If I Only Had a Duke(43)

"Two weeks." Alec searched the deck and lowered his voice. "The secret stays with us," he said urgently. "I'm a Counsellor at Law in New York. I don't want to disrupt the life I've built for myself there."

"That's just plain selfish!" Thea wheeled on Alec like a lioness protecting her den. "You say the duke is heartless but what about you, Mr. O'Roarke? Can you think of what your brother is feeling right now? He loves you. He's been grieving for you this entire time. His whole life he's been atoning for the imagined sin of letting go of your hand, that day on the beach. Believing he was responsible for your death."

Alec's gaze faltered for a moment. "Twenty years have passed. Please. Just leave and pretend this never happened."

"You truly want us to leave?" Dalton asked. Pain clenched his chest.

Go back to the house.

I don't want you following me.

This was what he deserved.

He gripped the leather cord around his neck so hard it broke off in his hand. He ripped it off and threw it on the deck.

Thea glanced down at the bloodred fossil and then shook her head. "We're not leaving."

She took a step toward Alec. "Not until you two talk to each other like men instead of snarling beasts."

Alec closed his eyes briefly. "Please, my lady. I don't want any trouble."

Thea's eyes flashed bluer than Dalton had ever seen them. "Your brother has gone searching for trouble in every gaming hell across London. Avenging your father's sins and protecting the helpless victims of the gambling world."

Dalton's chest swelled with pride at the way she leapt to his defense, but clearly Alec was set on keeping the past buried. "Thea." He clasped her hand. "We should leave now."

The sharp point of her chin raised defiantly. "No. Not yet." She widened her stance and addressed Alec. "Did O'Roarke also tell you about your mother?" she demanded. "How he broke her heart by stealing you? How she hasn't left her house in ten years and is only a shell of a woman?"

Before Alec could answer, a small figure darted across the deck and flung his arms around Alec's legs.

"Father?" The child was about six years of age with reddish-brown hair and wide, hazel eyes. He gazed up at Alec. "Why are you angry? Who are these visitors? Aren't we setting sail now?"

Alec ruffled the boy's hair. "I'm not angry, Van. And these visitors are leaving. Go below and find Ned, there's a good boy."

Was Van his nephew? Did that mean Alec had a wife? The boy's small face tugged at Dalton's heart, dredging up memories of Alec when he was that age.

The boy stared at Dalton. "How did you come by that cut across your jaw? Did you fight a duel?"

He drew himself up tall and straight. "I'm a great swordsman." He made a slashing motion as if he held a fencing sword. "No one escapes my blade."

Dalton dropped to his knees so he was on eye level with the lad. "You'll have to work on that forehand stroke. You need a good fencing master."

Van pulled on his father's hand. "May I have a fencing master?"

Alec unclasped his son's hands and took him by the shoulders. "Go below, Donovan."

So Van was short for Donovan. Dalton had a nephew.

This was so much to absorb.

Thea smiled and bent toward Van. "The duke could be your fencing master."

Alec tensed.

Van turned to Dalton, his eyes wide and shining. "You're a duke? I've never met a duke before!"

"Go below," Alec said firmly. "Now."

"But I want to talk to the duke," the boy protested.

Alec pointed to the doorway. "Now."

Van left reluctantly, shuffling his feet and casting lingering glances back at Dalton.

Alec waited until the boy was gone before rounding on Dalton and Thea, his entire body shaking. "I won't have my son corrupted. He'll never know the taint in his blood."

Dalton nodded. "We're leaving."

"Dalton, please," Thea urged. "If your mother was able to see her son, and met her grandson, it would help her so. I know it would. You have to explain, you have to fight-"   





 

"I'm through with fighting," Dalton said, bowing his shoulders.

Alec nodded tersely. "Thank you."

Dalton forced himself to turn his back on his brother and lead Thea off the deck.

Alec.

Not dead.

His mind still reeled with shock and there was still that churning of hope in his gut . . . but he knew one thing.

Alec didn't want him there. And so he had to leave.



Thea couldn't believe they were just leaving. She glared at Dalton but he avoided her eyes, using his strength to hustle her along the dock toward the waiting carriage.

She tried to dig her boots into the planks but he was too powerful. He easily kept her walking, fairly lifting her off the ground.

"I'll carry you to that carriage if I have to," he muttered, his face dark and closed.

Ominous dark clouds had overtaken the sky during their conversation.

There would be a downpour soon.

No sunshine for viewing paintings today.

"But," Thea sputtered. "You need to go back there, find a way to convince him to go to London. You can't just let his ship leave, Dalton. You can't do that."

He kept marching, his arm an implacable force around her waist. "Not my choice. He told me to leave. I left."

"That child can't be more than six years old. He's resilient. Adaptable. He'd adjust to the idea of having a new identity. Should it be your brother's choice to deny his son a grandmother?"

Dalton set his jaw. "He doesn't want the boy to know he's half-British and a descendant of a corrupt, evil aristocrat."

"But that's cowardly!"

"It's his choice."

"He doesn't know you like I know you." Thea curled her fingers around his forearm in a vain attempt to slow their forward motion. "You must go back there and speak to him. Before the ship leaves. Convince him he's wrong. If he got to know you he would want his son to have an uncle. A strong, kind uncle to guide him."

Why were his eyes so cold? Why did he shake his big, stubborn head like that?

"I don't know what to think, Thea. All this time I thought he was dead. Maybe it's better this way. Better for the truth to stay buried."

"No! I don't accept that." Thea clutched his hand, trying to make him understand. "I don't accept that our fates are written in stone. As long as we draw breath we can change. Until we're only bones resting in a crypt we have the power to shape our own destinies."

Dalton didn't even answer her impassioned speech. He merely opened the carriage door, lifted her by the waist, and set her inside.

He climbed in after her, cutting off all escape.

As the carriage wheels began to spin, carrying them over the uneven planks of the pier, Thea clenched her fists in her lap.

Obviously she wasn't going to be able to talk sense into him. It was so maddening.

The man was too stubborn.

He was letting his chance at happiness and wholeness slip away on the tide. It made her want to cry.

He sat beside her, heavily cloaked in silence, and she could almost believe that he was heartless and cruel and everything his brother had accused him of being.

Except she knew better.

She knew he had a heart. And right now that heart was grieving for the brother he'd lost once and was in danger of losing again.

She wanted to comfort him, help him make sense of the turmoil of emotion he must be feeling. But he was grieving in the only way he knew how-by shutting away his feelings and keeping her out.

The carriage kept an easy pace along South King Road. The green fields and estates of Lough Mahon that she'd used to delight in leaving her cold now.

"Turn the carriage around, Dalton." She took his hand. "You'll regret this the rest of your life."

A muscle tensed beneath the jagged scar across his jaw. "It's better this way," he finally said.

"How is it better?"

"It's too complicated. Alec is right to leave the past buried."

"You stubborn arse," she choked out.

"You don't know the half of it," he replied cryptically, retracting his hand.

What did that mean?

"It's twenty minutes to Ballybrack," he said in an emotionless voice.

"We're not going to Balfry?"

He shook his head and turned away, staring out the window.

The rain started then.

A sudden spring downpour; the sky turned dark, just like her thoughts.

Relentless needles of water. Rain running in rivulets down the carriage windows.

Two can play the silence game, thought Thea.

She wrapped her cloak tightly around her arms and shifted to the far side of the carriage.

It was all going so wrong. Finding his brother should have freed Dalton. Instead he'd only put up more barriers.   





 

Finally they arrived and the dear, familiar whitewashed walls and trailing rose vines of Ballybrack Cottage filled the carriage windows.

Her heart couldn't help but lift at the sight. Aunt Emma wouldn't be outside in this rain. She'd be sitting by the parlor fire, reading a book about beekeeping methods, or knitting socks for neighboring tenant families.

She'd bustle into the kitchen to put on the kettle.

And the duke would have some of her homemade apricot and honey preserves.

Maybe their sweetness would improve the beast's temperament.

One could always hope.

He helped her down from the carriage, still avoiding her eyes, and walked with her to the front door.