Page 45 of A Lady of Means (Roses and Rakes #1)

Chapter Thirty-Six

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been personally victimized by Lady M.

Did you find your name among those in the pages of her fiery book found bound and printed for mere pennies at every rag seller in Mayfair, or, like the Duke of A and many others, were you spared?

- Scandalous Lives of London scandal sheet

* * *

The Duke had had a shining moment to exit, and he’d chosen instead to stay by her side.

Moria didn’t know what to make of that.

She should be happy with her choice, but she was angry that she had to make such a choice, though who she was angry at, she couldn’t say.

Devyn was good, he was honorable, leaving her had not been a choice. Neither had staying. Neither were choices he could make.

The choice that she could make was to keep on loving him even as it ripped her soul to rags.

The Duke appeared in the doorway of her sitting room the day following the scandal of the Burn Book, standing over Moria to admire the embroidery hoop in her hand.

“It looks like… willow fronds,” he said in awe.

Moria looked at the white-on-white garment in her hand. “Do you like it?” she whispered, not meeting his eyes.

It had been the design she’d started stitching for her wedding to Devyn. She’d tried to take a pair of scissors, a seam ripper, a knife, a match to it, but she couldn’t.

“I think it’s lovely,” he said jovially.

“I think you’re lovely. You’re so…” He paused.

“Creative. It’s different from what I pictured you’d choose, but I’m sure you will look divine.

” He placed a kiss on her forehead, walking over to the other side of the room to take a scone from a tea tray just as her chaperone entered.

Miss Kelley gave Moria a reassuring smile. Moria hated seeing her, or any of her loved ones, walking on eggshells around her like one misstep might send her reeling.

“My lady,” he spoke, interrupting her thoughts.“My mother sent me to ask if you’d mind playing something tonight before guests arrive for the dinner she’s hosting?”

Moria followed his gaze to the piano in the corner of the room, to his right. She quickly looked away.

She knew what she’d see if her eyes hesitated too long.

Devyn’s body crowding hers, playing the right hand while she played the left, him loving her so fully on a piano bench.

A pianoforte with hand painted flowers on the music desk showing up at her family’s London house after she told him she didn’t have a piano to play in town.

She shut the memories in a drawer quickly.

“I don’t…I don’t play anymore.”

His face fell. “You don’t….play anymore? Is something wrong? You have a gift.”

Moria felt the tears pushing behind her eyes. She shook her head. She could tell him the truth; but then where would she be?

“Your Grace,” Miss Kelley began.

“Could you give us just a moment?” He interrupted, crossing the room to reach Moria.

His eyes were so kind. That was Moria’s first thought. The green of them was a hue that could only belay kindness, and maybe want.

He touched her cheek. She closed her eyes at the contact because it had been so long since she’d been touched so softly, so intimately, not because it heated her throughout.

“I won’t pressure you. The Burn Book yesterday, and your feelings about the piano…I just want to understand.”

As words go, that was the right thing to say just then.

She felt grateful to him for it. She hated him at the same time for not being conspicuously terrible so she didn’t have to care for him.

But some part of her knew that in time, she would trust him with more than just the surface of her heart, and his tender touches and those green eyes would work their way deeper.

And then how could she hold allegiance to more than just one man without being a traitor and every other name her mind called her at night? She looked down at the embroidery in her hand that she’d begun for a union with another man.

“Playing music is something…tied to parts of my past…I’d rather not hold fast to. If I let go of music, I let go of that too.” She swallowed the lump in her throat.

His eyes were confused, but he nodded, more out of a desire to understand than genuine understanding. “And not playing the pianoforte, does that for you?”

He was on his knees before her. His hands rested on his thighs, she set down the embroidery and took them in her hands, turning them over. They were lined, but smooth. A warm shade of brown. Long and lean. Nails neatly trimmed.

“You have beautiful hands,” she said, tracing the edges between his fingers. If she could focus on something before her, not all the things behind her and ahead of her and inside her head, she could push through.

“The only way out is through.” The memory of her mother’s gentle voice pushed.

“I will only ever use them to be gentle to you. I will never use them to hurt you, Moria. I swear to you.” One hand pushed a stray strand of golden hair behind her ear.

She was no adversary for such tenderness. “No,” she swallowed her tears. “No, I know. I know, Your Grace.”

“I wish you would call me by my given name. Call me George.”

He had to know, she had to tell him the truth and risk losing him. Moria looked down at their joined hands, and nodded.

“If we are to call each other by our given names, then I feel that you and I should have an honest conversation. And if, at the end of what I have to tell you, you want to call me something other than Moria; I won’t fault you for your choice of words.

Only I should give you the truth. It wasn’t always given to me. ”

“Is it about the Marquess? I was a few years ahead of him at school,” he sighed. “Ours was a strained friendship, but I had a vague notion there was something between the two of you.”

She nodded, tracing a finger of one of his hands intertwined with hers and spoke in a subdued voice. “I am not a virgin, Your Grace.” She felt as though her teeth had ground the words out, her lips being forced to form the syllables whilst groaning in protest, but they were necessary.

“If you think that you’ve shocked me, you haven’t, Moria.”

Her eyes shot up to his, searching for purchase while she fell into altering waves of confusion, regret, and guilt. “What do you mean?”

“You were engaged to Marcus, were you not?”

Moria took a steeling breath as though she’d been holding her breath before for his reaction, and now her lungs could fully expand.

“What I was… was a stupid girl of eighteen. I’d been infatuated with Marcus for years.

His family’s estate was not far from ours growing up.

When I look back now, he didn’t even formally court me the same as…

. well, the way he ought to have. I suppose I took for granted that he would.

He gave me lots of pretty words and promises and ideas when I pleased him, and much worse when I didn’t.

He showed me the vault where the family jewels were kept, and he said that one day they’d all be mine.

It wasn’t technically a proposal, but I’m sure he wanted me to think of it as such. ”

“Moria,” he shook his head. “You can’t blame yourself. You were very young… he was several years older than you. He took advantage of you. He hurt you. God, if he weren't dead, I’d kill him myself.”

The Duke ran a hand through his hair, as a thought struck him. “Wait, did your brother….”

“No,” she said, her eyes wide. “Marcus was killed in a duel by a gang lord he owed money to. He was planning to marry me to obtain the funds to pay him back, but wasn’t quick enough about ruining me or making profits on his business venture, I suppose.

Jasper didn’t find out about our relationship or his debts until Marcus was already dead. ”

“Moria, this doesn't change anything,” he pulled her closer to him, draping an arm around her.

She swallowed, looking at him with sorrowful eyes.

“There’s more, isn't there?” he asked, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.

“I was with child.” The words came out of her little more than a whisper, but he heard them.

“You and the marquess…had a child?” The words were a breath of air, soft and awed.

She shook her head, dabbing at her tears with her sleeve. “I lost the child. A little girl with blonde hair and blonde eyelashes. She was so small, but she already had my hair. Or Marcus’s hair.”

He pulled her to him, his strong hands painting comforting patterns along her arms and her spine. Tears were gone, she’d already used them all up before now.

She pulled back to make sure that he could hear her next words clearly. “George…the doctor that attended me…he said that I mightn’t have any more children.”

“Stop,” he forced her to look up at him, “Moria, I wish that I could undo all of this history for you. If I could bloody Marcus from the grave, I’d do it. But you need to understand, none of this means that you and I can’t wed.”

Moria felt hollow. Was she so hollow that she had misheard him?

“What are you talking about? Please speak plain, Your Grace.”

His Adam's Apple bobbed as he swallowed, seeming to pause to think through his words.

“I am a Duke, I have no end of resources at my disposal. I must marry, and it needs to be soon, and it needs to be, I feel crass to say, someone of the highest pedigree. There are those who look down on me for my mother’s heritage, I need a match with someone enviable.

Add to all of that, I am quite fond of you.

I would even go so far as to say that I feel some affection for you.

I think that I am the partner that will give you everything that you desire.

But if we don’t suit,” he drummed his fingers on his leg, “physically, I mean…we wouldn’t be the first nobles in history to…

seek elsewhere to continue the lineage.”

Was he proposing that he would sleep with some other woman to carry his baby if she couldn’t?

“Oh my god,” she breathed, standing to put some distance between them. “Are you telling me that you’re—”