Page 14 of Only a Fortnight with the Duke

CHAPTER 14

“ E mmeline, my dear.”

“Yes, Papa.”

“You have received an invitation.”

Emmeline looked up from her book, but her expression was not curious. Instead, a delighted smile played at her lips.

“An invitation?”

“Indeed–Emmeline, when will you put me and the ton out of our misery?”

“Papa! Not this again, please.”

“Three days have passed now and you have seen the Duke of Blackwood more times than that. The first space on the shelf in your room is dedicated to the gifts he has given you. Why, I do not think I showered your mother with such generous tokens before we had a year been married.”

“Papa–”

“I expect when you return from this visit with the Duke tonight to hear that you have accepted his proposal.”

“Papa, please . The Duke and I are still courting. Did not you yourself say that I should remain careful? That I should ensure my affections for him will not waiver before we are wed?”

“That was before. This is now. I was suspicious of the timing of your confession, but now I have observed the two of you together. My, the lengths he goes to find time to spend with you! The man must get no work done at all.”

“You jest.”

“I do not! His heart is yours, Emmeline. Trust me. I know such things. Do not be afraid–insist that he propose to you right away!”

“Papa, I will not! He will make an offer when he is ready.”

The Earl huffed, shaking his head, as he handed the letter over to his daughter. “Your mother initiated our proposal. She knew what she wanted and went after it.”

Emmeline chuckled, ignoring her father as she opened the letter. It was, in fact, an invitation from the Duke to visit his estate for the day. “He has something important to show me,” she said quietly, mostly to herself.

“A ring!”

“Papa, no . I am certain that he will not make me an offer today. He is a Duke–he will need to weigh his options carefully.”

“Are there other options to be considered?”

“Why, no, but–”

“Of course not! The man spends all of his time and money on you, Emmeline! He is smitten. You are smitten. I have never known you to entertain a man for such a length of time without growing bored. I will expire before you are engaged, at this point.”

Emmeline gave him a more stern look. “Papa, when I am ready, and the Duke is ready, we will be engaged. And if not–”

“Oh, Emmeline! I beg of you. Do not tease your old Papa.”

“Very well. When he is ready, and I am ready, we will be engaged. Be patient. These things take time.”

She thought of this conversation all the while she rode in her carriage with Sarah by her side to Blackwood Estate. His country home had been stunning, so she was certain that the estate would be grand beyond anything she’d seen before. She told Sarah as much, who nodded with uncertainty and kept her eyes trained on the road outside.

Emmeline thought perhaps the girl was not quite over her illness–whatever it might have been. When they arrived, she suggested to Sarah that she might go and lie down.

“But, my Lady, I–”

Emmeline put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “You are of no use to me if you fall ill again. Please. You seem pale and listless. I will call for you if I need.”

Afterward, Lady Clark was escorted to the library, where the Duke of Blackwood waited for her. He stood as she entered and went to her, offering her his arm even as she took in the vast collection of books with wide eyes, marveling at the rows of shelves.

“I have never seen such a collection,” she breathed.

“And no need to go to Oxford to do so,” he teased her. Her eyes fell to him, and she covered her mouth with her hand.

“I apologize, Your Grace! I did not even greet you initially. How do you do?” Even as she waited for him to answer her, Emmeline’s green eyes roved back to the books. Simon could practically see her straining to read their spines. He held out his arm for her to take with a soft chuckle.

“Never mind. I did not ask you here to exchange pleasantries that we have swapped a hundred times. By all means, let us peruse the aisles to your heart’s content.”

They walked together, and Simon told her in great detail the history of his family’s library. She listened, with rapt attention, paying special attention to the sections he indicated as some of his favorites. Emmeline indulged in the books, stopping every so often to pluck one from its place and crack it open. Simon indulged as well, but in the small fancies of her expressions–a wrinkled nose when she felt playful, an intense stare when she saw a book she wanted to read, and the light of her laughter when he teased her.

“Now that you have seen the library–was it enough to capture your heart?”

Each day he had seen her, the Duke had inquired this of her. Each time, her answer had been largely the same.

“No,” she laughed. “You are more and more ridiculous each time you inquire. My heart was not swayed by your chivalry at the lake, nor by your many gifts and attentions in the last several days. I have not fallen in love with you, Simon, and I will not.”

“How can you be so sure?” he asked, pressing a hand over his heart to indicate that she wounded him. At first, he felt reassured by her denial of him. It was, after all, his hope to convince her that they ought to marry for practicality, in the end. On this day, in the library, however, Simon found it frustrating. He had not put so much time and effort into anything in his life as he had into winning the affections of Emmeline Clark, yet she did not budge. “Have you not softened toward me, even a little?”

Simon watched the expression on her face tilt first to one side then to the other as if she were weighing her response on a scale.

“I suppose that I have softened toward you, but in the way that friends do. Or siblings, once they have aged and grown out of the need to compete with one another needlessly.” She smiled as her gaze found him. “But that is not love.”

“What makes you soften? I shall do more of that.”

Her laughter rose and spilled forth from her like water from a tap. “I have come to realize that you are a generous man who is dedicated to his friends. You are thoughtful and intelligent.” But the list ended there. It was hard to be sure whether Simon’s gestures toward her, though sweet, were genuine or just a matter of winning the game he had set in motion. Emmeline had thought many times over the course of their time together that if she had met him under different circumstances, perhaps her heart may have been more easily swayed. He had all the makings of the romance she craved on the surface, but the deceit lay in the smaller details.

“And that is not enough for your heart?”

“It amounts to nothing if love is not there.”

“You mean to say that love is a mutual feeling, then?”

“I suppose that you could interpret me in that manner, yes.”

“What other manner is there?”

“It would be difficult to fall in love with someone who did not love me as well, yes. But not impossible.”

“So if I confessed my love to you, then that would make it easier for me to sway your heart?”

“You would need to express your true love and devotion to me, but in your case I do not think that it would do much good.”

“Why is that?”

“You would be hard pressed to convince me of its truth.”

Simon paused for a moment, then led to her sit near a large window. “Wait here for a moment.” She did as she was told, and a few minutes later the Duke returned to her with a book in his hands. It was a copy of Zastrozzi by Percy Byshe Shelley. She had not yet read it, and her eyes widened as he placed the newly printed volume in her hands. Emmeline turned it over in them and delicately ran her fingers over the leather cover.

“Is this…?”

“For you, yes. It is not the sort of thing, I know, that a young lady would typically read, but…”

“It is perfect,” Emmeline interrupted, her voice and tone soft. “Thank you.”

Simon sat beside her in another chair and angled his body so that he faced her. “Emmeline, I may not have what the men in the novels you read do. I might not appeal to you because I am not exactly chivalrous or soft in nature. But what I lack in heroism, I can promise to make up to you in other ways. The more you allow me in to learn about you, the more toughtftul my gifts can be. The better I will become at communicating with you. I might not rip my heart out and serve it to you on a silver platter, but my affection for you is real.”

Simon’s eyes bore into hers, searching, cloying. “I first admired you for your bravery–the way you spoke to me despite my status. I admire your riding skill, your intellect, and even your romantic fancies. I find you a most intriguing, exquisite creature. It would be my honor to spend the rest of my life getting to know more of you.”

“But that is not love,” Emmeline mused gently. “You had not opened your eyes to the possibility that women can offer you more than marriage until recently. Any lady you spent time with after that would feel so intriguing.”

“Admiration is a close enough emotion.”

“Not at all,” Emmeline huffed. “You just the other day admonished me for my treatment of your gardener. We have not spoken of it again, and while we moved past it anyway, it was not because we came together to some sort of conclusion over it. We have moved on from it because we have accepted that we see such matters quite differently–that we will likely always see such matters quite differently. We come from altogether separate worlds.”

“For this? You have condemned me to be wholly separate from you over my concern for you?”

“Your concern?!”

Simon nodded vigorously. “Emmeline, I admit that my approach to that conversation was callous. But I meant what I said. It is one thing to show kindness, but another to show that you are readily taken advantage of. It can be dangerous–for your reputation and your pocket, of course, but your person as well! You must be careful. Your staff will tell themselves that you are but another greedy rich woman should the narrative suffice to justify any actions against you.”

“ My staff has been with–”

“Very well. My staff, then. I will not pretend to have any insight into the people who work at Clark Manor. But I employ a good many men and women, Emmeline, and you are not familiar with them. Kindness has no reward given blindly.”

“I will be more careful, then. I did not realize it bothered you so.”

“It does .”

“Thank you, Simon, for the incredibly thoughtful gift. I will cherish it. And in the future, I will try to listen to you with a more open mind.”

Listening to her almost made him feel guilty. Quietly, he softened his features and his resolve, and he led her on a tour of his estate. They took their time together, walking slowly as she admired the grandeur of the estate. He watched her and thought how natural she looked there in his home. She observed the stark white marble and the trendy, impersonal nature of the decor and thought how miserable she would be living there.

Once they were outside in the gardens, she breathed a sigh of relief.

“This sound does not bode well for your opinion, my Lady.”

Emmeline laughed lightly. “It is a home befitting a man of your status and station, Your Grace.”

“But not befitting anyone else?”

“I would not make such an extreme declaration. It is certainly not to my taste, but that means little.”

“What would you have me change?”

“I should like to see you add more of your personality. You are a warm man, despite your pretenses. There is no need to display your wealth, not here. Your country manor was much more pleasant. It felt like a family might live there, like the halls were decorated with laughter and joy, comfort and passion.”

“What dresses the walls at Blackwood Estate?”

“Despair,” she answered with feigned dramatics. “Cold and distant despair.”

“I suppose I do not spend enough time here for my walls to carry things like laughter and passion.”

“I can tell that it was decorated by someone else. Recently?”

“Yes, I had the house redone in my absence prior to my return.”

“What did it look like when you grew up here?”

“Like the country manor does now.”

“Why change it?”

“Perhaps it was my hope to paint a fresh canvas for you, Emmeline, such that when you become the Duchess of Blackwood you will have space to paint your own masterpiece.”

“Such pretty words, Your Grace, that I nearly forgot that I have no intentions of marrying you.”

Simon gave her a sideways glance, irritated by the pain in his chest that her answer caused him. “Not even to become Duchess and take over the coldness of my Estate?”

“No, Simon,” she laughed, as if they were sharing jokes between close friends, further frustrating the Duke who felt now like a suitor who was being rejected with cavalier disgust. “Not even to be your Duchess and take on the massive task of breathing warmth into the halls of Blackwood Estate, though I commend the woman who one day will. I have told you. I will marry the man who captures my heart.”

Simon stopped her, turning her so she faced him and dropping his arm, wrenching her hand from it without ceremony. “And I am not that man, Emmeline? What prevents you from seeing me as a prospect? I have invested my every waking moment these last few days in knowing you. I have proven that your life with me would be comfortable–that I will shower you in affection and gifts. What more could there be?”

“You know me, Simon, but you have shown me nothing in kind. It is comfortable for our exchange now to lack this mutual exchange. We are not wed, but if we were, that would change. My expectations of you would change. I know only that you have a propensity to indulge yourself in whatever you like so long as the ton can only print rumors in the paper. If there is no evidence of your wrongdoings, you feel free to do as you please. Likewise, you guard your heart by projecting yourself to be cold and judgmental. What am I to think of you when you have shown nothing else?”

“Emmeline, if you have learned nothing else of me in the time that we have shared together, then you have not been listening.”

“No, Your Grace? Have I not been listening? There is little for me to do when you do not speak. You are afraid of vulnerability, that much is clear, but without knowing why or to what extent–”

“Afraid?”

“Yes, afraid.”

“Your opinion is a gross misjudgment of what has transpired.”

“Then enlighten me.”

“You expect too much, Emmeline. I have given you everything that any reasonable man of good station could give. You think that I run from vulnerability? I yearn to have the privilege you do of opening your heart to others then shutting it whenever you please, as you once did with Lord Bancroft. As you do now with me. My lack of vulnerability comes from necessity, not fear.”

“What could necessitate such a cold disposition?”

“This!” Simon gestured around them to his estate. “All of this has weighed upon my shoulders since the moment I was born, Emmeline. Your father has spoiled you–he has not shared his burdens with you as an Earl, but you must see them. Surely , you look upon the folds in his face and the stiffness in his walk and you know that he has earned those marks of hard work and stress to appease you–to keep you comfortable and happy. If you would have me, I would do the same. If you would have had Lord Bancroft–the bastard– he would have done the same. This closeness that you want so sorely did not exist between your parents as you think it did.”

“Simon!”

“No, Emmeline, listen to me.” He stepped closer to her, their faces meer inches apart in his earnest declaration. “I do not say this to hurt you. I say this because it is the truth. Your mother, like all women married to even the most well-meaning high society man, suffered. She suffered quietly in dark places where her husband could not reach her. Those gifts you told me about–the extravagant ones like the flowering trees, the horses, the home he built. They were not gestures of love, Emmeline. They were an apology. An apology as old as time from providers to those they care for. Your mother filled the quiet spaces in with fantasy and romance for your benefit . Perhaps for hers! If she were alive to ask, she would tell you the same. I am right here, Emmeline. I am here and I am giving you all that you have asked of me, and yet you deny me still.”