Chapter Nine
Ewan often felt negative emotions when he was around other people. Strangers set him back a step, made him wonder at what they thought of him. With Charlotte it had never been that way. He’d never been nervous around her.
Until this moment. Standing in his office, with her smiling up at him just as she had a thousand times before, he felt…different somehow. Like he had to be ready to defend himself.
Perhaps it was that she’d been sitting so close to Smith when he entered. Ewan was good at reading people. When one didn’t speak, sometimes people forgot one was there at all. Plenty of times, Ewan had been very aware of the tells of others. Charlotte had her own, as did Smith.
They’d been talking about him.
The two people who probably saw deepest into him: Smith because he’d been privy to Ewan’s childhood, Charlotte because…
Because she was Charlotte. She looked deeper into him than anyone else ever had. She saw everything. Almost everything.
Charlotte tilted her head. “You are looking at me as if I’m mad. Did I put my dress on backward?”
The question, asked in her laughing tone that always put him at ease, drew the tension from him. He shook his head as he signed, “No, you look lovely.”
“I wasn’t fishing for a compliment,” she said as she gave him a twirl. “Though I do admit I am happy to be back in color. Black and gray and violet are so dour.”
She caught both his hands and backed him across the room, then motioned to the chair Smith had vacated moments before. He took it, for he had no way of refusing her, and she took the other. “Smith said you’d gone to inspect the dam and the bridge,” she said.
He heard the worry in her voice, anxiety for his people that warmed his heart. “Everything is fine, Charlotte,” he reassured her. “The water is receding now that the rains have let up. My men are still monitoring the situation, but the families will return to their undamaged cottages as early as tomorrow.”
She sighed in relief. “Oh, that makes me happy. Will they need assistance?”
His heart throbbed as he stared at her. The daughter of a duke, the wife of an earl, she so easily suggested taking on what many would consider a menial task far beneath them. Certainly, he could not picture his mother being so kind to people so far below her rank whom she barely knew.
“No,” he signed. “The moving back in will involve far less immediacy than moving out did. My people will help each family and they can take their time.”
“Very good,” she said. “But please do let me know if there’s anything I can do for your tenants. I really do want to be of service.”
He drew a long breath, for the way she was behaving was how she would act if she were his wife. The lady of the manor might very well offer such care and consideration for her people. And for a brief moment he could so very easily picture her in that very role. So easily that his chest hurt.
“Charlotte, I don’t think you—” he began to sign.
She pushed from her chair and turned her back, essentially cutting him off as she walked to his window and looked out at the gray morning. “Do you know what I was thinking as I sat with Smith in this lovely study of yours?”
He sighed as he stood and moved to stand with her. “What?” he signed.
“That I have never really had a tour of this place,” she said with a bright smile.
“Really?” he signed, searching his mind. “How is that possible?”
“I’ve only been here the one time,” she said, her smile faltering a little. “When you inherited. There was so much going on and so many people here to celebrate you, I feel as though it was a whirlwind. I wanted to ask you to show me every nook and cranny, but…”
She trailed off and her cheeks flooded with sudden color. He pursed his lips at it as he slowly signed, “But?”
She worried her lip a fraction. “I was still married to Nathan,” she whispered. “I knew if I asked you to take me on a private tour of your home that he—that he would know—see…”
His lips parted. They had never spoken of her husband. Ewan had always been polite to the man, even if there was some dark part of him that hated the Earl of Portsmith.
“Did he know?” he asked.
She held his stare for a beat before she ducked her head. “I think so, yes. I don’t think I was ever very good at hiding what I felt, especially if you and I were in a room together.”
He considered the earl, the times he’d caught Portsmith watching him. Ewan had sensed his hesitation, his discomfort. That was part of the reason he’d begun to avoid close contact with Charlotte. He knew he had no right to interfere in her marriage.
Now he felt compelled to ask, “What did he think of that?”
She shrugged. “He never said anything to me directly, but he didn’t seem angry when the subject of our friendship came up. He was just careful when he asked about you. Nathan did not…love me,” she admitted slowly. “And I did not love him either. So I suppose if I loved another, it was just as happy a thing for him. As long as I didn’t betray him or humiliate him, it freed him from having to deal with any inconvenient emotions I might develop through years of marriage.”
Ewan stared at her. How was it possible that a man could be with Charlotte, could touch her, could hold her, could spend any time with her and not love her? Had the earl been mad?
But there was another reaction that her quiet confession revealed to him. One that was very dangerous considering their current situation. Ewan was glad. Glad that she hadn’t loved another man. Glad that the earl hadn’t loved her. He might have touched her body, but he’d never gotten near her heart.
Ewan hated himself for that. He could well imagine her years of marriage must have been empty if there was so little connection between them. That was no reason for celebration, especially since his own love for her could lead to so little.
He forced a smile on his face and signed, “I have been a poor host. We have a little time before breakfast will be ready for us. Would you like your tour now?”
Her expression brightened, the darker expression on her face fading. “I would love that. Please, lead the way—I cannot wait to see it all.”
He hesitated a fraction, then held out an elbow to her. She looked at his face, then the offering and slowly slid her hand into the crook of his arm. He felt the weight of it there, the gentle pressure of each of her fingers. He felt her body pressed against his and God, how it made him think dark and dangerous thoughts.
Ones he pushed aside as he led her from the study and up the hallway for a glimpse into the life he now led. The life he knew could never include her.
Charlotte couldn’t control her gasp of delight as Ewan took her into the next room on their grand tour. Every time she thought she’d seen the most wonderful part, something else made her even happier. They’d seen several lovely parlors which looked out at the sea, returned to that library that made her heart skip a beat, and now they entered a huge music room with instruments strewn about, just waiting to be played.
She turned toward Ewan with a clap of her hands. “You saved this because you know how I love to play.”
His wry smile gave him away even before he nodded and signed, “Seeing you play is one of my greatest pleasures.”
Her heart leapt at the compliment, at the expression on his face when he said it. There was desire there, of course, but also something deeper. Something that she wanted so very, very badly.
She stepped toward him, the allure of the musical instruments muted by the allure of him. His eyes widened a fraction and he turned partially away as he signed, “Come, there’s much more to see.”
She frowned, but forced herself not to argue, to push as she followed him into the hallway. They were crossing from one wing of the house into another, and as he reached the double doors that made up the pass way, he let out a long breath. She stopped, staring as he opened them and revealed a portrait gallery.
These pictures weren’t like the happy ones he kept close to him in the master bedroom. These were of dukes past, a family that had rejected Ewan, and from the look on his face, he felt that as keenly as she did. He stayed stock still, staring into the room like just entering it might make those portraits come alive and the people within would begin to bully him.
She pushed past him gently and stepped into the room. Dozens of staring eyes looked down on her. It was eerie, but then she’d never liked a portrait gallery in any home, including her brother’s. For Ewan this experience had to be far worse.
“They’re always painted so sternly, aren’t they?” she said, a way to gently break the tension and unguarded pain that now flowed across his handsome face.
He nodded. “The ones I had the displeasure of knowing were stern,” he signed swiftly. His fingers faltered and he shook them out before he continued, “There was no kindness in my father, nor in his brothers. Nor in my own.”
She was silent in the face of his admission. This was yet another topic they very rarely broached. She had always wanted to avoid paining him with a reminder of the past that had been so difficult, but now she moved toward him and took his hand.
“I remember how he spoke about you,” she said, “That terrible day when he abandoned you to Matthew’s family. I know that he was worse to you when you were alone with him. Will you tell me a little?”
Ewan squeezed his eyes shut at her soft question. Just the words brought back a cascade of memories that flowed over him, pushing him under, drowning him with their weight and the depth of the pain they stirred.
“I was damaged,” he signed slowly, using letters rather than signs for words so that the tide of the confession was slowed a bit. So that he was forced to focus on what he was spelling out rather than what those words meant. It didn’t help. His chest still hurt. “He saw me as a reflection on himself. He hated me for making him look…weak.”
He could see his father now. Tall, broad, red with anger. Screeching at him to speak. His mother, standing by impassively, watching it all with a rather bored expression. How he had tried, straining his throat until it felt raw, pushing air until there was none left in his lungs.
Failing. Always failing.
“He was weak because he hurt a child,” Charlotte said, her gentle voice drawing him from that vivid past and back into the present. “He was weak because he could not see past something that does not define you any more than your hair color or your eye color does.”
“How can you say that?” he signed, his heart throbbing as he stared at her.
She shrugged. “Because it’s true. Of course it is part of you. An important part. But you are Ewan because you are brilliant. You are Ewan because you are kind. You are Ewan because you are loyal.”
“I am the Silent Duke,” he jerked out, his hands shaking as he signed those terrible words. A nickname he hated.
“You are Ewan,” she whispered, and now she was moving toward him, tracing his cheek with her fingertip. Loving him with her eyes. Pretending the rest didn’t matter. “How he treated you was abominable. But I also saw how your uncle treated you. Doesn’t that count for something too?”
He thought of his uncle Aldous. Also tall, taller than his father. Broader than his father. The man who smiled and ruffled hair. The man who was stern only when Ewan didn’t try. The man who was proud of him.
“Of course it counts,” he signed. “Without Aldous and Mary, I would have been lost. Sent to that asylum to rot as my father wished.”
He heard her suck in her breath, saw her flinch at the thought. But she let him continue.
“That he loved me meant the world to me. But you must understand, Charlotte, it isn’t his voice that is in my head. And it isn’t his voice that matches most in Society when it comes to those who aren’t…” He faltered before his fingers slashed out one word. “Perfect.”
“And their voices matter more?” she asked. “More than Aldous and Mary, more than Matthew, more than Baldwin and all your friends? More than…more than mine?”
“If you had to live in my head, Charlotte, you would understand,” he signed. Then he stepped back, out of the dreaded, hated gallery, back into the brighter hall. “I’m sorry, I find myself tired after this morning. Why don’t you have your breakfast? Perhaps we can reconnect at midday.”
He didn’t wait for her answer, even though it was impolite not to. He just turned on his heel and walked away from her. From all she wanted. From all that he could not give.
He walked away, and it was almost impossible to do it.