Page 65 of Ne'er Duke Well
Right. He had to think about something other than dragging her upstairs and sharing their bedchamber that very second. “Tea,” he repeated. “Right.”
The fires of lust could be extinguished quite quickly, it turned out, with the unexpected application of tears.
They’d dined, and then Selina and her maid had retired to the bedchamber to set about unpacking Selina’s garments and making ready for a shopping expedition on the morrow. Peter had offered to help and had been shooed away, so he’d been reduced to wandering the house like a randy ghost, whistling and alternately thinking about furnishings and Selina.
Well, that was a flat-out lie. He’d thought of furnishings at least once, though. He was fairly certain.
He paced his study and then wandered back down to the first floor, where the stairwell obscured the entrance to one of the only rooms in the house left mostly untouched by former tenants. It was a portrait gallery—the wall coverings were a bloodthirsty shade of red, and generations of Stanhope dukes and duchesses and children loomed menacingly out of the shadowed portrait alcoves. He could see why the previous inhabitants had ignored the room. He preferred not to think of it himself, and the grim faces were his immediate relations.
This time when he approached the tucked-away room at the base of the stairs, his ears caught the sound of muffled sobs.
He was in the room before he could think the better of it. He had half a beat to hope—rather uncharitably—that it was Selina’s maid crying her heart out and not his wife.
But, blinking against the dark red shadows of the room, he made out Selina’s tall form. She was tucked half in one of the alcoves, her head buried in her arms. And she was weeping.
He felt a queer sharp stab in the vicinity of his heart. Twice—twice in three days he’d reduced this fearless, remarkable woman to tears.
He came up behind her, trying to make some sound as he walked so she wouldn’t startle.
“Selina?”
She stood and turned, furiously swiping at her face. “Oh! Peter. I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d come in here.”
She’d been hiding, then, down here in this dim, uncomfortable room. From him.
He swallowed against that bright sharp thing in his chest. “I heard you. I’m sorry, I—oh, the hell with it.”
He reached out and yanked her into his arms. She stood stiffly for a moment and then, by degrees, she relaxed against his body. He tucked her head beneath his chin.
What had he to offer her? He was a duke—but she was the sister of a blasted duke, and marrying him gave her scarcely more social standing than she’d had before.
He had money, but so did she—from her family, from Belvoir’s.
He had a big empty house, and a brother and sister he didn’t know how to get or how to keep. He had himself, such as he was—selfish and reckless and heedless of all the things he was expected to care about in thebeau monde.
He thought of her family at their wedding breakfast, their mutual love and respect never more obvious. It was nothing like what he had known back in New Orleans, with his mother and the crumbling old house, with Morgan’s painful gasping breath in his ears.
He felt suddenly certain that she had realized what a dreadful bargain she had made with him. He was as emptied-out as the house—nothing more than a crisis that needed to be managed. He had nothing to offer her, and she had realized it, and she was drowning in regret.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was rough in his throat. “I know it’s not what you wanted, Selina. But it won’t be so bad. You’ll see.”
He scarcely believed himself. A lifetime of fixing her husband’s disasters—that must be what coming into this townhouse had taught her to look forward to. Unless she had decided she’d had enough already. Perhaps she wanted to go back to Rowland House.
She pulled her head back to look at him, tilting her chin up to meet his eyes. She stayed in the circle of his arms, soft and yielding. “What on earth can you mean?”
“This house.” He shrugged against her body. “Marriage. To me.”
She stared up at him. “You thought you’d found me in here weeping over the lack of furnishings?”
“Yes?”
She tried to flail a hand around at the room, but he was still holding her, so she mostly smacked him in the side. “Peter. It’s just a house. Just things.”
He winced. “It’s more than just things. It’s what they represent.” Perhaps if he made it plain for her, she would go now, before he started to hope for more. A future. A family, together, like the Ravenscrofts. “I know it must seem like you’ve done nothing but clean up after my errors, Selina, but I mean to put things right. With the house. With Freddie and Lu.”With you, he thought, but managed not to say.
She turned her head and tucked her face back into his chest, and he inhaled the almost-spicy scent of her body. “I was crying because of the portraits.”
He looked around the room. “Should I take them down? Theyarealarming.”
