Forever and a Day (20 page)

Roderick swayed, fighting the nausea seizing him. “I will set aside everything to make her my wife. I will. Even you. Even my name. Let there be no doubt in that.”

The duke narrowed his gaze and pointed at him rigidly with a black-gloved finger. “If you go against me in this, Yardley, I will strip you of everything, including your yearly annuity, and you will be left with nothing. Is that what you want?”

Roderick let out a shaky breath and forced more power into his voice. “I am not leaving her behind. I’m not.”

The duke dropped his hand to his thigh and lowered his shaven chin against his knotted silk cravat. After a long moment, he confided, “When you marry, Tremayne, it will be a woman worthy of your name and your status. Not this. Not…
thi
s.”

Roderick shifted toward him. “She
is
worthy. Upon all that I am, I swear to you, she is.”

The duke stared at him. “You aren’t even in your own damn mind anymore, boy.” The duke waved toward the rain-slathered window revealing distorted dilapidated wood buildings. “I take it this is Park Lane to you now?”

Roderick shifted his jaw. “Do not mistake what she and I share. You know nothing of it.”

The duke closed his eyes as if unable to look at him anymore and said in a barely contained voice, “Leave her here and don’t complicate your life or mine. I will not say it again. I would sooner disown you than see you marry into a mess.”

Roderick was more ready to fling himself into the arms of poverty and allow his hands to bleed every day on the hour knowing Georgia would be there to kiss it all away, but he
refused
to let Georgia live in the poverty that had quietly eaten away not only her pride, but the faith she had in herself as a woman and as a human being. He would change her life knowing that he was of status and of wealth and in time prove to this staunch man that Georgia deserved far more than dirt.

Roderick leaned toward him and said in a tone that he hoped was rational and persuasive, “I’ll take her to London, then. As my mistress.”

“Tremayne, for God’s sake—”

“Are you informing me I am not permitted to take a wife
or
a mistress?”

The duke gaped. “You mean to actually drag this woman all the way to London?”

“Yes. Now pray convey, what is the amount of this yearly annuity you spoke of earlier? I must ensure she has everything. And I do mean everything. In this, I will not desist. I am not leaving without her. I’m not.”

Those brown eyes hardened, no longer allowing for sympathy. “Your annuity is nine thousand a year, not including what you inherited from your brother. It should be more than enough, unless she plans to eat a barrel of gold on the hour.”

Roderick stared him down. “There is no need for you to insult her. Now stop this carriage so that I may fetch her. Unless, of course, you prefer I altogether stay and abandon my duty to you and my name. Because I will. Do you think it matters if I live in a sty knowing my heart is feasting like a king? Better mud than death to what little remains of my mind and my heart.”

The duke lowered his gaze, his gloved hand visibly trembling as he reached out and grabbed hold of his cane, yanking it up with a single sweep. “You and your heart will be the death of us both. Christ, do you ever remind me of myself in my younger years. ’Tis a curse, is what.” He hit the roof twice with the gold head of that cane, causing the carriage to slow, and glanced toward him. “I am trusting your word in this, Tremayne. Respectable men take on mistresses all the time, but they
don’t
bloody marry them. Is that understood?”

That will change
. “Yes, Your Grace.”

Roderick reached out and swung down on the latch, flinging open the carriage door. Without waiting for the carriage to come to a complete halt, he jumped out into the pelting, whipping rain, bracing himself against the still-moving road beneath him. He stumbled against the hard impact of the slippery mud beneath his boots, sliding against the thick mud.

Regaining his balance, he turned around and squinted against the rain-hazed street. In the distance, he could see Georgia had already turned and was walking in the opposite direction. As the rain came down harder, she gathered up her soaked skirts and sprinted away, kicking up a trail of mud and water.

“Georgia!”
Hundreds of icelike droplets poured down so rapidly he could hardly see as he pumped his arms and legs through the mucked mud squelching against every rapid movement.

“You there!” the duke shouted out to one of the marshals. “Follow him! Lest he altogether drown.”

Roderick sprinted onward toward Georgia, charging through puddles. Arctic spatters of water rose up time and time again, soaking his trousers and boots more and more. He gnashed his teeth as numbness slowly overtook his body.

The hooves of a horse trembled the ground, following him, as Georgia disappeared around a corner where another mud street crossed.

“Georgia!” Roderick dodged oncoming carts and carriages as people stepped out from beneath the eaves of buildings to watch him dash. He sucked in breath after breath, pumping his legs faster and faster until he turned the corner, momentarily sliding to make the turn.

He spotted her disappearing through a narrow stone archway of a stone wall stretching almost the length of the street. Gigantic green-leafed oak trees flourished on the other side of the old wall that hid a looming, abandoned church beyond.

“Georgia!” he yelled above the rain.

Glancing back toward the lone uniformed man on his horse, which was splashing torrents of mud, Robinson pointed the marshal toward the church and direction he was going, before dashing through the narrow stone archway where Georgia had disappeared.

The rain vanished as a canopy of large branches sheltered him from the downpour. The rushing silence pulsed against his ears as a decrepit, perpendicular-style church towered before him within the small courtyard. He swiped away the water from his face and glanced around, finding only quiet, crooked gravestones and mossy grounds bordered by stone walls. It was as if Georgia had never been.

“Georgia?” He jogged through the old churchyard, scanning the empty courtyard. Occasional drops of rain dripped through the branches of the trees, the eerie silence making him wonder if these grounds had ever been touched by the living.

A small ivy-covered stone crypt, separate from the church, made him pause. The mildewed stone had markings that had faded against time and its black iron gate had been left wide open.

He made his way through the open gate. Small mossy steps appeared, leading down into what appeared to be a small pool of water hidden deep within. He stepped down and into the shadowed darkness. Cool, stale air pushed up from the bottom, as if the crypt were breathing.

“Georgia?” he called, his voice echoing around him.

“Robinson?”
a choked voice echoed back.

Relief frilled his soaked body. Step by step, he made his way down toward her, the moist air growing heavier as rotting wood filled his nostrils. Shafts of gray light from the outside world illuminated the scaly, dark walls covered with dead ivy and moss.

Georgia’s shadowed figure kneeled before him at the very last step that disappeared into what appeared to be murky water. She glanced up at him, a soft gray line of light exposing only the right half of her wet face. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

He stepped toward her, tension and frustration knotting his muscles knowing that she thought so little of herself to not only have almost given up on them, but that she would also feel the need to lurk in the shadows of a crypt like some ghost. “I am absolutely
livid,
Georgia, knowing that the moment you realized you were the pauper and I the king, you knelt upon broken glass even as I offered you the means to carry you over it. You will never kneel like that before me or anyone else again, allowing your dignity and all that matters to you to bleed. Do you understand me?
Always
be the woman I know you to be. Be the one who wishes to go west when everyone else is going south. For that is the
only
woman I could ever allow myself to love. Because I need a woman to do more than love me. I need a woman willing to fight for me even when I am unable to fight for myself.”

She lowered her gaze and half nodded, but said nothing.

He swallowed, trying to calm himself. “My real name is Viscount Roderick Gideon Tremayne, though I also appear to go by yet another name. Yardley. I wanted you to know that. For maybe now you will have me.”

She glanced up.

“In truth,” he went on, “I much prefer being Robinson. For he, at least, was a good man. One I relate to.” He let out a shaky breath and stepped closer until he was at her side. He crouched alongside her. “What are you doing in here? ’Tis morbid.”

She touched a finger to the water at her feet. “I always come here.”

He glanced toward her but could barely see the soft, hazy outline of her face. “Why?”

“It’s been my sanctuary for years,” she admitted, her voice drifting and echoing around them. “When Da was still alive, he told me every time we passed this way, that the water sittin’ in this crypt could foretell the future if one had the patience to stare at its reflection long enough. Daft though it may be, I’ve been starin’ at the water since.”

Roderick gazed down at the water below their feet, seeing only the blurred, darkened outline of their figures. “Has it ever foretold anything of worth?”

A harsh laugh escaped her. “Yes. It would seem my future is bleak and undefined as the water itself.”

Roderick leaned toward her and cupped a hand beneath her warm chin, turning her shadowed face to him with chilled fingertips. She lifted her gaze to his and he felt himself melting away. “Your future is so much brighter than you think.” He released her chin and gestured toward the water. “I ask that you tell me what you see.”

She paused. “I don’t see a thing.”

“Yes, you do,” he insisted, pointing at the water before her. “No matter how distorted or shadowed the reflection may be, I ask that you look and tell me what you see.”

She paused, shifting against the wall of the crypt. “I see the dark outline of my face.”

“Exactly.” He rose to his feet. “You are your own future, Georgia, which is probably what your father was trying to say. Because no one can foretell it in the way you can. Sometimes, we become victims of misfortune and the mistakes we bring upon ourselves, but even then, we have the right to fight for what
will
be. Why do you think I am standing here before you? Because you willed it and because I willed it.
We
made our future by chasing it when it mattered most.”

He continued to watch the fuzzy, darkened outline of her face. “I will admit that whilst I stand here and lecture you, I bear my own burdens I have yet to comprehend and face.” He swallowed. “If I were to tell you that in my former life I was a bastard of the worst sort, would you still embrace me for what you now know me to be?”

She stared at him. “Whatever did your father tell you? Or did you…remember it on your own?”

“My father told me and I sense it all to be true. I am unmarried, which is a blessing, to be sure, but it would seem I was romantically involved with my brother’s wife. I am no more, but I was.”