The Rusticated Duchess (32 page)

Arwyn was quiet for a while as they collected their catch and put out the lines again. “I promise to do something productive with my time, Father,” Arwyn said. “And your lady is an Incomparable,” he added. “She once was an Incomparable and she could still be one, if she hadn’t married March.”

“Yes,” Clare acknowledged.

“Is she your mistress?” his son asked baldly.

Clare considered his answer. To his shame, it was the relationship he had first envisioned between them, but then he had no intention of sharing with Arwyn the details of his intimate relationship with Gloria. And he never would have brought her to Norham without the intention to marry her as soon as possible.

“No, she’s my betrothed, though circumstances forbid us from posting an announcement in
The Times
until after the marriage. If you were anyone but my only son, I’d have laid you out for that question,” he drawled. “I stayed in Ireland so long because I met her there. When her husband died in London last fall, she took her son and went to Ireland to grieve. The household was living in Blessing Cottage.”

“That poor boy doesn’t have a chance. Crusty old grandfather, overprotective mother, almost six months old with a bloody tutor in place already,” Arwyn grumbled. “Adding his drunken spectacle of a father to the mix would have made his life even more intolerable. I suppose you will let your Lady Clare coddle him dreadfully.”

“I trust you and I can make his life bearable,” Clare muttered.

“Only if he likes to get up at dawn.” Arwyn lay back on the blanket.

Clare stared at him, then took a handful of water from the pail of fish and flung it at him.

“That’s bloody well unfair!” Arwyn objected, jumping up and scooping a handful of river water into his hands. He tossed it at Clare, and the fight was on.

When they returned to the Castle kitchens, dripping wet, a bucket of fish between them, they were greeted in astonishment by the cooks and young kitchen maids. It had been a good morning, Clare thought, climbing the stairs. He regained his rooms, and glanced at the door that led to Gloria’s rooms.

Breakfast was too early in the day for wine, but the most difficult conversation of the day was still before him.

Clare took the wisest choice before him and rang for his manservant and a bath.

Chapter Twenty-One

Gloria was still in bed, drowsily wondering if she would ever wake up enough to ring for Astrid, when Clare pushed open the door between their chambers and strolled in.

She blinked, shivering as her eyes swept up his body. His feet were bare and a pair of linen trousers were drawn up and tied around his waist. He’d pulled a fresh shirt over his head and the crisp white sleeves were bloused out over his biceps. He hadn’t bothered to tie the neck closed or add a cravat about his neck or even a waistcoat, so the dark hairs on his chest poked out.

Gloria wanted to nuzzle against that soft nest and soak up Clare’s scent. Her lips curved at his boyish grin, and she blushed when he tugged at the sheet drawn up around her breasts.

“I thought you wanted to talk this morning,” she muttered, squirming when his hands trapped each of her wrists at her side and his head dipped to suckle gently on her suddenly upright peaks.

“I do, but it strikes me that here and now is the perfect time for something else,” he grated, his teeth scraping the sensitive aureole around her right nipple.

Gloria struggled to think. Her ability to reason was subsumed by hot passion and shivering pleasure, but he’d intended to discuss something important to her. She’d wanted to understand—

“Wait!” she gasped, struggling as the silk coverings slipped down to her hips and his lips dipped to her navel.

“Why?” he grunted, and she shivered, desperate not to succumb to the tingling warmth of his lips, teeth and tongue.

“I need to know,” she insisted, rolling to the side.

Clare sighed, and drew back, settling on the bed beside her. Even then, his fingers explored her skin, stroking down over the curve of her hip so that her will faltered and she nearly moaned.

Instead, she bit her lip and tried to restrain her pelvis from arching into his devilish fingers.

“Tell me,” she managed.

Clare’s lips tightened and he stood abruptly, walking across the room. Gloria watched him pace and slid to the edge of the bed, dragging a dressing gown around her. It was black, as everything else in her wardrobe was, and she looked at it in distaste. As soon as possible, she’d replace it with something dramatic.
Purple
, she thought.

By the time she stood beside the bed and finished buttoning the gown, Clare had wandered to the window and was tying back the drapes. Sunlight filtered in, but he turned and disposed himself on the window seat, so that his face was hidden in the shadows.

Silence stretched between them. Her heart thudding in her chest, Gloria stepped into the stream of sunlight that lit up the carpet, moving towards him. She needed to see his face, to see the line of his cheeks and the colour of his eyes.

The green light in their depths was so dark and the grooves of his face so drawn that Gloria couldn’t imagine—

“What if you are already with child?” he ground out, reaching out and gripping her upper arms.

Gloria blinked at him, confused. If she was already breeding, she thought inwardly, she would be bound by the hands of Fate. “Then I will have another child,” she whispered. “What other outcome is there?”

A great relief seemed to pass over him.

“What did you fear I would do?” she asked him, lifting her chin. He stroked up and down her arms.

Clare grimaced, but he could hardly deny her, especially when she remained waiting, insistent on his answer.

“It’s only been a fortnight at most,” he grated, his voice raw. “’Twould not be the first time a lady has made such a decision.”

Gloria’s eyes widened and her breath caught as her stomach rolled.

“How could you even question such a thing?” she accused. “Is that what you think of me? What you’ve been thinking since we were aboard the yacht? That I would do such a thing—especially when you are already intending to marry me?” The low voice she began with rose as the words flew from her mouth. In the light, Clare’s face paled at her accusation, but her temper had flown and her heart had cracked in two, leaving a gaping and painful hole in her chest. “Get out,” she said softly. “Get out of my chamber right now.”

Clare stood, shaking his head, but fury rose in Gloria’s mind. She’d spent so much time letting him save her, she thought bitterly, only to find out that he knew her no better than a stranger in the street. If he thought she would even consider ending a life inside her, what else did he think of her?

“That’s not what I meant—” he began, but Gloria cut him off by whipping around and marching to the door between them. She didn’t care what he thought.

“And to think you’ve still come to my bed since then. Perhaps my own status as a bastard is more an issue than I believed,” she said sardonically, when Clare appeared to not be moving. “As you hold me in such low esteem that you believe I could do such a thing.”

Clare’s face reddened as his temper erupted. “Do not ever use that word,” he thundered. “And low esteem? Whatever gives you such a foolish notion?”

Gloria fought back the tears that were threatening. “Just go,” she whispered. “I can’t even bear to look at you.”

Clare strode towards her and stopped when he was so close that she was staring down at his feet. “This discussion isn’t over,” he ground out. “As soon as I work out what nonsense you’ve taken into your head, I’ll be back.”

“Get out,” she managed again. She either had to whisper it or whip it out angrily, so the words came out in a low fury.

The pain of his suggestion still curdled her stomach.

To her surprise, he reached out to kiss her, but she backed away. A shadow of pain crossed his face, and he turned on his heel. “This isn’t over,” he repeated, even as he crossed the portal into his own room.

Yes it is,
Gloria fumed, closing the door hard behind him. She glared at it for a moment, then reached out and snubbed the lock. Pain shivered down her spine and she drew a deep breath, which only made her lungs hurt as much as her head and the inner chamber where her heart had previously beat.

Gloria turned back to the bed, marching over to the bell pull. Even as she tugged on the tasselled rope, she caught sight of the corked bottle of olive oil beside the bed. It was a beautiful glass bottle, with a golden glow where the sun began to hit it. And it suddenly represented all of Gloria’s outrage and heartache.

Her heart had never hurt this much, even when she’d been married to March. Her heart had not even hurt this much when the man she’d believed to be her father had betrayed her. Nothing—
nothing—
had ever hurt quite like this.

Gloria did not like it, not in any sense. Her anger focused on that bottle, on all it represented. She had believed that he’d used it to worship her. But now? Had he used it—had he taken her rear as he had—not because he respected her wishes regarding children, but because he did not want her to have his children? She was tainted by an unknown sire, the tragic adultery of her mother, by the stain of a shameful spouse and a vengeful parent. There was nothing of her life that was pure.

Rage doubled the pain and grief. She gripped the bottle’s neck and, in a wrathful moment that seemed to define all the unfairness and injustice and oppression in her life, threw it violently at the connecting door between their chambers.

The bottle landed in the centre of the wooden panel, shattering. The oil spilt and splattered, dripping down the door and spreading across the wooden floorboards to soak into the thick rug on the floor.

Gloria watched it for a moment, her mouth open in surprise. From the other side, Clare tried to open the door, but was confounded by the lock. He shouted her name, the concern in his voice evident even through the door, despite the harsh words they’d just spoken.

In that moment Gloria finally let go of the inner numbness that had haunted her life from the moment Winchester had betrothed her to March. No more would she live in a hopeless, emotionless existence. If Clare had done nothing else for her life, he’d awakened her soul. She might argue with him, but she would fight for him, too. She deserved his passion and his respect, and if she did not yet have it, she would earn it.

Manic laughter bubbled up from her bruised heart. Gloria sank to the floor beside the bed, arms wrapped about her knees, the cathartic tears running down her cheeks even as she sobbed.

From the sitting room door, commotion swept into the room. Astrid, Clare, Colman—all arrived within seconds of each other. Astrid exclaimed at the mess and Colman hurried to inspect the glass that littered the floorboards and carpet, but Clare ignored all of it and lifted her into his arms and carried her into the sitting room. Gloria slid her arms around him and half-sobbed, half-laughed, clinging to his waist.

“You aren’t cut?” he fussed, inspecting what parts of her he could find.

“No,” she choked out, trying to control the laughter that still clashed with her sobs. She looked up at Clare, tears blurring her eyes. Even through the fogginess and his aggravation, she could see his concern, his care for her. “No, I’m not hurt.”

He grunted, stepping to the bedchamber doorway and looking at the mess coating the door, wall and carpet that Astrid was ineffectually attempting to wipe away. His brows rose and he growled, then glared at her. “That was a damnably expensive tantrum,” he told her.

Gloria sniffed. “You made me angry,” she returned, before anxiety spread through her. She might be able to put March’s degradations, his drunkenness and his selfish death behind her, but it was because that emotion had been drained away and replaced by this sudden and unexpected heartache. Could Clare come to see her as more than a mistress he’d been forced to take to wife? Gloria knew well that she was hardly bred to be a duchess. Illegitimacy stained her, she had a legal parent who bordered on insanity and another who was a known adulteress.

She’d spent thirteen months married to a man who had daily reminded her that her sole value in life was her ability to produce children.

With that realisation came another. Did she truly not want more children, or was she simply reacting to March’s perspective that was her role and duty? She was more than a breeder, she thought bitterly.

She wished desperately that Clare believed there was more to her future than her ability to bear children. But how could she find out what he thought about the matter?

Regardless, she’d be a burden to him for the rest of his natural life. He would do all he was able to protect her, but when the danger was over where would that leave him? They would be bound together, no matter what circumstances changed.

If he found someone he loved, could she ignore it without a sign of resentment, and stay away as much as possible? Living apart was not, after all, such a strange occurrence in their world. Another woman who loved him could give him children, not noble but perhaps adoptable. Just because Clare was sacrificing any future matrimony did not mean he had to suffer with Gloria’s presence forever after.

A second round of heartache pierced her chest at the thought of separating herself from his company. No, she would try to occupy his life and satisfy him, rather than step back and encourage him to find another woman to meet his needs. Gloria didn’t know why, but she needed him. Desperately. And she did not want to share.

“If you would permit me to bathe and dress, then perhaps we might try this discussion again? This time, I’ll come to your study, and we will have a perfectly civil conversation.”

Clare looked at her suspiciously, but Gloria managed a weak smile.

“If you insist,” he said, mindful of both Astrid and Colman.

“I do,” she said. And she meant it.

* * * *

“Legend has it that the women of Greece and Rome once loved a plant so much that it is now extinct,” Clare said some two hours later. Gloria had missed breakfast, so he’d ordered a teacart and a tray of refreshments. She’d already poured the hot drink and sipped it, listening from an armchair near his desk. “Silphium grew in northern Africa, and the seeds were highly prized—and highly priced—by women for their contraceptive value. Women would crush them and put them in their daily beverage or food of choice. It was widely regarded as an effective way to prevent conception.”