His smile stayed small, but turned a little wry. “It has been some time since someone has saved me.”
“I imagine it has been some time since you needed saving.” She sat back, feeling oddly content. She believed him when he said he did not make a habit of drunken revelry, and she was glad for that. She had little experience with tipsy males, but what she had seen—usually at balls at which her parents had allowed her to stay later than usual—had not impressed her.
Still, she could not help but be glad that she had seen him this way. He was always in charge, always supremely composed and confident. It wasn’t just that he was the Duke of Wyndham, second in rank to but a handful of men in Britain. It was simply him, the way he was—his authoritative manner, his cool intelligence. He stood at the back of the room, surveying the crowds, and people wanted to let him take charge. They wanted him to make their decisions, to tell them what to do.
John Donne had got it wrong. Some men were islands, entire of themselves. The Duke of Wyndham was. He always had been, even to her earliest memories.
Except now, just this once, he had needed her.
He had needed her.
It was thrilling.
And the best part of it was that he hadn’t even realized it. He hadn’t had to ask for it. She had seen him in need, judged the situation, and acted.
She had made the decisions. She had taken control.
And he had liked it. He said he liked her bossy. It was almost enough to make her want to hug herself.
“What has you smiling?” he asked. “You look quite contented.”
“Something you would never understand,” she said, without a trace of bitterness. She did not begrudge him his self-possession. She envied it.
“That’s unfair of you,” he said with gentle accusation.
“I mean it as a compliment,” she replied, knowing he’d be unable to understand that as well.
One of his brows rose. “I shall have to trust you on it, then.”
“Oh, I would never lie about a compliment,” she said. “I don’t give them out willy-nilly. I think they should mean something, don’t you?”
“Even if the subject does not understand the meaning?”
She smiled. “Even then.”
He smiled back, a little wry thing involving just one corner of his mouth. But it was full of humor and maybe even a touch of affection, and for the first time in her life, Amelia Willoughby began to think that marriage to the Duke of Wyndham might be about something more than duty, something greater than rank.
It might turn out to be a most pleasant endeavor, indeed.
Chapter 9
It was probably a good thing that he’d still had rather too much liquor in his veins when Amelia came across him, Thomas reflected, because he hadn’t had the good sense to be mortified. And now—when the only remnant of his night of drunken excess was a pounding in his left temple (and a throb in the right)—he reckoned she’d already seen the worst and hadn’t gone off screaming. In fact, she seemed quite content to ride along in the carriage with him, gently scolding and rolling her eyes at him.
The thought would have made him smile, if the sudden bump in the road hadn’t sent his brain jostling against his skull—if indeed that were possible. He was not a scholar of anatomy, but this scenario seemed far more likely than what it felt like, which was an anvil flying through the window and impaling itself in his left temple.
As to why his right temple was pounding in a similar manner, he could only assume it was out of sympathy.
He let out an unattractive groan and pinched hard at the bridge of his nose, as if the pain of that might be enough to blot out the rest of it.
Amelia didn’t say anything, and in fact didn’t even look as if she thought she ought to be saying something—further reinforcing his newly arrived belief that she was a most excellent female. She was just sitting there, her face remarkably placid, given that he must look like death itself, ready to spew noxious substances all over her.
Not to mention his eye. It had looked rather vicious the night before. Thomas couldn’t imagine what sort of hue it had turned overnight.
He drew in a deep breath and opened his eyes, glancing at Amelia’s face around his hand, which was still doing its completely ineffective magic on his nose.
“Your head?” she asked politely.
She’d been waiting for him to acknowledge her, he realized. “Pounds like the devil.”
“Is there something you can take for that? Laudanum, perhaps?”
“God, no.” He almost passed out at the thought. “It’d do me in completely.”
“Tea? Coffee?”
“No, what I need is—”
A Gladdish Baddish.
Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier?
It was a ridiculous name, but as it was only needed when one had behaved in a ridiculous manner, he supposed it was fitting. Harry Gladdish had perfected it the summer they were eighteen.
Thomas’s father had elected to spend the season in London, leaving him to his own devices at Belgrave. He and Harry had run wild. Nothing too debauched, although at the time they fancied themselves the worst sorts of profligates. After having seen how other young men chose to ruin themselves in London, Thomas now looked back at that summer with some amusement. By comparison, he and Harry had been innocent lambs. But even so, they had drunk far too much and far too often, and the Gladdish Baddish, administered in the morning (with a pinched nose and a shudder), saved them more than once.
Or at the very least, rendered them able to walk straight enough to make it back to their beds, where they could sleep off the last of their miseries.
He looked at Amelia. “Can you spare another half an hour?”
She motioned around her. “Apparently I can spare the entire day.”
It was a bit embarrassing, that. “Ah, yes”—he cleared his throat, trying to hold himself very steady as he did so—“sorry for that. I hope you were not forced to abandon important plans.”
“Just the milliner and the cobbler.” She pretended to pout, but anyone could see it was really a smile. “I shall be poorly hatted and shod for the winter, I’m afraid.”
He held up a finger. “Just one moment.” Then he reached across the carriage and gave the wall two pounds with his fist. Immediately, they rolled to a halt. Normally, he would have hopped down to redirect the driver, but surely this time he could be forgiven for trying to limit his movements. The last thing any of them wanted was for him to lose his stomach in a closed carriage.
Once the new arrangements had been made, and the driver had got them back on their way, he resettled himself in his seat, feeling decidedly more chipper just at the thought of the Baddish that awaited him. Harry would wonder why he’d been drinking and why he’d been drinking somewhere else, but he would never ask. At least not this afternoon.
“Where are we going?” Amelia asked.
“The Happy Hare.” It was a bit out of their way, but not drastically so.
“The posting inn?”
Indeed. “I shall be cured.”
“At the Happy Hare?” She sounded dubious.
“Trust me.”
“Said by a man reeking of gin,” she said, shaking her head.
He looked over at her, lifting one of his brows into the famously regal Wyndham arch. “I wasn’t drinking gin.” Good Lord, he had more breeding than that.
She looked as if she might smile. “So sorry. What were you drinking, then?”
He was quite certain this wasn’t the sort of conversation one ought to conduct with one’s fiancée, but nothing about this meeting was the sort of thing one ought to do or see or say with one’s fiancée. “Ale,” he told her. “Have you ever tried it?”
“Of course not.”
“Tsk tsk. Such outrage.”
“That wasn’t outrage,” she shot back, outraged now. “It was simple fact. Who would have ever served me ale?”
She did have a point. “Very well,
” he said, everything gracious. “But it wasn’t gin.”
She rolled her eyes, and he almost laughed. They were like an old married couple. Not that he’d had much cause to witness old married couples doing anything but insulting (his father) and accepting it (his mother), but Grace had told him that her parents had been wondrously devoted to each other, and from what he’d seen of Lord and Lady Crowland—Amelia’s parents—they seemed to get on reasonably well, too. Or at the very least, neither seemed consumed with desire to see the other one dead.
“Do your parents like each other?” he asked quite suddenly.
She blinked several times in rapid succession, obviously surprised by the change of topic. “My parents?”
“Do they get on?”
“Yes, I suppose.” She paused, and her brow wrinkled adorably as she considered it. “They don’t do very much together—their interests really don’t mesh—but I do think they hold each other in some affection. I haven’t given it much thought, to be honest.”
It was not exactly a description of a grand passion, but still, it was so entirely different from his own experience that Thomas could not help but be intrigued.
She must have noticed the interest on his face, because she continued, “I suppose they must get on. If they didn’t, I probably would have given it much thought, wouldn’t you think?”
He thought about the endless hours he’d wasted thinking about his own parents. He nodded. For all her innocence and guileless speech, she could be extraordinarily astute.
“My mother can nag a bit,” she said. “Well, more than a bit. But my father seems not to mind. He knows it is only because she feels it her duty to see all of her daughters settled. Which is of course his wish as well. He just doesn’t wish to be involved in the details of it.”
Thomas found himself nodding approvingly. Daughters had to be an incredible amount of work.
“He humors her for a few minutes,” Amelia continued, “because he knows how much she likes an audience, but then he most often just shakes his head and walks away. I think he is happiest when out of doors, mucking about with his hounds.”
“Hounds?”
“He has twenty-five of them.”
“Gad.”
She grimaced. “We keep trying to convince him it’s got a bit excessive, but he insists that any man with five daughters deserves five times as many hounds.”
He tried to suppress the image in his mind. “Please tell me none are included in your dowry.”
“You should verify,” she said, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “I’ve never seen the betrothal papers.”
His eyes held hers for a long, steady moment, then he said, “That means no.” But she held her blank expression for long enough to make him add, “I hope.”
She laughed. “He could not bear to part with them. Me, I think he will be happy to get off his hands, but his dogs…Never.” And then: “Did your parents get on well?”
He felt himself go grim, and his head began to pound anew. “No.”
She watched his face for a moment, and he was not sure he wanted to know what she saw there, because she looked almost pitying when she said, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said briskly. “It is done, and they are dead, and there is nothing to be done about it now.”
“But—” She stopped, her eyes a little sad. “Never mind.”
He didn’t mean to tell her anything. He had never discussed his parents with anyone, not even Harry, and he’d been witness to it all. But Amelia was sitting there so silently, with an expression of such understanding on her face—even though…well, she couldn’t possibly understand, not with her gloriously boring and traditional family. But there was something in her eyes, something warm and willing, and it felt as if she knew him already, as if she’d known him forever and was merely waiting for him to know her.
“My father hated my mother.” The words fell from his lips before he even realized he was saying them.
Her eyes widened, but she did not speak.
“He hated everything she stood for. She was a cit, you know.”
She nodded. Of course she knew. Everyone knew. No one seemed to care much anymore, but everyone knew that the most recent duchess had been born without even a connection to a title.
The title. Now that was rich. His father had spent his entire life worshipping at the altar of his own aristocracy, and now it seemed he’d never really been the duke at all. Not if Mr. Audley’s parents had had the sense to marry.
“Wyndham?” she said softly.
His head jerked toward her. He must have drifted off in his own thoughts. “Thomas,” he reminded her.
A faint blush spread across her cheeks. Not of embarrassment, he realized, but of delight. The thought warmed him, deep in his belly and then deeper still, to some little corner of his heart that had lain dormant for years.
“Thomas,” she said softly.
It was enough to make him want to say more. “He married her before he gained the title,” he explained. “Back when he was the third son.”
“One of his brothers drowned, did he not?”
Ah yes, the beloved John, who might or might not have sired a legitimate son of his own.
“The second son, was it not?” Amelia asked quietly.
Thomas nodded, because there was nothing else he could do. He was not about to tell her what had transpired the day before. Good God, it was madness. Less than twenty-four hours earlier he’d been happily kissing her in the garden, thinking it was finally time to make her his duchess, and now he didn’t even know who he was.
“John,” he forced himself to say. “He was my grandmother’s favorite. His ship went down in the Irish Sea. And then a year later a fever took the old duke and the heir—both within a week—and suddenly my father had inherited.”
“It must have been a surprise,” she murmured.
“Indeed. No one thought he’d be the duke. He had three choices: the military, the clergy, or marriage to an heiress.” Thomas let out a harsh chuckle. “I cannot imagine anyone was surprised that he chose as he did. And as for my mother—now here’s the funny part. Her family was disappointed as well. More so.”
She drew back, faint surprise coloring her face. “Even marrying into the house of Wyndham?”
“They were wildly rich,” Thomas explained. “Her father owned factories all across the North. She was his only child. They thought for certain they could buy her a title. At the time, my father had none. With little hope of inheriting.”
“What happened?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea. My mother was pretty enough. And she was certainly wealthy enough. But she did not take. And so they had to settle for my father.”
“Who thought he was settling for her,” Amelia guessed.
Thomas nodded grimly. “He disliked her from the moment he married her, but when his two older brothers died and he became duke, he loathed her. And he never bothered to hide it. Not in front of me, not in front of anyone.”
“Did she return the sentiment?”
“I don’t know,” Thomas replied, and he realized that it was odd, but he had never asked himself the same question. “She never retaliated, if that is what you are wondering.” He saw his mother in his mind’s eye—her perpetually stricken face, the constant exhaustion behind her pale blue eyes. “She just…accepted it. Listened to his insults, said nothing in return, and walked away. No. No,” he said, remembering it correctly. “That’s not how it happened. She never walked away. She always waited for him to leave. She would never have presumed to quit a room before he did. She would never have dared.”
“What did she do?” Amelia asked softly.
“She liked the garden,” Thomas recalled. “And when it rained, she spent a great deal of time looking out the window. She didn’t really have many friends. I don’t think…”
He’d been about to say that he could not recall her ever smiling, but then a memory fluttered through his head.
He’d been seven, perhaps eight. He’d gathered a small posy of flowers for her. His father was enraged; the blooms had been part of an elaborately planned garden and were not for picking. But his mother had smiled. Right there in front of his father, her face lit up and she smiled.
Strange how he had not thought about that for so many years.
“She rarely smiled,” he said softly. “Almost never.”
She’d died when he was twenty, just a week before her husband. They’d been taken by the same lung fever. It had been a terrible, violent way to go, their bodies wracked by coughs, their eyes glazed with exhaustion and pain. The doctor, never one to speak delicately, said they were drowning in their own fluids. Thomas had always thought it bitterly ironic that his parents, who spent their lives avoiding each other, had died, essentially, together.
And his father had one last thing to blame her for. His final words, in fact, were, “She did this.”
“It is why we are here now,” he said suddenly, offering Amelia a dry smile. “Together.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He shrugged, as if none of it mattered. “Your mother was supposed to marry Charles Cavendish, did you know that?”
She nodded.
“He died four months before the wedding,” he said softly and without emotion, almost as if recounting a bit of news from the newspaper. “My father always felt that your mother should have been his wife.”
Amelia started with surprise. “Your father loved my mother?”
Thomas chuckled bitterly. “My father loved no one. But your mother’s family was as old and noble as his own.”
“Older,” Amelia said with a smile, “but not as noble.”
“If my father had known he was to be duke, he would never have married my mother.” He looked at her with an unreadable expression. “He would have married yours.”
Amelia’s lips parted, and she started to say something utterly deep and incisive, like, “Oh,” but he continued with:
“At any rate, it was why he was so quick to arrange my betrothal to you.”
“It would have been Elizabeth,” Amelia said softly, “except that my father wished his eldest to marry the son of his closest friend. He died, though, so Elizabeth had to go to London to look for a match.”