Page 44 of The Captive Duke
“You are disrespectful of the dead,” she said, hacking at her patch of ground with the trowel.
“You are disrespectful of me, regularly. Of all in your path. God above, those smell good.” He took her gloved hand in his and brought some lily of the valley to his nose. “Why did you choose these?”
“They manage well in partial shade, and you have them in abundance along your walks. Give those back.”
She’d dropped her hand, leaving him sniffing the little white flowers, their dirt trailing over his riding breeches. He passed them to her at nose height.
“Stop teasing.” She took the flowers and smacked his hand. “If you must tarry here, at least plant something over your son’s grave.”
He’d spent half the evening at his son’s grave, telling the boy all about his sister, about Cousin Gilly, andChessie. Happy things, mostly, so the sorrow could wash through him all the more cleanly.
And yet, on this pretty morning, the countess’s tone was sharp, too sharp.
“What’s amiss, my dear?” He patted his violets into the ground as she did violence to the earth with her trowel. “Tell me, hmm?”
Maybe she’d felt coerced into staying here at Severn, and needed to dress him down for that cozy scene by the hearth last night. To think she had regrets over it made him sad, for if she had regrets, he’d have to muster some too.
He truly didn’t want to distress her.
He put his gloved hand over hers. “Countess, desist. You are vexed, and I would not have it so.”
“How can you not care about them?” she wailed softly. “They were your family, and you don’t even care…”
“Not care?” He sat back, setting his claw-toothed tool aside. “You conclude I didn’t care for my family because I am indifferent about the ground where their remains lie? Is that it?”
“You’re…almost jolly, and they’re d-dead.”
She was crying. Hell and the devil, the Countess of Starch and Disruption was crying. To shut her up—to make those damned tears stop—he stood, put distance between them, and spoke over his shoulder.
“Would you have me crying, Countess? I haven’t seen you crying over your departed husband. You haverejoiced in his death, rather, and told me you are happy he’s gone.”
“You cannot be happy Evan is gone.” She glared up at him, her face dirty and tear-streaked and furious. “You cannot.”
“Why not? He cost me access to my duchess’s intimate favors, did he not?”
Christian had no idea where those ugly words had come from, but he knew they weren’t true. He’d loved his son, loved his wife, even, though not in the manner he’d wanted to. And he hated himself—not Girard, or not only Girard—because he, the husband, the papa, hadn’t been here when they’d needed him so desperately.
He braced himself on the wall, back to her, as a pair of arms slid around his waist from behind.
“You don’t mean that, Christian Severn.”
She held him fiercely, her female shape undeniable, as if she would impress the words on his very flesh. “You cannot mean that. Helene said you doted on the boy. She wrote me thus as well. And you always treated Helene with respect. She gloated over that to me regularly.”
He nodded, hoping to shut the woman up. She was fearless in her willingness to put into words what ought to remain unspoken. He turned, thinking she’d step back, but she instead attacked him from the front, leaning into him, wrapping him in her arms, pushing her nose against his throat.
He surrendered to the moment and brought both arms around her. She was little and sturdy, and very obviously female, and holding her was a pleasure and a…relief.
“I’m sorry. I do not mourn my husband properly, and I am nobody to tell you what you ought to feel.”
Still, she didn’t move. Christian used his teeth to tug off one glove, his left, and stroked his damaged hand over her hair. He wanted to comfort her, but she sought words from him, not caresses and silent wishes.
“You worry nobody will tend your grave,” he said. “It’s real, that worry.”
She moved against him, getting closer when he’d thought she would pull away. She ought to be pulling away, ought to be running back to Town or Greendale Hall, or anywhere to get quit of a place where she was made to cry.
“When you are imprisoned,” he went on, “you suffer bodily. War is hard enough on the soldier in service to his country. Prisoners cannot be spared a great deal of charity, else who would fight to the death to avoid capture? The physical deprivation is not so hard to understand, but inside your mind… Your captors assure you that your people have forgotten you, that nobody came to find you, that you were allowed to fade immediately from memory, and you…”
She was crying still, making miserable little noises against his chest, but he forced himself to find more words. For her.
