Chapter 24 #2
An awful pause followed. Darien gripped his glass till he feared it would shatter. So Henry had her mill, her plans and her causes and her future. Did she mean to include him in any of these? He had no indication that she did.
“To Hetty and her mill!” Marsibel raised her glass, and Darien forced himself to join another toast.
The marquess turned to Jasper. “Do you know, I’ve been considering building a factory on the Trent, but I’m not sure there’s a high enough drop to power a water wheel.”
“It’s steam you want, in that case,” Jasper returned. “I’m building my next mill with Watt’s atmospheric engine. Uses half the coal of Newcomen’s, and you needn’t be near a river at all.”
The marquess insisted that Darien return to Langford House to complete his recovery, and Lady Clarinda made no protest to keep him. Henrietta offered no demurral either. She whisked Horatia away shortly after tea, and Darien found them packing his things in the bedchamber he had occupied.
Henry was blithely sending him on his way, and he had no declaration from her, no promise, not even a few silly, tender words. She could not simply walk away from him. She could not.
“—besotted,” Horatia was saying. “Lucretius and I used to laugh at the way girls cast lures at Daring and Lucifer. But the way he looks at you…”
“As if I were a thorn in his side?” Henrietta answered.
“As if you were food and drink together, all that could sustain him.” Horatia’s voice turned wistful. “I should like someone to look at me like that, someday.”
Henrietta shook out one of his shirts. “Miss Wollstonecraft believes it is better to inspire admiration for one’s wit and sense rather than passion for one’s person,” she said. “All the same, I hope you know your uncle is not the sad rattle he is made out to be.”
“Such talk is not meant for her ears,” Darien snapped. “I’ll do that.”
Henrietta lifted her eyebrow. “And how are you to manage with one arm? Horatia cannot; she is holding the baby.”
“Here, you angel,” Horatia cooed, rocking Celestina in her arms.
Darien growled and rubbed his shoulder, which ached like the devil. “We could have made our announcement tonight, Henry. Your father and mine are downstairs haggling over our marriage settlements as we speak.”
“Neither of them has thought to consult me on the matter,” she said, folding the shirt.
“Devil take it! Why won’t you marry me?”
She flared her eyes at him. “You kissed me in the Egyptian gallery for all to see. I can only assume you meant to draw attention away from my other scandalous behavior, which the broadsides have taken due note of, thank you. But everyone knows Lord Daring doesn’t marry on a kiss, and besides that, my reputation has already been damaged beyond repair.
Ergo, you are under no obligation to extend your hand, nor I to accept it. ”
Darien sent his niece a glare, encouraging her to retreat. She did, withdrawing with the baby to the sitting room where, with one hand, she turned over the haphazard stack of books on Henrietta’s desk.
He lowered his voice. “You kissed me back, Henry.”
She tucked the shirt into the valise Rutherford had provided. “A few kisses are hardly grounds for marriage.”
He stepped close, looming over her. Where was the luscious woman who had melted in his arms among the ancient artifacts? “There is more than kissing involved in a marriage.” He traced a finger along the alluring neckline of her gown. “I shall be happy to demonstrate.”
Her resistance baffled him. Lord knew he’d never denied himself gratification with anything. He didn’t understand what she wanted, and if he didn’t understand, how could he offer it and secure her to his side? Make her want no man but him?
She snatched up a cravat and flapped the cloth at him, forcing him to step back. “I would insist on certain conditions. You will not like them.”
“How many conditions?” he asked warily.
“Two come immediately to mind.”
Horatia moved past the doorway, humming to the baby, and her happiness was an accusation.
In his own grief and blind obstinacy, he had allowed Ratty to drive his brother’s legacy to rack and ruin, just as his father said.
Worse, he had neglected his niece, Horace’s remaining child.
There was a liveliness in Horatia’s step and a glow on her cheek that had not been there when she’d arrived.
She had flowered instantly under Henrietta’s attention.
And the fault was his that Horatia had been deprived at all.
“I presume I am looking at your conditions,” Darien grated out.
“Horatia and Celestina comprise the first.” Henrietta folded his cravat with precision and tucked it into the valise beside his shirts.
“And the second?”
She faced him. “Your father’s suit,” she said in a quiet voice.
Darien stiffened, a cold despair washing through him. She, his hoped-for wife, was supposed to take his side.
“You want me to do as he demands? Take away Lucien’s birthright, when it was never meant for—” Couldn’t she see how wrong it was?
In his nightmares, he moved through Bellamy’s rooms as if he were the master of Horace’s domain, while Lucien bellowed from the family tomb in the graveyard. And Darien had put him there.
He had to make her see how impossible this demand was. He couldn’t meet it. She couldn’t ask it of him. “You wish to become a countess by courtesy, is that it? You’d be near the equal of Clarinda or Lady Bess. I am surprised a title could tempt you,” Darien snarled.
Henrietta didn’t rile at his insults. She stepped forward and placed her hands alongside his face, her gaze meeting his directly. He hated how vulnerable her touch made him feel, how much he craved her strength.
“You heard what your father said,” she said. “And Horatia. I have an estate of my own and I am responsible for the souls upon it. I could not be married to you and watch nothing be done to save Bellamy.”
“It is Lucien’s place to oversee Bellamy,” Darien said hoarsely. “Lucien is the heir. I cannot take what is his. It is theft, and it is murder. If I become Earl of Aldthorpe…there’s nothing for him to come back for.” He closed his eyes in pain.
“Oh, my darling,” Henrietta whispered. She stroked his cheek, and he leaned into her steady, solid comfort. He hated that she should have such power over him. A man ought to be his own master.
“You need not take the title, if that is the rub,” she said. “You need only consent to a legal act that will nominate you as your father’s heir, and Horace’s, so you may make decisions for the estate. You would make a better steward than your cousin, from the sound of things.”
“I shall not have him declared dead,” Darien rasped. “I shall not behave as if he is.” He pulled his face away from her hand. “I’ll— I can go to Bellamy and make Ratty behave.”
She picked up another cravat. “I wish you well in the attempt. I hope you will leave Horatia here while you are away.”
Darien caught her hand as his composure cracked.
He was doing it again. Ridden by grief, by shame at his own failures, he turned into a howling and desperate animal striking out at whoever was near, clawing everything around him to destruction.
He let his hands curl into fists so he could not touch her.
He could not hurt Henry, his valiant, determined, magnificent Henry.
He could not haul her down into his despair. He needed her to save him from it.
“I’ll go to India. I’ll find Lucien. I’ll bring him back.”
“Very well.” Henrietta bit her lip and nodded. “I will look after the girls while you are gone.”
Guilt goaded him past his patience. “They are my wards,” he growled. “I will provide for them.” Did she think him incapable? “I asked you to marry me. Not take charge of my family affairs.”
“Oh, you asked me to marry you. Why was that again?”
Her face shuttered, settling into cool, firm lines that told him he had pushed too far. He didn’t have an answer to that. He had found her outside the palace of St. James, cursing her gown, and he had not walked past her, though he might have. Others had.
And when she kissed him in her family garden, practice for imaginary future suitors, then strolled away untouched, he’d known—he decided in that moment—he would find a way to bind her to him and she would never walk away from him again.
Sheer impulse, the way he had always operated. The blind, groping need that had led him into destruction, and now he thought could lead him out.
“I thought so.” Henrietta snapped the valise shut and pushed it into his good hand. “If you see Lady Celeste on the Continent, tell her I have her daughter.”
“You’re supposed to be ruined,” Darien demanded, outraged that she was doing it again, walking away. That was how his world operated. A kiss was as binding as a vow. It could make marriages, and it could break them. What more would it take with this woman?
She turned toward him at the door. “I have a mill to build and an estate to oversee, and I hope someday to rebuild my credit enough to be accepted into the Minerva Society,” she said with a brittle composure that told him she was furious.
“Nothing about me is ruined. As to the matter of marriage, I have outlined my terms.”
He ground his teeth together. She asked him to deny Lucien, his other half, his best self. To accept that he would not come back, with his cocksure swagger and laughing blue eyes and bold grin. She was asking him to say aloud that Lucien no longer lived.
“I cannot accept your conditions.” The words squeezed the air out of his lungs. They clawed up his chest, shredding him from the inside.
She straightened her shoulders, those elegant square shoulders that bore so much. “Perhaps that is for the best,” she said before she exited. “It would not do for Prime Minister Pitt to haul away your would-be wife in chains.”