Regency 09 - Redemption (24 page)

Considering this threat was
uttered in the calmest, most emotionless tone, Adam’s reaction
might have been viewed as extreme to an outsider.

The baronet’s fist slammed
into the side of the carriage—right next to his young cousin’s
face.

Dare didn’t really react.
He turned, viewed Adam with a trace of disdain, and smiled thinly.
“What, may I ask, was the purpose of that?”

“Dammit! Show some life,
you soulless cur.” Growling, Adam lunged forward, grabbing the
front of Dare’s coat in one fist. He jerked his cousin out of the
seat, bringing his face close. “I know you care. I can feel it in
the way you try so hard to look like you don’t. If you keep hiding
behind that soulless façade of yours, you will snap at the wrong
time. Do you really want to hurt Jenny? Or would you rather take a
few shots at me?”

The last word had barely
left Adam’s mouth before Dare’s fist smashed into his head. Adam’s
hand opened, releasing his cousin. The baronet sat back with a
pleased smile, absently massaging his ringing ear.

Which only enraged Dare all
the more. He launched himself at the other man.

The close proportions of a
moving carriage were not conducive to an effective exchange of
blows. Adam very easily shoved Dare back in his seat, laughing at
the younger man’s fury.

“Oh, stubble it, Dare,” he
said affectionately. “You’ve had your outlet and I can assure you,
I’ll be hearing bells for a sennight.”

Dare somehow managed to
calm the unleashed fury roiling through him. Adam was right; he’d
been perilously close to losing all sense where Jenny was
concerned.

But, dear God, she was
letting herself die! How could she do that to their
child?

How could she do that to
him?

Not bothering to look at
his cousin, he asked, “Are we going to London, then?”

Adam shook his head. “Jenny
has been living in a cottage on Denbigh’s estate since you left. We
go there.”

Dare’s gaze swung around to
meet Adam’s. “She left her parents’ home?”

Adam nodded. “It was quite
a to-do. She calmly told them that she would not live with them and
wanted her own house. Denbigh had no choice but to comply. The only
ones she was willing to see were Miles and Gwen. She even balked at
allowing Con near her after the babies were born.” He shrugged a
little helplessly, in Dare’s opinion. “But now, she doesn’t seem to
care who is there—or who isn’t.”

Dare did not miss the
significance of his cousin’s words. Jenny didn’t even care that he
wasn’t there.

But he suspected that at
one time, she had.

Predictably, it was
raining. Not a gentle, drizzly rain but a cold, soulless drenching
that permeated the bones and made a man wish for nothing more than
a cozy armchair before a crackling blaze.

Dare wasn’t sure such a
thing would even begin to ease the cold he felt. The coach
approached Denbigh Castle and he felt nothing so much as the
unmistakable longing to flee.

But flight had accomplished
naught so far. And, quite frankly, Dare was tired of
running.

He’d run from everything.
It was not something he was proud of but he’d never really realized
it before. Whenever there was the slightest bit of adversity in his
life, he’d run. When Adam’s offer to go to sea had been raised,
Dare had leapt at it. Never had it been so easy to avoid
responsibility.

And now, Dare found himself
in a situation far worse than any he’d ever experienced before. He
was about to see his wife again after nearly six months; the woman
he’d fled twice now.

He almost hoped she’d tell
him to leave.

The carriage pulled to a
stop before the castle. It was not really a castle considering it
was a mere century or so old but it looked like one, its impressive
façade rising above him like something out of a Gothic
novel.

Bloody hell, that was just
what he needed. Imagining the home of his wife’s family to contain
some sort of Gothic tendency was not good for his already
unbalanced mind.

He exited the coach and
moved to the front steps. The door opened and he was shown into a
chamber by a very proper butler to await the duke and Lord
Connor.

Dare tried to sit calmly
and wait but he was too agitated to be still. He paced over to the
fireplace, staring down into the leaping flames. Any answers he may
have desired were absent from the mesmerizing blaze. But they did
succeed in calming him somewhat.

He turned at the sound of
the door. Lord Connor trailed in behind his father, his face
appearing to have aged five years in the last few months. Denbigh
looked as he ever did. Dare wondered if the man was even
human.

“My lords,” Dare murmured
politely, a small dip of his upper body passing for a barely civil
bow.

The duke nodded but said
nothing. Dare realized the man was human after all. His eyes held
the haunted quality of a man nearing despair. He was taking his
daughter’s decline rather hard, then.

Lord Connor gave Dare a
long look filled with so many rioting emotions that the younger man
had trouble pinpointing just one. He assumed there was a good bit
of fury in there as well as panic.

“Have you tried scolding
her?” Dare asked, only half-jesting.

Connor’s head jerked as if
slapped. The duke almost smiled. Dare shrugged his shoulders a bit,
adding, “From what I understand, she’s acting like a spoiled child.
I just thought…”

Dare glanced at Connor and
wasn’t surprised to see the man’s hands clench into fists. His
voice was taut with fury. “You know little of the situation,
Prestwich, so I would advise that you keep your unwanted
suggestions to yourself.”

Dare smiled dangerously.
“Perhaps I would know a little more had it not been rather
ruthlessly pointed out to me that I was not wanted
here.”

The duke’s expression
turned rueful. He moved further into the room and seated himself in
a chair near the fire, and in so doing, nearer his
son-in-law.

He gestured to the other
chair. When Dare hesitated, he said, “Indulge me.”

Dare dropped his tall frame
into the seat, sprawling a bit as was his wont, and watched Connor
as he moved another chair closer.

“You have a right to be
upset,” Lord Denbigh began, shocking Dare to the core of his being.
A grunt from the duke’s son was disregarded. “We bungled the whole
affair badly. We offer our apologies for the pain and misery our
actions may have caused.”

Dare said nothing for a
long while. He just stared at these two men who, with their
overwhelming conceit, managed to nearly ruin the lives of two
people, one of whom they professed to love. Part of him
acknowledged his own guilt and accepted the rightness of their
anger.

“You lied to me,” he said,
ignoring the apology for the nonce.

“I did,” Denbigh
admitted.

Dare couldn’t leave it at
that. “Jenny didn’t want me to leave. She didn’t know anything
about it.”

The duke nodded, his
fingers steepled in front of him. “True. Jenny was most distraught
when she realized what had occurred. We tried to find you after the
ceremony but you had somehow managed to disappear quite
thoroughly.”

“I’ve gotten rather good at
disappearing over the years,” Dare inserted dryly. Connor’s snort
of derision was not ignored this time. “Do you have anything
intelligent to add to this interview, my lord? Or are you here
simply to berate me for my past mistakes?”

Denbigh lifted a hand to
intervene in what would probably become an all-out brawl. “Arguing
amongst ourselves will not solve this dilemma,” he pointed out
reasonably. “Jenny is dying, Darius.”

Put so bluntly, Dare
couldn’t respond for a moment. Adam had said the same thing but
coming from her father, as it was now, it seemed far
worse.

“And Connor had done
everything he can for her physically. Nothing seems to
help.”

“The only time she shows
any kind of life is when Lucy brings Miranda in so Jenny can nurse
the child,” Connor added, his temper firmly under
control.

Dare’s dark eyes swiveled
between the two men. “Who is Lucy?” he asked, selecting the least
important tidbit in Connor’s revelation.

Connor gaped at him for a
moment, at a sudden loss. “I tell you Jenny’s dead to the world and
you ask about her maid?”

Dare almost smiled at him.
“All you had to say was, ‘Her maid.’ How difficult would that have
been?”

“Hell and the devil
confound it, Father! He’s completely addlebrained. How can she
possibly be pining away for him?”

The duke remained silent,
almost as if he was nothing more than a mere spectator. His
steepled fingers were pressed to his lips and his eyes reflected a
tinge of humor at his son’s assessment.

Connor emitted a grunt of
absolute disgust and rose to his feet. “I refuse to sit here and
trade nonsense with you,” he told their unwanted guest. “Father can
tell you any other unimportant details you want to know.” He
stormed from the room.

Denbigh watched him go,
amused. “I have not seen him so agitated since he was courting his
wife,” he mused reflectively.

“Does Jenny want to see me,
sir?”

The duke’s gaze returned to
the younger man. “She has never stopped,” he admitted quietly. He
stared silently at his guest for a moment. Then, leaning forward,
he confided, “I cannot tell you how wrong I was to try to
manipulate you as I did. I underestimated you and that blasted
pride of yours.”

An uneasy feeling slid over
Dare’s spine. “What?”

“I had hoped, that in
asking you to leave, that you would defy me by staying. I was
stymied when you obeyed.”

“You said she didn’t want
me as husband,” Dare pointed out numbly. “Did you believe I was the
type to force my presence on an unwilling woman?”

Denbigh sat back with a
long sigh. “I chose the wrong words. At the time, I but suspected
the depth of my daughter’s feelings. You…well, you were a little
easier to read, actually.”

Dare was fast becoming
angry. He hated manipulation and to think that he and Jenny had
been the victims this time made him see red.

Holding his emotions firmly
in check, he asked, “Where is my brother?”

The duke looked surprised,
then suspicious, then resigned. “You are not ready to forgive. You
are well matched with my daughter. She has yet to forgive as
well.”

“Where?”

The older man sighed. “He
and Gwen live in the cottage down the lane from Jenny. My coachman
will take you there.”