The Duke and I (35 page)

 Except tonight was different. Tonight Daphne felt oddly restless. Her body was blissfully weary and sated, but something felt wrong. Something niggled at the back of her mind, teasing her subconscious.

 Simon rolled over and scooted his body next to hers, pushing her toward the clean side of the bed. He always did that,

using his body as a barrier so that she would never roll into the mess he made. It was a thoughtful gesture, actually, and—

 Daphne's eyes flew open. She almost gasped.

 A womb won't quicken without strong, healthy seed .

 Daphne hadn't given a thought to Mrs. Colson's words when the housekeeper had uttered the saying that afternoon. She'd been too consumed with the tale of Simon's painful childhood, too concerned with how she could bring enough love into his life to banish the bad memories forever.

 Daphne sat up abruptly, the blankets falling to her waist. With shaking fingers she lit the candle that sat on her bedside table.

 Simon opened a sleepy eye. "What's wrong?"

 She said nothing, just stared at the wet spot on the other side of the bed.

 His seed.

 "Daff?"

 He'd told her he couldn't have children. He'd
lied
to her.

 "Daphne, what's wrong?" He sat up. His face showed his concern.

 Was that, too, alie?

 She pointed. "What is that?" she asked, her voice so low it was barely audible.

 "What is what?" His eyes followed the line of her finger and saw only bed. "What are you talkingabout?"

 "Why can't you have children, Simon?"

 His eyes grew shuttered. He said nothing.

 "Why,Simon?" She practically shouted the words.

 "The details aren't important, Daphne."

 His tone was soft, placating, with just a hint of condescension. Daphne felt something inside of her snap.

 "Get out," she ordered.

 His mouth fell open. "This is my bedroom."

 'Then I'll get out." She stormed out of the bed, whipping one of the bedsheets around her.

 Simon was on her heels in a heartbeat. "Don't you
dare
leave this room," he hissed.

 "You lied to me."

 "I never—"

 "You lied to me," she screamed. "You lied to me, and I will never forgive you for that!"

 "Daphne—"

 "You took advantage of my stupidity." She let out a disbelieving breath, the kind that came from the back of one's throat, right before it closed up in shock. "You must have been so delighted when you realized how little I knew about marital relations."

 "It's called making love, Daphne," he said.

 "Not between us, it's not."

 Simon nearly flinched at the rancor in her voice. He stood, utterly naked, in the middle of the room, desperately trying to come up with some way to salvage the situation. He still wasn't even certain what she knew, or what she
thought
she knew. "Daphne," he said, very slowly so that he would not let his emotions trip up his words, "perhaps you should tell me exactly what this is about."

 "Oh, we're going to play
that
game, are we?" She snorted derisively. "Very well, let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was—"

 The scathing anger in her voice was like a dagger in his gut. "Daphne," he said, closing his eyes and shaking his head,

"don't do it like this."

 "Once upon a time," she said, louder this time, "there was a young lady. We'll call her Daphne."

 Simon strode to his dressing room and yanked on a robe. There were some things a man didn't want to deal with naked.

 "Daphne was very, very stupid."

 "Daphne!"

 "Oh, very well." She flipped her hand through the air dismissively. "Ignorant, then. She was very, very ignorant."

 Simon crossed his arms.

 "Daphne knew nothing about what happened between a man and a woman. She didn't know what they did, except that they did it in a bed, and that at some point, the result would be a baby."

 "This is enough, Daphne."

 The only sign that she heard him was the dark, flashing fury in her eyes. "But you see, she didn't really
know
how that baby was made, and so when her husband told her he couldn't have children—"

 "I told you that before we married. I gave you every option to back out. Don't you forget that," he said hotly. "Don't you

 dareforget it."

 "You made me feel sorry for you!"

 "Oh now,
that's
what a man wants to hear," he sneered.

 "For the love of God, Simon," she snapped, "you know I didn't marry you
because
I felt sorry for you."

 "Then why?"

 "Because I loved you," she replied, but the acid in her voice made the declaration rather brittle. "And because I didn't want to see you die, which you seemed stupidly bent upon doing."

 He had no ready comment, so he just snorted and glared at her.

 "But don't try to make this about
me,"
she continued hotly. "I'm not the one who lied. You said you can't have children,

but the truth is you just
won't
have them."

 He said nothing, but he knew the answer was in his eyes.

 She took a step toward him, advancing with barely controlled fury. "If you truly couldn't have children, it wouldn't matter where your seed landed, would it? You wouldn't be so frantic every night to make certain it ended up anywhere but inside me."

 "You don't know anything ab-bout this, Daphne." His words were low and furious, and only slightly damaged.

 She crossed her arms. "Then tell me."

 "I will never have children," he hissed.
"Never.
Do you understand?"

 "No."

 He felt rage rising within him, roiling in his stomach, pressing against his skin until he thought he would burst. It wasn't rage against her, it wasn't even against himself. It was, as always, directed at the man whose presence— or lack thereof—had always managed to rule his life.

 "My father," Simon said, desperately fighting for control, "was not a loving man."

 Daphne's eyes held his. "I know about your father," she said.

 That caught him by surprise. "What do you know?"

 "I know that he hurt you. That he rejected you." Something flickered in her dark eyes—not quite pity, but close to it.

"I know that he thought you were stupid."

 Simon's heart slammed in his chest. He wasn't certain how he was able to speak—he wasn't certain how he was able to breathe—but he somehow managed to say, "Then you know about—"

 "Your stammer?" she finished for him.

 He thanked her silently for that. Ironically, "stutter" and "stammer" were two words he'd never been able to master.

 She shrugged. "He was an idiot."

 Simon gaped at her, unable to comprehend how she could dismiss decades of rage with one blithe statement. "You don't understand," he said, shaking his head. "You couldn't possibly. Not with a family like yours. The only thing that mattered to him was blood. Blood and the title. And when I didn't turn out to be perfect—Daphne, he told people I was dead!"

 The blood drained from her face. "I didn't know it was like that," she whispered.

 "It was worse," he bit off. "I sent him letters. Hundreds of letters, begging him to come visit me. He didn't answer one."

 "Simon—"

 "D-did you know I didn't speak until I was four? No? Well, I didn't. And when he visited, he shook me, and threatened

to beat my voice out of me.
That
was my f-father."

 Daphne tried not to notice that he was beginning to stumble over his words. She tried to ignore the sick feeling in her stomach, the anger that rose within her at the hideous way Simon had been treated. "But he's gone now," she said in a shaky voice. "He's gone, and you're here."

 "He said he couldn't even b-bear to look at me. He'd spent years praying for an heir. Not a
son,"
he said, his voice rising dangerously, "an heir. And f-for what? Hastings would go to a half-wit. His precious dukedom would b-be ruled by an idiot!"

 "But he was wrong," Daphne whispered.

 "I don't care if he was wrong!" Simon roared. "All he cared about was the title. He never gave a single thought to me, about how I must feel, trapped with a m-mouth that didn't w-work!"

 Daphne stumbled back a step, unsteady in the presence of such anger. This was the fury of decades-old resentment.

 Simon very suddenly stepped forward and pressed his face very close to hers. "But do you know what?" he asked in an

awful voice. "I shall have the last laugh. He thought that there could be nothing worse than Hastings going to a half-wit—"

 "Simon, you're not—"

 "Are you even listening to me?" he thundered.

 Daphne, frightened now, scurried back, her hand reaching for the doorknob in case she needed to escape.

 "Of course I know I'm not an idiot," he spat out, "and in the end, I think h-he knew it, too. And I'm sure that brought him g-great comfort. Hastings was safe. N-never mind that I was not suffering as I once had. Hastings—
that's
what mattered."

 Daphne felt sick. She knew what was coming next.

 Simon suddenly smiled. It was a cruel, hard expression, one she'd never seen on his face before. "But Hastings dies with me," he said. "All those cousins he was so worried about inheriting ..." He shrugged and let out a brittle laugh. "They all had girls. Isn't that something?"

 Simon shrugged. "Maybe that was why my f-father suddenly decided I wasn't such an idiot. He knew I was his only hope."

 "He knew he'd been wrong," Daphne said with quiet determination. She suddenly remembered the letters she'd been given by the Duke of Middlethorpe. The ones written to him by his father. She'd left them at Bridgerton House, in London. Which was just as well, since that meant she didn't have to decide what to do with them yet.

 "It doesn't matter," Simon said flippantly. "After I die, the title becomes extinct. And I for one couldn't be h-happier."

 With that, he stalked out of the room, exiting through his dressing room, since Daphne was blocking the door.

 Daphne sank down onto a chair, still wrapped in the soft linen sheet she'd yanked from the bed. What was she going todo?

 She felt tremors spread through her body, a strange shaking over which she had no control. And then she realized she was crying. Without a sound, without even a caught breath, she was crying.

 Dear God,
what
was she going todo?

 Chapter 17

 To say that men can be bullheaded would be insulting to the bull .

 Lady Whistledown's Society Papers,2 June 1813

 In the end, Daphne did the only thing she knew how to do. The Bridgertons had always been a loud and boisterous family, not a one of them prone to keeping secrets or holding grudges.

 So she tried to talk to Simon. To reason with him.

 The following morning (she had no idea where he had spent the night; wherever it was, it hadn't been their bed) she found him in his study. It was a dark, overbearingly masculine room, probably decorated by Simon's father. Daphne was frankly surprised that Simon would feel comfortable in such surroundings; he hated reminders of the old duke.

 But Simon, clearly, was not uncomfortable. He was sitting behind his desk, his feet insolently propped up on the leather

blotter mat protected the rich cherry wood of the desktop. In his hand he was holding a smoothly polished stone, turning it over and over in his hands. There was a bottle of whiskey on the desk next to him; she had a feeling it had been there all night.

 He hadn't, however, drunk much of it. Daphne was thankful for small favors.

 The door was ajar, so she didn't knock. But she wasn't quite so brave as to stride boldly in. "Simon?" she asked, standing back near the door.

 He looked up at her and quirked a brow.

 "Are you busy?"

 He set down the stone. "Obviously not."

 She motioned to it. "Is that from your travels?"

 "The Caribbean. A memento of my time on the beach."

 Daphne noticed that he was speaking with perfect elocution. There was no hint of the stammer that had become apparent the night before. He was calm now. Almost annoyingly so. "Is the beach very different there than it is here?" she asked.

 He raised an arrogant brow. "It's warmer."

 "Oh. Well, I'd assumed as much."

 He looked at her with piercing, unwavering eyes. "Daphne, I know you didn't seek me out to discuss the tropics."

 He was right, of course, but this wasn't going to be an easy conversation, and Daphne didn't think she was so much of a coward for wanting to put it off by a few moments.