Chapter Five
L ater that day, John sat at his desk with several open ledgers and rifled through the pages when his cousin entered, blood splatters on his waxed apron, followed by—John gulped—Melissa cradling a tiny bundle in a white towel. The bundle had two dark gray ears peeking out from the top. He dearly hoped it wasn’t a donkey.
“What is this?” John asked when Melissa set the bundle down on her lap. She was sitting in the far corner of the room on the stool next to the window, the drapes drawn.
“This morning’s umbilical hernia, don’t you remember?” Dustin handed his apron to a footman who’d appeared with more clean towels and carried away the wash basin in which Dustin had washed his hands.
“The umbilical hernia?” John tried not to grimace. “Is that—”
“Our first patient today. Angus, the kitten.”
“But why is Angus in my office?” John tasted the absurdity of a duke operating on his tenants’ cat in the shed of the main estate. He shook his head.
“Well, you can let it recover here. We were not able to move it much after the stitches,” Dustin said, rolling his white shirt sleeves down as if he’d look more ducal once he washed the blood off his hands.
“We?” John glanced at Melissa in the chair. “I thought you’d look after the feline patient.” She was lovely in the low light by the window, and his heart lurched when she cradled the tiny animal in her arms with such tenderness that it was as if it were a human baby.
“He needs his mother, so Herbert and Laura went to fetch her.”
“In the carriage, I suppose?” John could see the headlines in the gossip columns in London. The Duke of Duncan’s Carriage Reduced to Livestock Duty.
When Dustin moved back to Starcliff Castle, John had reassigned a maid to wash the medical equipment and a footman to tidy up his workspace. Still, John hadn’t expected to run a small hospital in the main building and a veterinary clinic from the stables.
“Dustin, a duke has a certain responsibility to the people on his land. They are tenants—” John sighed and rubbed his temples with his index fingers. “Why do I have to explain this to you?”
“You don’t,” Dustin said, picking up the vest and coat on the back of the chair facing the desk.
“Then why are you occupying the chair reserved for guests rather than this one?”
From the back of the room came a snort followed by a giggle. Melissa apparently pretended to pay attention to the little bundle but seemed to hear everything. John rose from behind the desk, but Dustin came to his side and pressed down his shoulder.
“Because this is your place, and I’m eager to learn from you, not replace you.”
“You already replaced me; it’s your birthright.”
Dustin inclined his head and briefly surveyed the ledgers on the desk. “I told you, it’s a job for both of us. I don’t know the details as well as you, and if I devoted myself entirely to the business of running everything, I wouldn’t have time to look after the patients,” Dustin only buttoned his vest and left the coat open, sat in the chair across from John and picked up the fountain pen.
“You are the duke, Dustin. You ought to run the estate, not operate on every runt of the litter.” John sighed. “Not that you can let an animal die, Dustin, but this is our family responsibility. It’s our legacy.”
“It includes every runt of the litter born on our grounds.” Dustin exhaled heavily. “I’m doing my best, but medicine is what I do best. Please let me!”
John didn’t need to look, but he felt Melissa inclining her head and waiting for his response. She had an air of the new duchess’s big sister as if she were ready to take the reins any moment and merely bit her tongue. And he loved that about her.
The hairs on John’s neck pricked up every time she looked at him, and her gaze must have been intent on him, for everything stood alert—everything indeed. He remained seated at his desk to avoid the embarrassment of showing his reaction to Melissa. She’d come to help her sister, and now she was playing nurse for a kitten. No wonder Prinny liked her; she was everything: intelligent, caring, well-bred, beautiful—and staring at him right now.
“Dustin, you’re the Duke of Duncan now.”
“But you’re running the estate so much better than I ever could. Why should I do everyone and everything to whom I owe such grand responsibility, as you say, disfavor by taking your job away?”
“You’re not taking the job; you’re still making me do it. It’s the title you got,” John mumbled, embarrassed that Dustin spoke of this in front of Melissa. Even though she knew, it made John feel as though his most vulnerable flaw was exposed.
“I already had a job when I became the duke,” Dustin mumbled. “Sometimes I wonder why I needed another with all this added responsibility.”
“Because it’s your prerogative. You were born for this.”
“I disagree. I think you were born for this.” When Dustin said that, John felt Melissa’s gaze on him. She was watching him most intently.
“You can’t just be a figurehead!” John lost his patience with Dustin. “Sometimes you’re stubborn like Herbert.”
Dustin smiled. “About that, John. I think you need to talk with him.” Melissa let out another noise as if she agreed with Dustin. This time, John couldn’t help but look over his shoulder. She smirked.
He’d gotten to know her well in the three months that Dustin and Lexi had been married. She was a fiercely loyal sister and a scintillatingly beautiful woman who preoccupied his thoughts.
“Why? What has he done now?” Don’t think you can change the subject and get out of balancing the ledgers, but we can table it while a lady is in the room.
“Well, he seems to be taking to Laura.”
“Taking what? He knows not to drive the landau without one of us.”
“Well, he has. But he is talking to her. He likes her. In a way that a boy likes a girl.”
John’s mien fell, but it was his heart he felt dropping to his stomach. “I beg your pardon?”
Dustin shrugged. “Just an observation.”
“You mean a diagnosis? Lovesickness? My baby boy?”
Melissa sighed in the back of the room, and John felt the energy of her smile. It was terrible how attuned he’d gotten to her body language, and he sincerely hoped she didn’t know about his infatuation with her. It had grown impossible to ignore and exhausting to hide.
Dustin grinned. “First, he’s not a baby; he’s almost thirteen. Second, it’s only just beginning, so he isn’t lovesick. And third, I will be the only one with a baby soon.”
John swallowed hard. “What?”
Dustin took a wide stance and nodded. “You heard me.”
John turned around, and Melissa was now smiling brightly.
“A baby?” John barely managed. “Did you know about this?” John asked Melissa.
Dustin was so obviously smitten with his lovely wife, and she was blossoming into a duchess with all the poise and grace he’d expected, but only a few months after their wedding, she’d already given him a baby. John wasn’t jealous, but something inside of him ached. He neither begrudged any of it to his younger cousin nor did he wish for anything but his absolute and everlasting happiness; it was just that… he didn’t feel old and yet was thrust into the position of a near grandfather who’d abdicated his throne to let the next generation rise to power. It was too soon at nine-and-twenty. Plus, he recognized the signs he’d only ever felt before. His affection for Melissa had matured into undeniable… John sighed. He never thought he’d feel like this again after his wife died, and now everything in his life was changing, and he feared he was changing, too.
John had no words, so he closed the distance and hugged Dustin. He patted him on the back.
“It seems that I will need your help again, in more ways than one,” Dustin said, wiping his eyes with the backs of his hands. He would be a good father. At least he’d always have bandages and antiseptic ointments ready if the child scraped a knee or got a splinter.
“I will always be there for you. And Lexi, of course. And the baby. All of them.” John choked. He meant every word. It was a wonderful thing to have Herbert back in the castle, women fussing over vases of flowers, and the staff was busy with dinner for a family. Soon, the halls would be filled again with babies’ cries, and nothing was more invigorating.
Except, perhaps, the lovely brown eyes of the woman watching him.
Melissa had tried to keep to herself until Dustin left the room with seemingly little success.
“I can tell that you wish to speak,” John said after a moment of silence when Dustin left the door open as he exited the study.
Melissa shrugged, bit her tongue, and hugged the sleeping kitten in her arms. Angus’s gentle purring was a soft, rhythmic lullaby that reverberated through her like the distant hum of her thoughts.
“Lady Thumbridge, I know you have something to say. Please allow me to be privy to your thoughts,” John said as he rose and walked toward her.
Melissa traced the subtle curve of the kitten’s spine, feeling the slight rise and fall with each contented breath as he slept on her.
“I knew about the baby,” Melissa said wistfully. I want one, too.
The kitten shifted slightly, its tiny paws kneading against her sleeve as if testing the comfort of a silken pillow. Melissa’s lips curled into a soft smile, the kind that spoke of secret joys and unspoken promises. She lowered her cheek to rest against the creature’s small form, drawing in the faint, milky scent that spoke of innocence and new beginnings.
John squatted next to her chair and put a hand on Angus’s furry back. He eyed Melissa for a moment, and it seemed as though a million thoughts had passed through his mind, like a wave of unspoken words.
“A baby will change everything,” he finally said as if it were the only logical admission he could make.
But when he stroked Angus with such tenderness, his hand so close to Melissa’s chest, she felt the burning desire to tell him how she felt. Everything. From the moment she saw him to the sleepless nights pawning over him until now—sitting in his study and holding a kitten. But it had become so easy to imagine a baby in her arms and his tender gaze on a bundle wrapped in white lace.
“I think the vows at a wedding are about sharing,” she said. Her mien fell instantly when she realized she’d spoken before thinking. He must think her a dim-wit indeed.
“To love and to hold?” he asked.
Melissa’s eyes darted to his, and he blinked a tear away. Could it be that he saw right into her heart, or had she misinterpreted?
“I thought it meant to love and to hold each other when I married my love,” John said.
“I made the same vow and never lived up to it. When my husband was on his deathbed, he sent me away. I think he didn’t want me to see him die.”
John shifted but remained squatting next to her, looking up. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think that he was about to propose. But that was nonsensical, of course. Silly woolgathering.
“When my wife died, I was the only one left to love and to hold my son. He wept and sobbed, and I just held him. At first, I tried not to cry and be strong for him. But then I just rocked him like I did when he was a baby, but this time, I cried with him.” He sighed deeply. “I never admitted it to anyone, Lady Thumbridge, but it’s different with you.”
Because you love me? Do you trust me?
“Why?” she croaked, seeing his raw emotions exposed and feeling guilty for not suffering the same way when her husband died. Melissa swallowed hard. She didn’t want to admit that she had mourned her husband’s death for the customary year, but she hadn’t grieved. She didn’t love him, so the loss was—what was the right word?—bearable. A relief from a transactional marriage that looked better on the outside than it felt on the inside.
“Because you’ve been widowed so young, I think you can understand me better than anyone,” he said.
Melissa wanted to take his hand, squeeze him in support, and draw him to her. But she didn’t dare. If he merely saw her as a widow, as Lexi’s sister, or worse, as Prinny’s mistress, she wouldn’t bear it.
“So to have and to hold applied even after your wife died?” Melissa said. John rose and looked at her intently. “I mean, you love Herbert and held him to help him grieve his mother.”
“I should have, Lady Thumbridge. But I was too cowardly.” He turned away from her and walked to the window. “When Herbert went to school, I buried myself in work. It wasn’t until Dustin came to London at about the same time that I met you and your family that I fled from my feelings.”
“And what are your feelings?”
He remained silent, drawing his lips in as if he didn’t want to say.
“You are holding Angus like a baby. Have you ever held a human baby?” he asked.
Melissa nodded.
“I always thought there’d be more children. I missed so much in Herbert’s life because I wanted to redeem the dukedom and our name so that he could inherit a title with wealth. But now, I wish I could give him a family.”
“I wanted a family with many children, a cat, a dog, a parrot from Africa, and grounds with livestock.”
He turned back to her with a half-smile. “A parrot?”
“Yes, a red, green, blue one with a bright yellow beak. They can learn to speak.”
“You want many children, a menagerie, and a speaking parrot?” He pressed his lips together in jest.
“No, you know what I want.”
He cocked his head. “I have the grounds, the livestock, and I suppose I could find a parrot for you.”
Melissa’s heart leaped. He could indeed give her everything she’d ever wanted.
But did she dare take it?
“Father!” Herbert called from the hall.
“For you, I’d even make him speak.” John looked at Melissa, and she felt a jolt of heat rise from her head.
“Papa?” Hebert stood at the door.
The moment was over, but Melissa’s questions were beginning to form.