by Nichole Van
“Of course,” she repeated in a monotone, eyes still fixed on the fire.
He waited another moment, but she said nothing more.
He kissed her cheek.
No response.
She did not turn her head to watch as he left the room.
The duchess would often go days without eating or speaking to anyone, staring listlessly into the fire or out the window. Worse, she would sometimes become agitated, muttering to herself and pacing her bedchamber over and over.
It was as if something had broken within her and, thus far, nothing had been able to mend it.
Rafe hated this feeling of helplessness, of being unable to relieve her suffering.
“On a positive note,” Alex said, “my research efforts have not been entirely without benefit. A former university professor recommended I speak with Dr. John Ross. He is a practicing physician who specializes in disorders of melancholic madness.”
Rafe’s head snapped to attention. “That is good news.”
“Aye. Dr. Ross himself is Scottish, actually, but he has lived and worked in London for several years. Apparently, the man prefers to focus on his patients and so doesnae take the time tae write letters for professional publications, which is why we hadnae heard of him until this point. But Ross supposedly has a wealth of practical knowledge. My professor felt if anyone could help your mother, it would be him.”
Rafe nodded. “I’ll write Dr. Ross immediately.”
He silently prayed that this new doctor had some answers.
Something had to change.
Kendall was as brutish as ever, keeping Rafe on a short tether, using the duchess’s health and the threat of a lunatic asylum as a bludgeon to guarantee Rafe’s obedience.
Rafe acknowledged that he could leave. He could walk away and ignore his father, leave his mother to Kendall’s cruelty.
But just the thought sent bile rising in his throat . . . the memory rose from two years earlier on his return from the South Pacific, of finding his mother chained to a bed in that asylum, lying in her own filth, gaze so empty and vacant—
No! Don’t go there. Not tonight.
More than ever, Rafe understood that Kendall’s threats were not idle words. The duke had committed his duchess to a lunatic asylum once in order to ensure Rafe’s obedience. He would do it again unless Rafe remained at the man’s beck and call.
However, Kendall was clever in his cruelty, tying Rafe with a silken cord. He allowed Rafe just enough freedom—to visit friends in Scotland, for example—that Rafe refrained from revolting in truth.
But after nearly three decades of bowing to his father’s iron will, Rafe was so tired of swallowing his pride and doing that man’s bidding. Just two weeks past, Rafe had been forced to evict a widow and her nine children, overseeing the duke’s men as they carted the entire family to the work house. He hated this powerlessness, this endless game of having to choose which evil he would tolerate. Anger left a sour taste in his mouth and rage humming in his blood.
Worse, Hawthorn, Rafe’s elder brother, had yet to produce an heir, and Kendall was growing impatient with Rafe’s unwed state.
Unbidden, a pair of forest-green eyes flashed through his mind’s eye. Even four years on, the pain of losing Lady Sophie had never really eased. The memory of her quirky mind and perceptive comments would not leave him be.
She was widowed, he had heard, over eight months ago. She would be through her mourning period by now. In his more delusional moments, he imagined defying his father and courting her again, assuming Lady Sophie didn’t think him the worst sort of cad.
But Kendall had forced Rafe to the ends of the earth last time he attempted such a courtship. Rafe couldn’t risk angering his father with his mother’s health so precarious. He needed to find something somewhere that would ease her melancholy. If the duchess regained her health enough to be seen in Society happy and whole, Kendall would find it harder to commit her without sparking public outrage. It would, at the very least, perhaps give Rafe enough leverage to find a wife of his own choosing with only his father’s lukewarm approval.
But in the meanwhile, Rafe seethed, simmering at the end of Kendall’s binding chain.
“So what festivities do we have planned for the evening?” Ewan sat back, licking honey off his fingers. He nudged a chin toward Andrew, a grin on his face. “This bawbag is getting hisself married in the morning. Surely we have much merry tae make afore the night is over.”
Trust Ewan to read the downhearted emotions in the room and attempt to change the topic.
Alex raised an eyebrow.
Kieran perked up, a cheeky light in his eyes.
Andrew, the groom-to-be, looked apprehensive, because he was a wise man and knew his friends well.
“If you’re going tae give me a soot foot or some such, Jane asked that ye ensure I be presentable by tomorrow,” Andrew cautioned, referring to the pre-wedding custom of rubbing soot over the groom for good luck.
Rafe chuckled, smacking his hands together. “We’ll just have to be careful tae keep it off your face, then.”
Nodding toward Alex, Rafe pulled Andrew out of his chair by one arm. Alex took the other.
“Come along, yer lofty lordship. There’s a fair amount of fun yet tae be had tonight.”
8
Sophie’s family did nothing by halves, not even breakfast.
“Father, you must not permit Henry to give sausages to the dogs,” her older sister, Mary, pleaded from down the table.
Mary’s four-year-old son, Henry, stood beside his grandfather, holding a plump Cumberland sausage in his chubby fist, dangling it high above his head and teasing the Earl of Mainfeld’s hunting dogs into a salivating frenzy. For their part, the dogs barked and whined but were too well trained to jump on the little boy and retrieve the treat.
Two footmen maneuvered around the dogs with practiced skill, pouring fresh coffee for Lady Mainfeld and replenishing the depleted sausage and bacon in the warming dishes on the nearby sideboard.
Lord Mainfeld presided over the head of the table as he always had, a benign smile firmly in place underneath his shock of salt-and-pepper hair.
“They both seem happy enough, Mary,” he said, patting Henry’s head. “Let it be. It’s nothing worth hurt feelings.”
Sophie bit back a sigh. The words summed up Lord Mainfeld’s motto in life.
Let it be. It’s nothing worth hurt feelings.
Whether it was hunting dogs and sausage or his wife’s incessant indiscretions, Lord Mainfeld accepted it all with unflappable calm.
The dogs continued to whimper and whine, their wagging tails thumping against Sophie’s chair. Little Henry giggled and turned in a circle.
“I don’t understand why we must have the hunting dogs in the breakfast room at all.” That was Sophie’s youngest sister, Harriet, pretty as a jewel in a new blue frock with expensive Venetian lace.
Four years Sophie’s junior, Harriet was in her third Season and in no hurry to find a husband. That was hardly surprising, given their parents’ own unconventional marriage and Sophie’s disastrous one. It was enough to render any sane person skittish.
In Sophie’s case, Jack had revealed himself to be typical of gentlemen on the fringes of the ton. He had been chronically unfaithful and often gambled deep, racking up debts. Jack had broken her into pieces, one biting word, one thoughtless act at a time.
She had spent the months since his death fighting to reclaim her very soul, to recover the bits and bobs of herself from the wreckage Jack had left—
Sophie stopped right there. She would not allow her thoughts to spiral into bitterness and anger. Not today.
She slowed her breathing.
Jack was gone.
Remaining angry at him only hurt herself.
Do not give him any more of yourself.
Live your life free of him.
Or taking a page from her father’s book—Let it be.
Sophie straightened her spi
ne and took a bite of her own eggs.
“Nonsense, Harriet.” Lady Mainfeld was saying. “You know your father prefers to keep his hunting dogs in the house, not the mews.”
“Yes, but why not leave them in the country—”
“Bah! Don’t be ridiculous, Harriet!” That was Sophie’s eldest brother, Thomas, Lord Richan. Like Jane, he was blond and blue-eyed and strongly resembled Lord Mainfeld. One of the Filius veras. “Town would be dreadful dull without the dogs about.”
Thomas emphasized his point by offering the nearest hound a sliver of his own sausage, thereby stealing the dogs’ attention from little Henry.
“Hear, hear,” Robert agreed, snapping the paper he was reading. Robert was dark of feature, a Filius falsus, but he and Thomas were thick as thieves, always dragging each other into one scrape or another. They were focused on the dogs at the moment. However, give it five minutes, and they would be discussing a horse race, or the planned hunting trip west next week, or who would win this year’s cricket match between Harrow and Eton.
Her family, in a word, was sporting mad.
Case in point: “Are we off to Tattersall’s this morning, my boys?” Lord Mainfeld asked his sons. “I want your opinion on a bay hunter I have been admiring.”
The men debated the matter back and forth, ignoring the dogs and their clamoring as only practiced gentlemen could.
Mary, Harriet, and Lady Mainfeld reverted to minutely dissecting the gentlemen’s behavior at a ball the previous evening. Though Sophie’s mourning for Jack had officially ended two month’s past, she had yet to resume attending balls, thank goodness.
“Did you see Mr. Watson dancing with Lady Lilith?” Harriet mused. “She flirted most shamelessly. I wonder if she intends to finally marry again?”
“Lady Lilith has not ceased flirting in the five years since her husband’s death,” their mother replied. “With her, I cannot imagine that flirting alone indicates an intention to marry. The lady is quite immune to any reproach over her scandalous behavior.”
Mary and Harriet nodded, neither of them seeming to note the hypocrisy of their mother’s words.
Sophie found herself observing the scene, once again invisible. Sometimes she wondered if she literally was invisible to her family—unseen, unnoticed.
Unwanted.
She had thought that marriage—that having a person, her person—would alleviate those old feelings of invisibility. But, if anything, marriage to Jack had made everything worse—
It was one thing to be invisible to strangers or family members with whom one had little in common.
It was something else entirely to be invisible to one’s own husband.
Sophie had married Jack, thinking to avoid the wiles of a rake, assuming that he was not one of them.
How wrong she had been.
There had been plenty of skeletons in Jack’s closet. They had simply taken longer than his courtship of her to reach London . . . reports of gambling debts, tales of seducing officer’s wives, stories of raucous drinking—
She placed a mental hand on that train of thought.
Enough.
Let it be.
Act. Do not wait to be acted upon.
Swallowing, Sophie calmed her breathing, pressing a palm to her sternum.
She turned her head to find little Henry stock still, watching her, his eyes too big in his face.
Oh.
At least someone noticed, she supposed. But like her, poor Henry was alone in a room of people who appeared heedless of his existence.
No one should ever feel unloved or unwanted.
Sophie smiled and beckoned him forward, shooing away the dogs. She lifted him onto her lap, snuggling him close and pressing a kiss to his forehead.
Henry, of course, did not want kisses and instead reached for her watch, dangling from its chatelaine. Sophie handed it to him. The watch and chatelaine were a favorite possession, given to her by Lady Mainfeld. The chatelaine featured a series of painted glass beads showing the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 1779. Her mother had purchased it as a memento while in Naples just after the eruption.
Henry passed over the exploding volcano in favor of examining the watch mechanism, listening as Sophie quietly demonstrated how it functioned, opening the back case to carefully show him the gears ticking away inside.
“ . . . Lord Rafe was there, as usual.” Harriet’s words snapped Sophie to attention. “But I did not see him flirting with Lady Lilith.”
Sophie stilled, her heart thumping as it always did when Lord Rafe’s name was mentioned.
Stupid, useless organ.
But the thought did not stop her from leaning sideways to better hear her mother and sisters.
“Lord Rafe has shown more restraint this past year, I think,” Mary said.
“Do you believe he is finally considering marrying, once and for all?” Harriet asked.
“Perhaps,” Lady Mainfeld replied. “He is of an age, and his elder brother has yet to sire an heir.”
“But who would be perfect enough for the son of the Duke of Kendall?” Harriet rolled her eyes.
“A second son,” Mary clarified.
“Lord Rafe will surely marry a Diamond of the First Water. Kendall will tolerate nothing less,” their mother replied, tone acerbic.
Something aching and hard lodged in Sophie’s throat.
Occasionally, she would take out the memory of that night, turn it over in her hand like a souvenir, brush off the dust, and marvel at her naivety. How being with Lord Rafe had felt like a homecoming, but he was, in fact, so very transitory.
Heavens but she was the veriest fool.
Yes, on an autumn evening four years ago (four years!), Lord Rafe had danced attendance on her for two hours (two hours!), behaving in every way like a smitten swain before sweeping her underneath a staircase for an epically-searing kiss. And then he had left London the next morning and set sail for the opposite corner of the globe, leaving Sophie to deal with the wreckage of his behavior.
The London gossips had been ruthless. Lady Sophronia Sorrow openly accepted Lord Rafe Gilbert’s attentions! Lord Mainfeld’s daughter is being courted by Kendall’s son?! How shocking! His abrupt abandonment had only added fuel to the fire.
Some said Lord Rafe’s actions were simply the typical behavior of a rake; Sophie should have known better. Others said it was Kendall’s doing . . . ordering his son to humiliate one of Mainfeld’s daughters.
No one put forth the idea that Lord Rafe had actually been sincere, smitten with Sophie for herself.
That was your own delusional fantasy.
Regardless of Lord Rafe’s reasons, Sophie had experienced whispered glances and cutting remarks in the aftermath of his departure.
Throughout it all, Jack had been loyal, staying by her side. Unlike Lord Rafe, Jack had appeared to want her. He had been constant in his affections during their courtship—he told her he loved her, he promised to worship her. And so, thinking him a Virum nobilis—a noble gentleman utterly unlike Lord Rafe’s Rakus lasciviosus ways—she had agreed to marry him a mere week after Lord Rafe had left London.
Hah! How wrong she had been.
A fortnight into their marriage, Sophie learned another brutal truth—neither professions of love nor marriage vows were to be trusted.
“—all I am asking is that you do not brazenly flirt with other women—”
“You are my wife,” Jack hurled back at her. “Am I married to those other women?”
“Of course not.” She nearly sighed. How could she help Jack understand? “When I was studying my barn cats, the primus led with gentle—”
“Enough of your damn barn cats! I’m sick to death of your bluestocking ways.” Jack glared at her, his handsome face twisting in anger. “A good wife would concern herself more with her husband’s needs than prattling on about farmyard animals—”
Sophie sucked in a steadying breath, allowing the memory to wash over her and then forcing it out.
And it had been a sham. Jack’s attentive behavior during their courtship had simply been a ruse. He had only wanted her for her dowry and her family’s connections. He had a taste for fine living and gambling debts nipping at his heels, debts Lord Mainfeld had settled at their marriage.
And once Jack had secured her as his wife—once she was utterly bound to him and unable to free herself short of death—his true colors came through. After those first months, he had declined to share their marital bed, preferring to slake his lusts elsewhere.
To be fair, Jack was never physically cruel to her. He professed to love her, but his actions and words were often cutting. If that was considered love in a marriage, then Sophie wanted no part of it.
Jack’s death had been such a relief. Relief that she no longer had to endure his presence, his biting words . . . that her life was her own again.
But Sophie found that she was not the trusting, naive creature she had been before her marriage. Jack had broken her soul, one small bit at a time, until she scarcely recognized herself. Ironically, it took his death for her to fully realize how battered and broken she truly was.
In the months after his death, she spent hours staring out the window, unequal to the task of eating or being in the company of others. If she did leave her room, it was to wander the countryside like some ghostly wraith. But eventually, she had sorted through her chaotic emotions and began the process of repairing her fractured heart. She had moved on from the pain of Jack’s behavior. She had stemmed the tide of caustic thoughts.
And she had arrived at some important truths:
Yes, she was odd and would likely never quite fit in.
Yes, her mind thought differently than others did.
Jack’s low opinion of her personality defects said more about him as a person than herself.
And yet . . . a part of her still mourned that she had never truly been wanted.
