CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
BATH, SOMERSET, ENGLAND – MID-MAY, 1814
“He’s gone! Lord Fillmore is gone!”
They spun at the sound of the maid’s frantic voice. She raced to them from the front door.
“Gone?” Grace exclaimed, bile rising in her throat. She’d truly killed him, then? No matter her fantasies of doing so a few short hours before, she’d never thought of how it would feel in reality to take another’s life. Her hand flew to her mouth. I’ve killed a man.
“He must have gone out the back while I was packing. There was blood on the step, an’ his horse is missing.” The maid swallowed, her small satchel banging against her legs.
Damon swore.
Deveric grasped Grace’s arm, steadying her. “It will be all right,” he whispered. “He can’t get you now. You are safe.”
She hadn’t given a thought to her safety, only to her sin. But surely the man wouldn’t come after her a second time? Then again, he was clearly insane—and had committed murder before.
“Damn him. Damn him!” Damon paced in front of the carriage, his long strides like those of a prowling panther. “I should have finished him off. I should have—”
“No,” Deveric interjected. “Your sense of honor is greater than that. As is mine. But should we encounter him again, when he is conscious …” His lips pulled into a grim line.
Damon stilled. “He had better hope he never sees me again. For if he does, I shall call him out.”
“Indeed,” Deveric said, laying a hand on Damon’s shoulder. “For now, shall we make haste? I am sure my family wishes to know Grace is unharmed.”
“Of course.” Damon quickly aided Grace into the carriage, then Daisy, before climbing inside himself. Deveric followed.
Grace took the seat next to the maid, forcing the two men to sit side by side. In no way was she prepared to ride next to Damon, not with the way the touch of his hand had sent her pulse aflutter, even as Damon’s declaration—“We must marry at once!”—pounded through her head.
“Would you prefer I get a room? Allow you some rest after recent events?” Deveric asked, as the carriage left the Crescent.
“No, dearest brother. I wish to leave this city as soon as possible in order to put these foul memories behind.”
Grace fell silent, her emotions a jumble as the streets of Bath flew by. They’d been traveling for about ten minutes when Deveric yawned and then tucked his head into his corner of the carriage, settling his hat over his eyes. A soft snore emanated from him less than a minute later. Shame spilled through Grace; she’d been so absorbed in herself, in all that had happened, she hadn’t taken into consideration that the two men had ridden all night to get to her. She, at least, had slept a few short hours in Bath. They must both be exhausted.
She looked across at Damon. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Should we stop after all?”
“No. I, too, want nothing more to do with Bath or my uncle. Ever again.”
He fell silent and she followed suit. With the maid—Daisy was her name—riding with them in the carriage, it was not the time or place for a more serious discussion.
Luckily, Daisy did not feel the need to chatter, or perhaps sitting amongst peers in the interior of such a lavish coach intimidated her into silence. She’d attempted to clamber up next to the driver, but Grace had stopped her. “It will be more comfortable for you inside, Daisy, and you deserve it after having to put up with Fillmore Blackbourne.”
True courtesy had motivated Grace, but also the knowledge that with Daisy and her brother there, she could avoid a more intimate discussion with Damon. The intensity of her newly acknowledged feelings, the terror of Fillmore Blackbourne nearly shooting Damon—all of it was such that she had not the strength for anything at the moment. She needed merely to exist, grateful the unexpected drama of the last twenty-four hours was now behind them.
Did Damon feel the same? He directed his attention not at her, but out the window, seemingly lost in thought. She took the opportunity to drink him in. His thick, black hair was tousled from the day’s travels. Stubble dotted his jaw, which only enhanced his raw masculine appeal. His lips were slightly pursed, but that didn’t hide their sensuality. If only they could repeat their kiss in Fillmore’s parlor here, without Dev or Daisy, just she and Damon, locked in a heady embrace as the carriage rocked on.
Her skin flushed. And then what, you ninny?
“We must marry at once.” Damon’s assertion echoed repeatedly in her mind. She couldn’t ignore the tendrils of excitement the notion aroused. Damon Blackbourne, hers, forever?
She’d given lip service to the idea of marrying for her family’s sake, but until Damon, never had anyone moved her to make a lifelong commitment seem reasonable.
“If I were ever to marry,” she’d insisted to her family on more than one occasion, “it would only be for love. A grand, passionate love. Not for duty, or honor, or expectation.”
Nothing less than the kind of love Deveric and Eliza shared made giving up what little freedom and independence she had make sense.
But what choice did she have now? Though thankfully nothing untoward had transpired, she was ruined in the eyes of society. Damon saw no other course than for her to marry him, immediately. Deveric clearly felt the same.
It was Lord Fillmore, not Damon, who’d dishonored her, however. How would wedding Damon save her? Save her sisters? Could it?
The ton would see no other option; she must marry or live in permanent scandal. The most logical course of action was to marry Malford.
Was it such a bad notion? She loved him, after all. And he felt something for her. Could it be love?
She sighed. It was all too much. Let me think of lesser things. For a little while, at least, while there is respite in this carriage.
The coach hit a rut in the road, and she bounced in her seat, clasping at the cushion as her eyes dropped to Damon’s long legs, which rested on the floor across from her. Black boots led to equally black breeches, breeches which revealed the fine musculature of his thighs. She should not linger there. It was most improper.
Her gaze moved up to his lean midsection and over his chest. The light speckling of hair peeking above the top button of his shirt aroused her curiosity. He was cravatless. How had she not noticed before? When had he removed it? She hadn't expected to see him in such a state of undress. The hint of his chest sent shivers through her.
Her eyes rested there before moving up to his bare neck, where his pulse beat, slowly and steadily. What would it be like to press her lips there, as he had done to her? To taste his skin?
Her cheeks tingled and so she shifted her gaze further up, to his chin with its slight cleft, then to his lips. Which were grinning. She gasped and her eyes flew up to his. His cheeks crinkled in amusement.
“Like what you see?” he said, his voice soft.
She looked to Daisy, seated next to her, but, like Deveric, she’d drifted off into sleep. Thank goodness. She needed no additional witnesses to her wanton behavior.
“I—” she began, but stopped, having no excuse for her blatant perusal.
He leaned forward and beckoned her to do so, as well. She did, hesitantly. Their faces were mere inches from each other. “This way we can whisper,” he said, “and not disturb the others.”
She nodded.
“Although if you’d like to kiss me, I wouldn’t be adverse to that, either.”
She tried to give him a severe look, but ended up biting her lip to keep from laughing.
His eyes twinkled in delight, but then grew moist. “I am so sorry, Grace. If I could have done anything—”
“—You couldn’t.” She broke him off with a shake of her head. “He is not right in the head, Damon. You are not at fault for that.”
“But he is my uncle. If not for me, for your knowing me, you would not have been taken. You would not have been compromised. It is all my fault.”
“I am not compromised!” she hissed, her voice causing Daisy to mumble in her sleep.
“Not in that way, thank God,” he said. “But in the eyes of society, yes.”
The words irritated her, though she’d acknowledged the same sentiment earlier. “Why do you care? It’s not as if you value what the ton thinks.”
“No. But I value you. And I must make this right. We must marry.”
Her heart sank, a coldness creeping in. There was no emotion in his voice beyond perhaps resignation. No hint that any feeling other than guilt and a sense of honor drove his insistence that they wed.
At her silence, he went on. “We would be well-suited. Do you not think so? Our interests are not dissimilar, our temperaments compatible. I have no love of London, nor do you. We could spend our time in the country, at Thorne Hill, or perhaps Blackwood Abbey. And when I must be in London to take my seat in the House of Lords, I would understand if you wished to remain behind, not forced into the stresses of city life. We each do value opportunities for solitude, after all. It need not …” He swallowed. “It need not be a full marriage, if you do not wish it. But a marriage of convenience, a marriage for appearances’ sake, would at least save you from the dishonor you have endured.”
Grace’s throat constricted, a sour taste rising in her mouth. Now he didn’t even want her with him? He’d abandon her so easily? This was his idea of marriage—of lives lived apart?
Her mother had suffered through that; years of her husband gallivanting around London while she’d been stuck at Clarehaven.
“You should stay for the sake of the little ones,” Samuel Claremont had insisted. “They need a mother’s influence.”
Little did it matter that plenty of other couples left their children to the care of nannies and governesses during the Season. And as Grace and her siblings had grown and he’d still left Matilda behind, it’d become apparent to all he’d not wanted her with him.
Had her mother wanted to go? Grace suspected so. Matilda Mattersley had never spoken openly of her feelings, but occasionally the mask of respectability and honor she wore like armor had fallen. Once, when a note from Grace’s father had come, promising to return at some point in the future, that business had delayed him a little longer, her mother’s face had crumbled, revealing the hurt underneath.
One evening shortly thereafter, as a young Grace passed the study, she overheard Deveric tell their brother Chance it wasn’t business that kept Father away; it was his mistress.
Grace hadn’t quite known at the time what a mistress was. When she’d asked her mother the next day, Matilda’s face had gone ashen and she’d struck Grace across the cheek, the only time her mother raised a hand to her.
“Never mention that again!” her mother had commanded.
And she hadn’t. But the anguish in her mother’s eyes spoke volumes. It was one of the reasons Grace had apprehensions about marrying. She did not want to experience the pain her mother had, no matter how well Matilda hid it from the rest of society.
Damon continued before she could respond. “You have been raised in the ways of society, in the ways of the ton. You could help me with the rules and regulations. As smart as you are, you could help in managing the estates, as well. I’m sure you’ve been taught the duties of a wife.”
Grace’s eyes pricked with tears. How had she mistaken Damon so badly? She had not thought him, of all people, to speak of marriage in such cut and dried terms, as a business transaction. She had thought that he, too, having suffered such loss and isolation as a child, wouldn’t settle for anything less than a full union, driven by love.
She was wrong. How foolish she had been.
Was this why he had courted her? Not out of affection, out of attachment, but rather as a tool for his betterment?
Oh, to turn back time! To be back in Bath, in the bedchamber in which she’d acknowledged the myriad ways she loved him, in which she’d fantasized about him being her knight in shining armor. Though she’d been a prisoner, the future uncertain, it’d been less painful than this, this harsh reality that Damon did not love her. Not like she loved him. For if he did, wouldn’t he have said so? Yet no such declarations had come from him, despite the passionate moments they had shared.
Or would she turn it back farther, to before they’d met? Would she wish to return to a time before she’d known this level of emotion? Before she’d fallen for the Duke of Malford?
Pain wracked her chest and she clutched her arms around her ribs. She was not interested in being his tutor, in training him in the ways of anything. She wanted to be loved and respected, not seen as a means to an end. She forced herself to sit up, to breathe regularly. She would not let him see how his words wounded her, would not reveal how her heart was breaking.
Amara had refused to marry without love, despite years of ostracization after her dishonor. Grace could endure the same.
She looked him squarely in the eye, hers unblinking. “No.”
“No? You haven’t been trained to be a wife?”
“No, I will not marry you.”