Page 36 of Her Duke Next Door
Tell me, Lady Yore, do you truly not miss it or do you have to convince yourself that you do not in order to endure this choice you have made?
He didn’t dare question her with that.
“I made my choices,” was all she said.
“I cannot say that I can compliment them,” he muttered. “Your choices, I mean.”
“Then it is a good thing that my choices are none of your business, Your Grace.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
“They seemed to be my business when we shared a kiss.”
They passed by a window just enough for the light inside to illuminate her face and highlight the pink flush on her cheeks a moment before she ducked her face away.
“Nonsense,” she answered. “That was a moment of weakness.” She sighed, her shoulders slumping. “Thank you, Your Grace, for getting me out of the house for a while.”
He wished to draw her closer, to corner her against the wall of this house, and kiss her again if only to ask her if she might want another moment of weakness.
“What is wrong, my lady?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she answered. “As I said, my life and choices are none of your concerns.”
“When a lady traps a chair beneath a door handle, I would assume it is to stop somebody from escaping. I have already offered my protection to you. You can confide in me.”
Her silence was the resolute reply.
He finally voiced the thing he had tried to initially give her a distraction from but he found he could no longer avoid it.
“It is the Earl, is it not?”
Mary’s furrowed brow deepened as she turned herself away, as if moving to walk away from him.
Dominique persisted. “I saw how he treated you in the ballroom. He is not kind to you. I have heard how he threatens you. Why are you enduring this? You do not have to put yourself through this! You were worried that I could not protect you due to my frequent traveling yet I have been present since my daughter’s birthday party. I have remained in Livingston Castle. I can assure you that you will be safe.”
“It is not you, Your Grace,” Lady Yore confessed. Her eyes were downcast, unable to meet his eyes as she confessed her true vulnerabilities. Her lips tightened as she fought back tears, at the thought that he might stay in Livingston Castle just to prove himself to her and help keep her daughter safe. “Yes, I said that at first but it is only because I am so fearful of the real reason.”
“Confide in me,” he begged. There was a bench further ahead in the gardens and he led her toward it. Together, they sat down on the bench beneath a stone pergola. He sat an appropriate distance from her but the moment he saw her hand settle on the bench between them, he fought to place his own hand over hers. “I beg of you to talk to me about what is worrying you, why you are enduring that wretched man.”
Mary was quiet for a few moments, her lower lip trembling. When she spoke, her voice came out in a whisper. “I cannot risk losing my daughter.”
“What has Yore done to you?” Dominique demanded to know. “What sort of hold does he have over you?”
Mary could not hold it in any longer. “I have told you that he is my late husband’s uncle! Everything was left to Lord Yore following my husband’s death. I own nothing, Your Grace. Nothing, not even my daughter. So I must endure him, keep him happy so he does not take everything away from me as he has threatened many times. If my happiness comes at the cost of my daughter’s safety and keeping her with me then I shall pay it.
“But now my daughter will barely talk to me. She is unhappy. All she sees is that I have taken her away from her best friend. We now live with a horrid man but I do not have another choice if I am to keep her safe. He will not harm her this way. He could take her away, he…”
“Mary,” Dominique murmured, processing all she had said about her late husband and his equally awful uncle. “May I ask how your husband died?”
It was no secret. She let out a dry, humorless laugh. “He was a rotten weasel of a man who barely looked twice at me each day. I told you he was unfaithful but it was my sister whom he lusted for. He became obsessed with her, stalked her, and I knew nothing about it. He sent her letters and almost ruined her prospects of marriage altogether, had it not been for the Duke of Winsor, her husband.”
Mary wrung her hands, not used to speaking of her own past. That was one of the reasons she had escaped to the countryside, so nobody made her discuss it. “It was the Duke of Winsor who informed me of my late husband’s involvement with my sister. We all knew she was being stalked but not by who. To find out it was my own husband was… It destroyed me, Your Grace. The guilt ate at me for a long time. She could have been hurt all because I married that man.”
“Did you have a choice?”
Mary shook her head. “I do not know. Perhaps. I loved him at first until he grew cold and distant after he met Anne. Now I know why. Anne’s husband informed me of the letters and I called the constables. He was shot in the hunt to arrest him. His family have blamed me ever since.”
