Chapter 6 #2
She drew in a breath, hating that she had to say what she said next. “And you don’t expect anything else?”
He winced, but then he squared his shoulders. “I understand the expectation of many gentlemen when giving out favors might seem licentious, but that is not me. I have the genuine wish to do something good, and that is all. I have a friend who does much good. And I wish to be like him.”
Like him? The duke already was. Could he not see that? From the way his servants admired him, that was infinitely clear.
This was like a dream! As she had noted, she could save a great deal of money if she stayed here, and the increase in wages was shocking. Her mind raced with how much money she would now have to get her mother meat and firewood.
If she was able to do this, she would be able to go and live with her mother, perhaps for at least a summer, and then she could work in the city in the winter.
She drew herself up. “I accept,” she said. “I would be a fool not to.”
“Good,” he said.
She turned to go, half expecting him to ask her to stay. When he did not, she stopped herself, turned, and met those crackling eyes of his. “Why do you wish to have me, and the other ladies too, so close at hand? Surely you wish to have some privacy as well.”
“Dukes never have privacy,” he said easily. “We are used to being surrounded by servants.”
She winced inwardly. Of course, she was just a servant to him. What else could she be?
He hesitated. “Miss Stillbrooke?” he ventured, his voice rumbling through the space between them.
“Yes?” she said, her voice much higher than she had intended.
He pushed away from the fireplace, his dark coat stretching over his broad shoulders.
He did not move towards her and yet, somehow, the way he stood now felt intimate and his gaze burned with intensity.
“I admire you as a person, Miss Stillbrooke, and I don’t want you to think that I see you as simply someone who’s come here to organize my father’s things.
I can tell how wonderful you are, and the fact is I would like to know you better, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. ”
Her eyes widened. “That is the most remarkable statement I think I have ever heard from a man.”
He laughed. “Should I be horrified or should I be complimented? I find that I am often uncertain these days.”
“Perhaps both,” she teased, her dratted heart skipping at his words and the way he was looking at her. Looking as if he wished he could sweep her into his embrace, but he would not because of his own sense of honor. Or perhaps hers.
“All right,” he said, his lips curving into a slow smile.
“Then I’ll settle on both. I would like to suggest that you take your meals with me.
The truth is I am accustomed to having good conversation, and when I eat here by myself, I don’t have it, and yet I don’t wish to invite people here. Not yet. I don’t want them to…see.”
“You don’t want them to see how your father lived?” she said softly.
“Exactly,” he said, his jaw tightening. “I know that people essentially already know, but there’s something very different about bringing them into it rather than them just hearing about it.”
She nodded. “I understand,” she said.
“Do you?” he asked carefully, his gaze searching hers.
She nearly gasped at the wounds she saw there and how she ached to fix them, to sort them out, as it were.
“You’d be surprised,” she said. “People don’t want others to know the inner workings of their personal lives or how horrible they truly were or are. I struggled quite intensely after my father died and we were on the edge of real ruin. I’m sorry, Your Grace, if it was horrible for you.”
“I’m so sorry about your father and what you and your mother endured,” he said.
“Don’t be,” she replied. “I am independent and resourceful.”
He hesitated as if he understood that she wasn’t quite telling him the truth. “I watched him, you know,” he said, looking away, folding his hands behind his back, appearing to have no idea what to do with them.
“Your father?” she queried.
“I watched him disintegrate from a great man to someone who could barely leave their house, someone who was obsessed with their things,” he whispered as he wound his way through the stacks of books about the stars and the earth’s place in them.
“I tried so hard to help him so many times, but he couldn’t be helped.
When he was living, I tried to have the house organized.
I brought people in, and he was infuriated.
He cursed at them and threw them out. He cursed at me and almost threw me out.
And finally, I knew that the only thing that I could do was let him live his life as he wished it and try not to interfere.
” His voice wavered, breaking. “But I couldn’t watch it anymore, you see.
” And then he tensed. “Do you think little of me for it? The fact that I couldn’t save or help my father? That I abandoned him?”
She drew in a breath, stunned by the intensity of his stare, his voice, and the vulnerability of his admission.
She knew that her answer mattered, but she was shocked that he cared about her opinion.
They’d only just met. Surely, there were far grander ladies who would listen to him and who he would prefer.
But instead of soothing him with banalities, she straightened and said without hesitation, “I think you did the right thing, Your Grace, because you stopped judging him, and you didn’t shame him, and you didn’t try to fix him.
Quite frankly, from what I have seen in my work, people can’t be fixed.
The person has to fix themselves, or they must at least want to be fixed.
And if they don’t wish it, then really there’s very little that can be done, and the worst thing one can do is make them feel worse about themselves. ”
And much to her shock, there was a sheen that covered the duke’s eyes. His throat worked, as if he was swallowing back decades of pain.
He snapped his gaze back away from her and looked to the cold fire. “You, madam, are like an oracle. Do you see all and understand all?”
“That is impossible for anyone,” she said. “Oracles don’t exist, nor do prophets. But if you pay close enough attention, you can understand how people are.”
“And how are people?” he said. “How am I?”
She should keep silent. She should not answer him, and she certainly shouldn’t be honest. “You’re a good man, but for all your bravado, you’re lost.”
“I, a duke, am lost? I don’t think so,” he scoffed. “I’ve wandered all my life and always found my way home.”
She smiled softly at him. “That doesn’t mean that you’re not still lost, because it’s very clear to me that you are still determined to find the answers to a question you don’t really understand.”
“And will I ever find them?” he asked.
“It’s unlikely,” she said sadly. “I don’t think anyone ever finds the answers. Unless…”
“Yes?” he murmured.
“Unless one understands that the answers are within. There are no answers without.”
He let out a soft, booming laugh. “You know, I went all the way to India to hear things like that, and, apparently, I could have heard them in my own study from a girl born on this little island. How the bloody hell did you get so wise, Ms. Stillbrooke?”
“I told you already. Pain,” she said.
“Ah, yes. Our dear friend pain. You bring her up again. Is pain always with us?” he asked, his eyes still just as wounded as before, but now he was gazing at her differently. As if he had known her all his life.
“Pain is always near,” she admitted, licking her lips, “but so is love.”