Chapter 17

17

N icholas had gone through numerous stages ever since that fateful day all those years ago. First came denial. Then , when that was no longer an option, shock. Anger . Regret . All emotions that had raged inside him but he’d never put on display, refusing to acknowledge the truth aloud. Until now.

I cannot sire children .

It felt strange to utter the words. Raw and exposing, and even a little surreal. He had said them, though; the instant look of shock mixed with confusion upon Phoebe’s face made that much clear.

I cannot sire children . The heaviness of the admission lingered in the air. Seemed to fill his lungs with each inhale and seep back into his veins until he had no choice but to confront it head-on.

“ I …” Phoebe’s hushed voice broke the silence. “ I don’t understand.”

He sighed, suddenly overcome by another torrent of exhaustion. There was still time to back away and pretend he’d never spoken on the subject, but to what purpose? What did he have to gain by concealing it any longer? At this point, it was just as well she know every ugly detail of the truth. So she’d comprehend why he could never offer her any of what she deserved.

He made a clipped gesture toward the chairs beside his desk. “ Sit , please .” She’d been adamant about standing, appearing before him with her squared shoulders and defiant chin. However , this was no quick, passing conversation to be held in the middle of the floor.

Fortunately , she didn’t protest this time but approached the desk and sank into one of the leather seats, watching as he took not his commanding chair on the other side of the desk but the smaller one beside her. He didn’t want the marquess’s seat that allowed him to peer across the desk in a position of power. In this matter, he was the one defenseless. About to lay all the broken parts of himself at her feet.

“ I was twenty years old when I inherited the title,” he began, the words stiff but rolling off his tongue with surprising steadiness. “ My father had been ill a long time, so it was expected. I’d been raised for the role. Knew it was my birthright.”

He spared another glance for the vast mahogany desk, his mind flashing back to the first time he’d sat behind it with his father’s signet ring upon his finger. Filled with eagerness. Self -importance. He quickly turned back to Phoebe , peering into gray-green-blue eyes that gave away nothing of her thoughts. She simply gazed in return, waiting for him to continue.

“ My twenty-first birthday coincided with the end of my mourning period,” he said, “and I celebrated the occasion with a party at my hunting box, Foxhill . Shooting season had just begun. My friends from Cambridge were all keen to attend.” He swallowed, his fingers curling around the arm of his chair. Again , his thoughts wandered, taking him back to the revelry at Foxhill . The two successful days of fishing and shooting. The nights filled with an endless array of spirits. The five-tier cake. The neighboring ladies they’d invited to join them for obscene parlor games.

“ The day of the accident is a blur to me now.” He paused, feeling beads of perspiration coat his nape. So many times, he’d run over the third, and what was to be final, day of shooting in his head. Trying to put it back together piece by piece, analyzing each move he could have made to result in a different outcome. Not that the knowledge would ever change anything. “ We were in the wood, hunting partridge. I was always a good shot, but I remember missing. And when I fired again …”

The tempo of his heart increased, warning him away from the memory. Yet Phoebe waited, and he’d come too far with it to back away now. He took a breath, his nose suddenly filling with the distant tang of gunpowder. “ I remember the sound of the explosion. My hands burning. The jolt of pain as I fell to the ground. But after that, I remember nothing.”

She gasped, her eyes becoming wide and horrified, and he didn’t miss the way they darted to his hands and the thick scars that would never go away.

“ When I awoke, my mother said I was lucky. Lucky to be alive. Lucky I hadn’t disfigured my face.” He gave a brisk, humorless laugh, having long wondered if she’d come to view that as a preferable option to the fate that had befallen him instead. “ The dowager, who never does things in half-measures, had summoned a whole team of physicians, and they agreed with her. Lord Rockliffe is lucky . All except one. One fresh-faced physician from Edinburgh who dared to insinuate that the hit I’d taken as the rifle exploded, due to its location, could lead to difficulties …”

Again , he trailed off, the weight of the past threatening to choke him. One step at a time, though, he would voice it. “ The dowager is not the type to accept things that don’t coincide with her will, and at that time, neither was I . My injuries appeared to heal, and after a period of recuperation, I felt well again. That lone dissenting physician was wrong, obviously, and I was determined to prove it.”

He pressed his palms against the woolen knees of his breeches, taking a moment to regather his thoughts. He wouldn’t subject her to the details of his nights that followed. The brothels. The lonely widows. The ladies with inattentive husbands. Yet at the same time, nor did he wish her to remain ignorant of any scrap of the truth. Of the man he was. “ I cannot claim to be proud of my conduct back then,” he said at last. “ However , I viewed garnering a reputation as a rake as far preferable to allowing rumors of what the physician suggested to begin circulating.”

He eyed her carefully, awaiting her comprehension and then repugnance, but the latter didn’t come. Instead , she shifted forward in her chair, rapt by the words he somehow kept producing.

Carry on, then. Get it out . “ The dowager was willing to tolerate my behavior for a while. However , after a few years went by, and my younger brother, Samuel —the spare—grew more distant from the family, her patience ran out.” He shifted as well, his body tense against the seat. If only he’d paid more attention to his mother’s ambitions at the time. If only he hadn’t remained so caught up in his own affairs that he neglected to consider the lengths to which she’d go to turn things the way she wanted them.

“ I met Lady Cecilia Burke at a soiree.” He flipped the subject—temporarily—finding that instead of hostility, the name produced only a dull ache. Understanding glinted in Phoebe’s eyes, but no part of her moved except her fingers, which curled into her black skirts. “ I’d stayed well clear of young society belles until that point, but … I enjoyed her company.”

Phoebe’s eyes flashed again, and his words, now uttered aloud, felt incredibly inane. Yet how else was he to state it? They were the truth, boiled down to its simplest form. He’d liked Cecilia , who immediately revealed herself to be no blushing young miss. For all that her demure white gowns suggested innocence, she’d never shied away from fluttering her golden lashes and leaning into him as he spoke. From placing a hand upon his shoulder, his arm, his back. From suggesting they slip away without the hindrance of chaperones.

“ I shouldn’t have gone into the Rockliffe House garden alone with her during my mother’s ball.” His admission fell like a cold weight, powerful even after all these years. He could still recall so much of that balmy, moonlit night. Could feel the softness of her lips and skin—a sensation that had once made his blood run hot and now left him icy. Could hear the horrified gasp that came from beyond their alcove in the hedge.

“ The Countess of Merrick discovered us. One of the ton’s most notorious gossips, naturally.” He laughed once more, a sharp, hollow sound. “ She had some other society matrons with her, although they mostly blended together. Only one other stood out.” The woman who trailed slightly behind the others as if out for a leisurely stroll. The woman who, before or after that night, had never dreamed of leaving a ballroom to which she played hostess, especially for something as frivolous as a turn about the garden. The woman who’d ignored Lady Merrick’s exclaiming and swooning and assessed him silently with shrewd eyes, knowing he and Cecilia were trapped where she wanted them. “ The Dowager Marchioness of Rockliffe .”

A shot of bitterness hit him as it always did at the recollection, but he pushed it aside, determined not to become entangled in it. “ I did the honorable thing and offered for Cecilia , but she didn’t agree to it at first, much to the dowager’s shock and chagrin. Her heart, it turns out, already belonged to the Viscount Littleton , a man who’d turned his attentions elsewhere and she was trying to make jealous. It was only after Littleton announced his betrothal to another that she accepted my proposal, and we were married by special license shortly thereafter.”

Phoebe’s mouth twisted at that part, as if she were about to offer words of sympathy, but he stopped them with a small shake of his head. “ I don’t fault her for her reluctance. I didn’t imagine myself in love with her, either, although once we were bound together, I wanted to make her happy. Especially when she announced, just weeks into our marriage, that she was increasing.”

For a brief moment, he could picture her strolling out of this very room, her belly swollen with child, as he watched her from behind his desk, a marquess who was haughty once more. Because the physician’s postulations about him were drivel. Because Prescotts always came out ahead.

“ For a short time, all was well, until Cecilia woke up screaming one night. Her labor pains had begun far too soon.” A night when circumstances flipped on him yet again, and every ounce of arrogance drained from his body, leaving only fear and helplessness in its wake. “ A midwife was summoned, along with every physician within a twenty-mile radius. They all said the same thing: that a child born so early could never survive. That Cecilia herself could be in danger. But as it turns out, physicians, sometimes, are wrong.”

He closed his eyes a moment, his heart thudding dully and his head knotting with tension. Just as they had on the night he’d paced the floor outside Cecilia’s bedchamber until finally, a physician emerged, an odd, unreadable look on his face. Congratulations , my lord, you have a daughter . Words that should have been joyful. Words that made no sense.

“ Cecilia made it through the birth without a single complication.” The image of her—sweat-stained and fatigued, but wearing a peculiar expression akin to the physician’s—as he burst into the room flooded his memory, and he gripped the edge of his chair, forcing himself to look straight ahead. To Phoebe , who continued to listen. Who wanted to understand. “ So did Emily . She was large for a baby newly born. Healthy . Perfect .”

He saw Phoebe’s lips part, registered the little sound of surprise she made, but his mind was drifting backward again, bringing him to steal across the floor of Cecilia’s bedchamber to the cradle in the corner. To stare at the bundle that had been placed there and lift her into his arms. To stroke the spiky, dark hair. The round, rosy cheeks.

His heart had never felt that way before. Full . In awe. In love. While simultaneously splintering beneath the crushing weight of betrayal. The knowledge that every bit of confidence he’d regained, every moment he’d assured himself that he was whole, was based on a lie.

Sometimes , physicians are wrong . And other times, they’re exactly right.

“ We didn’t much go out in society together after that. I couldn’t abide the thought of rumors circulating. Of people gawking at us and knowing .” It had been far easier to remain at Beaumont Manor , or better yet, Foxhill . To wander the grounds of the hunting box to prove he wouldn’t be scared away from the place, even though inside, he felt vacant and wrecked.

Macabre , his mother had said of all the time he spent there, and his throat tightened as he grappled with the idea that her proclamation held merit. “ The arrangement worked for a time,” he said, swallowing back the tightness, pushing the thought away. “ Emily spent her earliest years in the country, away from prying eyes, and Cecilia and I … I won’t go so far as to say we were happy, but we attempted to achieve some semblance of a reconciliation. To start over, to pretend that, maybe, our family would continue to grow in time. That’s all it was, though. Pretending .”

He glanced toward the sun-streaked window, remembering the occasions here at Beaumont when Emily had placed her chubby fist in his and toddled across the grass. When he’d held her in his arms, relishing her squeals of delight as she splashed in the lake. Those were the only pure moments of brightness, natural instead of forced.

With Cecilia , things had been bleaker. Trust didn’t come. Passion didn’t come. Their days together had been filled with stilted, formal conversation. His nights in her bed mechanical and emotionless. Always veiled by a truth he could no longer ignore.

He took a breath, his chest filled with a deep, grating ache that had never fully healed. “ I think I sensed right from the beginning that I wouldn’t be able to make that happen, and eventually, Cecilia didn’t pretend anymore, either. Enough time had passed that she knew I couldn’t provide her with the children she wanted. She expressed a desire to return to London , and who was I to interfere? I had nothing to offer her.”

His shoulders threatened to sag, and he tensed his muscles, fighting against the encroaching weariness. A feeling left over from the first time he’d watched the coach containing Cecilia and Emily barrel away from Beaumont Manor , and everything had felt heavy and wrong. The solution to which had been his retreat to Foxhill .

“ We both returned to the same household on occasion, for appearance’s sake, never speaking of what we did with our time in the interim. If she had affairs, she was discreet, for news of them didn’t reach the gossip rags. However , when she announced to me, after a few weeks we spent together at Beaumont , that she was increasing … I knew . I knew before she ever uttered the name Edmund Mowbray .”

Phoebe’s brows drew together at the revelation, although for his own part, he could conjure little more than a sense of detachment.

Which , consequently, had been his detrimental error. He’d failed to care enough until it proved too late.

“ Her attempt at deception was short-lived, at least. She told me everything about Mr . Mowbray . How he was the third son of a baron. An employee of the East India Company who had recently returned to England . All details I didn’t give a damn about until … until …”

He hated the sound of his voice, stammering and unsteady. This was the part of the story where detachment turned to a crushing mix of fear and fury. Where he flashed back to the day he’d run about the house, in and out of familiar rooms, only to find them vacant. The day his entire world had unraveled. “ None of it mattered until suddenly, they were gone. Skulking off on a ship bound for India without a word to anyone, leaving behind nothing but rumors of Cecilia’s pregnancy. Off to a place where she could start anew and erase every dismal year of our marriage, for she’d found someone else to give her what I could not.”

He took a moment to inhale. To ground himself in the Beaumont Manor study before the emotions of that day, still so raw, spiraled back into existence and overtook him. “ Had the situation involved only Cecilia and Mowbray , perhaps I would have done the merciful thing and let her go. But she took Emily . My daughter. Not mine by blood, but … but mine . I couldn’t allow that. If there was any cause to be grateful for the events of the preceding decade, any reason I could consider every fucking moment of misery and feel something besides regret, it was because of her . I couldn’t allow her to be dragged from her home to God knows where. I couldn’t condone a future in which I never saw her again.”

Tears shone in Phoebe’s eyes, and a single droplet slipped onto her cheek. Her pale, flawless cheek, down to the lips he hadn’t stopped staring at since the day he’d met her in the field. He wanted to kiss it away. Wanted his future to be filled with her smiles. Yet it was because of how deeply he wished for her happiness—how deeply, damn him, he’d come to care —that he could never keep her for his own.

“ When I found them in Saint Helena , laid out in a cottage and insensate with fever, I was so angry at Cecilia . Angry for what she’d stolen from me. Angry that she’d so blatantly disregarded Emily’s wellbeing. Angry that my child looked so lifeless, and I knew I could lose her …”

His voice broke, the air painful as it entered and exited his lungs. “ But I was angry at myself, too.” He let the ragged admission fall, giving it a moment to permeate the air between them. “ I was the one lacking. My failings are what drove her away, killed her, and nearly cost Emily her life in the process. My inability to do the one goddamn job a marquess has and sire heirs?—”

“ No .” Phoebe shook her head, slowly at first but then with vehemence. “ No . You cannot blame yourself for their illness. Nor were the consequences of the hunting accident in any way your fault.”

“ I have no interest in debating blame.” Finally , he let himself slump back in the chair, giving in to the exhaustion that riddled his aching shoulders. “ The important thing is, I’ve learned my lesson, and I’ve accepted the truth. I cannot do my duty to the marquessate, nor can I do my duty as a husband. The first failing is mine alone to bear. The second, however, affects the woman bound to my side. I won’t remarry only to inflict that sort of misery again.” Even though I cannot stop wanting you .

For a moment, he thought her tears were going to keep flowing, and he clenched his fingers to prevent them from sweeping across her face and brushing the moisture away. However , she gave several rapid blinks, swiping at the corners of her eyes, and when she opened them again, they were drier. Harder . “ And are you the only one who gets a say in your suitability as a husband?” She tilted her head, pressing her lips into a thin line.

“ Yes .” He didn’t hesitate, even when his proclamation made her face grow flintier. “ Because I’m the one who’s seen the consequences that arise when I fill that role. You can placate me with words about how my deficiency doesn’t matter. Perhaps you even mean them right now. However , you don’t understand what it’s like when disappointment has a chance to build. When with each passing year, you grow increasingly mournful about the children you’ll never have, until instead of affection, all you feel is resentment.”

That —a future in which he looked into her stormy sky eyes and saw nothing reflected back but his own shortcomings—was beyond what he could bear. She was still so young. Had a long life ahead of her where she deserved the chance for a proper family of her own. Babies with the same vibrant, changeable eyes whom she could cradle in her arms.

“ Do not presume to tell me how I feel.” Her voice loudened a notch, the ice in it enough to silence his next words. “ Have you ever considered that not every woman wishes to bear children? That not every woman can bear children?”

Something pulled in his chest, tight and uncomfortable. Yet before he could begin to fathom it, a knock sounded against the door, accompanied by the butler’s sturdy baritone. “ My lord?”

“ Not now, Barrington ,” he barked, his eyes staying fixed on Phoebe , whose features appeared tenser by the second. “ Leave us.”

A moment of uncertain silence fell, in which there were neither words nor the sound of boots retreating down the corridor. Only a moment, though, and Barrington’s voice rang out again. “ My lord, there’s a young lady—a Miss Buxton —here to see Miss Windham . She insists it’s critical.”

Phoebe got to her feet at once, her movements jerky, her gaze flashing between the door and where he remained in the chair. He didn’t miss the strain in her neck as she swallowed, nor the tiny bob of her head in his direction.

Damn it . He swore under his breath, then pushed to his feet as well, every muscle rigid. “ Send her in.”

They stood beside one another, his head reeling with all the admissions he’d finally voiced aloud. And , even more significantly, with all the things that remained unsaid. The conversation wasn’t supposed to end like this: unresolved, with a declaration of Phoebe’s own that placed a pit in his stomach and led to yet more questions.

However , there wasn’t time to address any of it, for no sooner did Barrington’s footsteps fade than new ones appeared, light and hurried. A footman threw open the door, and a pink-faced, curly-headed girl, who couldn’t be much older than Emily , burst inside.

“ Margaret .” Phoebe instantly rushed toward the girl—one of her numerous Buxton cousins, he inferred—with her brows drawn in concern. “ What’s happened?”

“ Oh , Phoebe , it’s—” The girl’s breathless, animated speech halted as she caught sight of his presence in the room, and she folded herself into an awkward curtsey. “ My lord.”

He gave her a brisk nod before refocusing his attention on Phoebe , each fruitless second becoming an eternity.

“ You need to come to the vicarage.” Fortunately , the girl blurted out the information without further preamble. “ Mama bade me to fetch you and tell you to hurry, for you have a visitor.”

He saw the color drain from Phoebe’s cheeks. The little tremor of her clenched hand. “ What sort of visitor?” Her question came out low, tentative.

The girl hesitated, long enough that he turned to see her feet shuffling against the floor, her finger winding in a strand of her unruly blond hair. “ It’s … it’s Sir Ambrose Windham .” She paused again, continuing to twist the curl, her half-smile in response to Phoebe’s sharp inhale speaking more of uncertainty than joy. “ Wishing very much to see his betrothed.”