Forever and a Day (26 page)

His father was anything but pleased and rambled on and on about how stupid he was to have destroyed his own happiness by his lack of patience and tact. The duke insisted that he call on Lady Morrow with an apology and try to get her to agree to breaking off the agreement with Yardley. Roderick refused to degrade what little he was worth and told his own father to go to hell. If Margaret wasn’t about to contest the marriage, why should he?

Within days, a wedding was set to take place in June, though it was not his own. Lady Margaret and his brother formally announced their engagement before all of London. Yardley, whose idea of true literature was
The Accomplished Whore,
had at long last sought to abandon whoring to become a married man, claiming
Roderick’s
woman for his own.

His father, who knew Yardley’s intentions were simply to best his brother, had repeatedly tried to talk Yardley out of it, but Yardley insisted no other woman would do and that it wasn’t
his
fault Roderick hadn’t been able to impress Lady Morrow.

Barely a day after the engagement had been announced, Roderick was further stunned when Margaret appeared at his door late one night, cloaked from head to toe in her scullery maid’s clothing. She had even smudged her face with ash to keep anyone from recognizing her. She begged that he forgive her for submitting to her mother’s wishes but that she still loved him.

He told her to leave.

She wouldn’t.

So he grabbed her by the arm to lead her straight back to that front door, but Margaret, damn her, grabbed
him
and kissed him with an unnerving passion that ended whatever rational thought he’d placed in his head since he was four. All was lost. From that moment on, he only sought to listen to the beat of his own heart, no matter how erratic or deranged it was.

Whilst they frantically and savagely kissed, they eventually stumbled off into his study to ensure their privacy and closed the doors. They kept kissing and kissing until he lost a cravat and she lost a bonnet. Everything was slowly fumbled off of their bodies one by one, until they were naked.

Though they hesitated every now and then in the silence of his study, knowing they shouldn’t, the passion between them was far too great, and to his disbelief and joy, Margaret begged that he ruin her so that they could be together.

He couldn’t say no.

Or rather…he
wouldn’t
say no.

He ardently penetrated her virginity with his own, branding her and himself for life. When they were virgins no more but well-sated sinners, he cradled her softness against his chest and informed her that he would sell everything of worth so they could leave to Paris within the week. What did it matter if they no longer lived like kings and respectable society turned against them? All that mattered was seeing their love crowned.

Margaret quietly eased out of his arms and eventually whispered, “We cannot publicly shame our families by disappearing to Paris. It would slaughter my mother’s name and all would turn against her, blaming her for my sins. She wouldn’t survive this.”

He grabbed her and yanked her back into his arms. “What will you have us do, then? Live here? It would be hell of the worst sort, no better by any means. London would spit at all that we represent and my father could very well disown me, given that your banns have already been printed and announced in church.”

She wouldn’t look at him and only half nodded as if in a daze, just now realizing the futility of what she’d done. “’Tis obvious what must be done. I do not wish you disowned or shamed, nor do I wish the same for my mother. I must therefore…marry your brother.”

“Marry him?”
he seethed out, shaking her in savage restraint. “But you are mine now, Margaret.
Mine,
damn you. Not his.”

She still wouldn’t look at him. Her hand trembled as she swiped away loose strands of blond hair from her cheek. “What choice have I in this? My mother wills it and your brother and all of London and the church expect it.”

And so the inner rot within him truly began.

Oh, how he hated her. How he hated her for not only sacrificing herself in the name of everyone and everything around her, making her own heart and dignity bleed, but he hated her for seizing the last of his own heart and his virginity, which he had sought to gift to his own wife on his wedding night. Now it would appear he had nothing to gift. It had all been taken away.

What a fool he’d been to think he could actually love a woman within his circle without turning it into superficial duty and lies. Every last woman of the aristocracy was bred to obey the rules of their elders and their circle by putting duty before their hearts, even when that duty was rotten to its core and undeserving of being honored.

U
NWILLING
TO
FACE
HIS
BROTHER
after what he had done, let alone attend the wedding that should have been his, Roderick wordlessly left London a week before Yardley made it to the altar. He went to Paris with a university friend instead.

Napoleon Bonaparte had wronged his beautiful France by making the world think the worst of it, because Paris, sweet Paris, was the breath of glorious air he’d been gasping for. He extended his stay beyond the mere month he had originally arranged and decided to stay for another five.

Everything about Paris was not only riveting but ravishing. Aside from the people, the food, the music, the gardens and the streets, delightful discoveries of incredible books like
La citoyenne Roland,
sitting crookedly upon dusty old shelves of quiet bookshops, made him all the more thankful to be part of everything known as France.

He was pleased to discover that the women in Paris, unlike those in London, could be paged through and opened like books without snapping any of their bindings. French women were by far more intelligent and valued the real worth of a man, be he a first son or a second or a third. He loved them all for it, and they, in turn, loved him because he always paid the bill.

Although he generously showered countless women with gifts, no matter the expense or her status or lack thereof, he didn’t do it for a fuck like the rest of the men around him. He did it because he enjoyed sharing his money with those that had none. In truth, when it came to
fucking,
he had become so morbidly selective after what Margaret had done to him that he refused to physically get involved with a woman at all.

He eventually decided, however, that he needed to move on. So he created a list in the hopes of yanking himself out of the abyss by unearthing a woman worthy of him. One he could share a corner of his life with without the expectations of his circle or matrimony.

After staring at a blank parchment for half the night, only
one
requirement came to mind: she had to be able to make him laugh before he’d so much as loosen his cravat. Though his requirement seemed stupid and easily attainable, there wasn’t a woman in Paris who
could
make him laugh. His soul had become far too warped and dark to find
anything
amusing and he hated Margaret
and
his brother all the more because of it.

But thankfully…that changed.

Whilst attending a social event for local artists looking for patrons, he met a certain Mademoiselle Sophie, a flamboyant actress with brick-red hair and a saucy smile who wasn’t at all pretty but was
incredibly
witty and had enough fire to burn down all of Paris. She had a remarkable gift, for she could not only make him laugh about the most foolish things, twisting her words and facial expressions at the most perfect of times, but she could actually make him laugh
so
hard, he’d be close to crying. And God, did he ever need it.

When he eventually decided to invite Sophie up for an evening alone in his flat after weeks and weeks of flirtations spent over champagne, conversation and theater, it was the best decision he’d made. He learned to love sex in a way he never thought possible.

One rainy morning, whilst Sophie lounged naked on his bed, reading aloud the latest in French gossip, which she always lived for, Roderick sipped on his coffee and wandered over to the window of his flat on
rue des Francs-Bourgeois.
As the grid of the streets below laid itself out like a bird’s view of a map, he came to remember his mother’s map for the first time in years. The one he’d buried long ago against the eaves in the garret of his father’s home.

Roderick was appalled, realizing he’d been obsessing over all the wrong things in his life. He knew he had to retrieve that map and do right by it, but he also knew it meant going back to London and facing his brother, whose wedding he’d never attended and whose wife he’d bedded.

Days passed and thoughts of his mother ate away at his ability to breathe and think. After avoiding the reality of the mess he knew he had to return to, Roderick sucked in his pride and returned to London. He toted back not only Sophie, whose friendship he’d grown dependant on, but several trunks filled to the lid with books he’d acquired from Paris. After he settled Sophie and his trunks, he decided to visit his father and announce to the man that he was back from Paris.

As his coach arrived through the vast iron gates leading to the Wentworth home, Tremayne was astounded to glimpse through the narrow glass window a funeral wreath hanging upon his father’s door. The door had even been painted black as had been done on the death of his mother those many, many years ago.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

’Twas dead of the night, when I sat in my dwelling;

One glimmering lamp was expiring and low;

Around, the dark tide of the tempest was swelling.

Along the wild mountains night-ravens were yelling...

—By a Gentleman of the University of Oxford,
St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian, A Romance
(1811)

A
PULSING
KNOT
OVERTOOK
Roderick’s breath. Flinging open the carriage door before it could even roll to a halt, he jumped down, skidding against the gravel beneath his boots, and dashed up the paved stairs leading to the main entrance of his father’s home. He pounded and pounded on the door with a gloved fist, his chest and throat tight as he tried to ignore the funeral wreath.

When the butler unlatched and edged open the door, he shoved past the man and stumbled inside.
“Father?”
he shouted, his voice eerily echoing around him as he sprinted toward the direction of the study where he knew the man would be if he were still alive.
“Father!”

The duke staggered out from the study like an apparition floating out from the shadows into candlelight, making Roderick skid to a halt. The man’s gray hair was unusually shaggy, heavily mussed and oily as if he hadn’t tended to himself in weeks. His evening attire was as disheveled as the rest of him, lacking not only cleanliness but a coat and cravat. A near-empty decanter of brandy was in his hand.

“Father?” Roderick whispered in disbelief.

Tired and darkly solemn eyes that were under the influence of brandy met his across the length of the corridor. “Typhus took Yardley. It took him. No doctor could…save him. I sent word to you in Paris, but obviously neither he nor…I meant anything to you or you would have come sooner. Don’t bother me tonight. We will…talk on the morrow.” He lowered his gaze and staggered back into the study.

The corridor swayed and he along with it.

Roderick fell against a wall and slid down its length, unable to withstand the weight of his own limbs. He’d never received anything. Not a letter. Not a word. Not even a whisper of a word.

Oh, God.

He stayed on the marble floor, a gloved fist pressed against his temple, too overwhelmed to do much of anything. When the servants had commenced lighting more lamps and candles to keep him from sitting in darkness, Roderick willed himself to stand on booted feet. A part of him still refused to believe that Yardley was gone.

Removing a lit candle from the nearest sconce, he drifted up the stairs he’d climbed so many times in his youth and turned down the corridor, pausing before Yardley’s old bedchamber. The door was ajar and the room softly lit by a lone lamp.

Roderick quietly wandered inside, the lingering smell of leather and shoe polish reminding him of Yardley. Upon glimpsing the four-poster bed, Roderick paused, the candle almost slipping from his trembling gloved fingers. A faded red ceremonial sash and a blunted sword had both been set upon the bed linens as if Yardley would trot into the room at any moment in the form of a child, snatch them up and don them, challenging Roderick to yet another game of Napoleon against British soldier.

Tears stung his eyes. He should have been a better brother. He should have been a better man. Instead, he had proven to be an even bigger prick than Yardley could have ever been. Roderick swung away and blew out the candle with a puff, flinging it to the floor where it rolled out of sight. Stripping his gloves from his hands, he tossed them.

Roderick wandered about the corridors aimlessly until he paused before the small wood door inlaid behind the top stairwell leading into the garret above. He stared at the latch. It had been many years since he’d last opened that door. How was it he’d so heartlessly lost sight of everything that had once meant the world to him?

Creaking open the door, he slowly made his way up into the narrowing garret, a headache pinching his skull. Though he tried to steady his breathing, the horrid ache he felt within his chest wouldn’t go away.

Kneeling before the trunk he’d tucked against the eaves so many years ago, he unbuckled the leather straps and pushed it wide open. Shadows covered its empty bottom. He staggered in disbelief and clung to the edges of the trunk in an effort to balance himself. Every book his mother had given him, including his cherished 1775 edition of Defoe’s
The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,
which held his mother’s map of New York City within its pages, was gone.

It was as if his life had been erased.

After staring at that empty bottom for much too long, he shut its lid and prayed his father had simply placed all of the books into the library. Hefting the leather trunk up into his arms, he made his way down and out of the garret, past Yardley’s old bedchamber, and veered down that vast stairwell leading down to the main floor.

Walking in through the open doors, his heavy steps dissonantly echoed against the expanse of the study. Depositing the trunk before his father’s desk with a thud, he lingered, unable to voice all of the agonizing emotion buried within him.

His father glanced up, the rim of yet another half-empty brandy decanter hovering before his lips. “What is it?”

After a moment of awkward silence, Roderick choked out, “Do you think so little of me as to believe that neither you nor Yardley meant anything to me? You are the only person left in this world that I can love and that I can trust. As for Yardley…he may not have understood me or respected me in the manner that I deserved, and I may not have understood him or respected him in the manner that
he
deserved, but we were brothers. I never received word of his passing whilst I was in Paris. If I had, I would have come. I simply didn’t know.”

His father’s large hand trembled. He swallowed a gulp of brandy and set aside the decanter with a
clink
. Lowering his gaze to his hand, which limply rested on the desk beside the brandy, the duke finally murmured, “The damn post is never reliable. Don’t blame yourself.”

The duke scrubbed his hair and fell back against his leather chair, eyeing him. “Both Lady Morrow and the Marchioness of Yardley have been inquiring as to your whereabouts. I suggest you call on them. Offer whatever comfort they require in the name of your brother.”

Roderick’s throat tightened. He knew full well why they were inquiring. He’d heard the rumors well across into Paris that Margaret’s marriage to Yardley had yielded nothing but misery over its five short months, and with his brother now gone, only one man remained heir to the entire Wentworth estate.
Him
. “I refuse to see either of them.”

His father’s gray brows rose up to his hairline. “You don’t intend to offer your condolences to your own brother’s wife?”

“No. I don’t.”

Color bloomed in his father’s features. He leaned forward in his chair. “If you don’t call on them at least once, London will be left to wonder why and I’ll
not
have whispers floating about my name.” His fist slammed against the desk, causing the brandy within the glass to slosh. “’Tis indecent enough you weren’t here when Yardley was lowered into the ground. I expect you to be devoted not only to the memory of your brother but to the duty you were born to. And now that you have inherited your brother’s title, you will heed the responsibility that accompanies it. You are no longer merely Tremayne. You are now a Yardley.”

Roderick shifted from boot to boot, already feeling himself being fitted into the role his brother had left behind. “I wasn’t born into the role of heir and therefore you cannot expect me to play the part of one. I will devote myself to the memory of my brother by wearing a mourning band for the rest of my days, but I have absolutely no desire to see the marchioness
or
her mother and console them over a death I have no doubt they care little about. They used me to get to Yardley and they will use Yardley’s death to get to me.”

His father glanced toward the entrance of the study and lowered his voice, meeting his gaze. “Yardley seethed on and on about you and the marchioness prior to his death. He claimed you bedded her prior to him taking her to the altar. Is that true? Or was he just being a cad as always?”

Roderick set trembling hands behind his back, the sting of those words biting into the last of what he was. “’Tis true. I had hoped to convince her to run off with me to Paris. Obviously, I did not succeed.”

“Dearest God.”
The duke threw his head back with an exasperated groan. “I would have expected this from your…brother, God rest his soul. He was a man’s man and rough around every edge no matter how many times I took a crop to him. But I would have never expected this from you. What became of that boy I loved so much?”

Roderick swallowed against the tears that overwhelmed him. It was the first time his father had openly admitted to not only having had pride in him but to having loved him. Though little good that did him now. He had destroyed that love and that pride, and, in turn, had destroyed himself.

The duke leaned far forward and into the desk and hissed out a breath. He eyed the empty trunk Roderick had toted into the study and gestured sloppily toward it. “What is that?”

Roderick’s voice faded, remembering why he’d come to him to begin with. “I found it empty up in the garret and wish to inquire as to what has been done with its contents. They held some of my old books.”

“Books?” The duke blinked rapidly. “Ah. Yes. Books.” He nodded and shifted in his seat. “A book collector who’d been visiting with your cousin kept pestering me. So I had the servants wade through everything in the house and let him…take everything away.”

Roderick stared at him in agonizing disbelief. The man had no idea what those books meant to him. “Those books were given to me by Mother.”

His father’s gruff tone softened and he seemed to momentarily appear sober. “What?”

“She gifted them to me shortly before she died. I placed them all in a trunk in the garret to prevent anyone from touching them.”

His father closed his eyes, rubbing the palm of his hand against his temple. “What the hell were they doing up in the garret? Why didn’t you…tell me?”

“I always hid things in the garret with Yardley being prone to burning my books. Something you may or may not remember. Either way, I want those books back. ’Tis all I have of her.”

Reopening his eyes, the duke dropped his hand onto his lap. “The man already left England.”

“Whatever do you mean he left England?” Roderick echoed. “You handed them off to a foreigner?”

“An American. From New York.”

He choked. “
An American from New York?
Dear God. What if he finds the map? What if he thinks it’s of worth and never gives it back?”

His father squinted up at him. “Whatever the devil…what map?”

“The map!”
Roderick roared, unable to contain his own agony. “The one Mother gave me. The one of New York City! The one you threatened to burn every time I pulled it out. I placed it in one of those books for safekeeping and you gave it away!”

His father’s lips parted. “I didn’t know.”

Roderick squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to lull his tone and his stance. “Why did she give it to me? What was it? What did it mean? And why was it so oddly separated into pieces?”