Page 60 of The Scandalous Love of a Duke (The Marlow Family Secrets #6)

After supper John continued guiding Katherine to participate in conversations, ensuring she was not excluded.

She acted the model wife, smiling, talking and nodding when he gave her an opening.

Yet despite her success John felt as though he were failing.

She was bitterly angry with him, he knew it, though he was not sure why, and yet she hid it perfectly.

She had learned how to set a smile tonight, and hide her emotions, and now he wished she could not.

Her fingers held his arm, but it was a heartless touch.

She was not seeking his support and there was no caress.

She looked into the men’s eyes, attentive, smiling and jovial, yet he knew beneath the smile, there was a brittle disgust of these people and him. He was forcing her to emulate what she hated, making her more like him, when he did not even like himself.

This is what he had wanted of her earlier, but now it grated on him. More fool you, John Harding . It was stupidity to bemoan it. He could hardly now tell her not to do it. Especially as he would not cease protecting his emotions; that was probably why she was angry.

Her honesty and openness were the things that had captured his heart.

Which was it to be? Which was best, to hide one’s emotions and be accepted and respected by these people, or just to be oneself and tell them all to go to hell?

He could not walk away from this life, could he? He had a duty to fulfil.

‘You cannot show weakness, Sayle. People will make a mockery of you. They will walk all over you, boy, if you do not show them who is master .’ He had heard that and similar warnings from his grandfather many times.

It irritated him further that the men who dared ask Katherine to dance were all rakes, because anyone wholly respectable was reserving judgement in the current circumstances.

Any other time he would tell them to go away, but tonight she needed all the support she could get.

Yet he knew these men thought her good game.

The history of her birth had only piqued their interest further and they would all willingly cuckold him, just to knock him down a peg or two.

In the carriage on the way home, he and Katherine were silent, while Mary, who did not know about Wareham’s published letter, excitedly reviewed the night.

He supposed it was a blessing no one had excluded Mary too. She could have been caught up in it. Thank heavens she was not.

His thoughts drifted to Wareham. The man was out there somewhere. John had agreed with Harvey they would hire three dozen more men to find him.

His eyes turned to Katherine. Her lips were pursed and her chin up. A storm would break when they were alone. Would they ever achieve an evening in society without her finding fault with him?

John climbed out of the carriage first when they arrived and handed his mother and Mary down, then Katherine. He kept hold of Kate’s hand and led her to the door, as his father followed her out.

In the hall, they said goodnight to the others and walked on to their rooms in ominous silence. When he shut the door he turned to face her. ‘Now, pray, tell me what is it you are riled over exactly?’

She did not speak as his fingers worked loose the knot of his cravat. John turned to a decanter. Once his cravat was loose he tossed it over the back of a chair, then poured himself a port. He took a sip, then put the glass down and took off his evening coat and threw that over the chair too.

Sipping from the glass again, he undid his waistcoat and left it hanging open. She was still silent. He faced her, intensely annoyed.

She was watching him. She was supposed to be his solace, his supporter. He was not supposed to receive condemnation from her, not in his own home.

He sat in an armchair before the hearth, leaned back in the seat and raised one ankle to the other knee. Then, regarding her, he lifted one eyebrow, another affectation he had picked up from his grandsire. ‘If you have something to say, Katherine…?’

She walked past him and took the chair opposite, staring at the fire, not him.

‘Spit it out then. Have at me, girl. You are obviously dying to.’

She shook her head, got back up and walked away.

She probably thought he would follow. He did not. He was in no mood to play lapdog. He did not even look as he heard the door to the bedchamber open. She would be fleeing to her rooms.

Katherine considered retiring to her own rooms, but she did not. It would be cowardice to do so. Instead she undressed quietly, and not even wishing to leave for a moment in case he came in and locked her out, she borrowed one of his shirts to wear as a nightgown.

John did not come in. She did not go back to him either. There was no point in talking to him when he was dressed in ducal armour, he would not listen.

Eventually she fell asleep.

When she woke John was in bed beside her, and he was breathing heavily, dreaming.

She listened for a moment, hearing his breath fracture on a sudden gasp and then he was awake, sitting up and turning to sit at the edge of the bed, panting before sucking in a deeper breath. She touched his back. It was damp with sweat.

He pulled away. It was probably deserved after she had cut him earlier.

‘John?’

He leaned forward and rested his head in his hands.

After a moment he stood and then moved across the dark room.

‘Where are you going?’ she whispered.

‘Downstairs,’ he growled as he picked up his dressing gown.

She slid off the bed in pursuit, and reached him before he got to the door, hugging him, wrapping her arms about his midriff and pressing her cheek against his back.

He stilled for a moment but then his hands pulled hers loose. ‘Leave me alone.’

The words were harsh and his tone was wounded. She moved and barred his exit. ‘John, what is it? Tell me.’

‘Katherine, please let me go.’

‘No. Not until you tell me about your dream.’

‘I am sure you do not really want to know.’ He moved to pass her.

She blocked his path again.

‘Katherine, just get out of the way…’ There was vulnerability in his voice, it was unusual for John. He was running because he did not want her to know how much his dreams disturbed him.

She hated being shut out. It was too dark for her to see his face clearly but her fingers lifted anyway and found his cheek. ‘Come back to bed and talk to me.’

‘So you can scold? For the life of me, I cannot see what I did to deserve your ire tonight. I spent the night defending you.’

She had upset him, then, and that was why he had retreated behind his cold facade earlier.

Her suspicions grew as her fingers fell from his face, sliding the length of his arm to capture his hand and tug him towards the bed.

‘Come on, John, come back to bed.’ She stepped back, trying to pull him with her, but he did not budge; her arm and his just stretched out. She tugged again. He moved.

She climbed on to the huge bed, still holding his fingers and attention.

The mattress sank as he sat. Then he rested back against the headboard.

‘Was it the same dream?’ Her question was cautious. She was still unsure of her ground with John. He could just as easily get up and walk out instead of answer.

His fingers let hers go, but they lifted to her cheek and then they were in her hair pulling her forward.

He kissed her. It wasn’t lustful. It was as though he were anchoring himself. When the kiss broke, he wrapped his arms about her. ‘I hate arguing with you, Katherine. Must we keep doing it? You are the one person I truly trust. I feel like I have no foundation when you are angry with me.’

‘Then if you trust me, tell me what your dream was about.’

She felt him shake his head.

‘This is me, John.’

‘I am not afraid.’ She heard a catch of emotion in his voice, a deep rumble, and the words seemed an answer to himself.

‘How long have you had this dream for?’ she dared.

Sighing, he looked up at the canopy of the bed. ‘Years. Sometimes it goes away for months and other times it haunts me every night.’

‘What is it about?’ She turned to face him, kneeling on the bedcovers, her bottom on her heels.

He sighed again, and one knee rose. Then a bent arm rested on top of his knee.

She said nothing, somehow knowing he was gathering courage, and drawing on the anonymity of the darkness.

‘I am a child, about ten years old. My mother has recently married Edward. They had fetched me from Eton in the middle of the night. We had fled halfway across the country to escape my grandfather. I do not remember seeing my mother before then. I had lived with them for two weeks. It felt like a dream. I am like any other child. Like any other family. I had begun believing it was real. Then one morning my grandfather appeared, angry as hell and spitting fire – if a man can achieve that when he has the presence of stone. I had not escaped him. He took me away, and they let me leave. In the dream, I am that boy who looks from my grandfather’s carriage, watching my mother run after it and cry out… ’

She did not know what to say.

‘It is ridiculous, isn’t it? I know. A grown man with the fears of a child. But it never goes away, and when I wake up I feel like I did then, all over again, lost, alone and unloved.’

‘You were not unloved, they love you. All your family are fond of you, look how they rallied about you tonight.’

‘I know that,’ he whispered, his voice bitter, ‘in my head. But in my soul… No. My soul remembers all those empty years when my aunts and uncles tried to fill the gap my mother had left, and failed. She left a hole in me, and it remembers the old man’s coldness and nothing else.

If you knew the things I did to please him, to make him like me, even if he would not love me.

I was a pathetic child. And then he sent me away to sing in the chapel at Eton, out of sight and out of mind, to toughen up, truly alone. ’

His arm dropped from his knee, and he reached to hold her hand.

‘I know where she was now. He had took me from her, after my father died. Disowned her and left her to starve. He told me, she was dead. She had prostituted herself to survive. My grandfather was a heartless bastard. And do you know what makes it worse? He made me the same as him. I don’t want to be, but I am.

I cannot be myself. You told me I was spoilt.

I was not spoilt, I was beaten until I bent to his will, and now I do not know how to straighten up again. ’

Katherine hugged him and kissed his cheek. ‘That is not true, John. You are not like him, not with me.’

‘The dream has changed,’ he whispered to her hair.

‘Before we wed, the woman chasing the carriage became you, and now a child is there, our child. What if I cannot love the child, Katherine? What if I cause my son or daughter the pain he caused me? When my mother married Edward, I was glad to have a father, I looked up to him and loved him, and Mary, she was a novelty, as was Robbie, but by the time the others came, I was already disengaged. I look at them now, my brothers and sisters and I feel nothing. What if I feel nothing for my own child?’

She pulled away, her fingers framing his face in the darkness.

‘You said yourself Mary and Robbie were new to you. You have not connected with the others because by then you were not at home. Your own children will be new to you, and you will not be away from them, you will bring them up, share their lives. So you will not feel distant because you will not be distant.’

His hands embraced hers.

‘John, I believe you love me. You will love our child.’

A breath sucked into his lungs as his fingertips tentatively touched her stomach.

‘You are wearing one of my shirts.’

‘I did not wish to leave this room in case you thought I would not sleep here and locked the door.’

He laughed. ‘I would not lock you out.’

‘You shut me out at the ball, John.’

‘And that is why you were angry…’ She felt his muscle tighten again. ‘I was not shutting you out. I was shutting them out…’

‘And holding me at a distance too. I wish to be your friend and your helpmate as much as your wife, John?—’

‘I have told you more than I have told anyone. I have told you about Egypt, about Elizabeth and now my grandfather. Believe me, I never thought I would tell anyone that.’

‘I know. But still, you only tell me and show me what you wish. Perhaps you are not shutting me out, but yourself in. You let me see what little you choose, like I am placed in some compartment of your life until you deem to visit it. I feel as though half the time I am standing at a window looking in at you.’

She took a breath. She had to tell him how she felt.

‘You will not speak of your business with me, as though it would be beyond me. Thrice you have told me I would not want to know. I have asked. Does that not tell you that I do want to know? You avoid me in the day, because God forbid anyone may think you put me first. Or do you do it because you do not like my company unless we are in bed? In the evening, on the two occasions you have taken me out, you set such an expression on your face people must wonder why you married me. They certainly cannot think you happy, nor in love. Which, considering my birth, leaves only indecent possibilities.’ She stopped but only to draw another breath.

‘I was propositioned thrice tonight, by men who think you too cold to warm my bed… The hard exterior you use is like your grandfather. But you are not him. I want you to share everything with me and let others see beneath your mask. I want them to know you love me and that you are caring and kind. You must show yourself if you do not want to be like him.’

He sucked in a deep breath.

She knew he was angry again.

Pushing her aside, he climbed from the bed, and, without a word, walked out of the room.

She did not call him back, or try to prevent him from leaving. He had needed to hear what she had said. He had just told her he suffered from nightmares because he could not be who he wished to be. She was right and he knew it.

She heard him stop within his sitting room and then turn back.

‘There is a new rule in this marriage, Katherine,’ he said from the door. ‘You are not to dance with anyone without my permission, understood?’

She did not answer and he didn’t wait for her to. It was a ducal command.

He slammed the door.

Her hand covered her stomach. He could love the child, she knew he could, but only if he allowed it, and he had a stubborn vein of iron running through his soul.

But he had married her – she had to believe that given time he would make the right choice again.