Chapter 37
Chapter
Thirty-Seven
A Duke Loses His Argument
Honeycutt let me into Rosehaven House with his usual forbidding expression.
“I am here to see Lady Rosalynd.”
Something in my face must have told him there was no use arguing. But he still had his say. In a masterful piece of disapproval, he escorted me to the morning room without taking my hat, offered me nothing to drink, and closed the door when he left with a firm click.
As I stood at the window, I wondered if I should revise the speech I’d prepared. After a moment’s thought, I decided there was no need. It was orderly, reasoned, and should elicit the response I desired.
I didn’t have long to wait for Rosalynd. She entered the room with her hair half-pinned, a smudge of dust on her cuff, and perspiration on her brow. No less than expected. Petunia had said she was packing.
“Steele.” She dropped a small curtsy and tugged at the cuff as though she might persuade the dust to leave on request. “Forgive my state. I wasn’t expecting you. We’re preparing for our departure to Yorkshire.”
“You look, as always, beautiful.”
She held very still as a shadow crossed her face. The compliment did not land where I had aimed it.
“You’ve come to say goodbye then.”
That was not what I had come to say. “No. No—that’s not—”
She swept a hand across her beaded brow. “It’s very warm in here.”
London had been suffocating for the last several days, and the morning room faced east.
“Did Honeycutt offer you something cool to drink? There’s lemonade in the kitchen.” She turned toward the door. “I should ask him—”
“Don’t.” The word stopped her. “There’s no need.”
She veered back toward me, a question in her eyes. “Why are you here, Steele?”
Every pretty word I’d rehearsed faded from my head. What was left was the plain, unvarnished truth. “I’ve come to ask you to marry me.”
Her brow creased while she waited for me to say something more. When I didn’t, she asked, “Why do you want to marry me?”
I had not anticipated that question. But it was nothing I couldn’t easily handle. I only needed to rearrange what I had planned to say. I clasped my hands behind my back, much in the way of an orator preparing to give a speech. “Something occurred to me.”
She crossed her arms in front of her. “Pray tell.”
“Well, Drayton—”
She scoffed. “What does he have to do with anything?”
“I will if you give me a chance to explain, Rosalynd.” A touch of exasperation tinged my voice.
She gestured me to proceed.
“The thing that emboldened him was your unmarried state. If you were married, he would not have dared prey on you like he did.”
She walked forward, one slow step at a time, until she was close enough for me to see a storm rising in her eyes. “You’re offering marriage to protect me from gentlemen like him?”
“Among other reasons.”
“Such as?”
This was not going as well as I anticipated.
At the very least, I’d expected her to be pleased.
Not this inquisition. No matter. I would push through.
“Well, with Cosmos marrying Lady Edmunds—Claire—she becomes mistress of Rosehaven House and the Yorkshire manor. She will take the place you now hold. You enjoy running this household. I have watched you do it. If we married, you’d have your own.
Several of them, as a matter of fact—Steele House, Thornburn Abbey, the Belgravia townhouse, the—”
She raised a hand to stop me. “You’ve made your point.”
“Also, the upbringing of your brother and sisters will fall to her. Fox. Laurel. Holly and Ivy. The schoolroom. Chrissie’s social life. All of it. She will take on that duty.”
“The transfer of that responsibility is not imminent as Claire is currently indisposed with the joys of impending motherhood.” A small dry note entered her voice. “But yes, you’re correct on the principle. It will go to her at some point.” She gestured once more for me to proceed. “Go on.”
Here I was on stronger ground. “Last, but not least, you would hold one of the highest ranks in society as the Duchess of Steele.”
She arched a brow. “Anything else?”
I glared at her. “Isn’t that enough?”
“What about children? Is that on offer?”
The sticking point. I had crafted a response that, I believed, would satisfy her.
“In time,” I said.
“That’s a rather nebulous answer, Your Grace.” She tapped a finger against her chin. “How long would you need? Weeks, months, years? Until I’m old enough that children would no longer be a possibility?”
I had seriously miscalculated my approach. She wasn’t grateful. She was furious.
For several moments, she wandered about the room, seemingly without purpose, pausing once to run a finger along the edge of a table. I thought she was composing herself.
I should have known better.
“Do you remember the Cholmondley-Smith ball?”she asked turning toward me.
“I do.” How could I forget? She’d dressed me down in front of the entire assembly for a transgression I hadn’t committed.
“Lord Selfgren was there. He’s looking for a new wife.
Sadly, Lady Selfgren passed away a year ago.
He is wealthy. Not as wealthy as you, granted, but wealthy enough.
And he’s an earl. I would be Lady Selfgren, and I would have a household to manage.
I forget where the seat is. Somewhere in Hampshire, I think.
He has children—a boy and a girl. He was very warm in his accounting of their accomplishments.
He wants a wife who can manage their upbringing and provide more children.
And she must possess a superior intellect.
Surely, you can agree that I have that quality.
That is a more attractive offer than the one you have given me.
” She turned for the door. “I think I shall write him immediately and ask him to call.”
I crossed the room in three strides, put my palm flat against the door she’d already managed to open, and slammed it shut. “No. You won’t.”
She did not flinch. Instead, she turned, leaned back against the door, and glanced up at me. “Well, Your Grace.” Her voice was very level. “Can you match his offer?”
I broke. “Damn you. Damn you to hell.”
A slow smile rolled across her lips. “I’ll gladly go there if you’ll come along with me.” An echo of what I’d said weeks ago.
I leaned down until our gazes clashed. “Before I met you, I had an orderly existence. I rose, I went to the fencing academy, I attended to estate business, I sat at the House of Lords, I discussed important issues at my club, and then I would come home where I would enjoy a pleasant dinner before I sought my rest. I knew what each hour of every day contained. I never missed a vote. I never lost a brief. I was a man who could be relied upon to be where he was expected to be, doing what he was expected to do.”
“Surely, nothing prevents you from continuing along those lines, Your Grace.”
“I don’t want that orderly existence anymore. I want the chaos, the light, the sheer madness you bring into my life.” I grabbed her shoulders. “I want you.”
“And I want children, Steele.” Her voice had softened. “Your children. That’s the only way you can have me.” And then, devil that she was, she drove home the point. “But if I can’t have yours, I’ll settle for Selfgren’s. After all, they’d be half mine.”
“The hell you will.”
The Alice months had come back to me on the walk across Grosvenor Square.
She’d been eighteen when we married, not only young but innocent in the ways of men.
She wasn’t eager for motherhood. She wanted to wait a few years before I gave her a child.
I’d agreed to wait. For three months, I’d been careful.
And then one night, I’d had too much to drink.
Not enough to incapacitate me, but enough to forget to mind what I did.
Weeks later, Alice had come to me in tears.
Her maid had told her she was with child.
God help me, I’d rejoiced. I’d puffed out my chest and strutted with pride, hoping for a male heir to continue the Steele line.
Several months later, she had died in childbirth and the child along with her.
I’d spent a decade crushed by that guilt and vowed never to put another woman in that position again.
But Rosalynd was not Alice. Rosalynd was made of sterner stuff.
Still, the calculation was the same. Childbirth was a perilous thing for a woman, and I had no way to be certain it would resolve differently.
What I had was the certainty that I could not stand on the other side of any door from her any longer. But—
“I need more time to come to terms with the issue of children.”
“Take as long as you wish, Your Grace. A day, a month. Not a year, though. I may be married to Selfgren by then.” She shrugged. “If not him, then some other lord.”
I gritted my teeth. “You are a witch.”
She smiled, almost.
“What about Petunia?” I asked. “She came to Steele House this morning. Told me to stop being silly—yes, she used that word—and demanded I ask you to marry me.”
Her mouth twitched. “She would do such a thing.”
“When I left Steele House, she was measuring her bedchamber for new curtains. Apparently, the current ones belong to the last century.”
“She can order new curtains at the Selfgren estate as well.”
“She adores me.”
“You have me there. But she’ll come to like Lord Selfgren well enough. And she would be the older, wiser sister to his children. She’ll enjoy bossing them around.”
While I wrestled with my demons, she said, “Well, I really must return to my packing, Your Grace. So much still to do. Thank you for your offer. But as it stands, I’m afraid I must decline. Have a pleasant trip to Thornburn Abbey.”
She opened the door an inch. I slammed it shut again, and then my voice softened. “I don’t want to lose you in childbirth, Rosalynd.”
She faced me once more. “You won’t.” She was being soft and kind. Her answer almost drove me to my knees.
“You don’t know that,” I said in a tortured voice.
“I do.” She slid her hand inside my coat and placed it over my heart, every beat of which was racing wildly for her. “I won’t allow anything to take me away from you. Say yes. Say you’ll give me children.”
She remained still while I weighed my fears against my desperate need for her. But there really was no contest. I loved her. If that was the price she demanded to have her in my life, so be it.
“I’ll do my level best to give you children, Rosalynd.”
Her eyes glimmered with emotion. “Promise?”
I nodded. “I promise.”
“Then yes, Steele—”
“Warwick,” I murmured against her mouth.
“Yes, Warwick, I will marry you.”
I kissed her before the last word had finished leaving her mouth.
She gave a startled sound against my lips and then she was kissing me back, fiercely, both her hands fisted in the lapels of my coat as though she meant to keep me there by force. There was no need. I was not going anywhere. Right here next to her was where I belonged.
Her mouth opened under mine. I bent her back against the door and kissed her as I had never kissed her before.
I pulled back enough to look at her. Her hair was coming undone in earnest now, one copper coil loose against her throat. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes were enormous.
“I love you,” I said.
“I know,” she answered back.
Oh, she truly was a witch.
With a full-throated laugh, I lifted her clean off the floor, and spun her, once, twice, three times.
The morning room wheeled around us in a blur of damask and sunlight, while her hands gripped my shoulders, and her skirts swung wide.
Some small piece of furniture went over with a clatter.
I did not look, or care, to see what it was.
"Warwick!”
“Hush, my darling.”
In three strides, I carried her to the settee and went down with her into the cushions.
As I lay half over her luscious body, her arms came up around my neck and pulled me down to her mouth again.
This kiss was slower. Deeper. She was kissing me and I was kissing her.
When her tongue touched mine, the whole world went away except for her and me and us.
Her fingers tangled in my hair. Mine found the bare skin at the side of her throat, where a pulse beat hard and fast against my thumb. I kissed the spot, and she made a small broken sound.
She maneuvered her legs wide enough to cradle me and then with a wicked glint in her eye, she said, “Show me.”
I glanced at the closed door. “Someone may interrupt us.” One of us had to keep a sense of decorum.
“No one will.” She wriggled her lower extremities against me.
“You are a wicked temptress, my love.”
By way of answer, she wriggled some more.
I lifted her skirts, pressed my need against her softness, and she let out a sigh of contentment.
“Better?”
Her gaze turned liquid. “Not enough. Not nearly enough.”
I caught her wrist, brought her palm to my mouth, and kissed it—the heel, the soft center, each finger in turn. “The rest will have to wait for our wedding night.”
“Warwick,” she whispered.
"Yes."
“We must marry quickly."
"Yes."
“This week!”
“I’ll obtain a special license.”
She sighed softly, curled her arms around my neck, and then, witch that she was, she tempted me some more.
“What the devil—”
We did not move. The voice had not yet resolved into a person.
"Unhand my sister this instant."
Rosalynd went still beneath me. Her eyes focused, slowly, on something past my shoulder, and then she said, in a voice gone strange with disbelief—
"William?"
I lifted my head.
A young man stood just inside the morning room door.
Travel-stained. Dust on his boots, dust on the shoulders of his coat, a valise abandoned on the carpet behind him as though he had dropped it the moment the tableau in front of him had registered.
He was tall, blue-eyed, and copper-haired—unmistakably a Rosehaven—and he was staring at me with the outrage of a brother who has been on a packet boat for a week and has come home to find a duke on top of his sister.
I removed myself from the settee with what dignity I could assemble and held a hand to Rosalynd. She stood, settled her skirts, put one hand to her hair. She shouldn’t have bothered. The situation was past saving.
"William," she said again. "You're—"
"Home. Obviously. What is happening here?”
"This is the Duke of Steele."
"I know who the devil he is, Rosie, what I cannot see is why he is—" He gestured toward our obviously disheveled state.
"We are engaged to be married,” she said.
William's mouth, which had been open for a further objection, closed. Opened. Closed again. "Since when."
"Since approximately a quarter of an hour ago."
He looked at me. He looked at his sister. He looked at the small piece of furniture that had gone over earlier and was still lying on its side near the window. He looked back at me.
"A quarter of an hour ago,” William echoed.
"Yes," I said.
“So you thought you’d anticipate your wedding—”
Rosalynd made a sound—the beginning of a laugh—and then she closed the distance between her and her brother and embraced him. “William, welcome home.”