Accidentally Compromising the Duke (24 page)

The tide of the dream rose in his head. The heat, the sheer joy of being buried in Adel, the tightness, the wetness, the comfort…it had been
real
. A low groan hissed from the back of his throat and rumbled in the room.

“Edmond,” she said on a softly shuddered breath, her eyes glistening with tears. “I know and I understand your fear, but I promise you I—”

“How?” his voice was a hoarse rasp. He knew the night in the cottage was somehow real, but he needed to hear it from her lips. The night that had been haunting his dreams, where deep in the darkest corners of his heart he had been hoping it was true, had been real? The passion he had tasted—never had he feasted on such wonder, such eroticism…and he’d wanted it to happen in the flesh. How foolish he’d been in his desires, forgetting the consequences of his actions.

Her throat worked to swallow. “You rode hell-bent away on your horse and I could not bear the idea of you being alone with your grief. I followed you and…and when you kissed me, I…we…” Guilt filled her eyes, but she tilted her head defiantly. “You consumed me, and I couldn’t resist the pleasures I felt in your arms.”

The challenge in her eyes nearly felled him.

Silence throbbed in the room like a wound.

“Say something, Edmond.”

Somehow the raw metallic scent of blood slinked into the room and filled his nostrils. There had been so much damn blood. Maryann had wept uncontrollably and pleaded with him to save her, save their baby, and he had stood by helpless,
useless
, and unable to do anything as she tired from the exertion of pushing, weakened from blood lost. He had watched the hope die from her eyes, and only fear had remained. He had done nothing…but watch in cold silence, trapped in his own hell and failure.

“Edmond?”

Adeline’s soft voice drew him back from the dark fraying edges.

She took a step toward him, anxiety clear in her eyes. “Edmond, I—”

“Get out.”

…

The words were like a solid blow to the center of Adel’s chest.

“Are you referring to my chamber or Rosette Park itself?” she asked with a calm that belied the feelings slashing through her veins.

The smoldering rage and contempt in his eyes frightened her.

“You lied to me.”

She lied to me.
He’d sounded broken when he’d confessed what Maryann had done.

“I did not.”

“Now I understand your wariness the morning after. Madam, a lie by omission is deception.”

She closed her eyes. “It was not intentional…I slipped from the cottage and returned to the main house. When I saw you later and realized you had not remembered I-I simply did not want your chastisement, so I did not mention that we were together. I never thought I would have fallen with child.”

“Why did you not reject me when I reached for you?” he snarled.

“I tried.”

He jolted…hard. “I
raped
you?”

Her throat worked. It would be so easy to say he had coerced her, to avoid the heartache about to come. But that would make her such a monster. “You did not,” she said softly.

A hiss of relief slipped from him. “It has been eight weeks since, all this time you knew you had been at risk and you said nothing.”

“In truth, I had no notion how to broach the topic, Edmond. And I only confirmed yesterday I am with child, and I am not at risk!”

“You will not give birth in this house.”

She flinched. Her gaze captured his, and within his eyes, she saw the absolute truth. He would not yield. The passionate lover she had fallen in love with melted away, as if he had never been, and her cold duke once more stood in his place. “So it is banishment then?” she asked, her lips trembling. She forcefully flattened them, refusing to cry.

“I do not care where you go for your confinement. I have estates all over England and Scotland. Visit any one of them.”

She gave him a fulminating glare. “You are being cruel and unreasonable. I will need my family with me…I will need
you
.” There…she was laying her heart bare though he had the power to crush it.

“I will not watch you die!” he snarled. “Nor will I subject Rosa and Sarah to the heartache of losing you.”

Her heart was pounding and her hands were shaking. “How arrogant you are. You are powerful and beyond wealthy, Edmond, but it is not you who determines who lives and who dies. Maryann’s death was not your fault, nor was it hers. It was simply death…inevitability, in this one a very tragic passing. I am with child—
your
child, and you would think to banish me to some forsaken place without the girls?”

He advanced almost menacingly, and she forced herself to hold her grounds. “If I had not climbed on top of Maryann and rutted until she bred, she would be here today,” he said with shocking crudity. “It was
my
desire for an heir…a thing that seems so inconsequential now, that pushed her to accommodate me every time, even knowing the danger to her life!”

How did he live with such guilt? Adel hugged herself and bit back a sob. “It was not your doing, Edmond. Even though the doctors had told Maryann not to have any more children…it was still her choice not to inform you, and I know why she did it. Not because she was being foolish or stubborn, but because she had hoped for a son and loved you. She wanted to grant your desire, and she hoped all might be well.”

A cold sneer curved his lips. “And is it that similar hope you possess, Adeline? You, who is slimmer, more petite than Maryann and the hundreds of women that die annually in childbirth. Do you hope you will not perish? Do you hope that the hunger I have for you has not consigned you to an early grave? Is that it, Adeline?
Simply damnable hope
?” His voice was icy with lethal scorn.

She jerked, not at his vulgarity, but the torment that darkened his eyes to ash. “I am truly sorry, Edmond,” she said her voice breaking. “I cannot imagine the pain and guilt you have lived with, but I cannot be caged because of your fear that I would have a similar fate.”

His gaze dipped to her stomach and lingered there for an inordinate amount of time. “I thought that night with you was a dream…a wonderful, terrifying dream.”

The soft words tripped her heart.

“I pray with everything in me, when you birth our babe you are not harmed, that he or she is not harmed. I can live with no other outcome.”

Her throat tightened. “I will be well, I promise you.”

His expression didn’t flicker. “As you said, Adeline, you are not responsible for the hands of fate, nor I. You cannot know if you will live or die. I cannot know, and that is why I had no wish to tempt fate’s capricious hand. But this is my fault and I will not hold you to blame. I had known relaxing with you, smiling and enjoying life would lead to this road. If I had been firm in my resolve to never allow such intimacies, we would not be standing here now, debating the possibility of you living or dying when you are brought to bed with our child.”

The distance in his voice had alarm shivering through her. This was going beyond anger or fear. “Edmond, I—”

“No,” he said, with such chilling softness that she faltered.

“I will never make such a mistake again.”

Suddenly she understood what he was about to do.

Perpetual estrangement.

Her eyes smarted with tears. “Stop this,” she cried fiercely. “Your unreasonable fear would see us divided forever.”

His gray eyes appeared like cold flint. “I am stopping, Duchess.”

She absorbed the finality in his tone, his demeanor. If she had thought him cold and aloof before, then the man before her now was a positive glacier…and unknown. All she had been hoping for would now be forever from their reach. Even if she delivered their child safely, he would never return to her arms, never ride with her across the fields, never kiss her, never relax and trust in the attachment strengthening between them with each passing day. His wall of reserve was now absolute, and she would never be able to shatter it.

The loss which scythed through her heart almost brought her to her knees. It took unbearable strength to remain standing and face him. “I will take my confinement at Rosette Park.”

“Is that so, Duchess?” he asked chillingly.

“Yes, I will have the consolation of Lady Harriet and our girls’ presence.”

“Send word when the child is born…if you are alive.”

She gasped, and he stormed away.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Edmond swung onto the back of his stallion and powered away from the estate. Blood washing over his vision, and the pale lifeless form of his wife and son crowded his mind. Thunder rumbled ominously, a reflection of his turbulent rage, or was it fear? He saw Adeline splayed in a similar manner, their child stuck, unable to climb into the world and take his first breath, her lifeless, accusing eyes piercing him as her life drained away.

He rode, blotting the emotions until a warning clang sounded in his brain. The rain would be fierce. He drew on the reins and slowed to a canter. When he saw where he had directed them, the breath sawed from his lungs. The cottage. He dismounted, and with long strides walked over the bridge where the river below it was already swelling from the slight rain. His heart pounded as he slammed into the cottage and jerked to a halt.

Hell’s teeth!

It was as he had left it. The bed sheets rumbled. He inhaled, and Adeline’s subtle fragrance filled his lungs. Surely he was imagining her scent after so long. He moved farther into the room, his eyes drawn to the bed. Distressing lust swam in his veins as the memory of arching her hips and sucking on her soft, wet, womanly flesh, rose in his fevered brain. She had screamed, gripped his hair, and demanded more in her wild passion. She had been fierce and beautiful, welcoming and tight as she offered her body unreservedly. Edmond’s knees buckled, and he sank into the lone wing-backed chair in the room.

It truly had not been a dream.

I love you, Edmond.

Had those words been real as well? Edmond’s insides turned to ice. Adeline was truly with child, and as sure as the sun would rise tomorrow he would lose her because of it. All of the facts he had studied raced to the forefront of his thoughts.

Fifty in every one thousand women in London died in childbirth. The odds seemed like they could be on his side. Maryann had been taken, and now Adeline could be one of the thousand that would die this year because of that bad luck.

No…not bad luck. Because of childbed fever, convulsions, infection, hemorrhaging.

He struggled to breathe through his nose evenly and to calm the furious pounding of his heart. He would have to leave Rosette Park tonight. He couldn’t bear to see her swell with his child and then watch the light dim from her eyes, as the monster named death came to claim her, like it had claimed Maryann and his father.

He braced his forearm on his thighs and lowered his head, ruthlessly building the wall around his heart, for without a doubt, from the terror now tearing through his soul, he had been on the cusp of falling in love with his wife.

What a damn fool he had been. To allow himself such sentiments when his children depended on him. He could allow nothing to plunge him back into that roaring demon riddled with guilt and pain.

When Edmond lifted his head, dusk had fallen. It seemed hours had passed since he’d been sitting in the chair. Rain had lashed the cottage, and thunder had shaken its frame and he’d hardly been aware. When he stood, he felt no tender stirring in his heart for his wife. Only a simple appreciation that she was alive, that she was a kind woman who seemed to cherish his daughters as much as he loved them. That was all he’d wanted. When she died, whether it be in nine months, or several years from now, he would certainly feel its sting, for Adeline was a wonderful woman. But he would not be crippled by torment, haunted by empty, lifeless eyes, and taunted by pleading tears to save her life, nor shredded by wails that accused him of killing her and their child. No…for he did not—
would not
—love her.

…

It had been six weeks since the duke had departed Rosette Park for, she believed, London. There was a squeal of joy from below the stairs, and Adel tried to drum up a smile. It seemed Sarah and Rosa had received another letter from their father. A messenger had arrived every morning on horseback, with a long letter for them both. Sometimes, parcels of presents, and even a few books had come. There had been nothing for Adel. The children allowed her to read the letters to them, and the duke regaled them with sights seen in London, and what he did with his day. But not once had he asked how she fared. Like a fool she kept reading the letters daily, hoping for a sign of something.

Why had she not told him what happened in the cottage the minute she realized he’d not remembered? Regret sat in her stomach like rotten food. Though she had come to realize it would not have mattered. It was not her omission he hated, it was the very fact that she was with child. And that would have still been true even if he had known about their night of untamed loving from the beginning. He had retreated back to his old self, and she would simply have to find happiness where she could in their marriage, without him. For now, she could not contemplate the loneliness that would eventually descend. For now, she concentrated on her children and not the crushing pain she woke with daily.

She rose from the bath water, and Meg gently toweled her dry. With mechanical motions, Adel sat in front of her dressing table as Meg tamed her hair. Then she dressed in a simple white muslin day gown, donned her emerald green redingote, and added her bonnet. She would go for a walk this morning, and try to lift her spirits.

A few minutes later she strolled through the gardens, the fragrance of lily and roses filling her lungs. Dr. Graves had said exercise would be good for her health and it was time she took measures to ensure she took her daily constitutional.

The wind tugged at her bonnet, and the air smelled crisp and clean. After her walk she would direct her attention to the few letters she had. Adel had become the patron to several underfunded and much ignored charities in the nearby villages, and a few in town. She had been appalled to learn the closest village to Rosette lacked both a proper school and had no bookstore or library. A few of the children in the village traveled for miles for some sort of an education but most went without and remained unlettered. A school was now being constructed, and it was being overseen by the vicar and his kind wife. One of the local shops was falling vacant in a few months and she had bought the lease intending to turn it into a bookshop. Though she immersed herself with such activities, every night she still ached for Edmond. But she was determined to exorcise the wretched man from her heart.