Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Andrew did his best to take his eyes from Jessamine as she glided about the room, but he found it almost impossible. In a room filled with ladies dressed to impress—some as nymphs, some as fairies, some as queens—he found nothing more compelling than the sight of his very own wife.
His Jessamine.
There was something so graceful about the way she moved, as though she drifted through life instead of putting her feet on the ground like any other mortal.
The severe black of her dress made her skin glow in comparison, and the feathering lace made him think of negligees and all the things he desperately—desperately—wanted to touch.
He didn’t deserve her. That fact stood solid and immovable between them. She dreamed of stability and certainty, and he brought nothing but uncertainty into his life. Almost every night, he woke beside her in a sweat, needing to escape to be in the cool air and finally to breathe.
He was a man haunted, and she was…
Well, she was a goddess.
She tilted her head, laughing, as someone spoke to her, and placed her hand lightly on their arm.
Connection. Every time she moved or said anything, she sought connection.
And he had been trying to give her what she needed without risking breaking her, but now he feared he had only made everything worse.
Nicholas sidled up beside him. “What are you waiting for?”
“Hm?”
“She’s right there.” Nicholas nodded at Jessamine. “And you’ve been staring after her like a lovesick hound for the past twenty minutes.”
Andrew scowled, flicking one of the vines around the pillars away.
The room looked like it belonged in a fairy bower, and he would have expected to hate it, except for the fact that it only made Jessamine stand out in contrast all the more.
The ladies were dressed like butterflies, and she was the solitary spot of darkness amongst them all.
“The first dance is beginning soon,” Nicholas said. “You should ask her to dance before someone else does.”
The thought of Jessamine in another man’s arms made Andrew growl under his breath.
“Precisely,” Nicholas said, nodding as though Andrew had said something profound. “And that is why you should act on your impulses instead of sitting back here and pretending they don’t exist. Have you so much as bedded her?”
Andrew’s jaw tightened. “That is none of your business.”
“I’ll take that as a no, then. Really, Andrew? A lady as beautiful as that? Look, there, she’s smiling at you.”
Andrew did look, and the sight nearly brought him to his knees. Jessamine had a particular way of smiling when she meant it, with her entire body. Such a thing ought to have defied nature itself, and yet, somehow, it did not.
Ordinarily, she directed that smile at William, but today she had aimed it at him.
He sucked in a breath. His legs moved even without intending them to.
He’d intended to give her the run of the ballroom without his interference.
After greeting the guests with her, as convention dictated, he had let her flutter about with well-timed compliments and observations.
She played the guests like a fiddle, and he had been much better suited to watching.
Not any more. He needed to be by her side, her little hand in his, her face upturned. By God, he needed her more than he had ever needed anyone.
“Your Grace!” A hurried through the crush, coming to stand beside him. He stopped, feeling the eyes of the assembled on him.
“Yes?” he asked curtly.
“It’s William, sir.” The maid’s eyes were wide, afraid. “He’s gone.”
Jessamine watched as Andrew strode from the room, a lump in her throat. She’d employed all her feminine wiles to tempt him across the room toward her, and she had thought it was working.
Until now.
It would have worked, she was sure, if something more pressing had not come up. But it felt as though every time they became closer, something came up. Something unavoidable that he could not escape. And he inevitably chose that.
A small worm of worry coiled in the base of her stomach. Could something be wrong? The maid had gone to Andrew, which suggested the issue involved him, not her. She’d instructed Lucy to let her know if there were any issues with William.
Still…
Temperance touched her arm. “Is everything all right?”
“I should go and see, I think,” Jessamine said, and offered an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. Do you mind dancing the next without me?”
“Well, I hadn’t planned on partnering with you, anyway,” Temperance teased, and shook her head. “You should go.”
Jessamine didn’t need telling twice.
Andrew burst into William’s nursery. Lucy lay on the floor, breathing but unconscious. The cradle was empty.
A cold calm washed over him. He cast another glance about the room, instructed the hysterical maid to tend to the nursemaid, and left. He sprinted back down the stairs, almost colliding with Jessamine. She gripped his arms.
“I saw someone going toward the garden.”
Andrew disentangled himself and tore for the library door, wrenching it open and sprinting across the lawn. Light from the windows spilled golden across the foliage, and dew soaked his shoes.
There. Movement, directly ahead. Andrew threw everything he had into running. All thoughts cleared from his head; only anger remained. No, not just anger—he had been angry before, and it had been nothing like this.
Because he knew who the culprit was. He recognized the gait, the gleam of his brown hair in the lights.
Baron Lorthey.
Rage rose in Andrew. An overwhelming need to do the man damage, images of blood spattering and the crunch of breaking bone.
Violence. He’d felt the urges out in battle-ravaged France, but he’d thought he’d left those feelings behind, exchanging them for the veneer of civilization.
But now he knew those things were still inside him.
Then he realized the baron held William, and everything stopped. There was no way of doing damage without harming the child.
The rage stilled. Withdrew. Not gone, merely… waiting.
He stepped out in front of the man, allowing his height and width to do the talking for him. “What,” he started, his voice low and dangerous, “the devil do you think you’re doing?”
Baron Lorthey stopped, clutching the squalling baby to his chest. “Isn’t it obvious?
” he demanded—spat, rather. “I’m taking away the one thing you care about.
Just like you did to me.” He held William even tighter, and Andrew’s fists clenched.
“You cost me my brother! You took my family. I will take yours!”
“My own brother died too,” Andrew said with false calm. “Or have you forgotten that fact? I am the duke because my brother and father died. My cousin died giving birth to the child you hold in your arms. If you want revenge, then consider it taken.”
“It’s not enough!” In the faint light from the house, it seemed as though the baron’s face turned dark with an angry flush. “You could have saved Harry! You should have!”
Ever since that day, Andrew had been plagued with nightmares that told him the same thing. But…
“There was nothing I could do,” he said, and the words released a little of the tension in his shoulders. This was true. “He was my friend. If I could have saved him, I would have, but there was nothing.”
And Andrew hated himself for it. He hated himself for every life lost under his leadership. But that was a fact that Baron Lorthey didn’t have the right to.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Andrew said, still in that voice of soft calm. “Give me the baby, Lorthey. Why hurt an innocent child over this? Is that what Harry would have wanted?”
Behind Andrew, a crowd was forming. And Jessamine, the person he would have tried to protect the most, stood at the front, her hand over her mouth.
Baron Lorthey spat on the ground by Andrew’s feet. “It’s your fault Harry died. If it weren’t for you, he’d still be here. You owe me a brother. This baby will do well enough. I’ll raise him as my own, and he’ll know to hate you.”
There could be no reasoning with him; he’d lost reason somewhere along the road of his vendetta. Andrew couldn’t hope to reach him with words alone.
Fortunately, he had more than words at his disposal. Andrew kept perfectly still until he pounced. Baron Lorthey hadn’t been expecting an attack, and he was briefly undefended.
William tumbled from Lorthey’s arms as Andrew planted his fist in the baron’s face. Blood splattered. Too late, he twisted, trying to catch the falling infant, only to discover Jessamine on the ground beside him, William in her arms. Her dress had torn.
Guilt plagued him as he bent, catching her elbow and pulling her to her feet. William screamed, red-faced, and she murmured shaking reassurances to him.
Lorthey, his hand clamped over his nose, glared at them both.
“Send for the constable,” Andrew instructed Jessamine quietly. “And the magistrate.”
The ghost of a smile appeared across her face. “I instructed James to do both before I ran out here.”
James was their head footman; if she’d asked him, he would have jumped to do it. The magistrate and constable would be on their way.
He looked at William. “Is he unharmed?”
“I think so,” Jessamine said, cradling him against her chest. She turned her gaze to Lorthey. “You thought to harm us, but you failed,” she said, her voice strong and authoritative. “Consider what you have done and repent.”
“You stand by him even now?” Lorthey demanded, one hand pressed against his nose. “Even knowing what he has done?”
“Your brother was a victim of the war, not of Andrew,” Jessamine said, and Andrew’s chest felt too tight. She was defending him in a way that no one had ever defended him before.
No one had ever defended him before.
She loved him; she had to.
The realization swept through him, and he could have laughed with the giddy force of it.
But now was not the moment for a realization such as this, or to glory in the proof that his wife loved him. She loved him of all people, when he had long ago determined that he must be unlovable.