Page 86 of The Marquess Wins a Wife
Her fingers trembled as she positioned, sent it spinning through the air—and he caught it before it could fall, offered it back to her once more. “What do you want of me, Lizzie?”
“I want to go back to Ambrosia,” she said softly.
His heart sank with the words. But she hadasked, and he had given her his promise. His knees creaked as he rose to his feet, the sensation of pins and needles pricked at his legs. “I will take you,” he said, fighting to keep the regret from his voice. “Jo is likely ready by now. Let me fetch her down—”
“Tomorrow,” Lizzie interrupted, as she rose to her feet. “Tomorrow, I would like for you to take me to Eton.”
Luke stared, dumbfounded, one foot out the door. “Eton?”
“I have to tell Georgie about Papa,” Lizzie said, and her voice faltered as she added, “I don’t—I don’t want to do it alone.”
Of course. She had had to tell Jo alone already. She had not had the opportunity to grieve in her own way, because she had had the managing of everyone else’s grief to consider. Unbidden, the memory of her tormented face the night he had sent her fleeing passed across his mind.
“You don’t have to do any of it alone,” he said. “I won’t—” He paused, clearing his throat of the hoarseness that had roughened his voice. “Lizzie, I won’t ever turn you away like that again.”
Briefly, her stoic expression crumpled into misery, and she turned her face away to hide it, smothering a little self-deprecating laugh beneath her fingers. “I wish I could believe that,” she said, and there wasn’t even any bitterness in it. Just a brittle sort of longing to be already in a place that they hadn’t yet reached—with a trust that he hadn’t yet earned.
“I wish you could, as well,” he said, and he wanted so badly to reach for her hand, to tuck her head against his shoulder. To let her cry if she needed. Instead his hands flexed impotently at his sides. The coin was still within the clasp of her hand. If she had wanted that of him, she had only to tell him. There was a moment where he thought she might, a moment where he lingered in the doorway, and she listed almost imperceptibly toward him, and he thought she mightnotrebuff him—
It passed. She collected herself once more, tucked every tiny hint of emotion back inside her, like they had been only linens in want of airing. She donned her dignity like a cloak, while he—he had shed all of his. It had never availed him much, anyway.
“I’ll return,” he said, and she nodded—the small nod that one distant acquaintance gives to another. But it wasn’tenmity. It wasn’trevulsion. It was justdistance; one that only time and trust could surmount.
At last he slipped out of the room, closed the door behind him, and breathed a sigh of abject, stunning relief. His back pressed up against the door, he tilted his head up, closed his eyes, and let his heart recover its steady beat from the frantic, desperate rhythm it had acquired.
“It’s the damnedest thing.” Willie’s voice—rough, grating—snared his attention from somewhere near the stairs. “I searched the house high and low. Couldn’t find a drop of liquor. Not a drop.”
“I got rid of it,” Luke said. “Allof it.” Probably there would always be at leastsomemanner of enticement associated with it; moments when he was weak, where he might find himself tempted to justoneglass. Butonehad invariably led to two, and then three—better still to remove it altogether.
“Hmph,” Willie said. “Good.”
Luke pried an eye open to find the old man staring at him in that disapproving manner that he had, and he suspected that he wouldalwaysdraw up short in Willie’s eyes in one way or another. But perhaps this time, thisonetime, he had earned a measure of respect. “Why were you searching for liquor?” Luke asked. “You don’t drink it.”
“I don’t mind tellin’ ye,” Willie said, “that I meant to toss the stuff m’self. For men like us, yer lordship, there ain’t no good what comes of it.”
Men like us. A smile cracked across his face, absurdly pleased by the association. “I don’t suppose it does,” he said.
“Imagine my surprise to find ye’d been there afore me,” Willie said. “Doin’ the right thing, no less. Ye found yer rock bottom, then, I suppose.”
“Yes,” Luke said. Hehadfound it; that cold and lonely place. “Yes. I found it.”
“Good. It’s simple enough to find. Right at the bottom of the bottle, every time.” Willie folded his arms across his chest, but for once he wasn’t scowling. “The hard work is in the climbin’ back up.”
Chapter Thirty Two
Joanna snored softly, her cheek turned into the seat of the carriage where she lay, sprawled out, in the unencumbered posture of youth. Lizzie hadn’t planned, precisely, on bringing Jo with them to Eton, but Luke had insisted—and now, on the long ride back, she could acknowledge the wisdom of it. They hadneededeach other in those moments, the twins. Perhaps it would have been easier had Papa been more of a presence in their lives—or at least it might have been less confusing, less burdensome. Certainly it would’ve been a different sort of pain. Notthisone which curled up at the edges where anger scorched it. It would have been grief, raw and honest, unpolluted by a half-dozen other emotions.
There was still Imogen to tell, once she had returned from her bridal trip, since mail to the continent was often sporadic at best. And there would be arrangements to make for Papa’s burial—
Luke’s hand covered hers where they were knitted on her lap. “It’s already done,” he said, his voice pitched low in deference to Jo sleeping on the seat across from them. “Your father. He’s been taken back to Hatfield, there to be interred beside your mother.”
Her mouth dropped open. “How—how did you—”
“You had on that face you make when you’re worried about something,” he said, and a tiny smile tugged at the right-hand corner of his mouth. “Given the events of this morning, I assumed.”
“I don’t have aface.” One of her hands slipped from beneath the pressure of his, came up to touch her cheek, as if she might feel it for herself.
“You do,” he said. “You chew on your lower lip, and you acquire a wrinkle between your brows—”
