Chapter Eleven
When Harbury awoke an hour later, Cassandra was gone. He smoothed his hand over the empty place where she’d lain; the sheets were already cool to the touch, but the bedside lantern still burned. He rolled onto his back, stretched out his legs, and pillowed his head with his arm.
After the lingering shudder of his little death had ended, Cassandra continued to hold him softly against her breasts—a heavenly, erotic sensation.
Bewildering, too.
His wife’s sweet ministrations ushered him into a deep and restful sleep. He’d felt safe. Perhaps for the first time in his life.
Safe.
On their wedding night, he’d used the word safe. Thinking Cassandra had cried out of fear, he’d told her she was safe with him. He’d meant that she could trust him to do his duty by her, and that, as his wife, she would want for nothing. But what he wanted now was even more consuming.
He wanted, though impossible, to take away all her fears.
Occasionally, he caught her gazing blankly at some decades or even centuries-old flourish of plaster or object of art gracing the walls of Harbury Hall.
She was, he suspected, finding the life of a duchess more daunting than she’d anticipated.
But how could he ease her unease when he’d never mastered his own?
From the day he’d pinned on the ducal coronet, he’d been dangling above the world, suspended as if he were one of those great balloons he’d once seen floating above the ground in Hyde Park, a monstrosity held aloft by fire and heat.
Like those balloons, he’d found his trajectory just as impossible to control.
Those fears, he knew, had grown out from an even deeper dread, fright that had taken root so early in his youth he couldn’t place the time. He’d always been different from his family, emotional in ways they could not fathom.
Beholding beauty in the world inspired in him greater happiness; feeling pain, greater devastation. His father’s actions implied the sensitivity that made him different also made him loathsome. And he’d accepted that as truth.
But, perhaps, his differences made him capable of a deeper devotion.
After Viv had left him, anger had vined up from his fears, two emotional aspects with the same germination. Ever since, the wild flora now firmly fixed within him had grown sharper and thicker thorns.
Tonight, Cassandra had pruned those thorns with her simple act of love. Previously obscured possibility appeared. Now, he was certain he could change…improve. He could set aside the past. He could create a better future. Not just for himself and Cassandra, but for everyone on the estate.
With care and attention, he could mend the rifts Anderson’s odd behavior had created.
Even if addressing the tenants’ concerns would mean a fundamental change to the way the estate had been run during his father’s time, he would make those changes.
Anderson had always enjoyed the prior duke’s complete confidence, but Harbury intended to stand his ground.
Obviously, the old way was no longer working.
But estate decisions were the last things he wanted to contemplate right now. He’d much rather be focusing on his wife. Where had she gone?
He leaned over the bed, and, with a groan, he retrieved his nightshirt and banyan from the floor. If Marsden knew how carelessly he’d cast away his garments, he would be horrified. Almost as horrified—he smirked—as Cassandra had been when he’d first taken them off.
Ladies, apparently, were less captivated by the male form as most men were by the female shape.
By contrast, nearly every feminine figure fascinated him. Plump or skinny, heavy in the upper, rounded in the lower, or—saints be praised—shaped like a bloody violin. But he hadn’t lied when he’d told Cassandra that his desire was specific to her.
Now that he knew his wife better, he understood her kind nature formed part of the secret to her allure. When he’d chosen her that night at Almack’s, had some part of him grasped that her beauty was her heart made manifest?
Possibly.
One thing, he knew for certain: tonight, she’d given him the gift of her uninhibited release, a gift he intended to cherish. As for her tender and nurturing embrace… Well, unrest and uncertainty be damned, he would not allow anything in the wide world to come between them.
He’d tell her now, only, first, he had to find her.
He donned his nightshirt, shrugged back into his banyan, and rose from the bed to check his chamber. Cassandra wasn’t the only creature missing. Mercy had disappeared from his bed as well. He pressed his hand into the indentation the puppy had left in his pillow.
Dry, thank heaven.
He hadn’t exactly been thinking clearly when he’d ordered an untrained puppy to go to sleep atop his bed. He did not, however, regret his decision. Even a wet bed would have been worth his wife’s surrender.
But now he had time to consider the puppy’s very presence.
Where had Mercy come from?
If the dog was a King Charles Spaniel—and he’d no reason to doubt Mrs. Pratt’s judgment on the subject—then the pup had been purposely bred. Mercy wasn’t just a mongrel, a stray. He must have been purchased.
Somewhere on the estate, someone was missing a dog. A very expensive dog. At a time when, according to Townsend, income was tight, and people were suffering.
He made a mental note to ask Anderson—
Anderson, again.
He halted his thought.
The letters, the conversation with Townsend, the steward’s strange behavior of late…taken together, they left him disinclined to trust the man regardless of his father’s confidence and his own long and complicated history with him.
No, he would not be asking Anderson.
Somewhere outside, Mercy yipped. Harbury wandered over to his bedroom window. Sure enough, there she was. She had taken the little beast out to the back garden. Her white robe and nightcap fluttered behind her as she rushed to and fro, never more than a step behind the scampering pup.
He glanced up at the close-to-full moon—the hour was late. Dangerously late.
He scanned along the garden hedge for any signs she might not be alone. He spotted the form of a man holding a lantern standing in the doorway—Tull. Thank God. Strange things had been happening. Cassandra must be protected. She was important to him.
Possibly—he rested his forehead against the cool glass—even essential.
Just then, Mercy went bounding off in the garden gate’s direction. Tull and Cassandra sprinted into motion at the same time. Mercy, however, interpreted their actions as a game—when either got too close, he darted in the other’s direction.
Harbury’s tension eased, and he chuckled softly. Wherever the dog had come from, the pup made Cassandra happy. From first sight, she’d adored the little terror.
So why had his initial response been to insist the pup be taken to the stables?
Below him, Mercy attempted to scoot between Tull’s legs.
The footman scooped up the dog. Mercy’s tiny legs continued to pump as if he could propel himself through the air.
Harbury frowned. The sight sparked a hazy memory—spotted legs and a rapidly wafting tail dangling from the grasp of another footman.
In memory, he lunged toward an ominously closing door.
What did I tell you, Edward? His father’s voice.
Tears—then and now—pricked behind Harbury’s eyes. I’m not to bring filthy creatures into your house. Next, his father’s desk drawer had squeaked. Out had come the lash. Harbury’s recollection vanished. Beatings themselves all bled together.
His father had drilled into him not to show any response many times.
Still, he’d never considered his father a cruel man.
Not as cruel as Adrian’s father had been, anyway.
Harbury knew his nature had alarmed the prior duke, giving rise in the man to an increasingly desperate need to instill his values, his methods, his idea of manhood into his son by whatever means necessary.
Harbury searched the garden below for the soothing sight of his wife.
Outside, Cassandra collected Mercy from Tull and then stopped to exchange a word. Together, they laughed, each of them shaking their heads in exasperation. Then Tull bowed respectfully.
An instinctive pull, a longing to safeguard what was precious to him left him feeling both vulnerable and yet thoroughly, heart-poundingly alert. The emotions surging through his blood were indescribable. The sting in his eyes, acute.
Oh, God.
He stepped back from the glass and pressed the base of his palms against his eyes. What was happening?
Pull yourself together.
He stiffened his spine and inhaled. One simply could not feel both brimming with hope and, at the same time, threatened by a yawning emptiness.
Not unless…
Had her gentleness left him undone? Had he succumbed to everything his father repeatedly warned him would lead to his ruin?
Panic returned—this time, with sharper teeth.
Mawkish, his father had called him. Thin-skinned. Far too easily bruised.
Overstated, perhaps, but still, a gentleman’s sentiments should never be out of his control, especially when he had something so vitally important to protect.
Through the doorway between their apartments, he saw her enter her own chamber, puppy in arms. As soon as Mercy caught sight of him, he began to squirm.
“You’re awake,” she observed.
“So is he.”
“He was a very good boy.” She admired the puppy with a small, downward smile. “Weren’t you, Mercy?” She tickled Mercy beneath his chin. “Yes, you were.”
Harbury took an involuntary step toward them both.
She glanced up, studied him, and frowned. “What’s wrong?”
Nothing he was willing to admit.
He forced what he hoped was a teasing smile. “I see I have been supplanted in—” your affections. His heart and his words both stuttered. “At earliest opportunity, you fled.”
“Nonsense.” She grinned. “My first thought, I’ll have you know, was for your pillow.”
For his pillow. “But maybe, just a little, for me, too?”