Chapter 40
Forty
Alec gave three short, sharp knocks on Finn’s door, the same signal they had used since they were boys.
“Come in, Alec,” he heard, and Alec entered.
Alec saw his friend standing over his open trunk, directing his valet to complete the process of packing. “If you would leave us, Davies. I will call you back when I am ready to resume.”
“Very good, Your Grace.” The man quietly stepped through into the dressing room and shut the door, leaving the two cousins standing together in the middle of the room.
“So, you are going to return to London with her, Finn?”
Finn sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, thoroughly displacing the complicated and precise arrangement his valet had prepared for him. “Yes, cousin. I feel obligated, for her own honor—”
“Honor? What type of honor does that woman have? Good God, Finn!”
Finn put up a hand to stop him. “Alec, I know. She is still very young. And underneath all that seemingly polished sophistication and beauty, there is a person there who is in pain.”
“And you feel you need to rescue her?” Alec could feel the edge and impatience in his voice, and he tried to tamp it down. This was not Finn’s fault.
“Only as far as London, Alec. I want no scandal to touch her. Well, at least as little as possible. With a ne’er-do-well for a father, she is in desperate financial straits.
Any rumor that I had abruptly dropped her could ruin her by starting the tongues wagging.
And—no, Alec, no.” Finn interrupted himself to forestall the next outburst from his cousin.
“I am not going to offer for her. Any consideration of that ended today.” His mouth twisted and he continued.
“In spite of my lectures on how I have wished to behave like the Ton, how this is the way our world works, and how I wanted to be the ultimate Pink of the Pinks—would this marriage of convenience be enough?
No, Alec. No. I cannot go through with this.
I have no desire to have a calculatedly arranged and coldly executed marriage, with each person living a different, separate life and trying to scrape together some sort of happiness.
“I have my responsibilities to my estate—I need to produce an heir. However, I do not have to do so this Season. And I cannot enter into a marriage which would estrange me both from you and from Marjorie. I have my mother, Alec, and I have you and your daughter. You are my family. I cannot lose that. Not even for the most beautiful woman I have ever set my eyes on.” Finn paused, and Alec watched a variety of emotions run through his cousin’s eyes.
“To wound a child like that— and so carelessly. She actually tripped her, did she not? Marjorie did not fall on her own account. No. I am sure of it. What a heartless set these members of the Ton can be. This is not a game. At least, not one I am willing to play. I have seen that today.” A wry smile touched his lips.
“As you foretold. You know me too well, cousin.”
Finn closed the gap between himself and Alec, clapped him on the shoulder, and then pulled him into an embrace. “Now, get away, man, and see to your family. I will return to you once my mission is done. I intend to be your guest of honor at your wedding.”
“You are a good man, Finn. I am grateful you are my friend.” Alec suddenly felt utterly wrung out from the emotions of the day.
“I will see you in the morning before you leave. I will ask Aurora to send a light supper up to everyone’s rooms—I do not think anyone will feel up to dining formally this evening. ”
With that, Alec left and headed downstairs to have a quiet word with Aurora and then take Marjorie back upstairs to her bedroom so she could prepare for the night.
* * *
No one slept well that night except, perhaps, for Marjorie.
Alec had sat with her until she fell asleep and then gently extricated his arm from her unconscious grip.
There had been a few more tears on her part, but bewilderment was the overriding response to the evening.
From her earliest years, she had been accepted in the spaces where she went.
But as much as anything, Alec saw, it was the repeated cutting coldness underneath the words directed at his daughter by Miss Wentworth.
And then to purposefully harm Marjorie? It had frightened her, too. Damnation—it had rattled him!
But Alec found comfort not only being with Marjorie but knowing his presence comforted her as well. In the midst of what this day had been, the still, firm, solid center of it all was his daughter.
In his own room, he dismissed a sleepy Archibald and got himself ready for bed.
Blowing out the candle, he went to stand at the window, staring out at the darkness.
His thoughts and his emotions were a complete jumble.
He knew he would not be able to sleep if he could not sort them out, a trick he had learned in coping with a chaotic childhood household.
First of all, his daughter had been tripped today.
That was the only reason she could have fallen in the drawing room.
He found himself clenching his fist again as he remembered it.
And he knew the only person near her at that moment, the only person who could have done it, was Miss Wentworth.
That one so beautiful could be so horrible.
And to a child, too. It was like looking at a beautiful statue and seeing a snake curl around its neck and slide down, fangs wide open.
Or watching—what was the fairy tale? Toads and the like issuing from a beautiful, exquisite mouth.
And I believed I adored her, I worshipped her.
She was what Mary might have been. She was the Ideal, the Beauty, the one I could not have because of the financial straits my father left me in.
Or had he? A renegade thought whispered at the back of his mind.
How could he have ever adored someone he was now imagining as a statue?
But she looked to be all a duchess should be!
She knew what was required. She had been trained to it since childhood.
He could turn the management of his household duties over to someone like her, knowing she would see everything was done to the standards of their position in society.
She would be able to teach Marjorie how to be a proper lady.
She could give her the polish that, sadly, for all his love he would never be able to provide his daughter himself.
But again, the reality of the scene that had occurred returned.
Miss Wentworth was cruel. And she had no interest in Marjorie.
None at all. She wished to pack her away, out of sight and out of mind.
Banish her. His daughter was a part of everything he did—well, with a few exceptions—not even he had dared to bring her to his club.
There had been a fierce defender of Marjorie in that room today and even the evening before, and it had not been him: it had been Aurora.
She had stood up for his daughter, and tonight, Aurora had banished the woman who had hurt her.
And not only Marjorie—Millicent Wentworth’s barbs had been aimed directly at Aurora herself.
Then, afterward, his fiancée sat with him and his daughter.
They had formed—could he even call it a unit?
Yes. A family. It was not just him, alone, being the parent, being the person carrying everything.
It did not have to be just him. It was clear she cared for Marjorie.
Would he go so far as to say Aurora treasured her?
But it was only a business arrangement with him, correct?
Not a love match. He himself was the means to an end—securing a title to go with Aurora’s wealth, so that she could move into Society and out of this backwater.
Clearly, they were more comfortable around each other now.
They were on a first name basis. Alec could tease her, and she responded in kind.
The blushing schoolgirl of his first acquaintance had developed a spine over these past weeks.
She had grown in confidence. It no longer seemed a burden to be undertaking this marriage.
He continued staring out at the darkened landscape.
Archibald had opened a window to bring in the fresh night air, and there was a slight breeze which stirred the draperies.
He heard an owl call nearby, and the rustling of some small prey scurrying for shelter.
But his mind was full of Aurora. It was almost as if he could see her standing there, looking at him and smiling.
He remembered her hand—her hands. Capable.
He meant no belittling or diminishing by saying so.
Rather, was he starting to see her as someone who might, in point of fact, be an equal to him?
Within limits, naturally. He would still be the husband.
It would be his word as the final on all decisions. But he would be able to rely on her.
Altogether satisfactory in a marriage arranged for business and practical reasons. Which was what marriages were supposed to be, outside of the ballads penned by Romantic Poets.
Or was it—that was, was it all just for practical purposes?
He recalled their ride yesterday morning.
It felt like another lifetime. It had been very difficult to stop kissing Aurora.
It had been even harder to pull back and simply sit quietly side by side.
He had wanted to drink her in, all of her.
Sitting so close to her, even when they had been barely touching, he could feel her presence alongside him like a lit candle.
The same happened today, at the picnic. Even with Mary, he had never felt quite so alive beside another woman.
The way she looked at him, with all of herself in that gaze.
Also, looking at him as if she saw him. That self-possession.
Yes, that was it. It did not frighten him anymore.
Alec spared the briefest thought on the acknowledgement that, yes, the directness in those eyes had frightened him at first. Him! But not now.
Because what Aurora appeared to find when she looked inside him, she found worthy.
She saw Alec. And that directness also felt very, well, erotic.
He could see quite clearly in his mind’s eye what he had stopped himself from doing.
His imagination ran ahead of him, teasing him with a what if.
And his body was letting him know again, right now, this was not a passing urge.
Conjugal duties to be endured and kept to the necessary, with Miss Hardcastle—Aurora—as his wife?
The idea no longer felt a duty or a burden.
He should sire some more children: companions for Marjorie, and, well, he should have a male heir, shouldn’t he?
I mean, this was a given. That it might be a pleasure was an unlooked-for miracle.
Or something for which he had not dared hope.
So, what did he want? It always came back to this question in the end.
Because he hated admitting to himself that what he wanted was truly not part of this entire expedition.
Nevertheless, he felt driven to ask it. For this whole business to be over, settled, and done.
For Marjorie to be protected, the estate secured. Yes. That was a given.
The memory of his waltz with Aurora came back vividly to him, followed by the feel of her in his arms as he kissed her.
Damnation! This was not going to get him to sleep any time soon.
And also—
Good God! He was in love with Miss Hardcastle!
No. Aurora.
He was in love with Aurora. Thoroughly and completely. Beyond the shadow of a doubt. He could not hide from this, or from himself, any longer.
Alec Raeburn, Duke of Selkirk, smiled into the darkness and felt the tension drain from his shoulders. Everything would be all right. Yes, everything would be fine.
Aurora. Yes, Aurora.
It still did not make it easier for him to fall asleep.