The Last Duchess (The Lennox Series)(89)

His peripheral vision caught the sight of the blood on her gown –her blood. Only minutes ago, he’d thought she might be dead, and he’d wanted to die too. Why, and how, could he be cruel to her? Now she was crying, wounded and asking for some way to defend herself. He was truly a despicable man.

What he did next took every ounce of courage he had, but he knew if he didn’t, they would be set upon a road that afforded no return.

He snatched her to him and nearly smothered her in his embrace. “I don’t hate you at all, Jane, and you’re correct, as usual. I admire and desire you. I enjoy your company, your body, your intelligence. I hold you in great affection, surely you know this.” He stroked her hair with one hand and clasped her close with the other. “I told you once, I don’t want to tender any affection for my wife. I thought you’d gone from me only a while ago and I went a little mad. It’s what I fear above all things, and it’s best you understand it.”

He felt her arms as they went round him and he sighed. She would forgive him, thank God. “After my mother’s death in childbed, my father did go mad. He imagined she was still there, would sit at table and speak to her, pause on the stairs and crook his arm, as though she placed her hand there. He even imagined the babe was alive and well, would go into the nursery and rock an empty cradle. Sometimes he was lucid, and knew he was gone quite mad. It was during one of those times that he realized he might pose a danger to me and Lucy, and he summarily packed us off to live with his sister. I never saw him again. He died alone some ten years later, while I was at Cambridge. They told me his hair was down to his hips, his fingernails were grotesquely long, and he wandered the halls of Eastchase in his nightshirt, talking to his duchess.”

She didn’t speak, but rubbed her nose against his throat and made a soft sound of pain, as if what he said was terribly hurtful. He had no choice but to continue.

“He’d allowed the estates to fall into disrepair and was perilously close to completely destitute. I inherited a pile in Devonshire, another in Yorkshire, one in Cornwall, and Beckinsale House. He’d long since sold the London townhouse and gave the money to a man who came to the kitchen door at Eastchase, offering to repair Cook’s pots. He sold everything that wasn’t entailed, including all of the family jewelry, some pieces hundreds of years old, and gave that money away as well. I had Lucy to think of, and my first order of business was to get her away from our aunt as quickly as possible. She’s four years my junior, was only fourteen at the time, but already worn down by the hateful, cold woman it pains me to call kin. We moved back to Eastchase Hall and were close to penniless when I began to rebuild what my father had lost, amongst the evidence of his madness. He’d broken all the mirrors in the house and destroyed the ancestral portraits. He removed the carved balustrade from the grand staircase and burned it, piece by piece. He died when he tripped on the stairs and tumbled from the edge to the hall below.”

Her voice was a whisper against his neck. “Why did someone not take him to an asylum, where he could be watched and unable to harm himself?”

“His sister was the only one who could do it, his only relative of age, and she never acknowledged his madness, wouldn’t see it because she did not wish to. Even after his death, while I worked to rebuild all he’d lost, she insisted my father merely had a run of bad luck. She demanded to have a hand in my business and it was difficult to dissuade her. She insisted upon sponsoring Lucy when she came out, but I wouldn’t allow it. I asked Twykham’s previous wife, and she was kind enough to lend her assistance. Once Lucy married Bonderant, I felt a great weight lifted, except that I still had the duty of providing an heir to the title and holdings. I felt I owed it to my ancestors to retain all of it, especially the title, as some measure of recompense for the tarnish it was given by my father.”

His arms tightened round her and he sighed into her hair. “There are times I wonder if I’m cursed, Jane. I’m responsible for the deaths of three women, all of them very young, completely innocent. I purposefully didn’t marry for love, or even affection, though I did grow to be fond of Annabel. Surely you can understand why I’ll never be able to truly love you as you deserve? I like you, want to be with you, desire you, but to love you, knowing the risk of losing you, I cannot do. I can’t go mad, Jane. Too many depend upon me, and I’ll not abandon them as my father did.”

“I don’t ask for or expect you to love me, Michael. I only ask for your respect, and that you not lash out and be cruel when you perceive I’m too close.”