his voice work properly.
“There’s more,” Adam reported with a bone-weary sigh. “Jenny is dying, Dare. Con doesn’t know what to do. He said she should be fine but she’s declining rapidly. He’s at his wit’s end. She doesn’t seem to want to live.”
Dare’s expression didn’t change one whit. None of his inner panic was revealed in his features or demeanor. None of his affronted anger was displayed either.
In an eerily calm tone, Dare replied, “How dare she? Does she not realize she has a child to care for?”
Adam, owning a perception of which few men could boast, saw beneath Dare’s calm demeanor to the demons lurking within. “It appears,” he said carefully, “that she has forgotten that simple fact. Although Con has tried to tell her.”
Dare turned his face away, staring out the carriage window. “Spoiled brat,” he said conversationally. “She will let my daughter grow up without a mother just because her life has not turned out exactly the way she planned. I’m tempted to go and beat some sense into her.”
Considering this threat was uttered in the calmest, most emotionless tone, Adam’s reaction might have been viewed as extreme to an outsider.
The baronet’s fist slammed into the side of the carriage—right next to his young cousin’s face.
Dare didn’t really react. He turned, viewed Adam with a trace of disdain, and smiled thinly. “What, may I ask, was the purpose of that?”
“Dammit! Show some life, you soulless cur.” Growling, Adam lunged forward, grabbing the front of Dare’s coat in one fist. He jerked his cousin out of the seat, bringing his face close. “I know you care. I can feel it in the way you try so hard to look like you don’t. If you keep hiding behind that soulless façade of yours, you will snap at the wrong time. Do you really want to hurt Jenny? Or would you rather take a few shots at me?”
The last word had barely left Adam’s mouth before Dare’s fist smashed into his head. Adam’s hand opened, releasing his cousin. The baronet sat back with a pleased smile, absently massaging his ringing ear.
Which only enraged Dare all the more. He launched himself at the other man.
The close proportions of a moving carriage were not conducive to an effective exchange of blows. Adam very easily shoved Dare back in his seat, laughing at the younger man’s fury.
“Oh, stubble it, Dare,” he said affectionately. “You’ve had your outlet and I can assure you, I’ll be hearing bells for a sennight.”
Dare somehow managed to calm the unleashed fury roiling through him. Adam was right; he’d been perilously close to losing all sense where Jenny was concerned.
But, dear God, she was letting herself die! How could she do that to their child?
How could she do that to him?
Not bothering to look at his cousin, he asked, “Are we going to London, then?”
Adam shook his head. “Jenny has been living in a cottage on Denbigh’s estate since you left. We go there.”
Dare’s gaze swung around to meet Adam’s. “She left her parents’ home?”
Adam nodded. “It was quite a to-do. She calmly told them that she would not live with them and wanted her own house. Denbigh had no choice but to comply. The only ones she was willing to see were Miles and Gwen. She even balked at allowing Con near her after the babies were born.” He shrugged a little helplessly, in Dare’s opinion. “But now, she doesn’t seem to care who is there—or who isn’t.”
Dare did not miss the significance of his cousin’s words. Jenny didn’t even care that he wasn’t there.
But he suspected that at one time, she had.
Chapter Eighteen
Predictably, it was raining. Not a gentle, drizzly rain but a cold, soulless drenching that permeated the bones and made a man wish for nothing more than a cozy armchair before a crackling blaze.
Dare wasn’t sure such a thing would even begin to ease the cold he felt. The coach approached Denbigh Castle and he felt nothing so much as the unmistakable longing to flee.
But flight had accomplished naught so far. And, quite frankly, Dare was tired of running.
He’d run from everything. It was not something he was proud of but he’d never really realized it before. Whenever there was the slightest bit of adversity in his life, he’d run. When Adam’s offer to go to sea had been raised, Dare had leapt at it. Never had it been so easy to avoid responsibility.
And now, Dare found himself in a situation far worse than any he’d ever experienced before. He was about to see his wife again after nearly six months; the woman he’d fled twice now.
He almost hoped she’d tell him to leave.
The carriage pulled to a stop before the castle. It was not really a castle considering it was a mere century or so old but it looked like one, its impressive façade rising above him like something out of a Gothic novel.
Bloody hell, that was just what he needed. Imagining the home of his wife’s family to contain some sort of Gothic tendency was not good for his already unbalanced mind.
He exited the coach and moved to the front steps. The door opened and he was shown into a chamber by a very proper butler to await the duke and Lord Connor.
Dare tried to sit calmly and wait but he was too agitated to be still. He paced over to the fireplace, staring down into the leaping flames. Any answers he may have desired were absent from the mesmerizing blaze. But they did succeed in calming him somewhat.
He turned at the sound of the door. Lord Connor trailed in behind his father, his face appearing to have aged five years in the last few months. Denbigh looked as he ever did. Dare wondered if the man was even human.
“My lords,” Dare murmured politely, a small dip of his upper body passing for a barely civil bow.
The duke nodded but said nothing. Dare realized the man was human after all. His eyes held the haunted quality of a man nearing despair. He was taking his daughter’s decline rather hard, then.
Lord Connor gave Dare a long look filled with so many rioting emotions that the younger man had trouble pinpointing just one. He assumed there was a good bit of fury in there as well as panic.
“Have you tried scolding her?” Dare asked, only half-jesting.
Connor’s head jerked as if slapped. The duke almost smiled. Dare shrugged his shoulders a bit, adding, “From what I understand, she’s acting like a spoiled child. I just thought…”
Dare glanced at Connor and wasn’t surprised to see the man’s hands clench into fists. His voice was taut with fury. “You know little of the situation, Prestwich, so I would advise that you keep your unwanted suggestions to yourself.”
Dare smiled dangerously. “Perhaps I would know a little more had it not been rather ruthlessly pointed out to me that I was not wanted here.”
/> The duke’s expression turned rueful. He moved further into the room and seated himself in a chair near the fire, and in so doing, nearer his son-in-law.
He gestured to the other chair. When Dare hesitated, he said, “Indulge me.”
Dare dropped his tall frame into the seat, sprawling a bit as was his wont, and watched Connor as he moved another chair closer.
“You have a right to be upset,” Lord Denbigh began, shocking Dare to the core of his being. A grunt from the duke’s son was disregarded. “We bungled the whole affair badly. We offer our apologies for the pain and misery our actions may have caused.”
Dare said nothing for a long while. He just stared at these two men who, with their overwhelming conceit, managed to nearly ruin the lives of two people, one of whom they professed to love. Part of him acknowledged his own guilt and accepted the rightness of their anger.
“You lied to me,” he said, ignoring the apology for the nonce.
“I did,” Denbigh admitted.
Dare couldn’t leave it at that. “Jenny didn’t want me to leave. She didn’t know anything about it.”
The duke nodded, his fingers steepled in front of him. “True. Jenny was most distraught when she realized what had occurred. We tried to find you after the ceremony but you had somehow managed to disappear quite thoroughly.”
“I’ve gotten rather good at disappearing over the years,” Dare inserted dryly. Connor’s snort of derision was not ignored this time. “Do you have anything intelligent to add to this interview, my lord? Or are you here simply to berate me for my past mistakes?”
Denbigh lifted a hand to intervene in what would probably become an all-out brawl. “Arguing amongst ourselves will not solve this dilemma,” he pointed out reasonably. “Jenny is dying, Darius.”
Put so bluntly, Dare couldn’t respond for a moment. Adam had said the same thing but coming from her father, as it was now, it seemed far worse.
“And Connor had done everything he can for her physically. Nothing seems to help.”
“The only time she shows any kind of life is when Lucy brings Miranda in so Jenny can nurse the child,” Connor added, his temper firmly under control.
Dare’s dark eyes swiveled between the two men. “Who is Lucy?” he asked, selecting the least important tidbit in Connor’s revelation.
Connor gaped at him for a moment, at a sudden loss. “I tell you Jenny’s dead to the world and you ask about her maid?”
Dare almost smiled at him. “All you had to say was, ‘Her maid.’ How difficult would that have been?”
“Hell and the devil confound it, Father! He’s completely addlebrained. How can she possibly be pining away for him?”
The duke remained silent, almost as if he was nothing more than a mere spectator. His steepled fingers were pressed to his lips and his eyes reflected a tinge of humor at his son’s assessment.
Connor emitted a grunt of absolute disgust and rose to his feet. “I refuse to sit here and trade nonsense with you,” he told their unwanted guest. “Father can tell you any other unimportant details you want to know.” He stormed from the room.
Denbigh watched him go, amused. “I have not seen him so agitated since he was courting his wife,” he mused reflectively.
“Does Jenny want to see me, sir?”
The duke’s gaze returned to the younger man. “She has never stopped,” he admitted quietly. He stared silently at his guest for a moment. Then, leaning forward, he confided, “I cannot tell you how wrong I was to try to manipulate you as I did. I underestimated you and that blasted pride of yours.”
An uneasy feeling slid over Dare’s spine. “What?”
“I had hoped, that in asking you to leave, that you would defy me by staying. I was stymied when you obeyed.”
“You said she didn’t want me as husband,” Dare pointed out numbly. “Did you believe I was the type to force my presence on an unwilling woman?”
Denbigh sat back with a long sigh. “I chose the wrong words. At the time, I but suspected the depth of my daughter’s feelings. You…well, you were a little easier to read, actually.”
Dare was fast becoming angry. He hated manipulation and to think that he and Jenny had been the victims this time made him see red.
Holding his emotions firmly in check, he asked, “Where is my brother?”
The duke looked surprised, then suspicious, then resigned. “You are not ready to forgive. You are well matched with my daughter. She has yet to forgive as well.”
“Where?”
The older man sighed. “He and Gwen live in the cottage down the lane from Jenny. My coachman will take you there.”
Several minutes later, Dare found himself outside a small house, handsomely built in a pleasing setting—or it would have been if the rain was not still making its annoying presence felt. It crossed his mind that his brother might be a gentleman farmer now and he couldn’t stop the laugh that escaped.
The door opened before he even reached it. Miles stood there, his face as blank as ever, his eyes glittering with what looked suspiciously like tears. Dare shook his head. It was just the rain, fouling up his sight.
He had reason to reassess his conjecture when his brother reached over the few feet that separated them and dragged him into his arms.
“Thank God you’re home,” Miles said in the most natural way, just as if Dare belonged there.
And an ache in his chest told Dare more clearly than words that he wanted to belong there.
Pushing himself away, he quipped, “So, I hear you are married now?”
Gwen was getting big with child, her radiance a beacon on this ugly, gray day. Dare wondered if Jenny was so beautiful when she was big with his child. He wished, yet again, that he’d been there to see it.
Miles noticed the direction of his twin’s stare. “The midwife predicts twins,” he informed him, his normally serious expression softening into amusement.
“Ah,” Dare replied, the only word he could manage past the lump in his throat. He raised the glass of whiskey he held, downing it in the vain hope that it would drown the incipient tears he felt burning behind his eyes.
How, he wondered irrelevantly, does one actually drown tears?
Miles frowned, motioning to his wife to leave the room. She nodded and rose as gracefully as she was able, leaving the gentlemen to themselves.
Miles leaned forward, not having missed his brother’s distress. “Have you been to see her yet?”
Dare silently shook his head. “I am thinking about running again. What do you think?” he said, his mind agreeing violently while his heart threatened to kill him for even thinking such a thing.
“If I thought you were in earnest, I’d be obliged to stop you.”
“Indeed,” murmured Dare, refilling his whiskey. He pondered the interesting question of how much it would take to make him oblivious to his own rocky emotions. “I am such a coward!”
The words burst out as if trying to escape, creating a tension in the room that Dare bitterly wished didn’t exist.
“You are not a coward, Dare,” his brother responded, sincerity positively oozing from his tone.
Dare’s grip tightened on his glass. “I run when I’m scared, Miles. What is that if not cowardice?”
Miles did not agree. “You may run but you always come back to face the consequences. What is that if not bravery?”
“Perhaps I should have tried to be more like you,” Dare mused, almost to himself. “Father constantly berated me for being such a loose screw, for not having the sense God gave a gnat.” He met his brother’s eyes. “He told me once that if I was more like you, he’d like me better.”
Miles was stupefied. “He always told me I was too stiff-necked and should be more like you, learn to enjoy myself. He constantly berated me for wanting to hide in my books and papers instead of living my life.”
The brothers gazed at each other in honest amazement. It had never occurred to them that their father was the reason that t
hey held such resentment for one another.
“Well,” Dare muttered finally, quaffing his drink. He refilled the glass and handed it silently to his brother.
Miles accepted the glass, stared at his twin for another moment, then lifted the tumbler and swallowed the amber liquid.
“So much for never drinking,” Dare commented dryly.
“Quite,” his brother agreed. He handed the glass back, however, and waved away the offer of a refill.
“It’s time, Dare,” Miles said so quietly that his twin almost didn’t hear him.
Inwardly, Dare sighed. Yes, it was time. Part of him rejoiced that he was finally to see the woman he loved after six interminable months without her. The other part rebelled at the inevitable rejection he would receive at her oh so delicate hands. What woman would want a cowardly husband, after all?
“Madam, would you like me to help you dress?”
Jenny barely heard her maid’s offer through the dense fog that seemed to have taken up residence in her mind. It was the same offer made every morning. And every morning, Jenny refused, preferring to cocoon herself away in her bed, pretending her life was not what it was.
How could she have come to this pass? Her husband preferred his travels to her. Her baby boy died in her arms. Her baby girl did nothing but cry. And she felt so lost and so alone that she couldn’t even dredge up a modicum of her innate pride to rescue her from complete mental breakdown.
It was too much to be borne!
Something in Jenny snapped. She was unsure if that something actually broke or if it had actually somehow righted itself in her numbed brain. She didn’t care.
Raising herself up on her weakened arms, she nodded to Lucy. “Yes, Lucy, I do believe I will dress today.”
Chapter Nineteen
Jenny sat in a rocking chair in the little room just off her own. It was this room that sheltered her child, the precious, beautiful little girl with black hair and pale blue eyes. Jenny cradled the infant to her breast, suckling the baby and crooning meaningless little words that meant the entire world to the child, as she rocked back and forth.
