Page 26 of The Duke of Swords (The Highwaymen #4)

“No, not to me,” she said, with a certainty borne of god-knew-where. She believed it somewhere, in the soul of herself, but she didn’t think it, not with her mind, not with her wits, not with any rational examination of all her experiences with the man.

But her father seemed swayed by it, even so. “You think he loves you.”

“I don’t know if he is capable of that,” she said.

“I don’t know if I am either, if it comes to it.

But he wants me and he has protected me from harm, again and again.

I have realized there is no world in which I get to be on my own or own myself or have the means and freedom to take care of myself.

And if it comes to who I should trust, I trust him more than I trust you. ”

Her father’s eyes widened in hurt.

And she apologized, though she wasn’t actually sorry and she had meant everything she said. It simply happened, because she had been taught that when she said something that hurt another person, the thing to do was to say she was sorry.

That was essentially the end of the conversation, however.

And later, she got the letter from Rutchester.

She sent back word that he should meet her to talk.

She wished it to be somewhere that her father would not see them, somewhere that Rutchester could get to without being seen, but not somewhere too far away, because she would need to steal away to the spot on foot and come back.

She thought about it and decided the spot in the wood where they had first spoken might be best. She thought back over that exchange, how he had been willing to let her go if she’d had somewhere to go, but that he had taken her so that she would not starve.

She thought about what he’d told her, about his own father.

He’s not monstrous, no matter what he thinks of himself, she thought. He’s like me. We are the same.

RUTCHESTER FELT READY to explode upon arriving at the agreed-upon spot, and he was worried that he would not be able to keep control of himself, not at all. If she told him to go, he was frightened he would slam a fist into a tree trunk or tear a branch from one of the trees or…

Please don’t let me hurt her. It was a prayer. Whether to the Christian God or to Mars, he could not say. If it was Mars, he had been a sacrifice often enough, a tender small thing offered up for the pleasure of that warlike deity. Mars owed him.

She wasn’t there when he got there, but she appeared soon enough.

She smiled at him, shy, and started to reach for him, but then stopped as she caught sight of his expression. “What’s wrong?”

He only shook his head.

“You’ve changed your mind,” she said, her face falling. “Of course you have. I wouldn’t have thought you’d come to tell me face to face, so I suppose I am grateful—”

“No,” he broke in.

She looked up, smiling again. “No?”

He shook his head. “I have not changed my mind, madam.”

“But you are…” She reached out and touched him, her hand gentle on his upper arm. “You are out of sorts. What is it?”

Her touch was like a balm. It made him feel warm and safe, like nights in his house when his father had been gone and left him there with his mother, nights where she seemed like a child herself, and where the atmosphere was celebratory without that man around, where she would let him sleep in her bed and he would curl into her and she would hold him tightly.

His mother was dead now. She had outlived his father but succumbed to a sickness about five years ago.

They had not been close towards the end.

Somehow, he’d never quite forgiven her. He knew that she had known what his father did.

He knew because he had told her, and she had shushed him and said he was never to speak of that, and that he must be confused, anyway, that it couldn’t be true.

“I suppose I have been worried you have changed your mind,” he said.

“No, no, not at all,” she said.

“You may, you know,” he said. “And even if I take it badly, I shall do my best not to behave like an ogre about it. And after we marry, if you ever decide you no longer want me to touch you, I will abide by that.”

She tilted her head to one side. “All right. Thank you, I shall keep that in mind. I do have… I wouldn’t say they are requirements, because I shall be honest when I say that if you deny me these things, I shall still marry you. It is my best option.”

“It is not, though,” he said. “You went to that ball as a countess, and no one said you were anything otherwise, at least I don’t think so. I don’t know why you left, but if you change your mind and want that back, I shall make certain you have it.”

She considered this, furrowing her brow. “I suppose I was being rather stubborn and wrong-headed when I turned all that down, but it doesn’t appeal to me anymore, I don’t think.”

“What are your requirements?” he said. “Maybe if I can’t meet them, that situation will.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Perhaps.” She took a deep breath. “Well, they are not requirements, as I say. They are requests. I want something of my own. It could be small. Perhaps a garden or a pair of dogs to breed or even some horses, if that is not too much.”

“All three, done,” he said. “I own four houses. You can have one of them. I’ll write the deed over to you.”

She was taken aback.

“Most of my friends have similar arrangements with their wives,” he said. “I expect to make sure you have a means to an income outside of being married to me. Something legally yours and not tied to being my wife.”

“Is that even possible?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Truly?” Her eyes were shining. “Well, thank you, then. Never mind.”

“Never mind?” he said. “Your other requirements?”

“Requests,” she said. “I wanted to have the ability to sell the things that were mine, that is all. If I bred puppies, I wanted to…” She looked away, wiping at her eye. “A entire house? An income?” Tears were spilling over her cheeks.

“These are, erm, good tears?” He wasn’t certain.

She nodded.

It was quiet for a moment. He reached out to take her hand.

She rushed headlong against him, tucking herself into his chest like she had in that carriage after they’d left Fateux’s body behind, and he wrapped his arms around her and felt certain she belonged here.

“Do you want to have children?” he said softly.

“I have a choice?” she laughed.

“If we can help it. I don’t ever have to touch you, you know.”

“You are touching me now.”

“You know what I mean.”

“But you wish to touch me.” There was knowingness to her voice, a richness that rooted down into the depth of his cock and made it stir.

“Yes, I do,” he breathed.

“I wish to be touched,” she said. “And wanted. You want me in this way , Your Grace, and there is nothing like it in the world.” She tilted back her head. “Maybe we’ll even sort of be happy, do you think?”

“I don’t know,” he said, with a rueful smile. “I don’t know if I ever have been happy.”

“Well, me either,” she said, grinning up at him. “I was thinking this before, that we are the same.”

“The same, madam?”

“You must call me Rae.”

“Must I?” He liked this woman. She was wonderful. “Well, if I must, then, I shall. I am Oliver.”

“I know your name,” she said, laughing. “I shall be Rae Campbell, Mrs. Oliver Campbell.”

“You’ll be Her Grace, the Duchess of Rutchester,” he said.

She giggled. “Maybe we’ll even be in love.”

“I love you,” he said, immediately.

She put a hand to his chest, letting out a breath. “Oh, you just said that.”

“I don’t mean to love you, truly,” he said. “But I have since the moment you tried to run from Fateux, I think, and I know I didn’t act like I loved you, but I had never really felt it before, not like this, not for a woman, and I didn’t know what it was, and—”

“I wish to love you back,” she cut in. “I really do. I shall try, if you but give me some time.”

He shook his head. “You shouldn’t love me, though.”

“W-well, I wish to. You are not angry that I don’t?”

“Not at all.”

“I’m ever so sorry.”

“All I should ever say to you are a thousand apologies and they would never be enough,” he said.

She lay her head back against his chest. “I do.”

“Do what?”

“Want children,” she said. “Do you?”

“I have never even considered it.”

“But you just asked if I did.”

“I…” He ran his hands over her body, her back and her shoulders, feeling a drowsy feeling of goodness at their closeness. “I think I might not be, erm, good with children.”

She stiffened. “You don’t mean that you—”

“ No. ”

“Good,” she said in relief.

“No, I’d never do that . I only mean that I get very angry sometimes. It’s more than the anger takes me over and I do things while it’s riding my body and I wouldn’t wish to ever… perhaps we shouldn’t have children.”

“Out of control,” she said softly. “Yes, you have trouble with that, with control. That’s all right. We work around that, perhaps.”

“How?”

“I don’t quite know,” she said.

“You haven’t perhaps truly seen me that way.”

“I have seen you break things,” she said.

“Right,” he said, chagrined.

“Let me think on it. While I am thinking, you will simply not spend inside me.”

“Yes, of course.” He cleared his throat. “That’s not exactly foolproof, of course.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, I shall think on that, too.”

“You’ll think on all these things and simply sort me out?” He was amused.

“Maybe I could,” she said, beaming up at him. “You love me, after all.”

There was a lump in his throat. He gazed down at her pretty, sweet face. “Why?” he breathed.

“I don’t know,” she said, understanding what he meant, understanding that he was asking why she was agreeing to marry him, why she was in his arms, why she was offering to bother trying to sort him out when he was such a mess of a man. “I told you I had gone mad, didn’t I?”

“Thank you,” he said. “I don’t deserve you.”

“You do not,” she said, a bit of coldness creeping into her voice. “You don’t deserve a woman at all.”

His jaw twitched.

She patted his chest. “You will work on that, though. I think you will deserve me soon enough.”

“How? How will I deserve you?”

“I don’t know that yet either,” she said. “But you are not monstrous. You are not good, not really, but you are less bad than you think you are.”

He laughed. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“I don’t wish to elope,” she said, with a sigh. “It would likely take us a week to get all the way to Scotland from here—”

“Oh, less,” he said. “If we could go fifty miles per day—”

“That is breakneck speed, Your Grace!”

“True,” he said. However, he might have gotten a bit attached to the thought of having nights and nights in various inns with her on the way there. He was going to marry her, and that meant he could have her under him again, and he wanted that. He wanted her badly.

“I doubt you are the type of duke who could finagle the archbishop into a special license.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”

“I think we must have the banns read in London, where the other dukes are.” She stopped, thinking about it. “Are they still in London, or have they all retired to the country for the autumn?”

“London,” he said. “Well, at least Dunrose and Nothshire are. Arthford doesn’t come to London if he can help it.” He knew because he’d needed to note the return addresses to address the letters he’d left for the post at Andiley. “Does that matter?”

“I think that if my father is going to try to come and protest at the bann reading, we must do it somewhere where you have support, not here, where my father might have sway.”

He nodded. “Yes, that’s smart.”

“And I would like to come with you, though I suppose that’s frightfully improper. We shouldn’t live together until we’re married. I thought maybe I could stay with the Duke and Duchess of Dunrose again if they were amenable.”

He cleared his throat. “It’s only that it’s likely easier to deal with if we were to elope.

Then we’d simply be married, and it would be harder for him to protest it.

He has three weeks if we have the banns read.

It’s not that I have any real concerns for my own reputation, you understand, because I don’t rightly have a reputation.

It would be quicker to go to Scotland in the end, and it would be less trouble with your father. ”

“Yes, but he said he was coming after us with pitchforks or what-have-you.”

“I know. We could leave now, right now, and he won’t know we’ve gone until he realizes you’re not there.”

“Leave now? But I didn’t bring anything with me,” she said.

“What do you need?” he said.

“He would likely still catch up with us, if he’s very determined. I think you should allow me to attempt to talk him out of it,” she said. She sighed heavily. “Of course, all my conversations with him are not working out very well, I have to admit.”

He regarded her, pausing for several minutes, and then he nodded. “All right, then. Let us think about both of these options and make a decision later, then.”

“Yes, that’s good,” she said. “I shall send word to you again when I’m ready to go.”

“And I shall come for you,” he said.

But when he returned to the inn where he was staying, the front room was quite crowded with men, all of whom stood up when he entered.