Chapter 12
“What are you doing?”
Damien did not jump or startle when he heard Adrian whisper into his ear. Instead, he slowly pulled back from the cracked door that led into George’s nursery and turned to his friend with a warning glare. He put a finger to his lips, signaling Adrian to stay silent, then stalked down the hall.
“When did you get here?” Damien asked once they reached the grand staircase.
“What is the matter, man? Disappointed to see me?” Adrian teased.
Damien rolled his eyes as they reached the bottom of the staircase and headed toward his study, knowing Adrian would follow.
“How you convinced my servants to ignore my commands so you can try to sneak up on me is beyond my comprehension,” Damien muttered. He glanced over his shoulder at Adrian as they reached the study door, and as he opened it, he asked, “What has happened to you, man? You used to be more serious.”
Adrian’s answering grin was that of a fool.
“Ah, well, finding the love of your life and having a child with her will do that to you,” Adrian replied with a dramatic sigh.
Again, Damien rolled his eyes. Nearly three years ago now, Cupid had struck the one eternally angry man with one of his arrows, and it was quite clear that he had no intention of removing it.
“You should know what I am talking about,” Adrian goaded as they took seats opposite one another. “You seem quite smitten yourself.”
Damien fixed him with a threatening glare from across his large oak desk.
“I assure you, I am not,” he replied, enunciating his last three words.
Adrian raised a challenging brow as his lips twitched toward a smirk.
“So you just loom outside any door and watch whoever is inside?” Adrian asked. “That must be causing stress for your servants.”
Damien bristled. Adrian had caught him watching Caroline and George—something he had meant to do just once after he had dismissed the nurse, but now, he seemed to be drawn to watching them every spare moment. He made a mental note to chastise his staff for not letting him know Adrian had come by.
“Our marriage might be in name only, but that does not mean I am not responsible for her. Just as I am responsible for the boy, even though he is not mine. If they are under my roof, they are mine to look after. Just as you no doubt would if you had guests staying in your home,” Damien explained with forced calm.
Adrian gave a casual shrug.
“To make sure they are not wanting of anything, for certain. But to go so far as to watch them from a distance?” Adrian challenged.
He shook his head as his smirk deepened.
“Why can you not just admit that you care deeply for Caroline? You did so once. Or at least confessed to finding her fascinating.”
He had, very shortly after Bridget became Adrian’s wife, and it was a confession that he wished he had never given. He knew Adrian would never let it go.
“Caroline is here to look after George until I can sort out his parentage,” Damien answered, ignoring Adrian’s questions and remarks. “That is all.”
He paused for a moment, a sense of fondness snaking quietly through his heart.
“To her credit, she has done wonderfully. She has only been here a little over a week, and already there has been much change in the boy,” he admitted.
Adrian raised an amused brow as he steepled his fingertips.
“And perhaps a little change in you and her, as well?” he nudged.
With his mouth set in a grim line, Damien shook his head. While watching over Caroline and George had become the best part of his day, the only part, if he was being honest with himself, he was certain that Caroline felt nothing similar.
“She is afraid of me,” he grimly added, his eyes lowering to his massive hands. “And after all I have done, I cannot blame her.”
Silence settled over the room as Damien continued to look at his hands.
Hands that had at one time, not very long ago, been responsible for so much pain and violence.
Even now, a year after having Evander back, he still had dreams of the bloodied and bruised men he had unleashed his fury upon in desperation to get his missing friend back.
“You are not that person anymore, old friend. None of us is.”
Adrian’s voice rose calmly through the tense silence.
Damien slowly drew his eyes up to him. The amusement on Adrian’s face was gone, and in its place was an intense gaze that he was sure saw beyond his person and into his soul.
“Even when you were, you had a purpose,” Adrian continued, his voice falling into a husky reverence. “My brother is a good man. He was abducted by evil people. You were violent, yes. But you did so in the name of good.”
Damien shook his head, closing his hands into fists.
“And it got us nowhere,” Damien rasped, shaking his head. “It was Elara’s sharp mind and will that brought Evander home. Not my fists or your investigation.”
His words were followed by another stretch of heavy silence before Adrian spoke again.
“We have all changed, Damien. Evander included. Though he is not himself at the moment, I have faith that he will rise anew. Perhaps you should, too.”
Damien looked up, his brow raised in question as he took in Adrian’s words.
“I know you do not wish to admit that you love her,” Adrian explained, leaning forward. “But what if you were willing to lower your guard around her? Just a little? Allow yourself to be something else besides a protector for once?”
Discomfort poured through Damien. That was all he had ever been. For his friends. For his little brother Jeremy. For his people in his dukedom.
“I do not know how to be anything else,” Damien rasped, feeling helpless for the first time in a very long time.
“And you will not learn how to if you do not begin to try,” Adrian replied, offering him a small, supportive smile. “Show her, Damien. Show her you are more than what the rumors say about you.”
Damien huffed, but he found his lips twitching toward a small smile of his own. Was it possible? Could he be something other than a brute in her eyes?
“Let us change the subject,” Adrian announced, and Damien agreed willingly.
“I am going to overlook the fact that you did not invite Bridget and me to your little wedding last week, but I am most curious how you convinced Caroline to come back.”
Damien explained, keeping the details to a minimum. He was not about to tell Adrian about their kiss and open the conversation of his supposed affection all over again. Instead, he moved quickly toward a subject that he knew would pull Adrian’s focus: their visit to Evander.
“You saw him? In person?” Adrian asked, leaning forward in his chair.
Damien nodded.
“How was he? Do you believe he would allow us to visit?” Adrian asked in rapid succession.
“He is struggling,” Damien replied, giving his honest opinion.
“Though I believe that a part of him is trying very hard to get past what has happened. I still hold hope that Evander will, as you said, rise anew. As for visiting, I would not recommend it. Not yet, anyway. I believe the only reason he allowed us to do so was because of the storm. He allowed me to visit with him in his study that night, but by morning, he had sealed himself off in his rooms, refusing both Caroline and me.”
Sympathy poured through Damien as the helpless look on Adrian’s face deepened. He wanted to help Evander. They all did. Until he gave them permission to do so, though, all any of them could do was wait and hope.
“I miss him,” Adrian rasped, his blue eyes filling with sadness. “I feel that we got him back from those demons only to lose him to the memory of what they did to him.”
“Have faith, Adrian,” Damien urged. “After all he went through, he at least deserves that from us. Evander is a strong man. Perhaps the strongest of us all.”
Adrian nodded, then stood as he drew in a deep breath.
“I want to get back to Bridget,” he announced, straightening his jacket.
Knowing that the woman was a lifeline for his old friend, Damien made no protest as he too rose from his chair.
“Be sure to tell her we send our regards,” Damien told him, waving a hand toward the door. “I will walk you out.”
At that, Adrian mustered up another smirk.
“Do not trust me not to catch you spying again?” he jested.
Damien grumbled something under his breath as he rolled his eyes, but he, too, felt a smirk upon his lips.
“Let us box again soon,” he added as they walked toward the front door. “At your place, though. I think it is better.”
Adrian nodded in agreement, knowing full well why Damien was requesting a change of venue.
“Any time,” Adrian replied.
At the door, Damien held out his hand to his friend, but Adrian gripped his shoulders and pulled him into a tight hug.
Mr. Stones, Damien’s butler, looked at him wide-eyed, as if caught off guard by his master’s rare show of affection.
Damien shot him a glare, and the man scurried away without a second look.
“Have faith, my friend,” Adrian whispered into his ear. “Just as you told me. Not just in Evander. But in yourself.”
Damien cleared his throat as he untangled himself from the uncomfortable and unusual display of affection from Adrian.
“Right,” he murmured, stepping away.
Adrian gave him a final wave, then turned to walk down the footpath toward the gate. Damien watched him until he reached the bright, neat street that led to the other Mayfair mansions, then slowly closed the door.
Damien stood at the closed door for a long moment after Adrian had gone, his hand still resting on the handle.
‘Show her you are more than what the rumors say.’
Easy enough advice to give. Far less easy to follow when the woman in question had already made up her mind about him.
“Was that Adrian?”
Damien jolted, completely unprepared to hear the beautiful voice behind him. He spun around and saw Caroline looking at him with an amused expression; clearly, she knew how off-guard she had caught him.
“Yes,” he blurted out, feeling suddenly sheepish.
He raked his eyes down her body, appreciation for her beauty warming his veins.
She was wearing a silk buttercream yellow gown that made her creamy complexion glow and brought out the rich, deep brown in her eyes.
It was long-sleeved, but they fit her arms to perfection, and the corseted bodice made the swell of her bosom evident.
His gaze narrowed on her throat, where beneath her creamy complexion rested the slow pulsing vein of her pulse point.
Images of the night he had found her flashed through his mind, and he was reminded of how oddly comforted he was to feel that vein pulse beneath his palm. She had been gone for a total of two months, and it was as if he had needed to feel such a pulse to prove that she was alive.
Would she ever know how panicked he had been? How his mind had conjured the worst atrocities happening to her as he continued to fail at finding her?
Suddenly, Damien realized Caroline had said something else, and he wrenched his mind from that dark place, his gaze shooting up to her eyes.
“I am sorry. What was that?” he asked, firmly planting himself back in reality.
A look of concern gathered in Caroline’s dark eyes, but she cleared her throat and spoke calmly.
“I said it was a shame that I missed him,” she replied. “I was hoping that he would send my regrets to Bridget.”
His brows furrowed as tension filled his already taut muscles.
“Regrets for what?” he asked, fearing that Adrian might have left out some serious information for the well-being of his wife.
What was wrong with Bridget?
“For not visiting her since I have returned,” Caroline answered, her small eyebrows arching up with curiosity as she crossed her arms and took a step toward him. “I have been most busy with George, happily so. But in doing so, I have put off assuring Bridget and Aunt Nora that I am well.”
Damien let out a long, careful breath through his slightly parted lips, willing himself to calm down. There was no danger. Everyone was fine. Save for perhaps a few worried thoughts that Caroline obviously wanted to soothe.
“Right,” he muttered. “Well, I am sure your request for forgiveness is not necessary. Why do you not invite them both over? They can visit with you, and George can meet Samuel.”
Caroline’s brows rose in surprise.
“You would allow that?” she asked.
Damien huffed out a dry laugh.
“What, you think I am so awful that I would not allow your family to visit you?” he remarked.
Silence answered him, leaving him and Caroline in an awkward moment as both cast their gazes away from one another.
“I suppose with the way I have acted, you would have no reason to believe I am not that awful,” he admitted, finally looking at her again.
Caroline’s gaze drew up as well, and something like understanding glittered in her gaze as her plump lips formed into a small smile.
“You are not so awful all the time,” she replied.
Damien smirked, relieved, and held up his hand to place his thumb and pointer finger just a hairsbreadth apart from one another as if measuring a small distance.
“You mean I am not so awful this amount of time?” he asked, and to his surprise and pleasure, Caroline laughed.
It was loud and beautiful and natural, and at once held him spellbound.
Caroline, as well, seemed to be taken by surprise by the sound, for she quickly clapped her hand over her mouth to suppress it. She continued to giggle into her palm for another few seconds, however, and Damien’s smirk shifted to a full, genuine grin.
“I did not know you could do that,” Caroline said, dropping her hand from her mouth.
Damien’s brow arched. “Do what?”
“Smile like that,” she replied, and the moment the words left her lips, the color drained from her face.
Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly, as if she had only just heard what she had said, and what it implied.
That she had been watching him closely enough and long enough to know what his face did and did not do.
“I mean,” she began, straightening abruptly, “George is asking for me. That is... not at this moment, he is asleep, but earlier he... I should go and check on him.”
She did not wait for his response. She turned on her heel with a quickness that was almost but not quite running, and disappeared down the hall, leaving Damien standing alone by the door with his grin still very much intact.