Forever and a Day (28 page)

Her thick golden hair had been swept up into a mature top knot as opposed to those debutante curls she used to wear. She turned and slid both paneled doors shut.

She turned back toward him, silently crossing the room, and paused to linger before him. The delicate scent of lilacs bloomed around him, heightening his awareness of her. She reached out a bare hand and touched his arm. “You came.”

He pushed away her hand. “Not for the reasons you think.”

She flushed, her features growing tight. Taking back the distance he’d put between them, she leaned toward him and awkwardly forced her warm fingers into his hand.

Roderick stiffened as the heat of her soft hand warmed his own. Jerking his hand out of hers, he asked tonelessly, “Did you at least come to love him? Give me peace and assure me you did.”

“I wish I could give you peace in that.” She leaned toward him and whispered with a vivid angst that penetrated her blue eyes, “Yardley knew about us. I told him days into our marriage. I was so disgusted with myself, and with everything, I was hoping that his anger would cast me out so that I could join you in Paris. Unnervingly, it had the opposite effect. Yardley became so morbidly driven to replace you and refused to let me out of his sight, even for a moment. He commenced dictating when and how my heart should beat, much like my mother did, which only made me hate him all the more. But it was God Himself, in the end, who dictated when and how
his
heart should beat by making it stop altogether.”

She set herself against the desk, tears streaming down her face. “I am done submitting myself to others at the cost of my sanity. Please tell me that something remains of your love for me so that I may crawl across whatever broken glass you lay before me in the hopes of reclaiming what had once been.”

Roderick glanced toward her, his pulse thundering against his skull. He couldn’t breathe knowing that she had chosen
everything
over their love. Everything.

The scent of lilacs and the brandy still warming his veins twisted his common sense as the sparse candlelight within the room blurred. He veered toward her and savagely yanked her up off the desk. “You knowingly destroyed me and for that I will never be able to forgive you. You had your chance to prove yourself to me when it counted most and you failed.”

She let out a sob. “Tremayne. My heart never ceased beating for you. Not once. Please. Show me that you still—” Her hands jumped to his face and tried to pull him down toward her lips as she had that night when she had first seduced his naive soul.

Roderick grabbed her hands and violently shoved them away, stumbling back in disbelief. “I ask that if there is any compassion or remorse left within you, that you cease this. Cease loving me, because I have long ceased loving you.”

Her anguished sob rippled through the air. “Tremayne—”

“’Tis Lord Yardley now, my lady. Sadly. I have inherited my brother’s name and, with it, it would seem, his heart. I am done with you and this. Do you understand me? I am done and ask that you never call upon me or whisper my name again.” Swinging away, Roderick staggered out, feeling as if he had
finally
set a part of his condemned soul free.

The following morning, whilst vomiting his excesses and wincing against every noise, he left London with his father to begin his journey to New York. While his father discussed matters of the estate and all that would now be his, Roderick couldn’t help but loathe himself to no end knowing at what cost the spare had become the heir.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

To save a man’s life against his will

is the same as killing him.

—Horace,
Ars Poetica
(18 BC)

Adelphi Hotel
The present hour of 12:45 p.m.

C
LASPING
THE
BLACK
MOURNING
band against the upper biceps of his gray morning coat in reminder of all that had once been, Roderick lingered before his father’s door marked 21. Drawing in a ragged breath, he shifted toward the closed door and, after hesitating, knocked.

“Yes?” the duke called out from within.

Roderick willed strength into his voice. “’Tis I.”

There was a pause. “The door is unlocked.”

Pushing down on the latch, Roderick opened the door leading into his father’s suite and eased into the lavish room, quietly closing it behind him.

The duke glanced up from the unfolded newspaper he’d been reading in a chair set in the far corner of the room. Refolding his newspaper, he slapped it onto the mahogany side table next to him and rose, coming toward him.

Letting out a low whistle, the duke chided gently, “You clean up rather well.”

Roderick stripped his top hat from his still-damp hair the valet had trimmed, and quickly strode over to the man, grabbing hold of his father with one hefting arm. Fiercely holding his father against his chest, as if he were not a man but a boy, he whispered, “Forgive me for not having loved you in the way you deserved.”

The duke stiffened, wrapping awkward arms around him. He patted his back. “What honor is this?”

Pulling away, Roderick confessed, “I missed knowing who you were and what you meant to me and ask that you forgive me for treating you with disdain when I last saw you.” Roderick placed his top hat back onto his head, angling it in preparation for the long walk he had yet to take, and grabbed those broad shoulders, squaring the duke toward himself so he might better look at his aged face and dark brown eyes. “I remember what had once been.”

Astonished gray brows rose. Blinking several times, his father intently searched his face. “You remember me?”

“That I do.”

“How? What happened? I don’t understand.”

Roderick shrugged. “It was like God Himself had touched a finger to my head.”

The duke stepped away and pointed at him, issuing the challenge of, “Tell me something that only you would know about me. I want to know this is real. I want to know that your mind is what it should be.”

Roderick couldn’t help but smirk. “Faith was never enough for you, was it? All right. What do I know of you, O Father? I remember how you always roared across the house before cropping Yardley. It felt like all you ever did on the hour was roar and crop Yardley on my behalf. Which I did appreciate.”

A boisterous laugh rippled through the air. “Now, why is it you would go and remember something like
that
about me? Though I will admit that boy had the devil in him. All of hell, actually.”

“That he did,” Roderick drawled. “Good old Yardley.”

The duke fell quiet, lowering his gaze. “Mischief-laced though he was, he was still my boy. It wasn’t right he died so young.”

Roderick swallowed, reached out and squeezed his father’s shoulder. “No. It wasn’t. And my biggest regret is that I didn’t make an effort to guide him more. I only judged him.”

“Nothing would have ever changed him. He was what he was.” Drawing in a huge breath and letting it out, the duke shook his head and eyed him. “Please tell me we are set to leave in ten days, as planned, because I am well and done with this piss of a city. We’ve done everything we set out to do. My Augustine at long last knows peace. My only regret is that she never had the chance to see him before she…” His voice trailed off.

Roderick let his hand drop away from his father’s shoulder, tensing from the reality that he might never remember what had happened since leaving England. “Though I remember quite a bit, I cannot remember getting on that boat or what happened thereafter. What happened? However did we find Atwood? Was it the map? And why isn’t he coming home with us? Doesn’t he wish to reclaim all that is rightfully his, given he is the sole heir to the Sumner estate?”

The duke swiped his face and swung away. “If he goes back to England, it would mean facing his parents and the past before all of London. You have no idea what that poor boy has been through, Yardley. It would be a damn rag-gossiping frenzy of the worst sort that would drag itself through every last court and torment London’s base understanding of humanity.”

Roderick’s eyes widened. “You mean…?”

The duke nodded grimly. “According to Atwood, your grandfather had wronged an impassioned man he shouldn’t have. A man who then sought to avenge himself by taking the one thing that mattered most to him—his son.”

Sucking in a breath, he edged back. “Whatever the hell did he do to the man to make him do such a thing?”

The duke swung back toward him. “’Tis a story deserving of its own book. One we will discuss throughout our journey to London, and one that must
never
leave your lips until Atwood is ready to emerge on his own.” His father paused and shook his head. “And now you wish to make an even bigger mess of our lives by dragging yet
another
poor soul into it.”

Roderick slowly turned away so he didn’t have to reveal his own agony. “You needn’t worry about Georgia. She will not be accompanying us to London.” Closing his eyes, he swallowed and went on, “I intend to end our relationship tonight.”

“What?” His father seemed not to understand.

“I love her far more than I could ever love myself. And so I shall let her go.” Opening his eyes but still keeping his back to his father, Roderick cleared his throat to push a sense of staid calmness into his quaking voice. “I intend to gift her a lifelong yearly annuity in parting and ask that it be arranged through your estate before we leave New York. I need Georgia to not only live incredibly well, but have servants, as her poor hands are so damn roughened by work they will require years of rest. She wasn’t deserving of being dragged into my life. She deserves more than this. She deserves more than me.” When only mere silence hummed, Roderick turned to his father.

The duke’s features were still morbidly stoic as if he were not involved in their conversation at all.

Roderick stared. “You will go to the bank before we leave New York and arrange an annuity of five thousand a year. Do you understand?”

His father glanced away and half nodded. “I will call on the bank this afternoon if that is what you want.”

Roderick threw back his head, almost causing his top hat to fall away, and rapidly blinked back tears he swore he wouldn’t cry. In a choked tone, he confided, “It will allow me a measure of peace.”

“The entire estate is set to go to your pocket, anyway,” the duke muttered. “What do I care how much of it goes where?”

Roderick swallowed, leveling his head again and adjusting his morning coat about his frame. He cleared his throat. “I am set to go for a long walk about the city on my own, and will be gone for most of the day and most likely well into the evening, depending on where my mood takes me. I have to gather my thoughts about how the hell I am going to announce all of this to Georgia without breaking her.”

He winced and glanced away. “She expects me at her door at nine tonight, so I have no choice but to be back by then. That said…I wanted you to know that despite all that has come to pass, I never sought to willfully dishonor you or her and will
never
shame our name again by involving myself with another woman, be that woman of our circle or not. I made that decision after Margaret and don’t even know what the hell I was thinking when I still had full possession of my wits. Sadly, my circle has too many expectations and I cannot willfully mold Georgia into becoming something she is not and expect the woman I love to survive. She won’t. She just won’t.”

E
ARLY
THAT
EVENING
,
AND
ALONE
at last from the flurry of the female servants who had bathed her, oiled her, dried her, massaged her, clothed her and tugged and pushed and pulled her freshly washed hair in every direction to assemble it into ringlets and a coif, Georgia spent most of her afternoon wandering about her lavish room. She had purposefully locked herself away to avoid Robinson. She had even supped alone in the room with a tray laden with poached salmon and creamed carrots that almost made her faint in well-pleasured anguish when they touched her lips.

The entire world appeared to be hers, and yet with Robinson putting her at a distance, it was meaningless. Adjusting the belt on the embroidered rose-colored robe she’d been wrapped in after a divine bath scented with orange blossoms, she padded over to the sideboard that had been arranged with female toiletries the chambermaid had methodically set out for her.

Though she tried to recall what was what—the woman had rattled off all of the cosmetics so fast—she really couldn’t remember. Leaning toward the silver tray laden with small glass bottles and tins, she poked at the open tin of rose rouge that for some reason the chambermaid had said was
green
rouge. The woman must have been color-blind.

Either way, good rouge went for a quarter a piece in stores and it was obvious this here was good rouge. Georgia had always wanted to buy a tin and see if it could make her prettier, but thought it vain and a waste of money. But now…it kneeled before her as if she were a queen and whimpered to be of service.

Georgia smiled and excitedly plucked it up along with the small bristled brush set next to it. Perhaps she could make herself pretty enough to make Robinson think twice about saying no to her.

Leaning toward the oval gilded mirror hanging above the sideboard, she held up the tin with the tips of her fingers and dabbed the brush into the powdered substance like she’d seen women do in the shops. Dashing it across each side of her cheekbones, she tilted her head from side to side to observe how it sat.

She leaned closer to the mirror and squinted. It didn’t do a thing. Perhaps she hadn’t put on enough. Dabbing a more generous amount onto the brush, she swiped it across both cheeks and paused. Reddish rouge skid marks streaked her pale skin.

Her eyes widened. “Oh, dear.”

She couldn’t have Robinson seeing her like this. Setting aside the brush and the tin back onto the silver tray with a clatter, she frantically swiped at her cheeks. Pinching her lips together, she leaned in closer to the mirror and rubbed both cheeks hard, her calloused fingers burning her skin. She paused and gawked at her reflection and her poor skin, which was a glaring red.

Georgia groaned and dropped her hand away from her face. She looked like a whore who’d been slapped by too many men in one night. She needed to wash it away.

Glancing down at the array of glass bottles, she grabbed up what she read was angel water. ’Twas an infusion of myrtle flowers and water that the chambermaid claimed would freshen her skin. If it could freshen skin, it could damn well clean it.

She carefully uncorked it and tilted the bottle slightly onto its side to allow a small amount of the pungent, sweet-smelling liquid to trickle out. It splashed out of the bottle, slathering and cooling her entire hand, dripping to the wood floor at her feet.