Page 23 of The Homecoming (The De Montforte Brothers #6)

Chapter Eighteen

H ours later, the house was quiet.

Dr. Highworth had long since returned to the village. Nobody went back to the parlor or felt like gathering, and weary from what had turned out to be a trying day, everyone made their excuses and retired for the night.

Turnip, having exhausted Celsie and Andrew the previous nights, now reposed in a box beside the bed in which Gareth and Juliet, woken by the puppy’s sudden whining, now sat in a tired stupor, waiting for him to settle back down.

They had got him outside just in time for what turned out to be an explosion out of his back end that was a testimony to—and a result of—all the food he had stolen earlier, and neither Gareth nor Juliet dared to fall back asleep for fear it was just the beginning of what promised to be a very long night.

In the rooms in which he had grown up, Andrew slept entwined with Celsie beneath the blankets, a fire dying in the hearth. After their sleepless tenure with Turnip, neither he nor his wife suffered the insomnia that plagued his brothers.

In the ducal apartments, Lucien lay staring up in the darkness as he waited for his duchess to return from the nursery where she’d gone to check on their son.

In his old rooms, Charles tossed and turned, finally got up and went to sit in a chair by the window so his restlessness wouldn’t keep his wife, still exhausted from delivering what was the most perfect little boy in the entire world, awake.

He dreaded the morning, when he would quietly remove himself from the house so Nerissa and her recovering husband could have a proper visit with the family without the awkwardness his presence, and the events of the past few days, would ensure.

He did not look forward to the explanations, the goodbyes, the protests, and surely, the silent accusations.

Embarrassed and ashamed, he just wanted to go away and let them all enjoy each other’s company without him.

And in a gilded room fit for a princess, an Irish mariner and his beautiful highborn wife lay in bed, his arm wrapped around her to hold her close against him, her head nestled against the uninjured side of his chest. Both stared into the darkness.

“I don’t think we should head home tomorrow, mo grá ,” he said quietly, his fingers stroking her back.

“Well then, we will go as soon as you’re well enough to travel. I’ve had enough. It’s been one disaster after another, and this homecoming was nothing like what it was supposed to be. Tonight was the last straw.”

“I’m well enough to travel, lass. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

She fought back tears as she thought of how close she’d come to losing him.

“What are you talking about, then?”

“If we go tomorrow, it leaves unfinished business and a world o’ hurt behind. The next time we come back—”

“I don’t ever want to come back.”

“Come now, Sunshine, you can’t mean that.”

“I do mean it. Everything has changed. My brothers are all married and have their own lives, their own children, their own homes. I’m married and live far away, in a place which is nothing like this one.

We’re not the family we were, I don’t even recognize what Charles has become, and everything is just .

.. different. Why should I ever want to come back?

To subject you to such horrible treatment? ”

“My dear Nerissa, I’ve a thick skin. Three out o’ four of yer brothers seem to like me. Can’t complain, now.”

“I still wish to go home. Too much has changed and there’s no fixing it.”

“If we go home tomorrow, there won’t be any fixing it. Things will stay as they are ... in fact, they’re likely to get worse.”

“And the puppy ... he’s been nothing but trouble from the moment we arrived.”

“He’s been nothing but trouble since he was born. It’s what makes him so charming.”

“We shouldn’t have brought him. I thought he’d be a nice gift for the family ... something from America to remember us by ... we’re all dog lovers ... but it’s all gone so very wrong.”

“He’s a puppy , lass. He’s just doing what puppies do.”

She felt hot tears tracking down her cheeks and hoped her husband would not notice. But, of course he noticed. His thumb came up to gently wipe them away and she felt his lips in her hair as he drew her close.

“Nerissa, love, I’ll say it again, one last time.

I think it’s wrong to go home tomorrow, and if we do, ’twill leave a pile o’ hurt feelings in our wake.

It’ll leave a fierce rift between you and yer brother that’ll never heal.

But I won’t try to force ye to do something ye’ve no mind to do.

If ye want to go home, we’ll finish packing and catch the stage in Ravenscombe tomorrow.

We’ll head back to the coast. I’ll sail us home and that will be that. But I think ye’ll regret it.”

She sniffled, overwhelmed. Celsie’s and Andrew’s bleary-eyed exhaustion after their nights spent with the puppy.

Charles’s unceasing hostility. Amy going into labor from the stress of Charles and Ruaidri coming to fisticuffs.

The horrible accusations of the ring’s theft.

The puppy chasing Mary’s kitten up the tree, the little girl’s screams for her stranded pet, the horrible sound of the limb giving way outside, Ruaidri lying hurt and unconscious on the bed, and perhaps worst of all, Lucien’s inability or even unwillingness to fix this whole big, bubbling, bloody awful mess that had been set in motion by their arrival.

All of it played over and over in her mind, unceasing.

Since when had Lucien not fixed something? Anything?

It seemed he too had changed. No, nothing was the same, nothing was the same at all, and none of it, not one bit of it, felt right.

“Nerissa?”

“I’ve made up my mind, Ruaidri. I want to go home.”

The rain had returned, and he could hear its soft whisper outside.

It beat relentlessly against the ancient glass of the tower bedroom’s windows, and on any other night he might have found it soothing.

Restful. Tonight though, the sound was mournful, a lament for what should have been but wasn’t.

A dirge. Lucien lay staring up into the gloom, waiting for Eva to return.

His heart was troubled. He could not sleep, either.

He heard hid duchess’s soft tread across the rug as she moved softly back into the room.

“No need to be quiet,” he murmured. “I am awake.”

She slid into bed beside him and up against his skin, right where he liked her.

He pulled the blankets over them both, and she dropped tantalizing kisses along the base of his neck, and down his chest, her hand finding him in the darkness.

She knew him well enough to know what was troubling him, knew him well enough that she would try to love away his heartbreak.

His arms went around her and they came together, and when it was over, he still could not sleep.

“Lucien,” she murmured. “What will you do?”

It was a long moment before he spoke.

“I can’t force Charles to like him,” he said. “And I fear too much damage has been done for this situation to ever resolve.”

She rested her head on his chest, her ear against his heartbeat. “Charles said himself, that he felt his animosity toward Ruaidri starting to lessen. That they were actually being civil to each other while trying to rescue Mary’s kitten.”

“Easy to say in the face of a crisis that was almost a tragedy. Such times of fear for someone’s very life tend to bring out the best in people.

The regrets. But now that Ruaidri is recovered and the crisis is past, Charles will be unable to forgive himself for his feelings.

His actions. I know my brother. I know how hard he is on himself, the standards he sets for himself, and he’s too ashamed to just go up to Ruaidri, apologize, and try to begin anew. ”

“I don’t understand how someone couldn’t like Ruaidri. A person would have to be blind not to see how much he absolutely worships the ground Nerissa walks on. He’s the best thing that ever happened to her.”

“Indeed. It’s what brought me around to accepting, and eventually liking him. Much as I hated to admit it at the time.”

They lay in the darkness together, he stroking his duchess’s long, unbound hair, she staring into the dying hearth, he at the bed hangings above.

“What does the poor fellow have to do for Charles to accept him?” she asked. “He brought Nerissa across an entire ocean just so she could be with her family.”

“And held his considerable temper in the face of Charles’s animosity.”

“And risked his life aboard that hellish stallion of yours in order to call out Dr. Highworth for Charles’s wife.”

“And nearly killed himself trying to rescue Charles’s daughter’s kitten from the tree.”

“The man’s a hero.”

Lucien sighed. “All that, and it still isn’t enough.”

“And now Charles is also leaving. Taking his family, including a wife that just gave birth and a newborn baby, back home.”

“A bloody disaster.”

“What will you do, Lucien?”

For once in his life, Lucien didn’t have a plan, and said so.

“Well, I may just have one,” Eva said slyly.

“Do tell, my dear.”

“It involves the children. But it might ... it might just work.”