She followed Mr. Collin’s gaze, reading the marker and feeling a small flicker of surprise. “Would not the Duchess of Damon be buried with her family?”
He turned steel gray eyes on her. Eyes so familiar that she felt a second stab of surprise. “She is.”
There was no family crypt at Wayfield Park? Unusual. Fallon shook her head, glancing at the markers near Dominic’s mother, wondering why she did not then see the grave for Dominic’s father.
“How do you know me?”
“I saw you in church last Sunday.” She had no intention of revealing the specifics of the first time she saw him.
“Mr. Simmons needs to work more on his oration. Too many ‘ahems.’” With a grunt, Mr. Collins dropped his gaze back to the grave. “The duke thought my daughter belonged here and not in the Damon family crypt.” Resentment laced his voice. “According to him, she was scarcely his duchess before she died.” Mr. Collins settled both hands on the head of his cane and shrugged as if it mattered little now.
Even knowing nothing of the situation, and little of Dominic’s father, she heard herself voice with her usual candor, “That shouldn’t matter.”
He turned those gray eyes on her again, his expression somber as ever. “I couldn’t agree with you more. She died bringing the duke’s heir into this world. She earned her place in the crypt.”
His words gave her a start. She was quite positive that she should not find accord of any kind with a man that reared Dominic with such cruel neglect, placing him with a governess who abused him.
And yet in that moment, standing in a graveyard with the wind whistling around them, she realized they were both two souls adrift. Cast apart from Dominic. A strange sense of kinship filled her chest and she stood a little closer to the old man who swayed at each gust of wind.
Perhaps Fallon wasn’t the only one to feel the crush of Dominic’s rejection. True, he would not see asking her to stay on as his mistress as a rejection, but she could see it as nothing else. Nothing more than a gouge to her heart. A heart that demanded more. Sighing, she shook her head. Everything it seemed.
She thought of her newly achieved home with its green ivy and sweet-smelling honeysuckle. It was more than she ever hoped for…and yet no longer enough.
Suddenly, impulse seized her. Lifting her chin, she heard herself asking before she could reconsider, “Do you care for chicken soup, Mr. Collins?”
Chapter 29
T his time, the secretary sent word.
The missive was brief, succinct. Dominic dropped it into the fire after reading it and rested his arm along the mantel, studying the curling fingers of fire devouring the parchment.
Still, the words floated before his eyes. Your grandfather is dying. If you wish to see him, come with all haste.
This was it, then. His jaw clenched.
He wasn’t going, of course. His feelings on the matter had not changed since he last spoke with Meadows at his club. His feelings had not changed. But he had.
The last weeks had altered him. He hardly slept, scarcely ate. His usual brandy held no appeal. Ethan had stopped by and tried to coax him out of his melancholy. Dominic had spent the entire time quizzing him on Fallon, trying to discover the location of her long-sought home. All to no avail.
If she wants you to know, she will contact you. The response had sent him into a rage. The fact that Hunt knew her location—was perhaps maintaining contact with her—filled him with impotent fury. His hand fisted. Rather than thrash his lifelong friend to an inch of his life, Dominic had ordered him from his house.
No matter how he tried, he could not stop thinking about Fallon. Wrong as it was. She had her home now. All she ever desired. And yet he had hired a Bow Street runner to locate her. He didn’t quite know why. Even if he knew where to find here, he could offer her no more than he had before. He could not be the man she deserved. Fidelity, marriage, the type of husband to escort her to church on Sunday. A proper, loving husband. He could give her none of that.
If he were honorable, he would leave her in peace. Permit her to move on with her life. But then he had never been the honorable sort.
He would not stay away. He doubted he ever would…ever could. Even if he found her years from now, married with a horde of children at her skirts, he would still want her. She was a fire in his blood and he’d been a fool to ever let her go. For her sake, he hoped the Bow Street runner did not locate her. Because he was too selfish to let her slip away a second time.
The memory of Fallon as he had last seen her smoldered through him: her taste, her touch…her voice. In particular, the words she had last spoken to him. He jammed his eyes shut. If you don’t see your grandfather, you shall regret it.
His hand tightened on the mantel, the flesh of his palm tight, unable to stretch. Why did he have to remember those words? Why now? He found himself shoving from the mantel with a savage curse. He strode from the room, his lips set in a grim line, one destination on his mind.
For Fallon. He would go for her. He shook his head as he strode into the foyer and called for Adams to ready his mount.
Because she had lost her father. Because he had never known his. Because, like it or not, Rupert Collins was the closest thing to a parent he had ever known. Dominic would see him to his Maker. Only then would he be well and truly rid of the old man and the past. With luck, all those painful memories would depart with him. Then he would be free.
With only Fallon left to haunt him.
“Shall we continue with chapter sixteen?” Fallon lifted the book from the rosewood side table and flipped the crisp pages, searching for the spot where she left off last time.
A rattled breath answered her as she found her page. Her gaze caught on the brass-headed cane sitting beside the bed. As it had sat for the last fortnight. Almost as though Mr. Collins would rise and grasp it in his gnarled hand.
She wished he would. They had fallen into a pattern before he took to his bed. A pattern she missed. Luncheon or tea at her cottage followed with a walk through her garden. Granted, the walks grew gradually shorter in the days before the fall that led to his confinement. Now she called upon him at Wayfield Park, reading and chatting and pretending as though she did not sit in the home of Dominic’s childhood, as though these walls had not borne witness to his unhappy youth…to the years that had formed him and shaped him into the hard man she happened to love.
Mr. Collins coughed. She set down the book and lifted a glass of water from the bedside table. With a hand under his nape, she helped him rise. After a sip, he lowered back down, his gray-blue eyes fixing on her. “You’re still lurking about here.” His voice scraped the air in low and raspy tones.
She leaned forward, as if confessing a great secret. “I have to find out how the book ends.”
He gave her a shaky smile. “He was a fool to let you go.”
Her own smile slipped. She had confided some of her past to him during the last fortnight. He had pressed her with questions, so she had told him…without revealing that the man who broke her heart happened to be his grandson.
“I’m certain he regrets it now.” His rheumy gaze grew distant. “We all regret things after they’re said and done.”
Those few words seemed to cost him. His breath came shallower, as if he fought for each sip of air.
“Easy there,” she murmured, smoothing her hand over his, knowing his words were not solely aimed at the unspecified man she told him left her heartbroken. They were aimed at himself. More than once he had spoken with remorse over the past. And on those occasions, she knew he meant Dominic. Ironic that they referred to the same person.
He worked his lips, grunting, “Read on.”
Reclaiming the book, she found her page again, noticing that her fingers trembled. His words had done it. Thoughts, memories flooded her. Not now. Don’t think of him now.
Spending time with Mr. Collins only reinforced her thoughts of Dominic. She saw him everywhere. As a boy running the halls of the great
mausoleum that was Wayfield Park. In the gray eyes of his grandfather. And she felt guilty. Guilty for being in this house. With his grandfather. Guilty for finding peace with the man that Dominic could not bring himself to even visit. The peace that belonged to him, even if he was too stubborn to claim it.
And yet in some small way, she felt as though she were doing this for Dominic. Being with his grandfather when he could not. Would not.
For Dominic. For the day he realized he should have been here. Perhaps it would console him to learn that someone had been—that she had been.
The sound of hooves broke the quiet afternoon, growing from a faint echo to an angry din of clatter on the drive. Mr. Collins’s eyes slid in the direction of the window. She pushed up from the chair and parted the damask drapes. Her heart seized in her chest at the tall figure vaulting from his horse. Even high above, she would know him anywhere. The way he moved. The brush of his too-long hair against the collar of his jacket.
It couldn’t be. He wouldn’t dare come here.
Her hand drifted to her throat, fingers grazing the skittery jump of her pulse. “No.”
“Miss O’Rourke.”
She dropped the curtains at the sound of her name. Spinning around, she tried to offer up a reassuring smile for Mr. Collins. Even so, she felt her head shaking in denial, panic and pleasure warring inside her. She took a step in one direction, and then another, unsure where to run.
Footsteps sounded outside the door, the swift tread growing, matching the thundering tempo of her heart. Unable to summon forth an answer, she shuffled back, retreating to the far shadows of the room. Her back bumped a screen and she quickly ducked behind it just as the door swung open.
From the crack in the screen she saw him standing there. Impossible as it seemed. His body overfilled the room, broad shoulders stretching the fine cut of his jacket. Everything else shrank away. Her palms tingled, remembering the sensation of his warm flesh beneath her hand.
Dominic. More than she remembered. More than she ever remembered feeling in his presence. Stronger. Deeper. Her chest tightened. Her breath would not come. Her stomach dipped, sank, twisted. Grand. She’d already come to terms with the notion of loving him. And not having him. She had not yet realized, however, that loving meant hurting. Always hurting. More so each time she saw him. Because she would never have him. Because she would forever want to.
Dominic stared at the shrunken shape of his grandfather beneath the counterpane in the massive bed. As a boy, Rupert Collins had loomed tall, an intimidating figure in his black broadcloth. This image of the past conflicted with the reality of the present.
The room felt airless, stale. A lamp burned on the bedside table but otherwise very little light pervaded the room.
“Dominic.”
The feeble voice startled him. Almost as much as the use of his name and not one of his grandfather’s usual designations. Forsaken sodomite. Devil. Satan’s spawn.
He approached the bed and peered down at the waxen face, hardly recognizing him, so changed even from his last visit. Sunken cheeks moved, working for speech. “I’m glad you’ve come. I waited…” his voice twisted into a garbled mutter.
Tension knotted his shoulders. He recalled the words hurled at him during the last visit. My last hope for your soul is to see you well and settled. I cannot embrace the comforts of Heaven until you do.
From the looks of his grandfather, God would no longer wait on Dominic to come up to scratch.
Sinking onto the bed, he braced himself for whatever stinging reprimand his grandfather would heap upon him, knowing he would suffer it. For Fallon. It had mattered to her that he ventured here. When he found her, he would tell her he had. That he had found the strength to try and rid himself of the past, so that he could move on and be whole enough for her.
“I tried so hard to keep you from becoming the sinner your father was. A chronic gambler…to his death. A womanizer in his life. I didn’t want you to grow into a man like him. He ruined my girl. Corrupted her and then broke her heart. As good as killed her, he did.” He shook his head slowly on the stark white pillow. “I wasn’t going to let you turn out like him.” Stopping for breath, he added, “I tried. The only way I knew. Perhaps I was too hard. Perhaps I was wrong to place my trust in Mrs. Pearce…” His voice faded and he shook his head again. “I should have dismissed her. I know that now. I am sorry, Dominic.”
Dominic stared down at his grandfather, hot emotion thickening his throat, disbelief rippling over him, puckering his skin to gooseflesh. He blinked fiercely, regarding the frail hand so close to his own on the bed. It looked pathetically small. And the man…the man suddenly bore no resemblance to the cold distant shadow of his youth. Dominic had come here braced and ready for familiar recriminations to be heaped upon him. He’d come prepared to feel his old hatred. But that, too, was gone. Evaporating like fast-fading smoke on the wind. He felt only loss. Regret for what could have been…but what he would now never know.
But what he could perhaps still have if he would only take it. With Fallon.
He eased his hand over the papery skin of his grandfather’s hand. Incredibly, he heard himself say, “I wish we had time to start again.”
A floorboard creaked and he stood in one swift motion, looking behind him. His gaze narrowed on a figure hovering in the shadows.
“Who’s there?” he demanded, mortified to know someone stood witness to the intimate conversation.
“Forgive me.” A woman stepped closer, her whisper a familiar caress to his starved soul. She left the shadows behind. Her face fell into the lamp’s glow.
“Fallon.” He breathed her name, his chest squeezing tight.
“I did not mean to eavesdrop.” Her words flew in an agitated rush, her hands twisting together before her. “You entered the room, and I just panicked.” She gestured to the screen. “Then you started talking—” She stopped abruptly. Even in the gloom of the room he detected the flood of color to her cheeks. She stared at him a long moment, her gaze searching. “My apologies.” She fled the room, wide skirts swishing at her ankles. Apricot-colored skirts, he thought in stunned silence. Had he ever seen her garbed in color?
He uttered her name again, staring at the open door through which she had fled. Questions whirred through his head. What was she doing here? In this house? With his grandfather?
The rasp of his grandfather’s voice penetrated his thoughts. “You’re the one, then.”
He turned and looked down at the bed, staring into eyes so like his own. Without even thinking, he nodded. “Yes.”
“I should have guessed.”
His spine stiffened. “Why is that?”
“The girl’s been nursing a broken heart. She said you didn’t love her. That you couldn’t love.”
“I can,” he spit out fiercely, feeling challenged, denied, and not liking it one damn bit. Especially since he had realized almost from the moment he let Fallon walk out of his life that he had to have her back. At the harshness of his voice, he swallowed, amending his tone. “I do.”
“Go then.” His grandfather’s voice gained volume as he added. “You haven’t run out of time with her.”
The words struck him with force in the chest, winding him. Nodding again, he started from the room. First at a walk, then a run.
Chapter 30
F allon halted at the bottom of the steps, cursing her poor luck to find the Reverend Simmon’s smiling face beaming up at her.
“Miss O’Rourke! Splendid meeting you here. Are you visiting with our unfortunate Mr. Collins?” His pleased features fell then, adopting an appropriate look of concern as he clucked his tongue.
Fallon nodded, stepping down into the foyer, her heart racing too quickly to form coherent speech. Dominic. She dragged a hand down the side of her face, loathing how it trembled.
What was he doing here? This was the last place he should ever appear given his relationship with his grandfather. She had thought herself perfectly safe at Wayfi
eld—the last place he wished to be. And yet here he was. Upstairs. With the man he most hated…and showing him kindness, saying things she never thought to hear him say.
“And how is the gentleman?”
She shook her head at the young vicar, doing her best to give him her attention. “Not well. He struggles.”
“Ah, but he is blessed with a hearty constitution.” His fair head bobbed. “He has been strong for so long now.” He took her elbow and leaned forward as if to confide some great secret. “I suspect your arrival into his life has renewed him.” His brown eyes warmed as they crawled over her face. His fingers moved a small circle over the inside of her arm. “Many an expiring soul would feel heartened in your company and find the will to live again.”
“God’s teeth, woman.”
Fallon closed her eyes in one pained blink, recognizing the deep voice at once and wincing at his choice of words. Before the local vicar, no less.
“Every time I turn around, some man is pawing at you. Can you not try to project proper modesty?”
She turned and glared at Dominic, all remorse for overhearing his very private and long-awaited words with his grandfather fleeing in the face of his rude words.
“A lecture on propriety from you?”
His gray eyes glinted with what almost looked like…delight? “We’re not discussing me.”
“Have you no shame,” she hissed, hot mortification sweeping her face.
“Whomever you are, sir, I can assure I was not pawing Miss O’Rourke.” Even so, Mr. Simmon’s dropped his hand from her arm as though burned. He pulled his narrow shoulders up and back, stretching to his full height, which brought his eyes level only with her chin.
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