The Duke's Disaster (R) (9 page)

The same floor from which Noah had personally escorted Thea the last time she’d ventured up here.

“I like her,” Janine said, grinning hugely and looking every inch a Winters. “She’s nice.”

“Lady Thea gets lost, and we know where everything is,” Evelyn reasoned. “She’s been here for days and days, and even if Cousin said we must give her time to settle in, days and days is long enough.”

“What are you young ladies working on, when you’re not paying a call on Mr. Erikson’s beauties?” Thea asked as she sat on a small chair and opened a book on the proportionately small table before her.

“
We’re
Mr. Erikson’s best beauties.” Janine’s tone was preening as she clambered onto Thea’s lap. “He says so all the time.”

“That’s my old storybook.” Evelyn took the opposite seat. “I can read it better than
anybody
. Cousin Noah said so.”

“Rainy days are the best for telling stories,” Thea said, opening the book to a drawing of a fire-breathing dragon attempting to toast an armored knight. “You must each tell me your favorites.”

“My favorites,” said a stern voice from the doorway, “are little girls who obey the very few orders they are given.”

“Hullo, Cousin.” Evelyn and Janine popped to their feet and dipped little curtsies at the unsmiling duke. Thea didn’t so much as glance up from the storybook.

“I met my new friends as we converged on Mr. Erikson’s conservatory,” she said, flipping a page when she wanted to fling the book at His Perishing Grace. “The girls and I were of like mind, thinking perhaps the dreary day had made him or his beauties lonely for callers.”

Noah shot a glower at the maids. “Then by all means take the girls to visit Erikson for a nice long cup of tea, why don’t you?”

“Aye, Your Grace.” In unison. Each maid took a child by the hand, leaving Noah and Thea surrounded by pint-sized furniture, dolls, and toys.

And a huge silence.

Thea stayed where she was, perched on the sturdy little chair, looking at a book of fairy tales but not seeing the knights, dragons, or witches. She saw only a husband, one trying very hard to find a place in the room that would give him strategic advantage in the battle to come.

“They’re good girls,” he said, back to Thea as he stared out a rain-streaked window. “This is the only home they’ve known.”

Thea had spent her entire childhood in pursuit of good-girlhood—fat lot of good that had done her—while Noah had been exercising the privileges of a young, wealthy,
lusty
duke.

She snapped the book closed. “His Grace deigns to pass along a tid-bit.” She enunciated each syllable with biting precision. “Or perhaps, in the spirit of good sportsmanship, we can consider that two tidbits.”

“Thea…” Noah turned to face her, his expression wary. “I won’t have the girls unduly upset because I took a notion to marry, and I’m sure there’s some compromise we can…”

He fell silent as Thea advanced on him, skirts swishing in her fury.

“You lied to me, Noah Winters,” she accused in low, miserable tones. “You lied to me about your own children, and you have been living a lie with me this past week and more. You
judged
me
for my past, but at least I didn’t involve a pair of innocent children in my short-lived attempt at discretion.”

He shoved the dragon book between other tomes on a shelf. “So you’re discreet when you come to the marriage bed unchaste, but I’m a liar?”

“They are
children
,” Thea spat. “Innocent, helpless children who depend on you for the stability of a roof over their heads, and you involved them in your subterfuge.”

Noah had the grace to look chagrined, running a hand through his hair and again turning his back.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said, I. Am. Sorry. Your Grace.”

All the hope, all the possibility Thea had been harboring for their marriage evaporated in the chill spaces between his words.

“It was not well done of me,” he went on, “to think the children wouldn’t be curious about you, and look for every opportunity to inspect you at close range.”

“You are sorry.” Thea came to stand beside him, determined he would not avoid her gaze, even if his expression could freeze boiling water in an instant.

“Yes, Araminthea, I am sorry. Shall I put it in writing for you?”

No angel of common sense appeared to slap a celestial hand over Thea’s mouth, not that such a trifling impediment would have kept her silent.

“Maybe that was my mistake,” she said. “I did not apologize to you in writing for my lack of chastity, and for my failure to find a way to disclose it to you any sooner than I
willingly
did.”

Noah traced a finger down the glass, keeping pace with a single raindrop as it started its journey to the sea.

“You disclosed your lies when it suited you to do so, and mine have been revealed by the children,” Noah mused. “The glare from your halo must be blinding me to the distinction between the two.”

“And no doubt”—Thea matched him for coolness—“some night over cherry cordials, you planned to tell me about your little indiscretions, tucked away up here in the attics. You’d relegate them to the status of details, and dare me to fuss at you for your dissembling.”

“Please do not refer to the children as indiscretions,” Noah bit out. “They have names, and they are dear to me, and whatever your quarrels with me, you may be assured of two things.”

Thea waited, for His Grace was very fond of ducal pronouncements—when they suited his purposes. His expression would wilt all of Erickson’s beauties, and likely Maryanne and Davies too.

At some point in this skirmish, he’d become the man who, without benefit of his own majority, had kept his family and estates together. The same man who coolly chose the companion when the debutante had given her hand elsewhere.

No, Thea corrected herself, not coolly. Coldly.

“First,” Noah said, “you may be assured I will do what is right for those girls in all the ways that count. They aren’t leaving, Thea, not to protect your sensibilities, not to spare you, of all people, embarrassment.”

“You idiot man, I would not ask them to leave.”

“You would ask
me
to leave?” He put universes of condescension in his question.

“Your blasted pride won’t let you set me aside, Noah,” she said. “I am resigned to being periodically tormented in this marriage for my mistake, or regularly tormented with your scorn and victimhood, but even you have to grow bored with bemoaning what you have unilaterally decided cannot be changed.”

His drew in a breath, and Thea would not have been surprised to see him sprout scales and wings and start breathing fire.

“You are already clear on my second point, Duchess: no matter your disagreement with me for how I’ve handled the introductions between you and the children, no matter you feel justified in judging me for it, this changes nothing. When I am assured you aren’t carrying another man’s child, I will make every effort to see to it you are soon carrying mine.”

He leaned in, kissed her cheek, and whirled away. His boots thumped down the corridor in an angry tattoo as the first, futile tears slid down Thea’s cheeks.

Nine

“It wasn’t raining when we left Town.” James Heckendorn accepted a medicinal tot from Noah as the storm raged outside the Wellspring library. “Patience insisted Lady Nonie had to see her sister. If I’d known dropping in would put you in such a foul humor, I would have come earlier.”

Noah saluted with his drink. “Bugger you, James.”

“The same to you,” James completed the toast as he ambled around a library where he’d run tame since boyhood. Noah should ask James to give Thea the tour of the house, lest Thea become lost on purpose for the remainder of the year.

“You’ll have to put off that thunderous expression,” James said, giving the globe a spin. “Otherwise, Patience will insist we join you here for a protracted stay.”

Noah took a hefty swallow of his brandy. “You intimate to her you’d abet such a plan, and it will be pistols at dawn, James. Rain, shine, or impenetrable fog.”

Such was the hospitality of a man who’d bungled with his duchess and knew not exactly why, much less how to fix it.

Though fix it, he would.

“You weren’t in this bad a mood when last we met,” James observed, giving the globe another push. “I thought maybe you’d stop by Henny’s and get your newlywed spirits, shall we say, lifted.”

The rest of Noah’s drink burned its way to his middle. “I am newly wed, and I did ride past Henny’s, though I haven’t yet officially informed her of my nuptials.”

“Oh, right.” James peered at his brandy, as if perhaps tea leaves might be read therein. “You’re the town crier now, making sure your mistress is kept apprised of your social schedule. I gather holy matrimony is now approximating holy hell?”

Noah gently set his empty glass down on the sideboard.

“For your benighted information, I cut Henny loose at the beginning of the Season, and generously so, if I do say so myself. I did not call on her last week because Meech’s phaeton was in her mews, and while I do not begrudge my uncle his pleasures, neither do I want to catch him on the stroll, so to speak.”

Which was nearly impossible, because Meech and Pemmie were usually trolling for custom of one sort or another. No wonder Harlan fretted over his legacy.

“One doesn’t know whether to admire Meech’s stamina, or shudder for his lack of adult restraint,” James said. “But if you’ve gone for, what—three months?—without exercising your manly humors, then no wonder you’re like the Regent with a bad head.”

“Oh, it’s worse than that.” Noah poured himself a touch more libation—a generous touch. “I was trying to give Thea time to settle in before I told her about Evvie and Nini, but the girls slipped the leash and found her on their own. Thea drew the worst conclusions, and we’re at daggers drawn all over again.”

For Noah’s duchess had gone toe to toe with him, as a duchess should when her idiot duke had bungled badly and been too proud to admit his error.

James saluted with his glass. “When you set out to muck something up, you muck it up as efficiently as you manage everything else.”

“I was
trying
to be considerate,” Noah shot back. “I was
trying
not to overwhelm the lady with all the changes in her life at once, to give her a chance to be my wife before she had to be anybody’s mother.”

With the luxury of hindsight, those rationalizations now seemed implausible to Noah—cowardly, even.

“That’s the preferred sequence: wife then mother,” James said. “But when you’re nobody’s father, why would she think she’s their new mama?”

Yes, why indeed? Thea had been magnificent in her temper, and not entirely wrong. Noah had kept the girls from the notice of his duchess, which was badly done on his part. Beyond that, the disagreement had escalated on both sides before common sense could wrestle pride, hurt feelings, and mistrust into submission.

Escalated
again
.

James touched his glass to Noah’s. “Anselm, you didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” Noah took off across the carpet, for the drapes wanted closing lest the drafts gutter the sconces. “Thea drew erroneous conclusions, and I did not correct her. The girls call me Cousin, and Thea chose not to believe them either.”

“Was she at least civil to them?”

Noah pulled two sets of curtains closed, plunging the library into funereal gloom.

“She was…” Noah flopped into a wing chair and ran a hand through hair already disheveled. “Thea was ferocious, James. She as good as told me I was free to decamp to some other residence, and she and the girls would be just fine without me, thank you very much. She berated me for involving the children in my schemes, and was generally quite impressive.”

Very impressive. Had called Noah an idiot to his face.

James put a hand over his heart. “Never say you found something to respect in the hopeless jade you married? Your Grace, I am ashamed of you.”

Noah threw a pillow at him, but James dodged it easily and took the other wing chair.

“What will you do, Noah?”

“One considers soaking one’s head in a rain barrel and beating one’s chest at such times,” Noah said, staring at the fire. “Or giving the lady what she wants.”

“Which would be?”

“The absence of her spouse,” Noah said. “Maybe some time to settle her feathers is a good idea.”

“While you leave Thea to contemplate having the marriage annulled?”

Noah got out of the chair and handed the pillow to James, who wedged it behind his back.

“No annulment,” Noah said. “I’ve spent years living down the reputation of my elders, and the day Thea goes to the bishop, I will be a laughingstock, just as they were.”

“No doubt. Bishops are the worst gossips, after all.”

“You are such a bastard.” Noah’s favorite bastard in the world, in fact.

James adjusted the pillow against his left lower back, which an old riding accident tended to make stiff on chilly days.

“Were you really only trying to give Thea time to grow accustomed to you?”

“Of course.”

James said nothing.

“Well, partly.” Mostly?

“And the other part?”

“How do you tell a woman she’s acquired maternal responsibility for two bastard children you neglected to mention before you so bitterly castigated her for her own silences?”

“You tell her humbly,” James said. “I have been married these three years to the most adorable lady in the world, but it might surprise you to learn ours has not always been a blissful union.”

Perhaps James had been making frequent use of his traveling flask and was already slightly tootled.

“I am that lady’s
brother
, James.”

James waved a dismissive hand. “I am her
husband
, and it is my job to make Patience’s way on this earth smooth and pleasant, to protect her from all harm, including the occasional minor irritation visited upon her as a result of my own human shortcomings.”

“Do your philosophical peregrinations have a point, James?”

“As a husband,” James went on, “I’ve learned a trick you have yet to master, Anselm, and if you don’t shut up, I won’t share it with you.”

Perhaps Noah was more than slightly tootled himself, for he was about to listen to marital advice from his brother-in-law.

“I am the embodiment of the attentive ear, Baron.”

“You should be, for I am about to impart to you the same secret Wilson imparted to me, and Heath imparted to him,” James said, naming Noah’s remaining brothers-in-law. “Pay attention: when your wife has painted you into a corner, or your own stupidity and stubbornness have—which in present company is more likely the case—then you must use the heaviest artillery in the husband’s arsenal. You must toss pride and even dignity to the wind. You must sacrifice your all for the cause. In short, you must humbly and convincingly
apologize
.”

The fire in the hearth snapped cheerily for a few heartbeats before Noah gave a snort of laughter.

“Years of marriage to my three sisters, and that’s all you lot can come up with? Apologize? Marriage isn’t public school, James, that a virtuosic display of the civilities will impress all the fellows almost as much as a vigorous round of fisticuffs. You want me to apologize to Thea? Well, I already did, before we even quit the room.”

“
We
quit the room?” James let the question hang in the air, his tone so, so innocent.

“Very well, Heckendorn,
we
did not quit the room. I quit the room, thinking to give the lady some privacy to compose herself.”

Noah was not tootled, but he was desperate enough to air grand bouncers before his oldest friend. Had Thea felt the same bewilderment as the wedding approached? The same inability to push simple, honest words past her pride?

James abandoned his chair to take the same pose by the mantel Noah’s grandfather had favored.

“Anselm, you have a lot to learn and a long way to go. You
ran
. We all run. The ladies start ranting and crying and catching us out in our selfish follies, and we bluster and stomp and threaten, and then we get the hell off to high ground, go for a ride, or a pout at the club. At least be honest with yourself. You left out of consideration for your own pride, not your lady’s.”

Noah hadn’t even left to salve his own pride. He’d simply panicked and run. “If you weren’t married to my sister…”

“I’d still be one of your oldest friends,” James said gently. “Apologize to Thea, sincerely, and soon. If not for your own stubborn sake, then for the children’s and hers. Once you’ve waved the white handkerchief of husbandly humility—”

James’s head came up, a hound scenting game, and whatever additional drivel he’d been about to dispense must have flown from his tootled grasp.

“I hear the carriage,” he said. “If the rain keeps up, we might impose on you for the night, Anselm, so compose your delicate sensibilities, and prepare to deal with your sister and Thea’s sibling as well.”

“God save me,” Noah muttered. “I’ll warn Thea, you warn Cook, and send a footman to let Harlan know we’re entertaining.”

“Of course, Your Grace.” James whipped off a salute. “And you
shall
apologize to your wife.”

Noah made a rude gesture and stomped off in search of the lady to whom he’d already planned to offer
another
apology.

* * *

“Thea?” Noah shook her shoulder gently. “Wife? Time to wake up.”

“Not yet.”

“We’ve company, Thea.”

Her Grace snored softly on.

“Araminthea, Duchess of Anselm.” Noah tried for a more stern tone, but God in heaven, she was adorable in slumber. “Sweetheart, your sister’s coming to call.” Seeing Thea snoozing away, her cheeks streaked with tears, Noah was hard put to recall why he’d been in such a towering temper with her.

This time.

“Just let me catch a few more—Nonie?”

“No need to panic.” Noah brushed a lock of hair off Thea’s forehead. “The coach was just coming up the drive a minute ago. You’ve been crying.”

She looked confused for an instant, then her eyes narrowed, and she flopped to her back.

“You made me cry, you odious man, keeping your children from me, while you strut about in righteous indignation over my own lapse. I don’t like you very much right now.”

James’s daft sermon rang in Noah’s ears as did all his own rehearsed apologies. “You have some insight into how I felt on our wedding night. I hadn’t planned for you to feel deceived, but here we are.”

Thea twitched at the folds of his cravat. “And where, precisely, is that?”

Noah turned and sat on the edge of the bed long enough to pull off his boots, and then climbed up to sit beside Thea, his back to the headboard.

Where it left them was hurt, mistrustful, and married. “We are both angry, misunderstood, and weary of it.”

“Very weary.”

“I propose a truce. The children are innocent of any wrongdoing, and we must put their welfare ahead of our squabbles.”

As apologies went, that effort was pathetic.

“This is not a squabble, Noah.”

“It’s not the Siege of Rome, either, Thea. We’re unhappy with each other, but we can either acknowledge what can’t be changed, or cling to our miseries. I honestly do not want to make you miserable.”

Which was a relief and a disappointment both. Shouldn’t a marriage have a higher ambition than not-miserable?

Thea began rummaging between the sheets. “What I want is to keep the vows I spoke before the vicar, Noah.”

Love, honor, obey. Interestingly, nothing on that list overtly required absolute honesty—or apologies.

“Those vows seem daunting now, don’t they?” Noah mused.

“Challenging.” Thea tossed a white, balled up handkerchief onto the bedside table. “I relish a challenge, usually.”

“As do I.” Something positive passed between them, and the tension Noah sensed in Thea relaxed.

“I have too much pride,” Noah said, “but sometimes pride is all one has. I don’t know how else to be.”

“I understand pride, Noah, and when I wasn’t either crying or sleeping off my tears, I realized you don’t know me well at all. If you knew me better, you’d know I’d love to be a mother to Janine and Evelyn. You and I are
married
, we are supposed to be the foundation for an entire family, and the girls are part of that family.”

Thea clearly aspired to higher ground than not-miserable, which ambition was a worthy attribute in a duchess.

“I could not predict your reaction to not one but two bastard children in the nursery,” Noah said, taking Thea’s hand, “and I’m more comfortable with situations I can predict. Still, I should have told you. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

Noah expected some cataclysm in response to his apology—the bed canopy to fall, perhaps—but Thea merely withdrew her hand and patted his knuckles.

“And I overreacted, for which I’m sorry,” she said easily, as if apologies were nothing unusual between spouses. “I know why you’re here, though, acting the diplomat and spouting sweet reason, Noah. If we’re to have company, you’re concerned I’ll rant and sulk, and embarrass you before others. I won’t. Never, not unless you push me to it with everything in you.”