When it came to it, Frederic wouldn’t want to fuck her either.
That wasn’t romantic. That wasn’t what Mia wanted.
There truly was no saving his marriage.
Chapter Thirty-three
The next morning, after a few short hours of sleep, Vander entered the breakfast room to find Thorn meditatively spreading preserves on a roll while reading a note from his wife. Thorn and India were constantly sending notes back and forth, via footman if Thorn was in his study and India in her sitting room a few paces away, or groom if he was in London and she in the country.
Vander contemplated sending a letter to Mia, but promptly discarded the idea. She was the writer, not he.
“India is not pleased,” Thorn remarked, looking up from his note.
“Did you tell her about your cracked rib?”
He shook his head. “Only the black eye. We’re supposed to go to a royal drawing room next Monday, and a battered look leaves me at ‘bastard’ without reaching ‘gentleman.’” He said it with distinct satisfaction. Thorn had grown up on the streets, and this morning, he looked as though he’d never left them.
“Why do you want to go to a royal drawing room? It’ll be bloody boring.”
“India is rehabilitating me.”
Vander snorted.
“She thrives in polite society, and I love her.”
Thorn said that easily: as if his love were a fact of nature. Yet the very word made Vander feel stranded, as if he were on a small island encircled by rough waters.
For most of his life, he would have insisted that his father loved him dearly. But the duke had tried to kill him, multiple times, according to Chuffy.
Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t love. He had loved his mother, even though he had cut her from his life. He had loved his father too, despite the tempests and violence he had conveniently forgotten. He loved Thorn. Chuffy. Charlie.
Mia.
He loved Mia. In fact, the truth was that talking about fucking her was just a way of saying that he wanted to be in her. The feeling that she was his . . . it was the same. A crude way of saying he loved her. A way of insisting that she could never be taken away from him.
He had the irrational conviction that she had taken all the broken, blackened parts inside him and mended them.
“So I am entering polite society,” Thorn was saying, unaware that Vander’s entire world had just turned upside down.
“What does that mean?” Vander asked through stiff lips. How was he to convince Mia of his feelings?
“A knighthood. My father favors it, so I suspect it is inevitable.”
Vander chewed a piece of ham that tasted like sawdust. He’d no doubt that Thorn’s prediction would be born out: the Duke of Villiers always got whatever he wanted.
He had to return to Mia. Kneel down if he had to. Tell her in the right words. Avoid saying things about bedding and owning her.
“You look like hell,” Thorn observed. “May I take it that your wife is not inclined to return?”
“I intend to make her change her mind.”
“Wasn’t it scarcely more than a week ago that you were incensed at being blackmailed?”
Vander didn’t bother to respond. For a while, there was only the clicking of cutlery as they demolished a great number of eggs, endless slices of beef and ham, and a mountain of rolls.
He had learned long ago that fashionable breakfasts sustained only those who spent the day moving languidly between carriage and sofa. He ate like a man with a mission, because he had one—the most important one of his life.
“I hope I didn’t resemble you before I married,” Thorn said, putting down his fork. “Though I probably did. Are you certain that the duchess does not love Reeve?”
“Yes,” Vander said, sure of that now. “But she says I don’t respect her.” He suspected that when Mia talked about respect, she really meant love. And when he talked of his duchess, he meant the same. Love.
“Can you point out to her that blackmail does not precisely—” Thorn broke off at Vander’s scowl. “Oh, very well; I suppose commonsense is irrelevant. I’ll take it as a given that you’ve made a royal hash of it. That means you’ll have to make a truly grand gesture.”
Vander thought that over. What did he value above all else, apart from Mia? “I could give her Jafeer,” he suggested. “I began to receive offers for him even before his first race was over. At present, he’s the most coveted horse in all England.”
“She doesn’t want a horse, you idiot.”
Chuffy rolled into the room and fell into a chair, looking the worse for wear. His hair resembled a graying bird’s nest.
“Lads,” he said blearily. “Don’t ever challenge the village baker to a game of darts. I didn’t win a single game until an hour ago, and that was merely because I hold my ale better than he does.”
“Vander must win back his wife,” Thorn said, without greeting. “Have you any ideas?”
Chuffy’s head slowly sank down onto the table. “Not sure it’s possible.”
Vander’s heart thumped. “Mia hates me that much?”
“No. But you don’t measure up to a Lucibella hero.” Chuffy’s voice was muffled by the tablecloth.
That wasn’t news to Vander, but Thorn frowned, clearly confused. “Measure up to a what?”
“Mia is an immensely popular novelist who publishes under another name, Lucibella Delicosa,” Vander explained. “My uncle has read every one of her books.”
“Novels and Shakespeare. Not exactly your forte.”
“I realize that,” Vander said grimly.
“So how does he fall short of a fictional hero?” Thorn asked Chuffy.
“He hasn’t a poetic soul.”
That was exactly the conclusion that Vander had come to.
“Kinross swears that he wouldn’t be married except for some poem by John Donne,” Thorn said. “You could always memorize a poem. Or”—he grimaced—“you could try to write one.”
“Are you referring to the Scottish duke?” Vander asked. “I have a very difficult time imagining Kinross reciting poetry.”
“He told me one night that he considers Donne responsible for the happiness in his marriage.”
“Poetry would be a start,” Chuffy put in, straightening up, though he had the distinct look of someone who might pass out in the butter at any moment. “But there’s more to it than that. At the climax of a Lucibella novel, the hero always does something heroic. In the one Mia is writing now, Frederic saves Flora from mortal peril.”
“Frederic is an unmitigated ass,” Vander said grimly. But he asked the obvious question anyway: “How does Frederic do it?”
“Presumably he saves her from the burning orphanage or something along those lines,” Thorn said.
“No, a wild tiger,” Chuffy said, stumbling to his feet. At some point during the night he’d lost his cravat, and his waistcoat was both unbuttoned and inside out. “I have to go to bed,” he muttered.
“The tiger comes in at the end of the novel?” Thorn asked.
“Flora is fleeing the ghost-infested castle, but the villainous Lord Plum is enraged by her rejection of his unsavory advances—even though he has a wife in the attic—so he looses the half-starved, man-eating tiger he keeps in a cage in the castle courtyard.” Chuffy rattled off the plot without pausing for breath.
“What’s the heroic part?” Vander asked.
“Frederic sees his beloved about to be eaten by the tiger, so he hurtles into the courtyard to distract the beast, and as the animal is racing toward him, the man draws out a bow and arrow and shoots it dead. I tried to convince Mia that a pistol would do better, but she thinks arrows are more romantic.”
A moment of brief silence followed as Vander (and presumably Thorn) tried to imagine this singularly unlikely sequence of events.
Chuffy added defensively, “It sounds a bit melodramatic, but that’s because the two of you don’t understand the genre. I assure you
that readers all over the kingdom will be shivering with terror during that scene.”
“Unfortunately, there’s a scarcity of tigers in Berkshire,” Thorn said, “so Vander can’t reproduce that thrilling denouement.”
“In one of Mia’s most popular books, Esmeralda, the villain leaps from a stallion onto the heroine’s moving carriage, which ends up in the river,” Chuffy said, looking more alert. “The hero—that would be you, Vander—dives into the black and icy waters in order to recover the heroine, reaching her at the very instant she starts to drown.”
“Ridiculous,” Vander said impatiently, coming to his feet.
“Write your own ending, Nevvy!” Chuffy exclaimed. He thrust out a trembling but declamatory hand. “‘The Duke, the Duchess, and the Orphan’! To be sold in fine leather with a gold-stamped binding.”
“I think you should memorize some poetry,” Thorn said, ignoring Chuffy. “Try for someone less quoted than John Donne and you might even be able to pass it off as your own.”
“Can you really see me falling on my knees and reciting a poem?”
Thorn and Chuffy looked at him, and Vander knew exactly what they saw: a burly man with no resemblance to a duke. At best his smile was wolfish; at worst it was downright menacing.
He had never read a Lucibella novel, but he had spent years listening to Chuffy recite breathless summaries of the plots of his favorite books. An idea began to take shape.
It would need Charlie.
Chapter Thirty-four
Mia rose at four in the morning and began writing, the words flowing out of her as if a river had been undammed. Flora was proving to have a surprisingly practical bent. After a few encounters with a spectral bride—who had been drifting about the castle weeping ever since being jilted in 1217—Flora had come around to the opinion that spending her life grieving for Frederic would be a waste.
By midday, Mia was missing Charlie so much that she decided to fetch him and move back to Carrington House, on the grounds that Sir Richard was surely no longer a threat. Once downstairs, the innkeeper informed her that Edward was waiting in their private dining room, where luncheon would be served in a few minutes.
“Good day,” she said, walking in the door.
Edward immediately stood, bowed, and kissed her hand. “You will be happy to know that a somewhat battered Sir Richard is now in custody of the justice of the peace, awaiting the Assizes,” he said, guiding her to a seat.
A Lucibella heroine would feel horror at the mention of Sir Richard’s condition, but Mia rather liked the idea that punishment had been served. “I am glad to hear it,” she admitted. “I hope that you didn’t suffer any damage?”
“Luckily not.”
“Given those circumstances, I shall fetch Charlie immediately. I’d like to re-establish us at Carrington House without delay.”
A throb of misery shot through her at the very idea of walking in the door of Vander’s house. But she had to be strong.
She was her own woman, she told herself for the hundredth time that morning. She was not just a title—“duchess” or “wife,” or even “daughter” or “sister.”
She was Mia, and Lucibella too. And Charlie’s mother. That would have to suffice.
After the meal, Edward went to settle accounts with the innkeeper, and she took herself out into the courtyard, tying on her bonnet as she walked. The moment she cleared the doorway, she heard a familiar whinny.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” she exclaimed, unable to stop herself from smiling as Jafeer pranced over to her. “What are you doing here?” He looked tremendously pleased with himself. Before she could stop him, he caught her bonnet in his teeth and danced backward, shaking it as if he were playing a game.
Although Jafeer was saddled, and his reins were draped around the pommel, there was no one in sight. “Where is Vander?” she asked him, almost expecting the horse to answer.
Jafeer dropped the bonnet and came over. She stroked his nose as she looked around. The inn yard was deserted but for a carriage that stood on the far side of the yard, attended only by a slumbering coachman. Where were all the post-boys and grooms who generally lounged about, waiting for something to do? She narrowed her eyes. That snoring coachman had a distinct resemblance to Mulberry.
“Vander!” she called.
Instead of her husband, she heard a peal of boyish laughter, and Charlie hopped from the open door of the carriage. Jafeer gave an approving whinny.
“Darling!” She held out her arms. “What are you doing here?”
Charlie swung himself across the cobblestones, his entire face alight. “We’ve come to fetch you home!” he shouted.
“‘We?’ Is the duke with you?” Mia asked, pushing back the thick curl that had fallen over Charlie’s face and dropping a kiss on his forehead.
“I have to recite a poem,” he said, giving her a tight hug. “His Grace and I wrote it together. I am going to declaim it, the way Roman orators used to do.”
Mia’s breath caught when she saw Vander step from the carriage; then she looked quickly back at Charlie. He hopped up on the granite slab before the open door of the inn, and turned back to the open yard. With all the majesty of a young lord about to say something to Romans and countrymen, Charlie announced, “Roses are red, violets are blue—”
An arm suddenly emerged from the shadowed darkness behind Charlie and wound around his throat. Mia screamed as a bloodied, disheveled Sir Richard shoved Charlie forward.
He was holding her child tightly against him, a knife against Charlie’s throat. The cultivated Elizabethan air that Sir Richard was so proud of had stripped clean away, leaving a predator with savage eyes.
From the corner of her eye she saw Vander take a careful step toward them. Mulberry suddenly showed himself to be wide awake and leapt from his seat.
“Sir Richard, what are you doing?” she cried, hoping to draw his attention away from the men.
“Oh, merely thinking about killing a little gutter rat,” he answered. Horribly, his voice still had the same cultivated tenor, as if he were speaking of tea and toast rather than murder.
Charlie’s eyes were wide and fixed on her. “Aunt Mia,” he said faintly. Another scream bubbled up in her chest, but she managed to choke it down.
“Surely murder is an extreme solution?” Vander asked. He now stood at Mia’s side. Mulberry was silently circling the yard so he could approach from the rear.
“He’s responsible for all of it,” Sir Richard snarled. “I have to leave the bloody country and it’s all the fault of this crippled little dunce, who should have been drowned at birth.” He gave Charlie a vicious shake and the knife came dangerously close to the child’s throat.
“No!” Mia stumbled forward. “I am responsible. It’s my fault. Please, let Charlie go.”
In answer to her movement, Sir Richard wrenched the child’s head farther back, placing the shining edge of the knife blade just under his chin. She heard Charlie’s crutch strike the cobblestones, though she didn’t dare take her eyes from Sir Richard’s face.
There had been more behind Sir Richard’s perpetual, ferocious lawsuits than she had realized. He was cracked, utterly mad.
“Why Charlie?” she croaked. “Please! He’s your nephew! He doesn’t deserve this.”
“Now,” Vander barked.
To Mia’s utter shock, Charlie’s right arm darted up and back, and he stuck a little dagger into Sir Richard’s arm. He probably didn’t manage to do more than prick him, but Sir Richard’s knife wavered, which gave Vander the second he needed: he exploded forward and wrenched Charlie free, spinning him away.
Sir Richard let out an enraged bellow, and lunged after them, knocking Mia to the ground. Charlie was already safely behind Vander, whose air of a savage warrior, ready to protect his family by ripping an enemy limb from limb, caused Sir Richard to freeze in his tracks.
Then, just as Mulberry sprang forward, Sir Richard veered left, grabbed Jafeer’s pommel, vaulted into
the saddle, and sent the stallion galloping out of the inn yard. With a curse, Mulberry charged through the gate after him.
For an instant none of them moved or spoke. Then: “He stole Jafeer!” Charlie shouted indignantly.
“He won’t have him long,” Vander said calmly. With one huge stride, he reached Mia and pulled her up and into his arms.
She couldn’t bring herself to speak; she just leaned against his chest, eyes closed.
“Don’t worry about Jafeer,” she heard Vander say above her head. Had he dropped a kiss on her hair? “Sir Richard will sell him when he reaches the coast, but I’ll offer a reward that will have every man in England looking for him.”
Boots sounded on the cobblestones, and a disgruntled voice growled, “I hope to hell that wasn’t Sir Richard Magruder.”
“Charlie is too young to hear that sort of language,” Mia said, opening her eyes.
“I apologize.” Edward was looking with narrowed eyes at Vander’s arms around her.
“Sir Richard has the justice of the peace for Berkshire in his pocket,” Vander said. “Although that does not explain why he knew we could be found here.”
“I expect that he was looking for me,” Edward said. “He made a number of threats against me last night. After he was in custody, I told the sheriff that I would be staying here in case I was needed to testify.”
Mulberry came back into the yard. “He’s taken the road toward Dover,” he said, panting. “Trying to get to France, I expect.”
Vander nodded and turned to Edward. “If you will forgive me, Mr. Reeve, I should like to take my wife for a short drive.”
The courtyard was silent for a long second.
“Right,” Edward said. His voice was expressionless, but his eyes were bleak. “Charlie, old man, why don’t you come inside with me?”
“Did you see what I did?” Charlie demanded. “The way I stabbed Sir Richard?” He didn’t seem in the least shaken by the experience.