Thomas would be gone by the time the week was out. The duke was quite sure of it. So sure that he had risked Pamela’s future on a bluff.
But, God, it was a sweet, seductive idea. He got to his feet and glanced toward the fireplace and the chair beside it where Fleur had sat the night before. It was just there they had stood.
She had stopped shaking at his bidding. And she had lifted her face for his kiss and opened her mouth to it. Her arms had come up about his neck and her fingers had played in his hair.
For a few minutes, at least, she had forgotten her fear of him. She had wanted him, as he had wanted her. As he wanted her.
Guilt gnawed at him. He had been outraged at the impropriety of the embrace Sybil and Thomas had been sharing in the long gallery. And yet he had engaged in his own not two hours later with the governess.
Fleur. She was coming to dominate his thoughts by day and haunt his dreams by night. He was coming to live for the moments when he could see her, listen to her music, listen to her voice, see her eyes on his. She was beginning to give light and meaning to his days.
In her he was beginning to glimpse the precious pearl that he had once expected of life.
It was a hard life he had dedicated himself to—a life of celibacy for the past six years, with the single exception of that one brief, dispassionate encounter in London.
With Fleur. With a thin, pale whore who had turned out to be a virgin, who had quietly obeyed his every command and had suffered his penetration of her body with only that small guttural sound and the biting down on her lips. Even such a sordid scene she had played out with dignity. She had been a victim who had sunk to the depths but refused to allow her spirit to be broken.
And he must never hold her again. Never kiss her again. For last night had been a moment for one time only, something that he had not planned. Now that he knew it possible, he would have to guard against its ever happening again. For though his marriage was a heavy burden on him, it was nevertheless a contract he had entered into freely and one he would remain faithful to as far as human frailty would allow.
He might yet have to move Fleur to another post somewhere else, he thought. He was not sure that it would be possible to live in a house with the woman he desired almost more than anything else in life and with his wife, whom he had once loved and with whom he had never lain.
She had cringed from him on their wedding night, screamed at him to get out of her bedchamber. He had told her about his wounds, and of course the disfigurement of his face was there for all to see. He had left her and made no attempt to go to her again until after the birth of Pamela. He had tried to make a friend of her.
But of course, she had believed him the villain who had sent her lover away and then forced her into marriage with himself. What a foolish hope it had been that he could bring her to love him.
The same thing had happened when he went to her two months after Pamela’s birth—the same hysteria and look of deep revulsion. He had talked to her about it the following day and she had told him in her usual breathless, sweet manner, tears swimming in her large blue eyes, that if he ever again tried to touch her she would return to her father’s house.
It was probably at that moment that his love for her had begun to die a rapid death. He had seen finally, and had admitted the truth of what he had seen, the cold selfishness that was hidden only just behind the angelic exterior.
All that was left after his love had died was a deep pity for her. For clearly her love for Thomas had been a monumental passion that she could not kill, even if she had tried. And of course, she had not accepted the truth, and believed that only his own cruelty had separated her from the man who loved her as dearly as she loved him.
The duke sighed and turned to the door. At last, he thought, he could proceed with the day he had planned. At last he could put his own problems behind him for a short while and concentrate on listening to other people’s.
It was only when he was striding toward the stables that he realized he had not eaten breakfast.
And it was only much later that he realized that calling on Duncan Chamberlain was not the thing to have done if he was seeking forgetfulness. For Duncan had asked him how he would feel about losing his governess if she could be persuaded to accept a marriage offer, and he had been forced to smile at his friend and shake his hand and assure him that the whole thing was entirely a matter between him and Miss Hamilton.
He wondered how Chamberlain would feel if he knew how perilously close he had been to having a fist planted right between his eyes.
PETER HOUGHTON ARRIVED BACK from his holiday three days later and regaled Mrs. Laycock, Jarvis, Fleur, and the other upper servants, as they sat at luncheon, with stories of the christening.