A Necessary Husband (19 page)

But not everything. She would not have Garrett.

The pain of it made her lash out. “You’re calling
me
stubborn? What about you? You still have not settled things with your grandfather,” she accused. “Instead, you are running away again. Why do you hide from your emotions?”

He scowled. “How can you say I hide from my emotions when I have just spent the past hour showing you how much I love you?”

“You say the words,” she said, “and you are an incredible lover. But nothing has really changed with you, Garrett. You still intend to return to America without taking on the responsibilities of your title. You still have left things unsettled with your grandfather. And you still intend to take Meg with you, despite the fact that she’s very happy in England!”

“Didn’t you warn me that Meg isn’t safe here?” he demanded. “Yet now you say I should leave her here.”

“I say you should let her choose.”

“Why? I let you choose, and you didn’t choose me.” He stared at her, eyes bleak. “I don’t know what you want from me, Lucinda. You have turned my world upside down. I want you to be my wife, but I can’t stay here in England. I have a
business to run in Boston, and I have already been away too long.”

“You want to marry me?” she whispered, hope swelling in her breast.

“Of course I want to marry you!” he thundered. “Did you think I wanted you to come home with me to make you my mistress?”

“I didn’t know,” she retorted. “You never asked me to marry you.”

“Will you?”

She stared at him, emotions warring within her. If she married Sir James, she knew what her life would be like—exactly what she had always wanted. But there would be no passion. Affection, fondness, yes. But no love.

If she married Garrett, she would have the passion and the love, but she would have to leave behind everything she had ever known for a life that stretched forward in foggy uncertainty.

What would happen if things did not work out with Garrett? She would be lost and alone in an unfamiliar country. At least in England, she knew where she stood.

She couldn’t rush into this.

“I love you,” she said quietly, admitting it for the first time. “I want nothing more than to be your wife. But if we wed, you intend for us to live in America.”

“Yes.” He took her face in his hands. “Boston is very much like London, Lucinda, only there
isn’t as much social snobbery. In America a man is judged for what he has done with himself, not who his ancestors were.”

“I don’t know if I can do it,” she said, her voice shaking. “I don’t know if I can leave behind everything I have ever known. I need to think.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, disappointment etched on his face. But then he opened them again and smiled at her, caressing her cheeks with his thumbs. “But you are not saying no, right?”

“I’m not saying no,” she agreed. “But
you
need to think as well, Garrett. Your grandfather is an old man. Perhaps you should mend things with him before it is too late.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“If you can ask me to leave my past behind, I can ask you to leave yours behind.”

He dropped his hands from her face and stepped back. “Does it mean so much to you then?”

“I have difficulty with the fact that you refuse to accept your responsibilities.”

“It’s just a fancy title,” he scoffed, slicing his hand through the air dismissively.

“No, it’s more than that,” she told him earnestly. “There are estates attached to that title, and people living on those estates who need and deserve a responsible leader. They cannot exist without one.”

“They have my grandfather.”

“For how long? Garrett, your grandfather is eighty-five years old. It’s a miracle he’s doing as well as he is! But he won’t be able to continue the responsibilities of the peerage for much longer. You need to claim your birthright.”

“Is that what you want in a husband, a fancy English title so you can play lady of the manor?” he snarled.

She jerked as if she had been struck. “How can you say that?”

“I have offered you my name and my life in America to share,” he said. “But that is not good enough for you.”

“You’re twisting my words.”

“Maybe you had better marry Sir James,” he shot back. “Obviously my love cannot compare with fancy estates and the approval of shallow society.”

She stalked to the bed and began to search out her hairpins. “If that’s what you think of me, Garrett, then we have no more to discuss.”

“Then I guess we have no more to discuss.”

She paused, barely able to breathe at the pain that stabbed through her at his words. But she was a survivor. She had survived Malcolm’s obsession, a loveless marriage, and the disapproval and death of her father. She would survive Garrett Lynch.

She just didn’t know if she would have a heart left afterward.

The silence stretched between them. “I will have a man see you home,” Garrett said finally.

“Thank you.” She slowly began to wind her hair into a knot at the base of her neck, keeping her back to him. If she looked into those beautiful blue eyes of his, she knew she would burst into tears.

She heard him come up behind her, felt the heat of his body as he stopped only inches away. Then he touched her, caressing her bare shoulder.

“I have told Meg I will stay for her come-out ball tomorrow night,” he said quietly, “but after that, I am going home.” His fingers tightened on her shoulder. “If you decide to come with me—”

She closed her fingers over his, unable to look at him. Unable to keep the tears at bay any longer. “I know.”

He took his hand away, leaving coldness where the warmth of his flesh had been. “I’ll have someone see you home.”

T
he come-out ball for Miss Margaret Stanton-Lynch was the grandest event of the season.

Meg looked like a young goddess in a pure white gown shot with silver, and pearls adorning her neck, ears, and hair. A coolness still existed between her and Lucinda, but Meg was so excited at a ball being thrown in her honor that she more or less forgot her anger as the guests began to arrive.

Before long, the house was packed to the rafters. The duke led Meg out in the first dance, and after that, eligible young bucks swarmed the young American, vying for her attention.

Lucinda watched the whole thing as if from a distance. If she were the same person she had been weeks ago, she would have basked in this
triumph. Because of her tutelage, Meg was a total social success. The duke had even gone so far as to murmur a compliment to that fact. She should be ecstatic, as all her plans were coming to fruition.

Instead, she felt like a stranger in her own world. She watched the dance of the social players as if she were in the audience at a theater.

Did she really care what these people thought of her?

She waited for shock to strike at such a rebellious notion, but it never came. Amazed at herself, she cautiously explored these new ideas, the total opposite of what she had believed for so many years.

How many lives had been ruined by society’s disapproval? How many innocent girls had ended up in loveless marriages because of one misstep amidst the convoluted rules of the so-called Polite World? How many fortunes had been lost? How many hearts had been broken?

Too many.

Did she really want to spend her life amid these fickle people, people who would turn on her in a moment if they thought it would provide a juicy piece of gossip for their entertainment? She had fought long and hard to do that very thing, yet suddenly it all seemed so foolish. Why had she clung so long to a way of life that had done her more harm than good?

For her father, perhaps. She had failed him by nearly causing a scandal, and his death so soon after her marriage had left her feeling as if there were unfinished business between them. She realized now that she would never get her father’s approval back. He had died before he could give it, and she had to accept that. Perhaps society had taken the place of her father somewhere in her mind, and so she found herself trying to prove herself worthy to a group of people who didn’t care for her or even know her at all.

She should have been trying to prove it to herself.

Yes
. A surge of rightness swept through her, and it was as if someone had lifted her burdens off her shoulders. Why did she work so hard to make herself accepted? She didn’t answer to anyone but herself and her maker.

As she looked around the opulent ballroom, she realized that England’s glittering peers did not provide her with the security she needed in order to be happy. She had to create her own feeling of security within herself, and to do that, she had to be brave enough to trust herself and leave the past behind.

A movement near the ballroom doors caught her eye, and she watched Garrett enter the ballroom.

How different this entrance was from the first
time she had met him! The wild American barbarian was gone, and in his place stood a dashing and elegant marquess who looked every inch the grandson of the Duke of Raynewood.

Garrett had dressed in the plain black that he favored, the starkness broken only by the pure white of his shirt and neck cloth. His dark hair was combed back and fastened in a queue, emphasizing the noble Stanton nose and the slashing eyebrows. His blue eyes glittered like gemstones as he surveyed the throng.

He strolled into the room, no doubt searching for Meg, and Lucinda couldn’t help but notice that he’d walked just as proudly across the deck of his ship as he did through the duke’s ballroom.

They were the same to him, no more, no less.

He turned his head and saw her. For a moment, he hesitated. Then he started across the room toward her.

Her heart pounded as he approached, excited by his mere presence. He didn’t have to say anything, didn’t have to do anything. He had only to exist in the same room with her for her to react to him.

This
was what she wanted. She wanted to feel alive. She wanted to feel beautiful and desired.

This man wanted her, simply and completely. And she wanted him right back.

America suddenly took on a different hue. In
stead of appearing to be a land of dark uncertainty, she now saw it as a bright and shining opportunity for discovery.

And marriage to Garrett seemed even more so.

“May I have this dance, Mrs. Devering?” The familiar voice jerked Lucinda’s gaze away from Garrett. Sir James smiled down at her, having approached without her noticing. She glanced again at Garrett, but all she saw was his back as he retreated into the crowd.

Her ingrained good manners took over. Even as she took Sir James’s hand to accept the dance, she realized that her future might not be as certain as she had once thought it would be.

And the prospect did not alarm her at all.

When Garrett saw Sir James approach Lucinda, he turned and walked away. Once he would have continued on and competed with the other man for Lucinda’s attentions—and won. He would have enjoyed challenging the other male, and he would have enjoyed Lucinda’s outraged reaction as he walked away triumphantly with her on his arm.

But she had to make her own decisions, and he had to let her. Even though it killed him to stand aside and watch her dance in the arms of another man.

He helped himself to a glass of champagne,
wishing it was brandy, and watched the spectacle of Meg’s come-out ball.

Meg was dancing with some red-haired young pup with big ears, and looked like she was having a wonderful time. She looked like she belonged here.

His gut knotted. He didn’t want her to belong here in England. He wanted her to come home with him.

What if she didn’t want to leave?

He sipped the champagne, steering away from those painful thoughts. He didn’t want to contemplate the idea that he might very well have lost everything that mattered to him.

“So you’re leaving tomorrow, are you?” The duke had come up beside him while he wasn’t looking. He glanced at the old man, but his grandfather was watching Meg, a soft smile on his face.

“That’s my plan.”

“Are you thinking to drag Margaret along with you?” Erasmus looked at him then, his dark eyes sharp and searching. “Whether or not she wishes to go?”

A cutting remark rose to Garrett’s lips and hovered there, unsaid. “I don’t know,” he admitted, surprising himself.

He had surprised his grandfather, too. A flash of emotion crossed the old man’s face before he could hide it, and it shocked Garrett to the bone.

Loneliness. And hope.

The all-powerful Duke of Raynewood was just as painfully lonely as he himself often was, but in the duke’s case, it was all his own doing.

Maybe they were more alike than he thought.

The idea made Garrett take another gulp of champagne. He didn’t want to think of his grandfather as human. He didn’t want to look at him and realize that the monster of his childhood was nothing more than a tired old man who suffered the same demons as he did.

Lucinda’s words came back to him.
Didn’t it ever occur to you that he was just as hurt as you were when your father died? Your father was his son. How do you think that made him feel, to know his actions had precipitated the death of his child?

Garrett had no children, but he had Meg, who had at times felt more like his daughter than his sister. How would he feel if he did something that resulted in Meg’s death?

The pain and grief would rival all the fires of hell.

“So you have come to your senses?” his grandfather challenged. “You will allow Margaret to stay?”

Once he would have taken umbrage at the old man’s querulous tone, but now he saw the duke’s aggression for what it was: fear.

“Meg is a grown woman,” he said mildly. “She will make her own decisions.”

Hope flared in the duke’s eyes. “And what of you, boy? Will you stay as well?”

“I can’t.” His gaze strayed to Lucinda.

“I see.”

“I have a business to run,” Garrett continued, looking away as Lucinda slipped out onto the terrace on Sir James’s arm. He met the duke’s gaze. “I don’t expect you to understand, but there are people depending on me for their livelihood. I have already been away too long.”

The duke snorted. “No one would understand better, boy. I have hundreds of people depending on me for the very same thing.” He glanced across the room. “Blast it. Agatha’s gone off again. I’d best wake her.”

The old man set off across the room, leaving Garrett stunned by the fact that the two of them were not so very different after all.

The moon shone full and bright, illuminating the small garden with a sweeping shaft of cool light. Lucinda went to the railing and stared down at the bushes and flowers and the marble statues that glowed in the eerie moonlit night.

She had a feeling she knew why Sir James had sought this moment of privacy with her, and for the first time, she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what he had to say.

He took her hand, drawing her gaze to his face. “Dearest Lucinda—”

“Sir James—” she began in the same moment.

“No, Lucinda, please let me get this out.” He took a deep breath. “It’s been many years since I offered for a woman, and I’m a bit out of practice.”

Lucinda raised one trembling hand to her bosom. “Sweet Lord,” she whispered, uncertain if she was excited or terrified.

“Lucinda, I have always admired you,” Sir James continued. “Your father was my dear friend, and I have watched you grow from a sweet child into a beautiful woman. In that time I have come to care for you a great deal, and I would be honored if you would consent to be my wife.”

As he smiled down at her, his brown eyes warm and kind, emotion clogged her throat.

“I can see you are uncertain,” Sir James said, when she did not respond. She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand, silencing her. “Don’t say anything. Think about my proposal, and I shall return on Thursday for your answer.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “I would like time to consider your kind offer.”

“May I escort you back inside?” he asked, gallantly proffering his arm.

“Actually, I would like to be alone for a few moments,” she said, apology in her voice. “To think.”

“Of course.” He raised her hand to his lips. “Perhaps you might save me a waltz later.”

She gave him a weak smile. “Perhaps.”

He did not press her further. He sketched a brief bow and retreated into the ballroom, a smile on his lips.

Lucinda watched him leave, confusion tangling her thoughts. At last she had what she had always wanted…but she wasn’t sure she wanted it anymore.

She had never expected to have a choice.

The beauty of the garden beckoned her, and she walked down the curving stone steps into the tiny patch of greenery that served as the garden. She sank down on a stone bench, her emotions churning.

She stood at a crossroads. She could walk one path with Sir James at her side and live a life of ease in England as a respected member of the Polite World. Or she could walk the other path with Garrett—become his wife, and go back with him to America. She had no idea what to expect, but with Garrett’s love to sustain her, she had no doubt they could weather any storm.

Both men were wealthy enough to pay off Harry’s debts, and both men were more than enough to discourage Malcolm’s determined pursuit. But which one should she choose?

Sir James would treat her with kindness and
respect. Years of quiet peace stretched before her as Lucinda Whigby. Should she wed Garrett, she had no doubt that the two of them would continue to engage in heated discussions. No doubt she would constantly feel the desire to fling a vase at his head when he was acting stubborn, but when it was over, she would always be secure in his love.

Garrett loved her. Sir James was fond of her. There really was no choice at all.

Garrett was the man she loved, and she would marry him, though it meant possibly leaving England for good. She would miss England, but how bad could America be, if Garrett wanted to return there so badly? And there were things she would
not
miss here, like the snobbery of England’s peerage and the constant fear of scandal. All in all, she might even look forward to going to America.

“Well, well, well,” came a voice that shattered her thoughts and chilled her blood. “Good evening, dear Lucinda.”

Lucinda leaped to her feet as Malcolm stepped out of the shadows of the garden behind her. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, her heart thundering in her chest.

“I was invited to the ball, of course.” The moonlight turned his blond hair to silver gilt as he came closer. He wore dark clothing, which
was why he had blended into the darkness so well. She refused to retreat a step, though every instinct in her body urged her to do just that.

“The ball is in the house, Malcolm,” she said.

“What kind of gentleman would I be if I left a lady all alone in a secluded garden?” he purred. “Unlike your suitor, I would never consider leaving you alone, dear Lucinda.”

The words held a casual menace that froze her with its subtle threat. He reached out and stroked his hand down her cheek. A wave of revulsion shook her free of her trance, and she jerked away from him.

“Keep your hands off me!”

Quick as a snake, he grabbed her by the arms and hauled her up against him. “Never, Lucinda dear. I have waited too long to get my hands on you.”

She struggled, but he was amazingly strong. “Release me at once, Malcolm!”

“You are not the pigeon I had hoped to snare tonight, but I will accept fortune’s choice.”

She opened her mouth to scream, but he swiftly clamped an arm around her struggling form and closed his other hand around her throat. She cast him a frightened look, barely able to breathe, much less summon help.