The Duke’s Obsession Bundle (65 page)

“I don’t want help,” Winnie said through clenched teeth. St. Just was too tired to argue, too tired to chastise the child for her tone of voice, her disrespect, or her stubbornness.

“So what do you want?” St. Just asked quietly. Winnie looked away, reminding him poignantly of Emmie in the midst of difficult discussions. “What do you want, princess?” he asked again.

“I want…” Winnie’s little shoulders heaved, and still St. Just waited. “I want Emmie to s-s-stay.” She hurled herself across the mattress, sending her writing implements flying in her haste to throw herself into St. Just’s arms. “Don’t let her go away,
please
,” Winnie wailed. “I’ll be good, just… Make her stay. You have to make her stay.”

He wrapped her in his arms and held her while she cried, producing a handkerchief when the storm seemed to be subsiding. All the while he held her, he thought of Her Grace raising ten children, ten little hearts that potentially broke over every lost stuffed bear, dead pony, and broken toy. Ten stubborn little chins, ten complicated little minds, each as dear and deserving as the last, and all with intense little worlds of their own.

Ye Gods.
And what to say? Never lie to your men, St. Just admonished himself…

“I don’t want her to go, either,” St. Just murmured when Winnie’s tears had quieted to sniffles. “But Emmie has her business to run, Win. She won’t go far, though, just back to the cottage, and we can visit her there a lot.”
Like hell.

“She isn’t going to the cottage,” Winnie replied with desperate conviction. “She’s going to marry Vicar and his brother will die and she’ll be rich, but far, far away. Cumbria is like another country, farther away than Scotland or France or
anywhere.
”

“Hush,” St. Just soothed, fearing he was about to witness the youngest female crying jag of his experience. “Emmie hasn’t said anything to me, Winnie, and I think she’d let me know if she were going somewhere.”

She had, however, told him to find another governess by Christmas at the latest.

“She’s going,” Winnie said, heartsick misery in her tone. “I know it, but she’ll listen to you if you tell her to stay.”

“I can’t tell her, Win.” St. Just rose to turn back the bedcovers. “I can only ask.”

“Then ask her,” Winnie pleaded as she scooted between the sheets. “Please, you
have
to.”

“I will ask her what her plans are, but that doesn’t affect your needing and deserving a governess. Understand?” When Winnie’s chin jutted, he dropped onto the bed and met her eyes. “We haven’t hired anybody yet, we haven’t even interviewed anybody yet, and we won’t expect you to tolerate anybody who isn’t acceptable to both Emmie and me, all right?”

“I don’t want a governess,” Winnie said, but her tone was whimpery, miserable, and hopeless.

“I understand that, and I only want you to have a governess you’re going to like, Winnie. All I’m asking is that you give somebody a chance to help you learn, whether Emmie’s here, back at the cottage, or married to the Vicar.”

“I love Emmie,” Winnie said, reaching for Mrs. Bear. “I love Emmie, and I don’t want her to go, and I don’t want her to marry Vicar.”

“Neither do I, princess.” St. Just blew out her candle. “Neither do I.”

He waited by her bedside until her breathing signaled sleep, and realized that as gray and threatening as it had been all day, the rain had held off. The weather was no doubt contributing to the heaviness in his chest, the roiling in his gut, the sense of being unable to string two useful thoughts together.

Somehow, Winnie had come by her conviction Bothwell was going to snatch Emmie away, and the threat was driving the child nigh crazy.

Just what we need, he thought as he headed back down to the library, another lunatic at Rosecroft.

***

Emmie wondered where St. Just had gotten off to. He wasn’t taking his customary morning shift in the library, though she herself had seen him coming up from the stables after breakfast. After a ride, he always looked windblown, happy, and relaxed, unless one of the horses had been particularly fractious, but this morning there had been something… troubled about his posture. The riding hadn’t set him to rights, and Emmie was coming to dread the next meal with Winnie.

“My apologies.” St. Just appeared in the library doorway, his hair brushed, his riding attire apparently discarded for clean clothes. “Shall we begin? Halton has interviewed no less than twelve possibilities… What?”

Emmie was frowning at him in consternation.

“No ‘Good morning, Emmie’? No ‘Wonderful crepes at breakfast today’? No ‘How did you sleep after Winnie’s little dinnertime drama, Emmie’?”

He flicked an impersonal gaze over her as he closed the door behind him.

“Good morning, Emmie. I trust you slept as well as you could, given Winnie’s unfortunate display of sentiment. Breakfast was as always
lovely
. Now shall we begin? I haven’t all day to spend on locating your replacement.”

“St. Just?” Her voice betrayed dismay and wariness. “What has gone amiss?”

“Not one thing, Miss Farnum,” he replied, pausing before his desk. “May we be seated?”

“No, damn you.” She marched over to him. “What in blazes has gotten into you?”

“I am not in the habit of explaining myself to women affianced to others, Miss Farnum. I don’t know whether to thrash you for your deceit or strangle you for the hurt you do that innocent child.”

“St. Just,” she said, her voice quavering just a little, “are you having another setback?”

“No.” He closed his eyes and clenched his fists. “I am
not
having another setback—yet. But if I do, you may hold yourself quite accountable, as you are clearly accountable for the setback Bronwyn has been treating the household to for weeks.”

“Explain yourself,” Emmie said, feeling gut-punched at his words.

He speared her with a glacial look then went to stand facing the window, the gray, bleak day complementing his demeanor.

“I went upstairs last night,” he began in the same terse tone, “to check on Winnie. She was writing to Rose but put her correspondence aside to treat me to a six-year-old version of a female tantrum, Miss Farnum, because she has learned of your plans. I do not appreciate having to learn from a child that congratulations are in order, by the way. When she finally quieted, I came back down here, unable to sleep, and no, I was not going to raid the damned… I was not seeking a drink.”

He paused, and Emmie waited. Congratulations for what? People congratulated women on conceiving, but…

“I thought I might quiet my mind by reviewing correspondence, and imagine my surprise when I found a note to me from dear Vicar Bothwell, delivered up from Morelands belatedly with some scores Her Grace forwarded to Val.”

“And the significance of his note?” Emmie asked, but the dread congealing in her stomach didn’t need his answer.

“Bothwell, to his credit…” St. Just paused and reined in the tempo and volume of his speech. “The vicar wrote quite cheerfully that he had asked you to marry him and anticipated being able to leave with you for the Landover estate not later than Christmas. I know not how, but Bronwyn knows of this proposal and your acceptance of it. She knows his brother is failing and where his estate is, and in her own way, just how far Cumbria is from the little girl who loves you.”

“She knows?” Emmie said in horror. “Winnie knows?”

“Winnie knows.” St. Just kept his back to her. “And now I know, too. When is the happy occasion?”

“What happy occasion?” Emmie asked, mind reeling. How could Winnie have learned of this?

“It is customary that when a man in need of heirs seeks a bride, for the bride upon acceptance of his suit to set a wedding date.”

“I haven’t accepted
anything
,” Emmie said, dropping onto the sofa. “He asked, but I didn’t give him an answer, and I told him if I did answer, it would be no…”

“Winnie perceives it differently,” St. Just said. “If she does, your vicar does, too. I saw the man kissing you, Emmie.” St. Just turned to eye her. “You might not be setting a date, but he is.”

“He kissed my cheek,” she said, touching her lips with her fingers. Her eyes met his then, and she had to look away.

“Was he the one who broke your heart?”

***

St. Just knew how to bellow loudly enough to shake the rafters, and he knew even better how to pitch his voice quietly for a more devastating effect.

“Emmie, did Bothwell break your heart?” He repeated the question even more softly, his tone lethal, though it was an unworthy question. A man ought to cede the field when he’d been bested, and right now, Bothwell had gotten a cordial stay of sentence, while St. Just’s attempts to propose had been summarily batted aside.

But she made love with me
, he reminded himself. That had to count for something with her, because it counted for the world with him. Incongruously, though he was furious with her, feeling betrayed and confused, just looking at her sent a spike of hot lust through him.
She made love with me…

“He did not break my heart,” Emmie said, “but he did propose—again—and he did steal a kiss, and somehow, Winnie must have seen this.”

“She saw it, and she heard it. Not too discreet, your vicar.”

“He is not my vicar,” Emmie wailed.

“He thinks he is,” St. Just rejoined. He eased his hips down to the windowsill, crossed his feet at the ankles, and shoved his hands in his pockets. “You have to tell him—and Winnie—what your intentions are, Emmie.”

“I have to what?”

“Winnie is in torments, thinking you plan to move to Cumbria. I suspect a good deal of her misbehavior has been as a result of the fear that you, like her mother, father, her aunts, the old earl, and God knows who else, will abandon her. You owe her at least an acknowledgement of your plans, whatever they may be.”

“I don’t know what they are.” Emmie could barely stand to meet his gaze. “I have not accepted Hadrian’s proposal.”

“Not yet,” St. Just spat. “Well, let us all know when you do and, until then, I will do my best to keep either myself or Bronwyn from any avoidable
setbacks
.” He shoved away from the window and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Emmie stared at that door, then out at the bleak Yorkshire day, and felt such an ache in her chest that her heart had to be physically breaking.

Lord Val found her in the kitchen when he wandered down from his bed just before noon.

“Good morning, Emmie.” He smiled a rumpled, cheerful smile at her then frowned. “I see it is not a good morning. Did your soufflé fall?”

“Lord Valentine,” Emmie said, “how would you take it if I went out to the woodshed, picked up the ax, and started laying about with it on your lovely piano?”

“Like you hated me. Does somebody hate you, Emmie?”

“St. Just.” Emmie nodded as she beat the hell out of a bowl of egg whites. “Or he will, if he hasn’t gotten around to it yet.”

“He’s not a hateful person. Why would he be provoked to such an emotion with you?”

“Because I have to leave,” Emmie said, pausing in her beating, then resuming with diminished fury. “I cannot stay here and be Winnie’s governess. I cannot marry him, for he’d hate me then, too, and God help me, someday Winnie will hate me, as well. Even Hadrian will be entitled to hate me, and you, too, I suppose.”

“Seems a deuced lot of hating going on for such a sweet woman. Don’t suppose you’d tell a fellow why?”

Emmie shook her head, and the eggs whites took the brunt of her frustration.

“And you won’t confide in St. Just, either, will you?” She just shook her head again and closed her eyes, heartbreak and unshed tears radiating through her. Val put an arm around her waist and pulled her against his side.

“Pies,” Emmie said, turning her face into his neck. “I have to put this meringue on the pies.”

Val patted her shoulder, gave her a little squeeze, then took his tea and left her in solitude.

Up on the servants’ stairs, St. Just leaned against the wall, trying to sort through the conversation—if he could call it that—he’d just overheard. Emmie was miserable; that much was beyond doubt and even brought him a little, nasty pleasure. She was destroying a helpless child, after all, and then, too…

She wasn’t destroying him, not like she was Winnie, but she was devastating him nonetheless. And for what? To bake bread in Cumbria for her vicar, for God’s sake?

Why would he hate her for marrying him? Was she barren, perhaps, and she could not provide him an heir? Why would Winnie hate her if this business of marrying the vicar didn’t accomplish that task?

***

St. Just finished his letter to his brother and closed his eyes, trying to hear the pattering rain as just that, merely a typical late autumn evening’s weather in bucolic Yorkshire. Memories nagged at him, tried to drag him back in time, but he resisted, turning his mind instead to the day’s rides and the soft, lilting melody drifting through the house from the music room.

Emmie had not told her vicar she would marry him, but as October drifted into November, St. Just knew she hadn’t turned the man down, either. It had taken some time to see why the decision was difficult, though he’d initially considered that he held the trump card—Winnie.

Except there were low cards in his hand, as well, something he was finding it difficult to come to grips with.

In the army, his men had become loyal to him for three reasons. He did not have charm, luck, or diplomacy in sufficient quantity to inspire followers, but he was, first, foremost, and to the marrow of his bones, a horseman. In the cavalry, a man who truly admired and understood the equine, and the cavalry mount in particular, was respected. St. Just’s unit was always a little better mounted, their tack in a little better shape, and their horses in better condition, primarily because St. Just saw to it. He commandeered the best fodder, requisitioned the best gear, and insisted on sound, sane animals, though it might cost him his personal coin to see to it.

The second attribute that won him the respect of his subordinates was a gentleman’s quotient of simple common sense. Stupid orders, written for stupid reasons, were commonplace. St. Just would not disobey such an order, but he would time implementation of it to ensure the safety of his men. In rare cases, he might
interpret
an order at variance with its intended meaning, if necessary, again, to protect the lives of his men and their mounts.