Page 64 of My Deceitful Duchess
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“Down, Charlie,” Sebastian said in exasperation, as the dog danced around his knees, yipping for a treat. It was still early; dawn was just rising in the distance—but Sebastian had been waiting here, at the bakery, with Charlie, for nearly twenty minutes.
Just on the off chance that today would be the day that Jenny would venture out. He’d waited yesterday, too, but as dawn had deepened into full day, he’d been forced to admit that she was not coming, and he’d purchased a couple of profiteroles and had taken them to Ambrosia instead.
Which he knew she had not eaten.
And now Charlie was growing impatient, his nails clacking upon the ground as he jumped about, pleading for attention and for the daily treat to which Jenny had accustomed him weeks ago. He butted his muzzle into Sebastian’s hand, his cold, wet nose slipping along his palm. And then a moment later, that irrepressibly floppy ear perked up. His whiskers quivered, his nose twitched, and a whine rose in his throat. Like a shot he took off, darting down the street, disappearing into the morning fog before Sebastian could stop him.
“Damn.” Sebastian jammed his fingers in his mouth and issued a sharp whistle, which usually attracted more than justCharlie’sattention—but desperate times called for desperate measures.
But instead of the distinctiveclackingof Charlie’s nails as the dog trotted back toward him, he heard only a distant, happy yip.
And then there was Jenny’s crooning voice. “Charlie!Whatever are you doing here, my fine fellow?”
He couldn’t see her just yet, but her voice was so much softer, so much sweeter than he had heard of her just lately. The rising sun began to burn through the fog, and hedidsee her at last, crouched there at the side of the street; slowly, emerging in fuzzy layers as the mist faded. First, the pale blue of her gown, then the brilliant shine of her hair, glowing like a mislaid moonbeam in the new dawn.
He took a few helpless steps forward, and the image sharpened again—the wrinkle of her nose, the dimple set into her cheek as she dodged the excited swipes of Charlie’s tongue. How long had it been since he had last seen her smile?
He’d stolen that from her, too.
And he stole it from her once more as he watched the realization come upon her—that if Charlie was here, so musthebe as well. And that gorgeous smile faded slowly as her gaze traveled up the street to find him standing there. There was a telling catch at her throat, a sudden stiffness to her limbs as she rose once more. Charlie settled there at her side, nudging her hip with his nose.
“I missed you yesterday,” he told her as she approached. He stretched out his hand, holding out the profiteroles he’d purchased already in offer, but she looked at them for only a second or two before she turned her face away, walking past him, Charlie hot upon her heels.
He followed a few paces behind, summoned Charlie back as she entered the bakery, and fell into step beside her as she left it once again, two brioche buns in her hand. He bit into the first profiterole, but found no enjoyment in the juxtaposition of crunchy outer layer and soft inner pastry, the sweet richness of the pastry cream. They had been meant for her, after all.
“He took me just there, your Mr. Beckett,” she said, without inflection, nodding to a spot on the pavement. “I had been waiting for you.” A flat laugh scratched at her throat. “Imagine my surprise.”
He winced. “I am sorry for that. For all of it. For—” He likely could have rambled on for hours, enumerating the many and varied ways he had hurt her, without scratching more than the surface of it. “For all of it,” he repeated. “I regretted it almost immediately. I wish you could believe that.”
“I do,” she said, surprising him. “But it doesn’t make a difference.” She peeled off a fluffy bit of brioche and tossed it to Charlie, who snapped it up in his teeth straight from the air. “I suppose I must thank you,” she said. “Always, my future has been measured in days, hours, minutes—even whenyearspassed, I never dared to dream I would get another. I was always waiting for the moment it would end. And I knew, I think, that you would be the cause of it.”
It was at least partially why she had not confided in him, he knew. Because he was too quick, too clever, not to piece the fragmented bits of her together. And he—he had let it all unravel precisely as she had expected. He had been the architect of her undoing, and it was notenoughthat he had also freed her from the shackles of her past. It could never be enough.
He tossed the remaining half of the profiterole in his hand to Charlie, appetite vanished. He’d thrown away his own future along with hers, it seemed. For as many years as he had been alive, he had never imagined awife, achild—but they had become so real to him within a space of months. Until he could not imagine his future beyond her. She had permeated every bit of his small house, until it seemed too large and too empty without her.
Those things that he had grown so quickly to love—watching her sleep through the day in his bed, walking with her in the mornings, scouring the streets with her on Saturday evenings—had fit so naturally into the perfect order of his life that he wondered now how he had ever gone without them. How he would continue to go on without them.
And she might have wanted them, too. If he had given her the opportunity. Hehadcaught her in the web he had cast—they were tied together forever through their child, inhismind at least. A child he hadn’t the right to claim. A child he might never know, who would grow up apart from him.
We’ll marry, of course.
Those words shamed him now; the tight, expectant tone he had employed. As if she ought to have beengratefulthat he had been willing to sacrifice himself on the altar of marriage. As ifshehad trappedhim, instead of the other way around.
That she walked beside him now, the picture of tranquility, was a blessing he did not deserve. But there was an odd sort of finality in it also, and he thought—perhaps it was not so muchtranquilityasresignation. As if he could feel a door closing between them; not with a heavyslam—but with a soft, decisive push, after which a lock would turn, and that would beit. She would never think on what lay behind it again, for it led nowhere she wished to be.
His mind worked rapidly as they approached Ambrosia, reeling through a series of chances, of choices. At last he settled upon one, the mostandleast likely. She was a logical woman; rational, intelligent. But she was also anemotionalone, and that, he thought—thatwas what he was counting upon. For her heart to sway her head. For every hope and dream she had denied herself for the last decade to seize upon a chance to snatch back everything he had taken from her.
And so he said, “I wish I hadaskedyou to marry me before. I am asking now.”
Her face darkened like a stormcloud had passed across it. But he had expected anger; he had lost any right to a fair consideration. “I have suffered one bad marriage already,” she said, and he heard the sickness in it—a sickness he had let fester there inside her. Arotof every decent thing they had been to one another, seething within her chest. A suppurating wound beyond his power to cleanse at present. “I will not suffer another. I will not become thechattelof a man like you.”
“I would ask you to consider it all the same,” he said. And then, gently, “Without a husband, you would have to leave London. You could not expect to continue to work at Ambrosia, or to keep company with Ladies Clybourne and Livingston. Your reputation, even such as it is, would not survive an illegitimate child.”
And he could see that she had understood that already, in the tremble of her lips, in the way her fingers curled too tightly around the remains of her brioche. Perhaps she had not yet come to a decision, for she had a few months yet before onehadto be made—but sheknewnonetheless that time was growing short. That her options were few, and none of them particularly appealing.
Though it galled him, he forced himself to add, “Your friends seem to think they can find you another husband. I imagine it is true. But could you trust a man you hardly know with a child not his own? Could you trust him to continue to allow you to work in a club?”
