Chapter Seven
A couple of hours later
Knowing she couldn’t put off the next meeting with Thornton, Emma eventually tracked him to the portrait gallery. It was a place she’d never visited, but her maid had disclosed that the duke tended to gravitate there at times.
He sat in a winged-back chair done in dark brown leather.
It was one of two, and both rested with a small round rose-inlaid table beneath a large oil painting of a darkened, wind-swept sea.
The storminess in the painting put her in mind of Thornton’s recent mindset, but then the whole of her attention landed on the man himself.
There was a glass of brandy in his right hand.
He sat with his cravat loosened. For whatever reason, his jacket was missing.
A waistcoat of gray silk called her attention to his abdomen, and with scrollwork in black velvet, it was perfect for him.
But when she became cognizant that the sleeves of his fine lawn shirt had been rolled to his elbows, a shiver of need twisted down her spine.
It should be criminal for a man to look so devilishly handsome and dangerous.
Then her gaze slipped to his face. A day’s worth of stubble shadowed his cheeks and jaw, the blond hairs mixed with silver, but oddly, it made him even more attractive.
Everything worked together to make her mouth dry. “What are you doing here, Thornton? Surely there are more comfortable places in the manor for you to rest.”
He grunted. “Perhaps I wished to remember my past.”
“Sometimes that is not a good thing.” As she spoke, Emma came closer to his location.
With a shrug, he took another sip of brandy. “You can go back to London. I won’t hold you here,” he said without looking at her. Instead, his gaze rested on a portrait of a man she assumed had been his father. It was something else he’d not truly talked about with her.
Shock smacked her square in the chest, quickly followed by a trace of panic. “While that is magnanimous of you, I don’t plan to leave here just yet.”
“Ah.” That was all he said, and still, he didn’t look at her.
His expression didn’t give anything away.
Instead, the duke gestured at the paintings on the wall before him of men sitting astride on horses.
“My father and grandfather were war heroes. They garnered accolades and were given honors and gifts of land and titles from kings.” Pausing, he took a deep sip of his brandy.
“They were strong, stoic, never showed emotion, had clear minds, but were harsh, exacting… horrible.”
The tone in his voice sent a shiver of concern through her belly, yet there was a certain vulnerability in his face that had her creeping silently closer. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’ve disappointed them with who I am, who I became during my own stint in the military, because my marriage has failed.” Pain crossed his face then he drained the contents of his glass. “They kept their unions going despite everything, until their wives died.”
Oh, goodness. Was he in his cups or merely lost in the past?
“That might be true, but did they love their wives? Did they beat them out of love or out of control or because they secretly hated themselves but couldn’t talk about what bothered them in their lives?
” Only knowing scraps of his history, what she said was a guess at best.
“I don’t know.” His shrug only lifted one shoulder. “My father wasn’t a kind man by any stretch. My sister said Papa locked her in her room for disobedience. Minor infractions if you ask me, but Charlotte learned quickly how to escape her room shortly afterward.”
Not wishing to do or say anything that would interrupt him from sharing with her, Emma nodded. He’d never spoken of his past or his family with her before, and this was quite the boon. “What did he do to you?”
The duke rested his glass on the table at his elbow.
“Beat me with a riding crop.” He kept his gaze on the paintings while his lips formed a tight line.
“Sometimes, that correction came in the form of a sugar cane rod. He always said that Englishmen in the beau monde, especially those who would be dukes, never showed emotion, never let anyone see them as weak. That they never let anyone else have opinions that would sway their minds. Thus the reason for the beatings, which continued until I stopped crying, until I ceased to show any emotion when they happened.”
Disgust twisted with the urge to nurture him inside her chest. “That is a broken way of thinking.” No wonder he never wished to speak of his family. If his father had done that to his own son, what else had Cecil borne in silence?
“I don’t know about that. My grandfather was no better.”
As much as she wanted to give him a comforting hug, she refrained for fear he would stop talking.
He might have been in his cups, but she rather suspected he was in a remembering sort of mood.
“People in your life are supposed to help you, support you, guide you, love you.” She needed to tread carefully lest she frighten him back into his shell so to speak.
“Despite what those men in your family told you, did to you, love doesn’t hurt or harm. ”
A frown tugged at the corners of his sensual mouth. “Of course you would say that; you’re perfect.”
“Ha.” A snort escaped her. “I am not. Neither did I come from a perfect family.”
Finally, he met her gaze. Doubt lay stamped through his expression. “How?”
“It doesn’t matter just now, but please know my family was as flawed as yours.
Except in my case, it wasn’t my father who wielded power, it was my mother.
” There had been times when her mother was the kindest, most endearing woman, but there were many others when Emma had thought her the devil incarnate.
“I suspect she never wanted children, but was given three in her life. My sister and I were basically her personal maids, while my brother escaped most of her wrath since he was always with my father, training to be the earl one day.” She shrugged.
“Every once in a while, my mother would beat us with her hands when she thought we weren’t attending to her properly, but mostly her abuse was verbal. ”
And that was something she could never escape. It was always at the back of her mind, taunting her, reminding her, and if she didn’t make a conscious effort to push it away, it would certainly haunt her.
“That is outside of enough. One never assumes a woman could be an abuser.”
“Exactly, and that is why it’s still so insidious.” Perhaps they would bond over this. How every… odd. “I couldn’t wait to leave the house and be away from her, but I couldn’t leave my sister behind.”
“Yet you married me.”
She nodded. “Because my sister had married two years before I did. To a man wrong for her but probably for the same reasons I wanted out. Sometimes you do what you must in order to chase peace.” The last she’d heard from her sister, her marriage was in a delicate state at best, but she was doggedly working at it.
“I’m sorry.” Thornton stood up from the chair, and his full, towering form was as impressive as it was the last time she’d been with him. “Is that why you married me? To get away? To find peace? That I was a shelter?” A trace of annoyance wove through his tone.
“I won’t lie and say it wasn’t, but there is a bit of truth there.
” She shrugged. It was in the past. “However, I’d also fallen in love with you through your letters.
I heard what you didn’t say aloud, I saw what you’d alluded to but couldn’t bring yourself to admit to, and in that, I did find a safe harbor.
Even more so after we wed.” There was no shame in saying so.
“When you held me, I knew you would protect me from everything.”
Would that help him to remember what they’d had then?
“Ah.” When he drifted close to her, the faint scent of his cologne teased her nose. The notes of cedarwood, citrus, and a hint of leather drew a sigh from her. “I am still that man.” Then he hooked a hand behind her nape and dragged her to him. “In theory, I suppose.”
“Yet different.” Trembles of need fell down her spine as she stared up at him with a hand resting on his strong chest.
His eyes darkened. A certain hunger reflected in those blue depths. “Agreed. I am changed. Deformed in the mind.” As he spoke those whispered words, he buried his fingers into her hair, tugged until her head went even further back to expose her throat. “Dangerous to those I hold dear.”
Before she could respond, the duke kissed her. This time, the embrace was hard, intense, hungry… arousing, and it touched something deep inside her. The hand resting on his chest curled into the lawn of his shirt as her pulse accelerated. “Surely you can’t want this again.”
“I have been without you for far too long regardless of the reason.” He cupped her cheek with his left hand, drew the scarred pad of his thumb over her bottom lip. “So yes, I do want you, and where there are so many things not in my control, in this I am a master.”
“Perhaps you are.” Twin tremors of fear and need competed for attention inside her chest, but deep down, she wanted him too.
Would this be how she connected with him, how she could drag him back into the light?
“Do what you will, Thornton. I won’t bid you nay this time.
” Not that it had mattered the last time.
“Ah, Emma…” With a growl, he kissed her again with enough force that her mind spun and went into forbidden places, for this she remembered about him.
He pushed her through the gallery until the large picture windows at her back prevented further movement.
“God, I’ve dreamed of you, nearly went out of my mind from needing you but knew you would reject me eventually, so I didn’t go to London. ”