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To scorn to be his mistress was one thing, but what woman in her right mind would turn down the chance to be a duchess, to be married to one of the wealthiest men in Britain?
Yet now he felt that perhaps he had missed one of the few chances life offered to step off the wheel of routine and familiarity and duty to discover if there was joy somewhere beyond its turning.
But they were free to be happy. None of them was the Duke of Bewcastle, who could expect almost everything of life except freedom and personal happiness.
Life for a while, he thought as his steps led him slowly back in the direction of the revelries, was going to seem bleak indeed without even a glimpse of Christine Derrick to look forward to.
After that he had learned his lesson well. The child in whose body he had lived and dreamed for twelve years no longer existed. Christine Derrick was not for him.
“Come and dance with me, then,” he said, getting up off the bed to open the door for her, “and smile as only you know how, even though I know Bewcastle said or did something to upset you, damn his eyes.”
And so they had been intimate without intimacy.
Her heart felt like a leaden weight in the middle of her chest. She would never see him again. Thank heaven. But never. It sounded like an awfully long time.
He read a great deal. Or, at least, he sat in his library a great deal, a book open in one hand, while he stared through it and brooded.
A little rejection, he supposed, was good for the soul. But his soul felt bruised, even crushed.
It was unlike him to procrastinate, to feel lethargic, to brood. To feel lonely.
He did not think of Christine Derrick. But sometimes—or most of the time if he were to be quite truthful with himself—he discovered that bright, laughing blue eyes and tangled dark curls and sun-bronzed skin and a freckle-dusted nose could slip past thought and lodge themselves in unwelcome images in the brain and in a heavy feeling about the heart.
All he needed was something to keep him busy. Soon he would be back to normal.
There she could relax and be herself and everyone seemed to like her for it. She had no enemies in the neighborhood, only friends.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him. It was a horribly rude question to ask of a duke, but who could think of good manners at such a moment? What was he doing here?
Determined as she had been not to think of him, her nights were still filled with vivid dreams of him, and even her days were not yet free of unwilling memories that seemed quite beyond her power to banish. She did not want this.
“I find myself unable to stop thinking about you,” he said. “I have asked myself why I offered to make you my mistress rather than my wife and can find no satisfactory answer.
I choose to have you as my wife. I beg you to accept me.”
“Someone with a heart,” he said very softly then. “No, perhaps you are right, Mrs. Derrick. Perhaps I do not possess one. And, if I do not, then I lack everything of which you dream, do I not? I beg your pardon for taking your time and for offending you yet again.”
There had been a look in his eyes when he spoke those words. What did she mean by that? A look? It had broken her heart, that was what she meant. It had broken her heart. She hated him, she hated him, she hated him.
He would really prefer to have no reminder of the unfortunate lapse from his usual habits that he had allowed to happen there. He had chosen to forget, and he believed he had been quite successful.
Why would he not, after all? It had all been sheer madness, that business with Mrs. Derrick, and he was quite happy that he had escaped with his familiar way of life still intact. But he wanted no reminder.
It was better to think the best and be wrong than to think the worst and be wrong.
“Just in order to beg a ride with Bertie and me? Beg? I would have had my brawniest footman carry you bodily out to the carriage on the day of our departure to London if you had shown any resistance to coming voluntarily. But you would have walked through mud to beg?”
The old irritation against her returned just as if he had not forgotten about her in the intervening months.
He had no warmth of personality, no compassion or kindness, no laughter inside himself. That was what she had accused him of. That was part of her reason for rejecting him. No warmth. No kindness. No humor.
Why was it that that little speech of hers had imprinted itself indelibly upon his memory?
Of course he was not such a person. The very idea—frolicking and absurdity! But there were people he loved—even children.
He could feel Christine Derrick several pews behind his own, almost as if she held a long feather and was brushing it up and down his spine. Soon it would touch his neck and he would shrug his shoulders defensively.
It would be ill-mannered, and he was never discourteous if he could help it.
Now her eyes laughed at him, though she was no longer actually smiling. He had forgotten that extraordinary look.
But how did one deal with one’s irritation over a woman who stubbornly refused to leave either one’s thoughts or one’s blood—even when one had believed one had purged her memory and influence long ago?
And a woman, moreover, who smiled far too brightly and talked with far too much animation, even to people who sat across the table from her?
How did one deal with a woman who insisted upon holding one’s glance every time she caught one watching her and outmaneuvered one by raising her eyebrows—and then laughing at one?
He was still infatuated with her, Wulfric thought in some amazement
And infatuated be damned. He was near to being blinded by his attraction to her. He was in love, damn it all. He disliked her, he resented her, he disapproved of almost everything about her, yet he was head over ears in love with her, like a foolish schoolboy.
He wondered grimly what he was going to do about it. He was not amused.
She believed she had quite effectively forgotten the Duke of Bewcastle in the six months or so since she last saw him. Her reaction to seeing him again, therefore, shook her considerably.
How could she ever have believed that lying with him by the lake on that final night was something that could be casually done and easily forgotten? Would her reaction have been any less intense, though, if that had not happened? And if he had not come back after ten days to offer her marriage?
He had perfected the art of making that sound to serve as a suitable answer to whatever Melanie asked or suggested, Christine had noticed, and had thereby released himself from the necessity of listening to everything she said.
Was she a flirt? Christine wondered. Was she? Oscar had come to believe that she was, and Basil and Hermione had finally been convinced of it too. But if she was, then it was really quite unconscious.
She had never said or done anything to encourage the earl to conceive a violent attachment to her—or even a mild one, for that matter.
And here she was with her hand upon the sleeve of the Duke of Bewcastle and suddenly feeling a little as if she had just grasped a lightning
“I daresay I would have rescued myself in a little while,” she said. “But for once in my life I was quite delighted to see you.” “I am flattered, ma’am,” he said.
And I do not suppose you have many kindly thoughts of me. It cannot be every day that a lowly commoner refuses two very different but equally flattering offers from a duke.” “You assume, then,” he said, “that I have had thoughts of you, ma’am?”
“And I love it, Mrs. Derrick,” he said softly, “when you can be provoked to laughter—even when you do it with just your eyes.”
“You do not need to flirt,” he told her. “You are extraordinarily attractive and need to use no wiles.”
“Ah, but I did not call you either beautiful or elegant,” he said. “The word I used was attractive. Extraordinarily attractive, to be more precise. It is something your glass would not reveal to you because it is something that is most apparent when you are animated. It is difficult for any man who looks at you once not to look again. And again.”
From any other man the words might have sounded ardent. The Duke of Bewcastle spoke them matter-of-factly,
She was actually feeling severely shaken. He considered her extraordinarily attractive.
