Page 23 of The Burdened Duke (Willenshires #4)

William felt as though his feet were rooted to the ground. Timothy had gone rushing to the door of the stables, staring across the courtyard after her. He paused in the doorway, glancing back at William.

“You should go after her. Tell her it was a misunderstanding. You need to explain , William.”

“Explain what?” His lips felt numb. “It was all true. I did hire an investigator to find her. I did keep her locket for longer than I should. I don’t have anything to say to that. It’s true. I can’t lie.”

Timothy began to look exasperated. “Tell her that you love her, you utter fool.”

William flinched. “I can’t. I couldn’t. How can I, after all that?”

His friend came towards him, gripping his shoulders. “Look at me. Look at me, Will! You can’t be a coward. Not when it comes to love. Take it from somebody who almost lost everything. You must act.”

“I’m not a coward.”

“Then do something. Go after her. Tell her you’ll break your betrothal off with Miss Bainbridge.”

“I can’t.”

“You must! It is unfair to Miss Bainbridge – you do not love her – and it is unfair to yourself.”

“It’s dishonourable.”

Timothy growled. “Dishonourable! I hate that word. Are you truly going to condemn yourself to a lifetime of misery because of one small mistake? If you tell Miss Brookford that you made a mistake, that you intend to end things with Miss Bainbridge, then perhaps she will think differently of you.”

Biting his lip, William glanced across the courtyard. Lavinia had her head down, and was running as fast as she could. She had almost reached the steps.

He squeezed his eyes closed.

“No.”

“ William …”

“Not yet . She needs time to calm down.”

Timothy made an exasperated noise. “You’ve said that a great deal lately, William Not yet . Be careful that not yet does not become never.”

William said nothing in response to this. Really, there was nothing to say.

***

Most of the guests had left for the hunt. William had made an excuse and taken himself to the privacy of his study. Today, he wasn’t even pretending to do work. He stared into space, fingers drumming out a rhythm on the desk.

Timothy is right. I must speak to her.

I doubt she wants to speak to me at the moment. I’d be turned away.

What if she tells her family?

What have I done?

What if she won’t forgive me?

What if I can’t forgive myself?

With a groan, he dropped his head into his hands, fingers dishevelling his hair.

I don’t know what to do.

A brusque tap on the door made him jerk upright. He blinked, mentally reviewing who might still be in the house. He was fairly certain that Lavinia was still here, but his siblings and their respective spouses had all gone out. Perhaps Timothy had told Katherine about what had happened, and she was here to lecture him.

Richly deserved, I think. Only one way to find out.

“Enter,” he said, hating how tremulous his voice sounded.

The door opened. Miss Bainbridge entered. Alone.

William flinched, eyes widening, and made to get up from the desk.

“Don’t fret, my maid is right outside the door,” Miss Bainbridge said wearily, pushing open the door a little further to show the maid in question. “I am not here to entrap you. May I sit?”

He cleared his throat, gesturing to a chair. She sat, carefully adjusting her skirts. After an awkward moment, he sank down too, clearing his throat.

“I thought you had gone out,” he said at last, when the silence began to stretch on.

She shrugged. “I meant to go out, but I have no taste for hunting. I thought I would stay, and once I discovered that you were here, I thought we could talk, you and I.”

He swallowed hard, glancing over at her.

Miss Bainbridge did not look well. She was paler than usual, with dark circles under her eyes. Her hair was as neatly arranged as ever, and her dress impeccable, but there was something missing about it all. A spark, perhaps.

“I believe that I owe you an apology,” William heard himself say. “Directly or indirectly, I have made you believe that I was agreeable to… to the union you suggested. Which I accepted. I should not have accepted.”

“To our marriage, you mean,” she said bluntly, and then gave a tired smile at the shock on his face. “Come, your Grace, let’s be honest, shall we? I do like to be forthright in these matters.”

He cleared his throat. “Yes, I suppose you are right. I… I did not know my own mind, and I should have been clear with you on that point. Darting between decisions was an ungentlemanly thing for me to do. I am sorry. But it matters not. I entered into an agreement with you, and I must stick to it, I know that now. Going forward, I will be a better man, and strive to… to make you happy.”

She eyed him for a long moment, fingers drumming on the arm of her chair.

“I had made up my mind to marry you,” she said at last. “I came here to have one last try, to convince you that we would make an excellent Duke and Duchess together.”

He glanced down. “I think you would make an admirable duchess, Miss Bainbridge. You would do a far better job than I am doing as a duke. You are clever, logical, straightforward, and hardworking. You are a fine woman, and you deserve better than… than this,” he made a vague gesture which he hoped encompassed all of what had gone on between them. She gave him a wry smile.

“How kind. I sense that you are about to add a but , though. So let me hear it.”

He closed his eyes. “I am in love with Miss Brookford.”

She gave a long, slow exhale. “Yes. Yes, I thought you were. It makes sense, I suppose. She has a… a vibrancy that I do not. Of course, I have money, a great deal of it, and breeding, which she does not, but that is neither here nor there.”

“I ought to have been forthright with you,” he repeated, forcing himself to meet her eye. “I… I did not expect to fall in love. I did not plan for it. Frankly, I intended to keep my heart clear of the marriage business altogether, as I thought that using only my head would make for a better decision. We discussed this, I know.”

“I am inclined to agree.”

“And indeed, here I am,” he shrugged tiredly. “I love her. My heart is gone, and I cannot take it back.”

Miss Bainbridge lifted her eyebrows. “She has refused you? What a surprise. I rather thought she was fond of you, too. At the very least, yours is an offer she should not pass up.”

“No, no, I haven’t asked her. How could I? You and I are… ahem. I would never make a proposal of marriage to a woman while I was engaged to another. To you, in point of fact.”

She eyed him with those cool, beady eyes, waiting for him to finish, as if she knew it all already. “I have upset her quite badly,” he finished at last. “Hardly surprising, considering my behaviour over the past weeks.”

“Well, whatever it is, I’m sure you can smooth it over,” Miss Bainbridge remarked, lifting an eyebrow. “A little honesty, a few sincere apologies are all it will take, yes?”

“I… I don’t know.”

Almost without thinking about it, William reached for the small, muslin-wrapped parcel on the desk. He hadn’t taken the locket out to look at it for quite a while. Odd, considering how important the trinket had become to him recently.

“You won’t know until you try,” she said, offering what might have been a smile. “I bear you no ill will, your Grace. I’m not even angry at Miss Brookford. I was angry at her, I think, but perhaps you and I would not have been so ideally suited after all.”

William blinked, glancing up. What was she talking about? They were betrothed. They were committed to each other. He had told her that he would engage into matrimony with her.

“I take my promises seriously. I will try my best to make you happy, Miss Bainbridge.”

She gave a wry smile. “Bless you, your Grace, but I don’t leave my happiness in the hands of others. I choose for myself whether to be happy or not.”

He frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Miss Bainbridge suddenly looked very tired. “I release you from our betrothal, William. Such as it was, at least. If you wish to pursue Miss Brookford, you are free to do so.”

“I… I don’t know what to say,” he stammered.

She chuckled. “There is nothing to say. I am simply informing you of this change in circumstances.”

Abruptly, she rose to her feet, extending a hand. It took him a second or two to bounce to his feet as well, and he realised that she was not holding out her hand for him to take. She held it with the palm to one side, fingers straight. She was inviting a handshake, frank and open.

After only an instant’s hesitation, he took it. It was like a huge weight had lifted off his shoulders. He felt almost shaky.

“I wish you all the best, Miss Bainbridge. I wish you might find love, as I have. I hope you’ll manage it a little better than I have done.”

She chuckled, reaching up to adjust her spectacles. “Perhaps I shall, perhaps I shall not. I hope we’ll meet again, your Grace. I look forward to meeting your duchess under better circumstances.”

He could only manage a smile in response. She dropped his hand, offered him a wry smile, and turned to leave.

William was left standing behind his desk, hands hanging by his side, listening to Miss Bainbridge’s footsteps retreat, her maid scuttling behind.

He was still standing there like a statue when the butler came bursting in, out of breath.

“Your Grace, I am terribly sorry to interrupt you, I just… well, I thought you should know, seeing as everybody is out of the house, including her Grace the Dowager.” The man was panting, sweat beading on his forehead, and it was fairly clear he’d run at least from one side of the house to another.

That’s not like him, William thought, a sense of unease sparking in his chest.

“What’s the matter?”

“It is the Brookford family,” the butler said, regaining his breath. “I am quite sure that her Grace, the Dowager, is unaware of this, and they would not agree to wait even an hour longer! Her Grace will be quite upset, I fear. There’ll be a great deal of talk about this, too. They would not be reasoned with. Their minds were quite made up.”

“What are you talking about?” William felt the first throbs of a headache at his temples. “I don’t understand.”

The butler drew in a breath. “The Brookford family has packed up their things and left about ten minutes ago.”

There was a moment of silence.

“I beg your pardon,” William said at last. “You mean they have left, without warning or announcing it? Is there a note?”

The butler shook his head. “There was something of a kerfuffle this morning, I believe. I only heard of it half an hour ago, when the Brookford carriage was summoned. Their things were already half loaded by the time I arrived. I tried to get to the bottom of it, but Lord Brennon was remarkably uncooperative. He only said that he believed you , your Grace, would know the reason.”

William swallowed hard, a lump forming in his throat.

He’s right. I do know the reason. I shamed Lavinia Brookford, I hurt her more than I had ever intended to do, and now her family are leaving my home.

“Is… are all of them going?” he managed at last.

The butler sighed. “ Gone , your Grace. All four of them. I watched the carriage move away. I thought, mistakenly, that you had gone out with the hunt, your Grace, or I would have told you at once. Of course, they cannot be obliged to stay, but…” he bit his lip. “There’ll be a great deal of talk about this, your Grace. The nastiest rumours are started over things as silly as this. I cannot imagine what might have happened to offend the family, but…”

“I must go down to the stables,” William said shakily, snatching up the locket from the table.

He left the study, sprinting down the hallway. The butler followed him, the poor man puffing and panting as he went. William felt a pang of sympathy, but really, there was no time to waste.

He went straight to the Brookfords’ rooms. They were, as the butler had promised, empty, an odd sort of deserted feeling hanging in the air.

There was no note, nothing at all, not even a folded slip of paper left out on the chest of drawers.

William stood in the middle of one of the bedchambers, his breath coming hard, heart pounding.

What have I done?

Timothy warned me. Or tried to, at least. He told me that not yet might easily become never . And now, my chance has slipped away.

No. Not quite. It has nearly slipped away. And that’s not the same thing at all.

“I’ll need a horse,” William said at last. The butler who had arrived puffing after him, flinched.

“A… a horse, your Grace?”

“Yes. There’s a nice mare in the stables called Cinnamon. Saddle her up. I shall ride out after them.”

The butler cleared his throat awkwardly. “There… there aren’t any horses, your Grace. Not riding ones.”

William rounded on him. “What did you say?”

The poor man shrank back. “The hunt, your Grace! Just about every horse in the stables has been taken out! I might be able to find a few horses from the farmlands to hire, and we could strap them up to one of the carriages, and…”

“No, no, that’ll take too long. They’ve got a long enough head start. I’ll never catch them in a carriage, or on some staid old carthorse.” William dropped his head into his hands, giving a muffled groan. “Are there no horses at all in my stables?”

There was a long, pregnant pause.

“Well,” the butler began carefully. “There is one horse.”

William lifted his head. “Oh?”

The butler met his eye pointedly. “ A particular horse, your Grace. The one that you said nobody was to ride. The… the horse that belonged to the late duke. The one that killed him.”

William swallowed hard, fear drying up his throat. He glanced down at the driveway, which he could see clearly from the window.

Ten minutes. They’ve been gone for ten minutes. If I don’t leave soon, I won’t catch them.

He squeezed his eyes closed.

“Saddle him up.”

The butler actually staggered backwards. “Your Grace?”

“You heard me. Saddle up that horse. Make haste, there’s no time to lose.”