Page 36 of The Duke of Cups (The Highwaymen #3)

AT FIRST, DUNROSE was simply ashamed of himself.

He’d nearly killed himself on accident. While he was lying in his bed soiling himself and vomiting all over her (apparently, according to his valet) she’d taken it upon herself to finally take care of Champeraigne and had done a good job of it, it seemed.

No one had ever thought of using someone close to Champeraigne against him.

No one had ever considered Fateux.

Hell and damnation, no one ever saw Fateux, and they’d never considered that was because Fateux might be angry enough at Champeraigne to go after him.

No poison necessary; Champeraigne was gone.

So, at first, he couldn’t bear to look at her. He felt stupid and pathetic. He couldn’t understand why she’d ever been drawn to him in the first place.

Then, once he was back at Bluebelle Grange, and it had been enough time that he began to think he was not going to relapse into drinking laudanum, he began to think about going to see her.

He wasn’t sure what he wished to say to her, though.

She had never really wanted to marry him, had she?

If he went to her and asked her, really asked her, would she welcome a proposal or would she simply laugh at him?

After seeing him the way she’d seen him, practically dead, and after she’d proved that she could take care of everything all on her own, maybe she would rather never see him.

He sent a letter to Rutchester, because he knew she was staying there.

Rutchester wrote back that she never spoke of him, and what was more, he’d just offered for her to go to Bluebelle Grange and she’d preferred to go to Nothshire.

Oh.

Well, that settled that.

He gave up on it.

Once, he sent a letter to Nothshire himself, asking how she was doing in the north, and Nothshire wrote back that she and Patience were good friends and that they all went on picnics together and played with the baby and laughed a lot.

She never says anything about you, really, Nothshire wrote.

She doesn’t seem like she’s broken-hearted or anything.

Well, that put the final nail in the coffin, Dunrose decided.

He stayed at Bluebelle Grange longer than was likely necessary, but he wasn’t sure if he trusted himself all alone somewhere, especially since he had meant so very little to Hyacinth in the end.

He couldn’t quite make it make sense. She supposedly never left his side while he was ill and in that opium coma, and she’d obviously destroyed her own safety and her relationship with Seraphine for his sake and the sake of the other dukes.

So, why did she seem totally uninterested in him afterwards?

Had he done something after he woke up to deter her, or had she come to her senses?

He didn’t know.

But when he saw her again for the first time at the dinner at Nothshire’s London house, he didn’t know how to act around her.

He spent a lot of time looking at her and looking away if she looked back at him, feeling nervous and wondering if she was looking at him—and it did seem, as though, often, when he looked at her, she was already looking at him.

He couldn’t just avoid her. That seemed wrong in some way.

He had never rightly thanked her for getting rid of Champeraigne, anyway. He should at least do that.

So, after dinner, after whisky with the other dukes, after he heard the ludicrous proposal that sometimes they’d be Robin Hood for the needy and said he wanted no part of it, but that Nothshire could spend time being a do-gooder if he wished, he found her sitting at the piano, picking out the same little tune she’d once played for him at Bess’s.

“Hello there,” he said.

She started, looking up from the piano, her fingers playing wrong notes. “You,” she said.

“Me,” he said.

She got up from the piano and folded her arms over her chest.

He held up his own hands, palms up, to indicate he was not attempting anything at all.

“Don’t worry. I shan’t ask you for anything, I swear it to you.

I am positive there is nothing you would ever want from me, anyway.

I only wished to say that we are all in your debt for what you did, and to, um, well… thank you.”

“Thank you,” she echoed. “For what?”

“For Champeraigne, obviously.”

“Oh,” she said. “Yes, I see. You’re welcome. That was all you ever wanted from me, after all. You got it. I should have realized you wouldn’t even speak to me after you got what you wanted. You’re that sort of man.”

“Well, I would speak to you,” he said. “Except I can’t see why you’d wish to speak to me .”

She looked him over. “True.”

He hung his head.

“I have never seen why either,” she said, furious. “But for whatever reason, I think of you far more often than makes any sense. I was so very nervous about your being here tonight, and… and…” She drew in a breath. “Well, there it is. You don’t like me, and I shall attempt to cease to like you— ”

“What?”

She blinked at him.

“What are you going on about?” he said.

“If you hadn’t interrupted me, you’d know,” she said. “I was going to propose that we try to find some way to be easy around each other, even after all of those frightfully embarrassing things I said to you when you were pretending to be attracted to me.”

“ Pretending to be attracted?”

“Obviously,” she said. “So that I would kill Champeraigne for you.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You don’t really think that’s the way it has been between us, do you?”

She licked her lips slowly.

“Because I seem to remember that my attraction to you has caused me to act ruinously on several occasions, and if I simply wished to manipulate you, I already had leverage, and I seem to have just gone out of my way to muck that up. My attraction to you has never been pretend.”

She took a step backward. “Well, then… why have you been avoiding me?”

“I didn’t think you wished to see me.”

“After I got a man killed for you? After I sat at your bedside until you woke. After I—”

“I was ashamed,” he said. “I was… you should not wish to see me. You should have someone else besides me, someone better than me. I am not good enough for you.”

“Well, that may be true,” she said. “But you’re the one I want.”

His heart gave a mighty tug in his chest. It was very nearly painful. He could not speak.

She stepped closer. “Oh, yes, I seem to remember this now, your going on and on about how no one ever cared about you, and no one ever loved you.”

“No one does,” he said in a faint voice.

“I suppose I’m going to be the first, then.”

Something constricted inside him painfully.

He sat down at the piano. He ran his fingers over the keys, but did not press them down.

“My mother played the piano,” he said. But this was nonsensical, to bring his mother up, out of nowhere, into the midst of this conversation.

“I watched her drown herself, do you know that?”

She sat down on the piano bench next to him. “Daniel?” she breathed.

He wouldn’t look at her. “My father said things . He always knew the right things to say, well, the effective things to say—not right, not truly, for truly they were wrong things—but the things to say to manipulate people into doing whatever he wanted. I am not sure why he wanted to kill her, though. I think… perhaps… he simply wanted to see if he could.”

“I thought she, erm, did away with herself?”

“Right, but he talked her into it,” said Dunrose.

“He told her that she was worthless and that we would all be better off without her. He said that she was a burden on everyone and that I could tell she didn’t love me enough and that it would harm me to be raised with a mother like that, a mother who was cold and unfeeling.

And then he told me , while we were standing on the shore and he was holding my hand and we were watching her—well, watching the water, because she was beneath it, and we couldn’t see her anymore—he told me that no one was going to love me, ever.

He said that she was the only person who had, but she couldn’t even muster enough courage to fight for me.

He said she killed herself to get away from the responsibility of me, and—”

“Stop it,” she said.

He looked up at her.

Her eyes were shining. She shook her head at him. “No, my apologies, you must get it all out, of course, and I can hear it, but it’s so awful. It’s so very, very awful. I can’t abide thinking of anyone saying such a thing to his own son. How old were you?”

“Five years of age,” he said. Seeing the unshed tears in her eyes made him want to cry.

He hadn’t cried over his mother in some time.

“He was lying, then, wasn’t he? My father was lying.

I know it, but sometimes, I can’t help but think that it’s true, that I am unlovable, and that no one will ever love me, and that the responsibility of loving me is so much that anyone who feels it will kill themselves to be free of—”

“It harmed you to be raised by him ,” said Hyacinth fiercely.

“Aye,” he whispered. “My mother did love me, and he took her from me.”

“Just to see if he could,” said Hyacinth. “These men who see the people in the world like playing cards! Lord, Daniel, why are there so many of them?”

He scrubbed his fingers into his forehead. “So, then, you’ve loved me a long time, haven’t you?”

“I have,” she said.

“Why would you keep at it when I’ve been so… wretched to you?”

“I haven’t the foggiest notion,” she said. “But you are lovable, Daniel Roberts. Rather incredibly lovable, actually, rather ruinously lovable. I could not stop myself from loving you anymore than I could stop the sun rising, that’s how it seems to me.”

“Well, that’s abominable,” he said. “You should quite figure out some way to be shut of me, I think. I don’t deserve that kind of unwavering love.”

“No, you don’t,” she said with a shrug. “I am far too good for you.”

He couldn’t help but smile. “Yes, well, seeing as you are so ruinously in love with me, however, maybe it’s just as tidy if we get married, after all.”

“Was that a proposal?” she said.

“Perhaps.”