Page 25 of The Duke of Swords (The Highwaymen #4)

RUTCHESTER LEFT.

HE wasn’t sure what to do, but he did not wish to stay in a place where he was expressly not welcome.

He said that Miss Smith might come along with him, if she wished, and she said she would speak to her father first, if he didn’t mind.

She said that if he wished to elope, however, that might be the best course.

And then her father said that if Rutchester tried to take her to Gretna Green, her father and every man who lived on his land—for all the tenants were apparently devoted to her now—would come after them and prevent them from getting anywhere.

Her father said that Rutchester might not duel him, and he might be a vicious sort of man, but that even the most vicious of men could not stop a crowd of able-bodied men.

Rutchester had never fought a mob, but he wondered if he could prevail against one.

It was odd, really, because Rutchester didn’t typically have much in the way of qualms when it came to cutting through any resistance to whatever it was he was after, but he did not wish to kill a number of men for her, not if it would displease or terrorize her.

Yes, whatever Nothshire had said was right in some way. She made him wish to be a different man, a better man.

He did not leave the area. He went to a nearby inn and took a room there. He sent word with a servant, paying the boy extra to put the letter directly into Miss Smith’s hands and not to allow her father to see that she had received it. The letter told her where he was and where she could send word.

Then, he couldn’t relax.

Anxious, he paced his room, feeling again that he had somehow acted without forethought, gotten himself into a mess that he didn’t know a way out of. It would be easier if Miss Smith were to simply decide not to marry him.

Why did she want him?

Perhaps, he thought, she simply wanted his title.

He didn’t quite think that was the answer, however.

The thought from before, that she was confused about him, the way he’d been confused about his father, also surfaced, but he knew it wasn’t the same. Children relied on their fathers for protection and care. They must excuse their fathers’ sins, for they had no other recourse.

She did not already have some attachment to him, not like a child to a father.

She might still be wrongheaded about him, he supposed. It might be a wretched thing he was doing to her, tying her to him. But, as it was, he could not take back his proposal or turn his back on her, either.

He vowed to himself that if she came through it at some point, and her senses returned to her, and she hated him, as well she should, if she then wished to have some other sort of sweet and loving connection with a better man, he’d let it happen.

Fateux, after all, had let his wife have any number of affairs.

It wasn’t ideal, of course, but it seemed the best way forward as things stood now.

This was what Nothshire never seemed to understand, that there was often not a right way to do things. There were simply several not-right ways and one had to pick the one that was the least damaging, and that was really as good as the world ever got.

Hours later, a letter came back. She wished him to meet her in the woods outside the keep, in the place where they’d spoken alone for the first time.

He wished she had not picked that place. He wondered if it meant something.

But he went there at the time appointed, and he was prepared that she would tell him that she wanted nothing more to do with him.

He thought about how that would make him feel, and he admonished himself, over and over, that even if it hurt like hell itself, that he would not break something.

I shall keep myself in check, no matter the outcome, he said to himself, and he repeated it like he was warding off the darkness within.

RAE GOT THE letter from Rutchester, brought to her secretly by a servant, and she read it with a bit of disbelief, because some part of her had thought he would simply be gone, that he was not serious about marrying her.

But he was nearby, waiting for word from her.

I am yours, he had said.

But she’d known this for some time, she thought, that he belonged to her in some way. Perhaps it was not a strictly good way, but a way that was born of blood and longing and a lack of control. Even still, it was true in an ancient and powerful way, and she felt its truth in her bones.

He was hers and had been for some time.

But she did not belong to him.

Well, she would, once they were married, in that way that women belonged to men.

But she sort of understood it in a strange way, why men did that to women, because they must sense it somehow, that women never belonged to men in the same way, and they wished to tie them up, tie them down, hold them under their heels.

But she didn’t belong to him anymore than the trees surrounding the keep belonged to her father.

Men tried to take control of things, tried to tame the ancient power of nature, and they always failed.

In some way, she would always be free. She had claimed her freedom that night she had left London, and no one could take it away from her, never again.

High-minded thoughts, though, and much easier to think when one had a proposal from a duke, she thought wryly.

The world of the trees and the world of men did not rest easily against each other, and they both had their own rules. But they were each real, in their own way. She would, quite truly, belong to Rutchester once she was married to him.

After Rutchester left, her father had raged for some time, talking endlessly, not listening to anything she said, not letting her finish her sentences, even, and so eventually, she fell silent and waited until his words sputtered out.

“You have never asked me what happened to me,” she said, then.

“I knew what happened,” he said hotly. “I didn’t want to hear about it, and I didn’t think you wished to relive it.”

“He tried to give me another life,” she said.

“He took me to London and gave me over to the duchesses of his friends, who were setting about to hand me over enough money to live on for the rest of my days. They were styling me as a widow, and they gave me a new name and different history. I went to a ball in a beautiful dress, and it would have all been washed away.”

“What are you talking about?” said her father.

“And I couldn’t take it at the end, because it didn’t feel as if it was mine,” she said.

“It felt as if it was admitting that I could not do anything for myself and that I was weak and that I needed the assistance of others. I had felt, when you fell into debt, so helpless, and then when Fateux… I cannot explain why it was so awful, exactly, because the physical part of it was not that bad. It was unpleasant but not exactly painful. It was endurable, but it was bad in some other way, some deep way, some way that cemented to me the truth that I was helpless, that I owned nothing, not even my own cunt.”

“For God’s sake, that word , Rae!” Her father gaped at her.

“And I came back here, thinking, foolishly,” she said, “that I would own myself here, and that I would make my own way, by my wits and the sweat of my brow and by making the best of what we had. I thought, and I don’t know why I thought this, but I thought, here, with you, that this was my home, and this was where I owned myself.

But then, you reminded me that all I did was come back here and give you ownership of me, which you are, even now, trying to exert. ”

“No,” said her father. “I am trying to protect you. I do not own you, I love you.”

She leveled a gaze at him. “It will not matter, you know. You and all the men you can muster may come after Rutchester and me, but he is a duke, and he has money and resources and other duke friends, and all of them are quite as vicious as he, and you will fail, and I shall still be with him. But you will drag my reputation through the dirt even worse than it already is and you will throw a pall over my marriage, which will still happen.”

Her father sighed. “Why would you wish to marry that man?”

She opened her mouth to explain.

Nothing came out.

Her father dragged a hand over his face. “You’re being childish about this.”

“I am not,” she said, appalled.

“You and I quarreled last night. I never did seek another wife all those years after I lost your mother, and you would obviously not be pleased at such a suggestion, and now you are doing this only to be perverse and to make me just as equally unpleased.”

“No,” she said in a tight, horrified voice. “How dare you say that? Not everything is about you , Papa!”

“You should understand that I only said it to reassure you that I would be all right if you did wish to leave and have your own life. I didn’t wish you to give up your own future for my sake—”

“None of this has been for your sake!” She screamed it.

He took a step back. “There, you see, throwing a fit, as if you are but ten years old.”

“Let me be plain, Papa,” she said coldly.

“You have been a disappointment to me for some time. I deserved a better father than the father you were to me. When I came back here, it was to take care of myself, for I had no hope that you would ever take care of me. Now that you are attempting to, I see that I was better off without your abundantly short-sighted and ultimately selfish interference. I am not some extension of you. I am a human being.”

He rolled his eyes. “Now you’re being overly dramatic. Of course I know you are a human being.”

“If I were a boy, would you prevent me from marrying where I chose?”

“If it were a particularly bad marriage, yes.”

“I shall be a duchess.”

“He will likely kill you, Rae. It won’t even be on purpose. He’ll go into a rage, and you’ll be in the way, and—”