Chapter Eight
The letters were in his desk.
Martin had not looked at them in three days.
This was, he told himself, a sign of admirable restraint.
A lesser man would have pored over them endlessly, memorising every line, torturing himself with words never meant for his eyes.
Martin was not a lesser man. He was the Duke of Montehood, and he possessed self-discipline in abundance.
He had only read them twice, perhaps three times…certainly no more than four.
The morning sun cast long rectangles of light across the carpet of his study, illuminating dust motes that danced in the still air. It was early yet…too early for callers, too early for correspondence, too early for anything but solitude and the thoughts he could not seem to escape.
He had tried distraction. He had reviewed estate accounts until his eyes blurred.
He had answered correspondence until his hand cramped.
He had even attempted to read a novel, something light and forgettable, but every heroine had somehow taken on Vanessa's face, and every hero had seemed pale and inadequate by comparison.
It was absurd. He was behaving like a green boy in the throes of his first infatuation, not a man of nine-and-twenty with considerable experience of the world.
He had conducted affairs and maintained liaisons.
He had navigated the treacherous waters of Society's romantic intrigues with skill and discretion.
None of it had prepared him for this.
Vanessa Wayworth had written him letters.
Not to him, precisely. She had never intended him to read them.
They had been private musings, confessions penned in the safety of assumed secrecy, and he had no right to the knowledge they contained.
He was aware of this and understood this.
He understood the violation implicit in having read them at all.
And yet.
I wonder sometimes if he sees me at all, she had written, or if I am merely Edward's sister to him, a fixture of the household, no more worthy of notice than the furniture.
He did…he always saw her…always sought her out…
Martin rose from his chair and crossed to the window, his hands clasped behind his back in a posture his father would have recognised.
The elder Duke of Montehood had stood thus when contemplating matters of import concerning wars and treaties and the fate of nations.
His son stood thus while contemplating a woman he had spent six years pretending not to want.
The irony was not lost on him.
He could remember the precise moment the trouble had begun.
A house party in Kent, the summer Vanessa turned seventeen.
She had been in the library when he arrived,curled in a window seat with a book of poetry, her hair escaping its pins, her stockinged feet tucked beneath her in flagrant disregard of propriety.
She had looked up at his entrance, and instead of the simpering deference he received from most young ladies, she had fixed him with a stare of frank appraisal.
"Lord Montehood," she had said. "I did not expect to find anyone else seeking refuge from Lady Hartwell's interminable musicale."
"The soprano was threatening to perform another aria. I fled for my life."
"A wise decision. I believe she has designs on a third encore." Vanessa had returned her attention to her book, clearly dismissing him.
He should have left, any sensible man clearly would have. Instead, he had found himself lingering, drawn by some impulse he did not care to examine.
"What are you reading?"
She had held up the volume without looking at him. "Byron. I found it on the shelf. Someone has written the most ridiculous notes in the margins."
Martin had felt his neck grow warm. The book was his, left behind on a previous visit, the marginalia penned during his university years when he had fancied himself a philosopher of romance.
"Ridiculous?" he had repeated.
"'The sublime agony of desire,'" she had read aloud, her voice dripping with mockery. "'Here Byron captures the very essence of the human condition.' Did a person actually write this, or did it simply appear through some spontaneous generation of pretension?"
"I believe the former."
"How unfortunate for them."
He ought to have been offended. Instead, he had laughed, a genuine laugh, surprised out of him by her audacity. No one spoke to him thus as he was a duke. People flattered and fawned; they did not mock his youthful literary criticism.
"You find the observation lacking?" he had asked, settling into the chair across from her.
"I find it overwrought. Byron is perfectly capable of speaking for himself without some anonymous commentator adding unnecessary interpretation."
"Perhaps the commentator felt Byron's meaning required elucidation."
"Then the commentator has a very low opinion of Byron's readers." She had finally looked up at him, those green eyes sharp with intelligence. "Or perhaps merely a very high opinion of his own insights."
They had argued for an hour. She had called his taste pedestrian.
He had called her critiques uncharitable.
She had made a point about the difference between passion and melodrama that he had found himself unable to refute.
At some point, she had thrown a cushion at his head actually thrown it, with considerable force and accuracy and he had caught it and found himself grinning like a fool.
That was the moment. That was when he had understood that Vanessa Wayworth was going to be a problem.
What he had not understood was the nature of that problem.
He had told himself it was merely intellectual attraction.
She was clever and sharp-tongued and entirely unimpressed by his rank; naturally he found that intriguing.
He was accustomed to flattery, accustomed to having his every utterance treated as wisdom from on high.
A young woman who dared to contradict him was a rarity.
This rarity…this behavior had not worn off.
In the six years since that afternoon in the library, his regard for Vanessa had deepened rather than diminished.
He had watched her move through Society, watched her navigate the treacherous waters of the marriage mart with grace and sharp wit and watched her deflect the advances of unsuitable men and the scheming of ambitious mothers.
She had grown from a clever girl into a remarkable woman, and his admiration had grown with her.
He had never acted upon it. He was not a fool.
Edward was his closest friend…had been since their years at Eton, when Edward had punched Lord Greyton's son for calling Martin's recently deceased father a gambler and a wastrel.
The accusation had been true, which made Edward's defence all the more meaningful. They had been inseparable ever since.
One did not pursue one's best friend's sister. It was simply not done.
And even if Martin had been willing to violate that unwritten code, there was his reputation to consider.
He was not known as a man of constancy. He had conducted affairs, discreet but numerous with women who understood the temporary nature of such arrangements.
He had never courted anyone, never given any indication that he was interested in matrimony.
Vanessa deserved better than a man whose name had graced the gossip columns more times than he cared to count. She deserved someone steady, someone honourable and someone whose attentions would elevate rather than tarnish her.
Someone… who was not him.
So he had kept his distance and maintained the role of Edward's sardonic friend, always ready with a cutting remark or a teasing observation. He had danced with Vanessa when courtesy required it and avoided her when it did not. He had perfected the art of casual indifference.
And then the letters had arrived, and he had discovered that his indifference had been rather more convincing than he had intended.
Six years later, she remained a problem.
Martin turned from the window and regarded his desk. The letters were in the top drawer, secured beneath a ledger of estate accounts. He had placed them there deliberately buried them, in truth, as if hiding them from view might somehow diminish their power.
It had not worked.
When he takes my hand for the supper waltz, she had written, I forget how to breathe properly. It is the most absurd sensation. I am not given to fits of vapours or feminine weakness, and yet his touch renders me quite the simpleton.
She was not a fool. She was the furthest thing from any fool he had ever encountered…and when he took her hand for the supper waltz, he felt precisely the same loss of rational function she described.
The difference was that he had learned to hide it.
***
Haberton appeared in the doorway, his expression arranged in lines of studied neutrality that Martin had come to recognise as disapproval. His valet was a man of middle years and impeccable discretion, possessed of an uncanny ability to communicate volumes while saying almost nothing at all.
"Your Grace. Might I enquire as to your plans for the morning?"
"You might."
"And might you deign to answer?"
Martin suppressed a smile. His valet had been with him since he came into the title, and the man had long since abandoned any pretense of servility. It was one of his more useful qualities, a willingness to speak plainly when other servants would merely bow and scrape.
"I thought I might ride."
"An excellent notion. Fresh air and exercise are much to be recommended when one has been brooding in one's study for several days."
"I have not been brooding."
"Of course not, Your Grace. My mistake. You have merely been sitting alone in a darkened room, staring at nothing, and sighing at irregular intervals. An entirely different activity."
"I do not sigh."
"As you say, Your Grace." Haberton's tone suggested he found this assertion dubious at best. "Shall I have your horse saddled?"
"If you would be so kind."
"At once, Your Grace." Haberton turned to leave, then paused in the doorway. "And might I suggest the blue coat? It brings out your eyes, and one never knows whom one might encounter on a morning ride."
Martin gave him a sharp look. "What precisely are you implying?"
"Nothing whatsoever, Your Grace. Merely that Hyde Park is a popular destination at this hour, and it would not do for the Duke of Montehood to appear anything less than his best." Haberton paused, his expression carefully bland.
"Lady Vanessa Wayworth is known to ride most mornings, I believe.
Between eight and nine on the hour, along the eastern paths. "
"And how would you come by that information?"
"I make it my business to know things, Your Grace. It is part of my service." There was a glimmer of something in his eyes, amusement, perhaps, or knowing. "A well-informed valet is an invaluable asset."
Martin stared at his valet for a long moment. Haberton gazed back with an expression of perfect innocence that fooled neither of them.
"The grey coat will do," Martin said finally. "I have no need to impress anyone."
"Very well, Your Grace." If Haberton had an opinion about this choice, he kept it admirably concealed. "I shall have your horse ready in a quarter hour."
He withdrew, leaving Martin alone with the uncomfortable awareness that his valet had somehow divined his interest in Vanessa. If Haberton knew, who else might have noticed? Edward? Lady Wayworth? The entirety of polite Society?
The thought was not a comfortable one.
But it was not sufficient to keep him from riding to the park.