Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Jackie thought that Philip’s friend was a nice man, but she did not take much notice of him.

In truth, she was nice to him because she hoped to make a good showing of herself around people the duke respected, but outside of that she could not say that she was all too fond of him. He was far more direct than she was used to, as if he were a gentleman interrogating her at a ball, and she did not enjoy it too much, but she knew there was no harm in him and so she chose to ignore it.

After all, he certainly seemed to care about her thoughts a good deal, as any good friend would, and if she were to marry the duke then it was only right that she acquaint herself with his inner circle, even if that inner circle consisted of one friend and his mother.

“I enjoy the changing of the leaves,” the duke noted as they walked the grounds.

“As do I,” she replied. “Elizabeth has always hated it. She says it is as though we are watching the death of summer, but I do not see it that way. Perhaps it is because I enjoy the harvest in autumn too much.”

“The harvest?”

“Yes, I have been running a small farm on our grounds for a few years, to help with saving some money here and there, and the autumnal produce has always been my favorite.”

“I cannot believe that you have never told me that.”

“It is quite shameful,” she confessed. “I know that you are aware of my family’s situation, but it still does not make it any easier to talk about things. Even I forget just how dire things became.”

“I do not find it shameful. I find it admirable that you were able to do all of these things by yourself.”

“Well, you would be the first to see it that way.”

“And I am more than happy to be if it means that you do not see yourself as a commoner without class forever.”

Jackie appreciated his kindness, but she did not know how to handle the attention that he was giving her about her life back home. She forgot, at times, just how bizarre it truly was.

“Are you not joining the hunt?” she asked. “The nobility is supposed to.”

“I never have,” he explained. “I have never had a desire to kill for sport. The very idea seems cruel to me, especially when there are so many other ways to spend my time.”

It was then that Jackie realized how the duke treated others in general. Lady Ophelia had appeared out of nowhere, and he could have sent her away in an instant, but he had not shamed her. He was good to animals that could not help themselves. He was a good man, and it was a shame that nobody was able to see it given that he did not leave his estate.

His scars affected him greatly, she knew that—or rather, the way others perceive them did, and she felt almost guilty about it. She knew that he deserved far better than to be hidden away. Scars did not fade entirely, and so this would be his life for as long as he allowed it to be.

And she would possibly be his wife.

Could she make peace with that? Could she be happy to have a husband that avoided the outside world while she wanted to see as much of it as possible? To her surprise, she decided she could. Philip was a good man, whom she liked a lot, and against all odds she was attracted to him. It was more than she could have hoped for upon her arrival.

“What did you expect you would be doing right now?” She asked, albeit clumsily.

“In what sense?”

“In the sense that… well, when I was a girl, and my mother was still alive, I dreamed of marrying and adventuring, just like in my books. We were never the most affluent family, but I sometimes wonder if I could still have had the means to if she had not passed, or if my father had not squandered it all.”

“That is a dream that you can still achieve one day.”

Jackie smiled, but she knew it would not be the case if they married. She could not very well travel alone, and it was clear that he would not accompany her.

“I suppose,” he continued, “I always wanted to be more like my father.”

“Lady Ophelia told me that it is a shame that I shall never meet him, and that he was wonderful.”

“He certainly was. He had this charisma that worked on everyone, no matter who they were. My mother told me once that the Queen herself called him a charmer—the Queen! I thought that I could do the same, threading that needle that he did so deftly, so that I was not known as a rake.”

“You were certainly never seen as that.”

“No, only ever as a recluse.”

She looked at him, his face fallen, and placed a hand on his sleeve.

“You need not ever tell me what happened to you,” she said gently. “I can see in your eyes just how much you lost without needing words to understand.”

“Do you truly not know?”

Jackie shook her head. There had been gossip about him, of course, but it had never been anything about how it had happened, only the aftermath. It was true, they referred to him as a scarred recluse that refused to see anyone, but there was never anything further beyond speculation.

“My apologies. I truly thought everyone was aware of it.”

“Others may be, but I never asked. It did not matter to me, for I tend not to meddle in the affairs of others.”

“Then I shall rectify that for you. It is not something that I am ashamed of. You see, years ago now, my father and I were reading in his study late at night. My mother came in, asking the two of us to go to bed, but we knew better than she did.”

He laughed sadly at that.

“It was something my father and I joked about. We never meant it, for my mother is highly intelligent, but we would tell her that we had ‘dukely matters of the utmost importance’ to tend to, even if it was a paper that had nothing to do with our dukedom, which it more often than not was.

We read by candlelight, and that night when my mother came in, we did our little routine and then I left a few minutes later. I was tired, in truth, and my mother often did come in at the right time.”

“Mothers always seem to know, don’t they?”

“More than we give credit for,” he sighed. “I fell asleep, but after what seemed like not much time at all, I awoke once more. My walls were peeling, and there was this strange smell… burning…”

Suddenly, it all began to make sense.

“My father had continued reading that night, until his body gave in, and he fell asleep at his desk. He knocked the candle onto the floor. He couldn’t have known that it would brush against the curtain, setting it alight. He couldn’t have known about anything that would transpire.”

Jackie had a hand to her mouth, imagining it all clearly.

“Did he…?”

“No, thankfully. I found my mother, and she had already escorted the staff out and exited into the gardens, but my father had not been so fortunate. He was still in the study when I got out, and the only thing in my mind was that I was not ready to lose him yet. I ran back inside.”

“That must have been so painful. You were so brave to do that.”

“We both sustained burns, but admittedly my condition was worse. Somehow, even though the fire had started in the study, it did not touch his desk for a good while, and so the only real trouble came when we tried to leave. He was a shorter man in his later years, and so I was able to cover his body with my own. He had some marks across his back, but nothing that he couldn’t recover from.”

“He must have been so grateful to you.”

“He was, until the day he died. Other people were sympathetic at first, but soon enough they gave up on me. I cannot say that I blame them. After all, no one would choose to be around such a gloomy person. The only exception was Lucien. He was the only one to truly care enough to stay with me.”

“And now I am here.”

“And now you are here, even though I am a shell of the man I once was and cannot give you what you deserve.”

“I like to think that I deserve happiness, and you have thus far given me that.”

“But I wish to give you more. I want to travel with you, so that you can do everything that you wish to.”

“Well, you can do that. You simply have to find the courage to do so. I believe we both do.”

“You make everything sound so simple.”

“Because I like to think that things are. If you want something, you have to do what is necessary for it. There is no questioning that.”

“Do you ever regret it?” he asked. “Giving up your life to take over your household?”

“No more than you regret saving your father,” she explained. “It was never a question for me; they needed me, and so I was there and did what was necessary. That is what happened for you, is it not?”

“It was precisely that.”

“And so there are no regrets,” she smiled. “Things are the way that they are, and clinging to something we once wanted is not going to change that. I might never see the Americas, but I know that I have enough in my life without all of that. Besides, what if I did go, and I discovered that I loathed it entirely? It would have been a waste. I suppose, in that sense, I truly do not care that I might never have that dream.”

“All the same, perhaps we can start again? We can make new dreams and chase them, no matter what happens.”

Jackie liked the sound of that. She hadn’t truly believed she could attain any dreams since losing her mother, but the duke seemed so sure of himself that she could not help but believe in it.

She held out a hand as though they were making some sort of business transaction, and he laughed and shook it. She looked into his eyes, and couldn’t help but notice that there was something more there. There was attraction, of course, but something even more than that. She could feel how much he had meant his words. It was a pact, but more than that it was a promise, and she intended to keep it.

“I am going to find my happiness,” she said firmly. “I am capable of doing so, and nobody can stop me. That is my new dream.”

“And I am going to be the man I was before, except perhaps a little wiser. I will not attempt to become my father, but be my own man. I will be and do everything that I have ever wanted.”

They both nodded, and there was that strange feeling that the duke had been stirring within her for a while now. She wished that she could put a name to it, but she could not. All that she knew was that she liked him a great deal, and something within her was telling her that it was, in truth, more than that.

And she wanted to believe in that, too.