32
Arriving at the seaside cottage and finding that everything looked exactly the same was almost a shock to Jo’s system. It felt like several years since she had left, so thoroughly and irrevocably had her life changed. And yet everything had happened in only a month.
She looked at the small room that had been the frame around her life in the six months she had been living here.
The bookcase full of her books; the one high-backed chair in front of it.
The lone chair in front of the fireplace with her abandoned basket of handiwork beside it.
The desk at the far wall by the window facing the garden.
Where she realized she had no choice but to marry.
Where she had written the first drafts for her lists.
It was impossible not to notice how the room had been centered around one person living there: One high-backed chair, one lounge chair. She had meant to find a small sofa and a tea table to be placed opposite the bookcase so she had room for visitors, but she had never found the time.
“Is there anything you need, Miss, I mean Ma’am, I mean, Your Grace,” the housekeeper asked behind her.
“Oh, no, thank you, Mrs. Brown. I should like to rest my legs for a while, before I retire,” she told the housekeeper and tried to smile, but knew she did not succeed.
Mrs. Brown sent her a comforting smile and closed the door behind her.
Jo walked to the high-backed chair and sank into the plush velvet of it.
It had been Uncle Horace’s favorite chair.
The wood needed polishing and the upholstery needed changing but it was comfortable, which was what her uncle had needed.
Jo had not wanted to deprive him of it, simply for the sake of vanity.
When she had asked Ambrose whether she could bring it, he had scoffed and not even bothered to answer, which she had taken as a yes.
The sun was setting and Jo could see it over the top of the shrubbery protecting the house from the wind.
She had wanted it removed to have a view of the sea, but the gardener she had spoken to had told her it would be better to wait until autumn when the birds would no longer be nesting in it.
She could hardly argue with that. It had made her rethink whether removing as large a section as she had planned was a good idea.
She could have the part right in front of the window cut down and then keep the rest for the birds.
She could see the sea from the house when she was standing up. If she had had the strength, she would have been leaning against the windowsill and staring at it, trying to find the calm she always felt while there. But her entire body was tired from traveling.
After she had left Brighton the day before, she had traveled as far as possible in the carriage before Robert’s driver had told her it would be best to stop.
She had spent the night at an inn and then continued early in the morning.
Stopping only for food and to change horses.
Feeling the constant need to push herself and the staff to create as great a distance as possible between them and Robert.
Jo sighed as she leaned back in her chair and looked at the small empty space opposite her where a small two-person sofa would fit snugly between the outer wall and the fireplace.
The room had originally been a bedroom, but Jo had chosen it as her sitting room, since it faced the sea.
The main sitting room was at the other end of the house, facing the road, which meant it was easier to heat in the winter, due to less wind.
It had large windows facing the road and the garden, but it was still unfurnished and Jo had not found a purpose for it yet.
She would have plenty of time now she suspected.
“There is a visitor for you, Your Grace,” Mrs. Brown told her two days later when Jo was sitting in the high-backed chair trying to focus on the book in her lap.
Her heart immediately jumped into her throat and her cheeks flushed at the thought that Robert had traveled here to see her.
“Who… who is it?” she asked Mrs. Brown breathlessly as she half rose from the chair.
“Mr. Hawkins. Your cousin.”
Jo felt her face fall and could see the sympathy on Mrs. Brown’s face.
“Show him in,” Jo told Mrs. Brown in a detached tone as she turned toward the window and the view of the bright, dark blue sea beneath her, hoping to draw a little strength or at least find a modicum of calm to face Ambrose.
When she turned toward the door, her cousin was already there flanked by what looked like two working men.
Jo’s stomach turned at the thought that they were there to take her to one of the homes he had once threatened her with, but she immediately discarded the thought and straightened her back.
Even though Ambrose had turned into a much fouler creature than she could have imagined, he had no right to do so.
No right at all. She was someone else’s wife.
She was a duchess now. The last thought made her straighten even further.
“Josephine,” Ambrose snarled and entered the room.
“What do you want?” Jo said instead of greeting him. He was clearly not there as a courtesy.
“The chair,” Ambrose told the two men and pointed toward the high-backed chair that used to belong to Uncle Horace. The two men approached it then hesitated when Jo did not move.
“Beg your pardon, ma’am, we are only doing our job,” one of them said.
His courteous tone made Jo jump into action. She snatched the open book from the chair and stepped aside as much as was possible in the small room. She silently watched the men take Uncle Horace’s favorite chair away before she spoke.
“You gave me permission to take it,” she told Ambrose in a cold voice.
“I did no such thing,” her cousin scoffed and crossed his arms over his chest, not meeting Jo’s eyes.
His gaze was all over the room, perhaps searching for trinkets that had belonged to his father.
Jo saw his eyes land on the small painting of her uncle that was hanging under the one of herself as a small girl with her parents.
“Here,” she said as she yanked the painting from the wall. “Take it. If it can give your sick and twisted heart peace and ensure I never have to see you again, take it.”
She thrust it against his chest, and he seemed to take it out of reflex.
He looked at the small painting, barely larger than his hand, for a second.
His face was unreadable. Jo wondered whether he felt anything at all at his father’s death.
With adept fingers, as if he had done this a hundred times before, Ambrose removed the painting from the gilded frame, then dropped the small canvas to the ground.
Making the corner crack with a disturbing sound. Like a limb breaking.
“I will take this. The painting has no value,” he told her coldly.
Jo stared into his grey-blue eyes, which were exactly like hers.
“What has happened to you?” she whispered. “You were always horrible, but now you are just… cruel.”
“I am cruel? I am horrible?” Ambrose shouted.
Jo saw several members of her staff appear in the hallway, one of them the footman that Robert had sent with her. She shook her head almost imperceptibly and saw him retreat but not close the door to the kitchen fully. It made her feel safer that he was there.
“From the moment you moved into our house you have been stealing my father from me,” Ambrose continued in a loud voice.
“He always favored you. ‘Why can’t you be more like Jo?’ ‘Look at how clever Jo is with her lists’.
But it was not enough for you, was it? You had to go and spend his money on prostitutes and bastard children, diminishing my inheritance while you have everything.
Of course, the brilliant Jo would also ensnare a duke and become one of the richest and most powerful women in the country. ”
“I… that is not…” Jo whispered, wide-eyed, as she looked at Ambrose.
He was angrier than she had ever seen him and he was blocking the door. She had never thought he would physically harm her but now she did not feel certain. Her eyes sought the door to the kitchen again, but she did not want to involve her staff unless she had to.
Ambrose deflated a little and went to the window overlooking the sea. Jo hurriedly switched places with him and stood in the doorway, ready to bolt if there was the slightest hint of physical aggression. She tentatively picked up the broken canvas from the floor.
She had never given any thought to what Ambrose had felt about her showing up at his house.
He was two years older than her and was already in school when she came to live with her uncle.
Jo had always liked Uncle Horace, and in the months they had spent alone before Ambrose returned for a brief holiday, they had settled into a comfortable life: eating their meals together, going for short walks in the garden or rides in the small pony cart in the afternoon, and reading together in the evening.
Jo had always assumed that Ambrose did not want to fit into their lives.
He was hardly home, talked back at his father when Uncle Horace reprimanded him, and whispered cruel comments to Jo whenever he could.
Perhaps they could have done more to include him in their lives.
To make him feel part of the family as well.
It was an explanation at least for his cruel behavior in the past months, although it did not excuse it.
Perhaps he had felt left out, but even before when she came to visit with her father, Ambrose had never made her feel welcome.
It was time their ways parted. They might be related by blood, but Jo had a new family now.
Even if she and Robert were never able to find each other again, even if they ended up living estranged from each other, Jo felt certain that Robert’s mother and sisters would still welcome her.
Thornston would certainly, and Xavier too, in his own quiet way.
Not all of them were related by blood, but they were a unit much more than Jo and Ambrose ever had been.
“Fine then.” Jo crossed her arms over her chest. “You have gotten your chair and your frame. Now leave. And I don’t ever want to see you again.
You have no claim over my money, and no right to visit me unannounced.
If we see each other again, we will greet each other politely, but nothing more.
From this day on, we are mere acquaintances and nothing more. ”
Ambrose looked stunned at her outburst for a moment.
“Fine, Josephine, if that is the way you want it,” he snapped as he made his way past her.
“Don’t you ever call me that again!” Jo shouted after him. “From now on it is ‘Your Grace’ or ‘Duchess’ if you ever need to address me again. And I'd prefer that you don’t!”
Ambrose slammed her front door so hard that the window beside it rattled.
Slowly, Jo made her way to the chair as she looked at the space where the high-backed chair had once been.
She wished she could have sought the comfort of it, but even more so, she wished she could have sought comfort in Robert.
Sitting in his lap, feeling his arms around her, and recounting the events of the past half an hour.
Jo was acutely aware that this was what he had wanted to spare her.
Had she been too harsh on him, when she demanded to be included?
No, she had needed to hear Ambrose say these things, and she had needed to cut him out of her life herself.
She only wished Robert would have been there to experience it with her.
Her chest felt hollow at the thought that it might never happen. She had heard nothing from Robert since she left, and she needed him to reach out first. She needed to know that he had figured out what he wanted.
He had said he wanted them to be partners yet went above her head with important decisions. He had said they could only ever be friends yet treated her like a loved one.
Jo’s heart ached at the thought as she stood by the window and looked at the sea below her. She knew she had been foolish and let herself believe, but by God, a much too large part of her wished that he could love her like she was starting to understand that she did him.
No, she had not been foolish. She was allowed to fall in love, even if Robert could not reciprocate her feelings. You could not help who you fell in love with, and Robert should be grateful for her love, even if it was not what he had looked or wished for.
There were three different outcomes to their situation as far as Jo could see.
They could live estranged from each other; they could try to find a way to live with each other, or – Jo’s heart pounded at the thought – Robert could miraculously in time fall in love with her.
She had always thought that she was an acquired taste; perhaps with enough time and patience, he would come to love her.
Even if he might never feel for her the way he did for Lady Egerton.
With a sigh, Jo walked to the desk and found three sheets of paper and started a list on each. One for either outcome of the conversation that they inevitably had to have.