Page 42 of Denying a Rakish Duke
It had been childish fun until it was not.
The majority of his childhood had been spent under the watchful eye and strict tutelage of his grandmother— but not his summers. Never his summers. He had always spent no less than five weeks at the country home where his father had designated his mother to live. He had always endeavored to do his very best to remember every single detail of every moment of those summers.
Naturally, most memories had faded with time but not the last handful of years in his mother’s life. Each time he had been returned to her, there had been more attendants, and his mother had grown more and more frail. The color drained from her cheeks, she lost her curves, and even the smallest dresses had started to hang awkwardly on her frame, no matter how gifted the seamstress was. Most of all he remembered the cough and her inability to keep any sort of sustenance down.
The memory forced upon him now had been the start of it all.
He was firmly grasped in a cold grip of irrational fear as he watched until Vanessa crossed to the water basin and splashed cool water on her face and rinsed her mouth. She took a step away from the basin, and she faltered. Joseph rushed across the chamber to steady her by the same elbow he had been holding earlier. He wrapped an arm around her waist and escorted her back to the bed. He pulled the warm bedding up and over her legs as she practically fell backward into the abundant pillows. “Do not— do not fret over me.”
“I shall fret over anything I like. Your stubbornness shall not deter me in this any more than it has in anything else.”
Vanessa smiled, little more than a flash of teeth, before she nearly started another coughing fit. “Do not make me laugh— it causes a burning in my chest.”
Joseph eased onto the bed beside her and took her hand in his. “You have worked yourself into an illness … all of this stress and fear … your body is forcing you to take a break. It will not allow you to put any further strain on yourself and neither will I.”
“If you think a little dizzy spell will suddenly cause me to listen to you, Your Grace, you are mistaken,” Vanessa chastised weakly.
“Just listen to me for a couple days — please allow me that— at least until the doctor comes, and we learn how dire the situation is.”
“I do not think that I have ever seen so much emotion that is not sarcastic in nature from you before.”
“This is not a situation that I would joke about.”
Vanessa opened her eyes and lingered on their joined hands. “I have been sick a few times in my life, Joseph; I am stronger than I look. I will endure.”
Joseph bent to press his lips against her knuckles. “My mother assured me of much the same— and she was robbed from me regardless,” he offered in a small voice. “I implore you, indulge my worry until a doctor comes.”
Vanessa’s eyes widened, but she nodded only once and made a soft whimper of pain as the chamber started to spin. “Careful now, if you continue to say such things to me, I shall gain the false impression that you care for me, Your Grace.” She could not tell in the darkness how her joke was received. She could not discern whether he had scowled at her in response or if he had grinned.
“I do care for you,” Joseph said softly, so much so that she almost thought it was a part of the fever heating her mind that played tricks on her. “I care for you so deeply that it terrifies me, in fact. So much so that I am afraid that should I lose you— I would never be the same again.” He could not look at her while he spoke. He felt anxious and unsure even as he said anything at all. ‘It baffles me endlessly how someone could be so much my match and that you tolerate me most days.”
Vanessa did not know what to say or if she ought to say anything at all.
Joseph continued, “I lost my mother to an illness when I was very young. My mother was the third wife of my prolific father … and the example of marriage that was set for me was not a very high one.” He pressed his lips together, recalling unpleasant memories.
“He never would have sat over my mother’s sick bed. He would have sent someone to attend to her and positioned her very far from himself. They did not share a home; I do not think that I ever even witnessed a conversation between them. The only thing that my father ever cared about was an heir … when she died, he—” he cut himself off. It was strange how angry a memory could make him and how raw it could feel in his chest even after all of this time.
“He did not ask how I felt; he did not say anything to me. I remember he looked over at his steward; he grunted and said, ‘Well, I guess I will not have any other heirs then,’ and went on his way.” His mother had never meant anything to him— useless in the eyes of his father apart from her pretty face and fertile womb. It was a small blessing that she had been blessed with a male son in her first pregnancy. Joseph had never gotten a clear answer as to what had become of his father’s two wives before her.
“My first education to the ways of a marriage was negative— as was each and every one that followed it. I have seen every sort of thing that you can imagine. Husbands that were not content to keep with their wives and must injure the same wives’ pride or emotions by keeping countless mistresses, resulting in unhappy wives running secret side affairs of their own. The lies between men and women who are destined to be unhappy partners. Marriages in thetonarranged for profit and prolific gain … business trades of daughters who had no idea they were being auctioned away for the benefit of their fathers until it was too late.” Joseph knew that he was one of them, and he was every bit as horrible of a rake as the bleak picture that he presented.
“I thought that could I merely exist in business and keep my pleasure a separate entity so that I could enjoy both. I never intended to marry … I never intended to carry on my legacy or to have the Atkins line carry on beyond myself. It was to appease my grandmother that I entered into Society this year at all.” Joseph was quite certain that Vanessa was bound to take at least part of what he had yet to say in the wrong light.
“Then I met you … and everything changed. You challenged me, you spoke your mind— you stomped on my foot, and yet in my arms, you were the softest, most delicately indulgent thing that I had ever held … and I knew in my heart that I had to have you—”
“I never would have wished to treat you the way that my father treated my mother. Yet, in many ways, that was precisely what I did, and I can only hope to make it up to you. In all of my youth, I craved a family much like yours. I longed for siblings and cousins to play with. I longed for somebody else to shoulder the burden that my grandmother placed on me. I wished for companionship, and I told myself that one day— should I ever grow up and find the most beautiful woman in the world— that I would raise a family with her and grant my children every kindness and leisure that I was never afforded as a lad … but I lost sight of my vision. I lost sight of what I truly wanted … and for all of those reasons and so many, many more … I need you to be well, Vanessa. I need you to allow your needs to be tended to before those around you.”
A commotion came from downstairs with such a ruckus that Vanessa did not have a chance to comment on the information. Joseph squeezed her hand and left her to go only as far as the doorway so that he could see the man coming up the stairs. The doctor was still in his nightclothes with a jacket hastily jammed over it. Joseph could not be bothered to care as he ushered the elder gentleman into the chamber where the doctor set about a series of tests to gather information as to what might be ailing her.
“Your Grace,” the doctor said gently, “I need quiet if I am to focus on my work, and I cannot do that with you pacing. You wear your thoughts so loudly that you might as well be shouting them at me. Go and wait outside.”
Joseph would not say anything kind if he answered, so he placed his faith in the doctor and went outside of the chamber. The door clicked closed behind him— and he resumed his pacing back and forth on the carpet runner spanning the length of the long hallway. Back and forth in front of the chamber door he paced. He paced and waited— dreaming up every possible scenario or ailment that he had ever heard of even in passing and assigning all of them to the moderate symptoms that Vanessa was currently exhibiting. How long had she been suffering in silence? Had she been suffering in silence and pretending that it was only her grief and stress these past few harrowing days? Had he not been paying close enough attention?
It was hard enough to keep himself from her when he was justexistingin the same space as her. He wanted to believe that he would have noticed … she had not been eating much. She had blamed it all on her troubled stomach.
After what felt like hours, the door finally opened. Joseph got but a cursory glance at Vanessa, now asleep on the bed, before the door was shut behind the doctor again. “The Duchess will need her rest this evening. I have given her something to help her rest comfortably, and the next few days to come, she shall need plenty of restorative teas and fresh fruit to help replenish her energy.”
“Of course. Anything that she needs … what else … what else can I do?” Joseph did not recognize the concern coming from him for a moment.
