Duke of Lust (Sinful Dukes #3)

Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22

“ I said I am not to be disturbed,” Frederick thundered as the knocking at the library door sounded a third time.

This time it was lighter as though Witmore was thinking better of his persistence. Or as though it was now a lighter hand applying itself to the heavy oak of the door.

“Frederick? This is your stepmother,” sounded the familiar voice of the Dowager Duchess of Heartwick. "You must let me in. We are all worried about you.”

So, Duchess Sarah had returned. Frederick should have known this would happen eventually. He should have made the effort to write briefly to Walden Towers in response to recent letters from her or his brother-in-law. He could even have pretended an minor illness or business crisis to discourage calls. Then he could have avoided this intrusion.

He remembered groggily that he had ordered his staff to send an appropriate congratulation and gift to the Duke and Duchess of Walden once the news of the twins’ birth arrived by express from Walden Towers. He was not far enough gone to neglect that much. What day had that been? Frederick could no longer remember. He was even less sure of what day it might be now.

Penelope and her children – including a son who was Frederick’s heir – were safe and well. His relief for that had been genuine. He simply could not bring himself to care about the wider chatter of visits, names, Christenings and family resemblance now occupying all his relatives. All letters concerning such inanities had been cast aside, largely unread beyond an initial scan.

“Let me in, Frederick. Please. I only want to see you are well.”

Well? No, he wasn’t well, God damn it all. In fact, he doubted he would ever be well again. It was, however, something impossible to explain, either to respectable members of his family and acquaintance, or to his loucher friends and lovers from Lord Blackwell’s circle.

“Penelope has told me to remain here until I have seen you and am satisfied that you are safe and well, Frederick,” Duchess Sarah insisted. “Her midwife and physician have both emphasized the importance of new mothers avoiding unnecessary worry.”

This was pure and obvious emotional blackmail now, but still powerful enough that he could not ignore it, caring deeply as he did for Penelope.

The Duke of Heartwick swore and rose to his feet, slightly stumbling and knocking over first the almost empty bottle of claret by his seat and then the still half-full glass on the table. He muttered further oaths as he crunched over the mess of wine and broken glass to the door.

As soon as he turned the key, his stepmother rushed into the room, followed by Witmore and two manservants. Were they worried he might have gone mad and needed restraint? Or had they expected to have to carry him to bed in his cups like an elderly and habitual soak?

“I am as you see me, Stepmother,” Frederick managed to say as she took in the mess of the room where he had been secluding himself, even sleeping in one of the large chairs by the fireplace.

Aside from the broken wine glass and bottle rolling in a puddle of claret, trays of half-eaten meals and discarded items of clothing lay scattered about the place, while correspondence was cast across a desk, some fallen to the floor and in danger from the encroaching wine.

“Witmore, have the staff clean this up and tell Duke Frederick’s valet to run a bath and lay out fresh clothing,” Duchess Sarah instructed as she retrieved the letters from the floor and placed them back on the desk, noting her own handwriting as she did so. “We will take a light meal in the dining room as soon as the Duke is ready.”

Frederick laughed incredulously as he listened to her trying to put things to rights. Did she really think she could come back here and mother him out of his present mood?

“You’re not my mother!” he exclaimed as the two footmen set to work in cleaning up the room, knowing even as he spoke that he sounded like a drunk and petulant youth.

“I’m the closest thing you have and I consider you my son. I always have, Frederick,” said Duchess Sarah quietly. “I have been worried sick by not hearing from you. Even Maxwell was concerned that something might have happened.”

“I sent a present, didn’t I? Witmore?” Frederick pointed out, looking to the rather solemn-looking butler for confirmation.

“You did, Your Grace. Two silver infant drinking cups, to be engraved with names after the Christening.”

“Very well chosen, Witmore.”

The butler inclined his head in acknowledgement but said nothing in response to Duke Frederick’s praise, more conscious than his master of the view that Duchess Sarah was likely to take of Frederick’s delegation of so personal a task.

“If you had brought them personally, or even written a note with them, Penelope’s mind would have been at rest,” his stepmother remarked. “As it was, your sister has convinced herself that your continued silence means that you are in the greatest peril of some sort. Is she right?”

“Do we have to have this conversation in front of the.. the.. schtaff?” Frederick began and then stopped upon hearing the humiliating stumbling and slurring in his words.

“The Heartwick Hall staff have been worried too, Frederick. It’s a little late to be concerned about what they might see or hear, isn’t it? Let us all help you. Please. For Penelope’s sake, if not mine or your own.”

Duchess Sarah gestured around the room, her voice deeply concerned rather than angry, which somehow only made matters worse. For perhaps the first time in his life, Frederick began to feel truly ashamed of himself. He had messed everything up for everyone, hadn’t he?

“Why can’t I be allowed to forget everything?” he muttered to himself. “Why?”

Sitting back down heavily, Frederick closed his eyes and wished the world away. It seemed that every time he began to be able to forget, the world threw some awful reminder back in his face.

Several days ago, for example, an unexpected box had arrived from Madame Deveaux and upon opening it, Frederick had found the shimmer of silken fabric that formed Annabelle’s bridal nightgown, together with a message congratulating her on her marriage. Evidently, the dressmaker was unaware that Annabelle was no longer residing at Heartwick Hall.

Consumed by conflicting desires both to bury his face in the fabric and rip it apart, he had instead had the box taken upstairs and placed far away from him in the now empty bedroom where Annabelle had stayed. He had not even been back upstairs since then, fearing what he might do to the garment.

“Witmore, fetch some strong coffee and biscuits while that bath is being drawn.”

When Frederick opened his eyes again a few minutes later, there was only him and his stepmother in the room, the servants on their errands.

“What has happened to you, Frederick?” Duchess Sarah asked him gently, now that they were alone. “Can you tell me?”

“I just want it to be over,” he said and saw her visibly blanche with alarm.

“Oh, not my life, Stepmother,” Frederick clarified speedily, lest she send for a physician, a priest or both, equally unwanted. "Just everything else. It’s the waiting that’s so hard. Knowing what is coming and not being able to stop it. What’s the date?”

“It’s the morning of the nineteenth of July, Frederick,” the dowager duchess answered with a troubled expression. “How long have you been in this state? Three days? Four? Longer? Witmore was reluctant to say so I am only guessing from what I have seen.”

“The nineteenth,” he mused, the rest of his stepmother’s questions falling away unanswered. “Then it is nearly over. Nearly over…”

“What is nearly over?” Duchess Sarah inquired and then sighed. “No, I don’t need to ask that, do I? I shan’t feign ignorance. You are speaking of Annabelle’s wedding I believe.”

Annabelle’s wedding. The words hit him like a blow and he felt his face crumple before he could control it.

“Duke Frederick’s bath will be ready in five minutes,” Witmore relayed as he returned with a steaming pot of coffee, a plate of biscuits and several maids and footmen ready to set about the library and restore it to order.

Duchess Sarah took the tray.

“Very good, thank you Witmore. Give us five minutes alone before you start the cleaning.”

She closed the door behind the household staff and went back to Frederick’s side, laying a hand on his shoulder. It was a cautious gesture, likely not knowing how it would be received, but he found it oddly comforting to know that at least one person cared that he was in pain.

“Does Annabelle know how you feel, Frederick?” his stepmother asked mildly, stepping back to pour out the coffee and place a cup in Frederick’s unsteady hands.

“She must do. How could she not?” he blurted out, the images of all their embraces, ecstasies and whispered erotic endearments rushing through his mind. “How could she not know?”

“But have you ever told her?”

“Told her? I have surely shown her in everything that I have done, everything that we have done together…”

At this, his stepmother held up her hand.

“There are some things it is best that I do not know, Frederick, for everyone’s sake.”

“Why does everyone assume that I am a heartless rake and have besmirched or hurt Annabelle?” Frederick demanded angrily. “I would never do that, not to any innocent or unwilling woman, and certainly not the woman I…love.”

The last word was spoken in a horrified whisper. He had never said it aloud before, and never knowingly even to himself. Still, he had known it was true for some time now, at least since that night by the campfire. Annabelle was the woman he loved. The only woman he could ever love – and she was to marry another man tomorrow.

The sadness on his stepmother’s face under its faded gold and silver hair told him that she was thinking along the same lines. Annabelle would become the Countess of Darrington tomorrow and lost to Frederick forever.

“You never told Annabelle that much, did you?” she suggested. “She certainly does not know that you love her. If she did, I wager that she would not be marrying Oswald Quince.”

“You speak very confidently,” Frederick reacted with a humorless laugh.

“I am not as blind as you seem determined to be, Frederick. Did you really never notice Annabelle’s affection for you? She has been devoted to you ever since she was a little girl.”

“You’re talking only of a childish infatuation,” he dismissed this idea easily, tempting though it was. “Annabelle is an adult woman now and knows her own mind. Given how protective Stephen can be, I was likely the only young man she knew as a girl. Now she sees that there are other choices and she is free to make them.”

“Annabelle loves you,” stated Duchess Sarah as slowly and clearly as though trying to explain something to a confused small child rather than a drink-addled man. “That has been obvious to me for years. I have never encouraged her affections, given her naivety and your… lifestyle. Still, that young woman would have followed you to the ends of the earth if you asked her.”

Every word was now a dagger, especially as the coffee began to restore some order to Frederick’s befuddled senses. What was the point of saying these things to him now? It had always been impossible and it was now also far too late.

“Annabelle shines like the moon in the sky,” he said with a sigh of thwarted longing. “She is sweeter and more wholesome than any fruit, and more natural and desirable than any woman I’ve ever met.”

“And yet you have never told her these things,” remarked his stepmother with sorrowful wonder.

“A man like me, a woman like Annabelle – how could that ever end well?” he asked, choking on his own bitter laughter. “As I said, I won’t hurt Annabelle. It surely would hurt her to hear me declare my love now. I must let her move on with her own life.”

“Is that what love is to you, Frederick? Only pain? Oh, my dear boy. That is not how it should be at all.”

“It is not what I want, it is who I am. I hurt everyone I love, don’t I? You and Penelope most of all. You never deserved the way I behaved after Father died. Neither of you did. God, what is wrong with me?”

Duchess Sarah pulled up another chair beside Frederick’s now and took one of his hands between hers.

“We have spoken of this time before, Frederick, but you must not have believed what I said. You were a hurt and grieving child after your father died. I held nothing you said then against you, ever. You are my son. Even when you went your own way, when you chose to live partly beyond society’s limits, you have always been my beloved son and Penelope’s beloved brother.”

Frederick squeezed his stepmother’s hand between his own but shook his head.

“I don’t understand how Annabelle could love me as you say,” he admitted. “Do you know, I gave Annabelle my mother’s sapphire necklace and told her to keep it? Still, I could not speak what I felt, even to myself. I have made myself into a man not fitted for love.”

“You have not,” Duchess Sarah contradicted him firmly. “I cannot claim to understand the circles you move in, the lifestyle you lead, but I believe none of it can be entirely wicked if it includes a man like you, Frederick. There is no evil in you. Annabelle’s love alone is proof of that.”

Still he shook his head in disbelief and his stepmother suddenly laughed in unexpected joy.

“How could she love me?” he questioned, addressing himself and the universe as much as his stepmother.

“Oh, Frederick, how you do remind me of your father at this moment!”

Frederick saw tears in her eyes as she made this remark, but happiness too, rousing his curiosity as well as his sympathy.

“I can see from his old portraits that we are alike,” he commented.

“It is not just your face, Frederick, although Philip, your father, was just as handsome as you. All the ladies ran after him, you know, just as they run after you.”

Frederick did not know what to make of this slightly embarrassing revelation so merely listened.

“Of course, your father’s attention was elsewhere. He had been very much in love with your mother and when she died, he was distraught. His principle concern was for you, not chasing women.”

“I never even asked how you met Father,” he remarked.

“You were there when we met,” she said with a smile, “although likely too young to remember. We were both flying kites out on Hampstead Heath, your father with you and me with my nieces, Kitty and Isabelle. The wind was strong and our kite was so big that it nearly pulled me off my feet. Your father ran after us and rescued both me and the kite.”

Duchess Sarah smiled warmly at this reminiscence, clearly a very happy day for her although she was correct that Frederick did not remember it at all.

“After that, Philip called at my family’s house to ask after my health and present me with a smaller kite. I thought he was only being kind, even when he invited me out to fly the kite with you both next time I was out with my nieces. Then, he bought a little boat for the pond in Hyde Park and gifted me that.”

“When did you realize it was more than kindness?” Frederick asked.

He was sorry now that he had been too young to remember any of the courtship he must have witnessed directly. Before Penelope’s birth when he was six, Frederick remembered little of his early life at all, not even the face of his natural mother.

“Your father’s interest had to be pointed out to me by my mother, who was more astounded than I was. At eight-and-twenty, I was considered to be on the shelf in those days and likely to be no more use to my family than as a kindly aunt to my sisters' children. The idea that the handsome Duke of Heartwick might seek my hand was incredible.”

Duchess Sarah shook her head and smiled again as she looked back across the years.

“I was considered very plain beside my sisters, who were both very glamorous and accomplished ladies. They played many instruments, took a great interest in fashion and could paint and draw better than any other lady in society. They married young and very well. Meanwhile, I was a homebody, happiest in the garden or greenhouses with my plants, or playing games with my nieces.”

“I don’t remember you being plain,” Frederick thought aloud. “I only remember you being calm and happy, and that my father was calm and happy when he was with you.”

“Yes, we were very happy together, and yes, our marriage was a tranquil one. His first marriage to your mother was more dramatic, I think, with her family originally opposing the match due to some family feud or other. Then, she died so young and so suddenly. Poor Philip was done with drama by the time we met.”

Frederick listened with interest, never having spoken very much to his stepmother about his father before, at his own wish rather than hers.

“It’s good to speak like this and we should do it more. Still, I don’t understand what it was that reminded me of my father a few moments ago.”

“Ah, yes, I must be rambling. Forgive me, Frederick. I’ve rarely had the opportunity to speak to you about your father and I am carried away. Well, when he finally declared his love and made me an offer, I was too astonished to speak. He took this as rejection and I had to stop him leaving instantly. It was what he said next that reminded me of you.”

“What was that?”

“When I explained that I never thought that a man like him would consider someone like me, he was amazed. Then, he told me that he did not believe he was a man any woman could love again, given the marks that grief had left. That handsome man, with his title, his fortune and a personality that would have won friends without the rest, considered himself to be unlovable.”

“Ah,” Frederick said and dropped his eyes back to his now empty coffee cup. “He and I both saw the hidden places inside ourselves where others cannot look. His was filled with grief and mine with dissolution.”

“Your father was lovable and so are you, Frederick. It is not too late.”

“You think I should jump up in the church and disrupt the wedding, do you?” he asked with a raised eyebrow, not serious about this idea and doubting that Duchess Sarah could ever encourage such an outrageous action. “You think Stephen would just let me carry Annabelle off from the altar?”

“Of course not. But, if Annabelle marries a man she does not love, all while loving you, will she be happy, do you think? Speak to her before the wedding. Please.”

Frederick gave a long sigh, the thought of Annabelle’s potential unhappiness enough to jog him from his own inward spiraling.

“All I had to do was get through one more day and then this would all have been academic. Now you want me to jump through another hoop before I give up, don’t you?”

“You deserve happiness and love, Frederick, both you and Annabelle. It is up to you whether you seek it or give up. Now, I will not keep you from your bath. I will be waiting in the dining room when you are ready to eat.”

Steadier on his feet with the coffee now in his blood, Frederick stood up and left the library, passing the servants in the hall without a word as he went upstairs.

Duchess Sarah had always been a little sentimental in her kindness but at least one thing she said rang true. It was important that he see Annabelle one more time and ascertain for himself if what his stepmother said was true. Did she really love him as he loved her? Would she really be unhappy if she married Oswald Quince?

If she did not love him then he would let her walk up that aisle without raising a finger. But if she did…what then?