Taken by the Duke (14 page)

There was a moment when something akin to panic filled Christian’s eyes. She almost withdrew from it, but forced herself not to react. If he knew she had found even the tiniest glimpse into his soul he would push her away, just as he had been doing since he first snatched her from the party.

“If you are insistent,” he finally said through grinding teeth. “Sanders, have a light meal set up along the river’s edge at one o’clock. Lady Ava and I will arrange to find ourselves there at that time.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Sanders responded, and for the first time he allowed his stare to actually settle on Ava, though she could not tell what judgment he made of her. “Of course.”

“Thank you, Sanders, that’s all,” Christian said, turning on his heel to make his way down the stairs toward the twisting driveway below.

“Good day, Your Grace,” Sanders said as he began to shut the door. “Lady Ava.”

Ava jerked her head to look at the butler, but he was already gone. So she had been acknowledged. A triumph indeed.

Gathering her skirt in one hand, she made her way down the stairs to join Christian at the bottom.

She smiled as she slipped her hand into the crook of his arm that did not hold his cane. He jerked at the contact and looked down at her in surprise, but she didn’t pull away, even though she wished to withdraw thanks to his pained expression. No, she would not be apprehensive. This was an opportunity to gain some much-desired insight into the man—she would not allow him to take that from her.

“Shall we begin in the gardens?” he said, leading her around the house down a little path of crushed stones.

“Oh yes,” she said with a smile she didn’t have to force. “I have been looking at them out my window for days and longing to see them closer.”

“They are lovely,” he admitted, as they entered a little space in the hedgerow.

She released his arm and moved forward to suck in a breath of sweet rose petals and lilac. The gardens were even more of a marvel up close than they had been out her window. High hedges made up the perimeter and lower ones of the same variety helped to create walkways. In between was a riot of flowers of so many varieties she could not begin to count them. Roses and lilac, carnations and lavender, daisies and marigolds, all burst forth with vibrant colors and attracted bees and butterflies to dance around the petals.

“More than lovely—this is the happiest garden I have ever laid eyes on,” she said on a sigh before she faced him. “Christian, it is magnificent. Who did all this?”

He blinked. “The gardener, I suppose.”

She shook her head and leaned down to sniff a bright red rose. “Oh no. A gardener, even the best gardener, would not design this kind of joyful retreat for someone else. This is something made by the hands of someone who lived here.”

He seemed to consider that point. “My grandmother, my mother’s mother, loved flowers, if I recall. This was her home after my grandfather died, so I suppose the gardens may have been planned by her.

Ava smiled broadly. “I can almost imagine her out here, doting on every plant. Did she speak of it much when you visited?”

He frowned, his gaze far away. “When we visited, her conversations with my mother were often…more troubling.”

She lifted her head from the latest blossom she was examining. “Oh, I see. They did not get along?”

“No, it wasn’t that. My grandmother worried about my father, his obsession with—”

He broke off, but the intent of the rest of his sentence was patently clear.

“My mother’s family also had concerns about their feud,” she said softly.

He said nothing in reply, but walked away to break off a dead leaf from one of the bushes along the path. He tossed the brown refuse aside.

“We were never much of a flower family,” Ava said, shifting the subject. “Loved to look at them, yes, but I am afraid I kill any green thing within twenty paces.”

He looked at her briefly. “I should hustle you out of my garden, then.”

She hesitated, for she could scarce believe he was actually teasing her. In a friendly way.

Finally, she laughed. “I promise not to touch anything else, just in case my black thumb is catching beyond my own plants.”

“Should I fear for the dogs?” he asked, and there was a hint of another real smile, so fleeting and so…lovely.

“You have dogs?” she asked, truly surprised. “I have never seen them. Are you hiding them just as you are hiding the servants?”

He tensed. “Who told you I was hiding the servants?”

She shook her head and strolled over to a bench, where she sat down and set her hands in her lap.

“Oh Christian, do you think I’m blind? You have a huge manor home that must require dozens of servants to manage. The only one I see regularly is Laura. Sanders makes an occasional appearance, and I’ve seen fleeting glimpses of those who deliver meals or scuttle down the halls, but they hardly look at me. Obviously, they have been given an order not to interact with me. It is very…isolating.”

There was a long moment where Christian seemed to be in disagreement with himself on what to do or say next. Finally, he shrugged, almost in surrender.

“They have not been ordered to do anything,” he said. “But I doubt they approve of my methods of revenge, so I assume they avoid you because your captivity makes them uncomfortable. At any rate, when I come here I am not exactly a talkative master, so that feeling of isolation may come more from my habits than anyone’s feelings toward you.”

She pondered her response carefully. This was as open as Christian had ever been with her, and the puzzle that he was began to become clearer. And led her to further questions.

“Your habits since the accident last year?” she pressed, very careful in her tone so that he wouldn’t push her away.

He frowned. “I’m certain they have become worse since my sister’s death and my own…incapacitation, but no. I admit I have never been one for excessive warmth or connection with those in my employ or even my friends and family. Probably Matilda was the only person who enjoyed the very best of me and only because she refused to accept less.”

“She sounds like a very good sister,” Ava said. It was odd to think of her as such, after so many years of being told not to think or speak about their family or even consider them human at all.

“She was,” he admitted. He shook his head and walked away. “But we are here to examine my gardens, are we not? Shall we do that or just dally talking nonsense?”

She pushed to her feet and followed him, easily catching up to him with his painful gait.

“Christian,” she argued. “I wouldn’t classify your sister or your life as nonsense. Great God, I shall be here another two weeks still. Are we never to know anything about each other but our bodies? Do you not wonder about more when we are now so intimately acquainted?”

He spun on her, his face darkening and tight with both physical pain and emotion.

“No!” he burst out. “I never wondered about you. Ever. I never thought of you at all until I decided to steal you. But here you are and you are…intrusive. You are…meddlesome. You are…you are nothing like I ever thought you would be.”

She folded her arms, trying to will her pounding heart to slow, which of course didn’t work in the slightest.

“How am I different?” she demanded.

He threw up his free hand. “You are all lightness and laughter, despite this feud, despite what I’ve done, despite whatever your life has been like.”

Her lips parted. “Are you saying you do not think I feel the pain of my past, of my present predicament?”

“I don’t know, do you?” he pressed, and there was true wonder in his voice.

“I am not a fool,” she whispered. “I feel each and every effect of my life. I grieve for what has been lost thanks to this idiotic war between our families. It all but killed my mother when I was a very little girl. It poisoned my father until I do not think he felt love for anyone, even his children, so blinded was he by hate. It crippled my brother, both in his body and his heart. I don’t even recognize him when he bothers to open his door to me.”

He flinched at her stark recitation of losses, which shocked her. Should he not be crowing?

“And if you think I do not feel the more direct effects of our ‘war’, then you are the fool,” she continued, even though she knew she should stop.

“Ava—” he interrupted, but she ignored him.

But the words had begun now, words she had felt inside herself for years and put aside, shoved down, tried to ignore as best she could.

“Do you think I’m blind to the fact that men have turned away from me because they do not want to involve themselves in an increasingly irrational battle? Or that friends have slowly melted into shadow because of the scandals our two families carry on our backs with every moment and every step? Trust me, Christian, you and my brother are not the only ones with scars from your war. You scar everyone around you, as did our fathers, our grandfathers, and all the rest back to the beginning, whenever that was.”

She was panting now, her eyes stinging with tears, her hands shaking with upset. As her high emotion faded, she blushed at how she had railed out everything she felt. She had armed him, and worse she had made a fool of herself.

But his expression was not one of triumph or even shock. He swallowed.

“If all that is true, how
do
you keep your lightness, Ava?” he asked, his voice barely carrying in the summer air.

She squeezed her eyes shut. “I have two options in this world. I can allow what is happening around me to control me, to break me, to destroy me and make me a twisted, angry shell of a person, as it has done to so many others. Or I can rise above it. There is ugliness around me, but there is beauty, too. I will find whatever I seek.”

He sucked in a sudden breath at her final words, and for a long time he was silent. Then he turned toward her and held out a hand.

“Come,” he murmured. “I want to show you something.”

She stared at his outstretched fingers, then up to his face. For the first time, there was something open about him. Perhaps she was only hoping for the best, but on his countenance she saw an honesty and a true desire to share a moment with her.

And she had no choice but to take his hand and allow him to lead her wherever he chose.

Chapter Thirteen

Christian didn’t know why he was leading Ava away from the garden, over the rolling hills, down a hidden path and to a small, rickety bridge over the lazy river that cut through the middle of the property. But he was doing just that.

“Mind your step,” he cautioned as he stepped out onto the old wooden bridge. “I doubt I could save you if you started to drown.”

“We’ll hope it won’t come to that,” she said, gingerly feeling her way across the half-rotted beams. “What in the world is this?”

He stepped onto solid land on the other side of the river and offered her a hand of assistance to the shore.

“A child’s bridge,” he explained. “I think my grandfather must have built it, but it hasn’t been maintained since I don’t even know when.”

She nodded, saying nothing else as she followed him through an overgrown path in the woods.

“You aren’t planning on murdering me, are you?” she asked with a laugh to her tone that wasn’t entirely humor-filled.

He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Great God, I’ve had you in far more compromising positions than this one,” he said. “And I have not killed you yet.”

“How very comforting,” she said with a shake of her head.

“You could outrun me,” he added, motioning to the cane.

She shut her mouth and motioned for him to lead on. He did so, his mind racing as he picked his way through bramble and bush until there, in a small clearing in the middle of the woods, he saw what he had been seeking. A place he hadn’t visited for decades.

“A playhouse?” she asked.

He couldn’t blame her for the question of her tone. The little house, which had once been painted white with blue trim, was now very worn down. There was a hole in the roof, the door was cracked in half and the windows were shattered.

“Once it was,” he said with a shake of his head. “I wouldn’t exactly send a child in there now.”

“Unless you didn’t like him,” she suggested with a smile.

He found himself smiling in return even as he stared at the house with a twinge of pain. “Yes, I would have to truly despise him, you are right.”

“Was it yours?” she pressed, moving forward with care. The little house was about as tall as she was, and she bent to peek into the windows.

He nodded. “My sister’s and mine. We would play here when we visited with my mother many, many years ago.”

“Your father built it?”

He snorted out an angry laugh. “My father? No. He wouldn’t have thought of it unless he could use it as punishment. My grandmother had it placed here for us.”

She glanced at him, and he immediately regretted the very honest but highly emotional response.

“I remember your father a very little from when I was a girl. I believe I would have feared him even if our families weren’t at odds. Was he truly that hard?”