The Spinster and the Duke Read online

  Feelings were stirring inside of her chest. Feelings she had managed to suppress long ago. Feelings she didn’t know if she wanted. Feelings she wasn’t sure if she was ready to revisit.

  Seeking to comfort herself with the familiar, Abigail discarded her bonnet and cloak before climbing heavily up the stairs to begin the arduous process of drawing herself a bath.

  Yet even as she sank into the warm water, she could not stop her mind from turning. Perhaps too much time had passed, she worried fretfully. And perhaps some mistakes were simply too big to forget, let alone forgive. If she opened herself up it could mean love… but it could also mean hurt, hurt the likes of which she never wanted to feel again.

  She had survived losing Reginald once. Could she survive the terrible heartache and pain that would come with losing him a second time?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Stubborn woman.” From inside the cramped confines of his carriage, Reginald watched with no small amount of frustration as every candle in Abigail’s house was meticulously doused one by one.

  He’d been sitting across the street, waiting in vain for her to change her mind, for nearly three hours. In that time the rain had slowed to a trickle and the fog had rolled in, blanketing London in a dull gray mist. Navigating the streets would be perilous, but he supposed there was little choice. Abby was not going to receive him and he would be damned before he begged for admittance.

  “Move on,” he ordered the driver sharply.

  The poor man startled – no doubt having drifted off – and jostled the team of matching bays into action. They settled into an easy rhythm and Reginald settled back in his seat, rubbing his chin as he contemplated this unexpected turn of events.

  All of his time and energy had been poured into convincing Abby to forgive him. He had speeches prepared. Lavish gifts ready to be sent. No expense was to be spared in his courting of her, for that was exactly what he intended to do, albeit thirty years too late. Unfortunately, he never paused to consider one small fact: she might want nothing to do with him.

  His mouth twisted into a scowl. With the exception of not marrying Abby, he was a man accustomed to getting what he wanted. He was a wealthy duke, for the love of Christ. An older one, perhaps, with a bit more silver at his temple than he preferred, but he was still willing to bet any woman – married or not – would clamber over themselves to stand by his side. Except he didn’t want any woman. He wanted Abby, only Abby, for the rest of his life.

  And she didn’t want him.

  The blank look in her eyes when she stared at him… He winced to think of it even now. She had bloody well stared through him, as though he meant nothing, and it pained him to acknowledge that perhaps he truly didn’t.

  She could have moved on. He shoved his fingers through his hair and mustered a harsh laugh. Hell, she should have moved on. He was the foolish one for still carrying a torch after thirty bloody years. A torch he still wasn’t quite yet ready to extinguish, no matter how many times she turned him away.

  His face hardening into lines of firm resolve, Reginald began to plot his next move with all the thought and dedication a colonel would give a battle. After all, he may not have been fighting for Queen and country, but he was fighting for the most important thing of all: love.

  For the next three days straight he sent his card to Abigail’s house and for the next three days straight it was returned. But Reginald refused to give up, and on the fourth day his persistence paid off.

  You may call at half past one in the afternoon on Thursday

  The square piece of card stock was devoid of a letterhead and even a signature, but the looping scrawl was unmistakably Abby’s. The paper even smelled of her, and though it made him feel like a foppish schoolboy he tucked it away in his vest pocket so something she had touched, even something so small as a hand written note, could rest over his heart.

  At half past one on Thursday afternoon she received him in her front parlor. It was a small, tidy room with cozily arranged furniture and a sense of light and comfort the likes of which he never felt at Ashburn. After pouring him a cup of tea she sat on one side of a folding draft table and, left with little choice, he sat on the other, fitting his long, lanky body with no small degree of difficulty into a chair meant for a considerably smaller person.

  He raised his cup to his mouth, but he did not drink. Instead he took the opportunity to study her over the curved porcelain rim while she did the same to him, neither one bothering to disguise their blatant staring.

  Was she as pleased with how he had aged as he was with her? Oh, she was certainly older, but instead of time detracting from her beauty it had only served to enhance it. Her face had softened and plumped as had the rest of her body, but the added curves filled out a frame that had once been a touch too gangly. There was more gray in her hair and lines stretched out at the corners of her eyes and mouth, but she was still as lovely as she’d ever been. No, not lovely, he corrected himself silently. As a girl she’d been lovely. As a woman she was breathtakingly beautiful.

  “You look well Abby,” he said quietly.

  Her expression guarded, she gave a clipped nod. “As do you, Reginald.”

  “You used to call me Rocky.”

  One eyebrow lifted. “I used to do a lot of things.”

  All of his carefully prepared speeches fled in the face of this coldly composed stranger. The Abigail he’d known had been impulsive and loud and filled with life and laughter. She’d never thought of what she would say before she said it, never guarded her words as though they were precious gemstones to be counted and given out sparingly. Had the years changed her so much? Had his leaving changed her so much? Mouth set in a grim line, Reginald set his cup aside with a hard clatter and leaned forward out of the impossibly small chair.

  “Abby, I—”

  “I do not know what you think coming here will accomplish,” she said, neatly cutting him off, “or what it will change.”

  “I have moved back to Ashburn House permanently.” He sat up, pushing his spine into the rigid back of the chair. “I am only in London for a short time on business, but I knew I needed to see you. I had to see you.”

  He saw the moment her resolve cracked. Her entire body trembled, one hard jolt that moved her to the edge of her seat. A line appeared between her brows, sinking deep into the ivory skin. Taking a deep breath she lowered her head as though to compose herself, and when she raised it again there was a defiant gleam in her eyes that had been missing before and he could not help but think: there she is – there’s my girl.

  “You married someone else, Reginald. You left me and you married someone else.” It was not an accusation, but rather a fact. A hard, simple fact summed up in four words that had changed both of their lives forever.

  “I know I did, and you know the reasons. But I’ve come back—”

  “Thirty years too late. You’ve come back thirty years too late. I thought I could do this,” she muttered, more to herself than to him. “I thought I could sit here and listen to you, but I cannot.” The overwhelming hurt in her eyes cut to his very soul. “I will not. You broke my heart when I was a girl, Reginald. I will not give it back to you so you can break it again. You need to leave now.”

  He stood up as something akin to panic flooded his chest, making it hard to breathe. He couldn’t leave, not yet. Not before he made it better. Not before he made them better. Damn it all to hell. He’d had thirty years to prepare for this moment – thirty years – and he was mucking it all up. “Abby, if you would just listen—”

  “What could you possibly say?” Standing as well, she crossed her arms tight over her chest and glared at him through the sparkle of tears that clung to her lashes like shards of glass. “Nothing,” she said before he could utter a word. “There is nothing left to be said. Let the past be the past, and please go.”

  “I do not want the past to be the bloody past!” He was shouting, but he didn’t give a damn. He would shout until every window in th
e house cracked if it would make her listen to him. In a rare show of temper he kicked the table between them aside with one furious sweep of his foot. It skidded across the floor and flipped on its side, fracturing a slender leg in the process. Abigail’s eyes went wide.

  “Out,” she hissed, jabbing her finger at the door. “Now.”

  He spun away from her to pace the length of the small parlor, the heels of his boots echoing on the wooden floorboards. “I will get you a new table. A better table. I’ll buy you new furniture for the entire bloody house. Hell, I’ll buy you a new house. A bigger one. A grander one.” Anything, he thought frantically. I will give you anything, Abby.

  Defiant to a fault, she jerked up her chin and stared down her nose, making him feel for all the world as though he were a toddler in the midst of a tantrum. “I do not want a new table, or new furniture, or a new house. I like what I have, thank you very much. It may not be fancy, and it may not be expensive, but it’s mine. Now kindly bugger off!”

  “You do not want to give this a chance?”

  “Give what a chance, Reginald? I have not seen you since I was a girl barely out of the schoolroom. That was a lifetime ago. We were different people then.”

  He braced his fingers against his temple and closed his eyes. Maybe she had a point. Maybe some things couldn’t be salvaged. Maybe some things weren’t meant to be saved. And yet… And yet he knew there was still something there. In the heart of him, in the core, he knew. He could feel it, and he was willing to bet his last pound she felt it as well. His eyes opened and he studied her intently, looking for the real Abby behind the mask of cool indifference she had slipped into place. “You never thought of me during all this time?”

  Her lips compressed to form a hard, flat line. “I would be lying if I said I didn’t. Of course I thought of you, Reginald. I loved you. I was going to marry you. What I felt for you… It did not vanish when you left.”

  He took one step towards her, then another. With the table no longer an obstacle between them he could stand as close as he wanted. He saw the quiver of her pulse in her neck and smelled honeysuckle on her skin. She had her hair pulled up in a bun, coiled loosely beneath a lace cap. A few tendrils had escaped and dangled down on either side of her flushed cheeks, tempting him to reach out and see if her hair felt as silky as he remembered. “Is what you felt for me gone now, Abby?”

  She stared at him, her hazel eyes unflinching even as her bottom lip wobbled. “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Liar.”

  The space between their lips was blissfully short.

  He dipped his head, closed his mind to what should have been, and indulged in what was.

  She felt frail beneath his hands and he touched her with all the delicacy one would use when holding fine spun glass. His fingers slipped through her hair, dislodging the offensive cap and spilling her curls over her shoulders in a wave of pale gold. He settled his other hand at her waist, cupping her hip when she tried to pull away, not enough to hold her but enough to offer a token resistance if that is what she wanted.

  It was.

  Abby had never been one to shy away from passion. She gave as good as she got, committing as much enthusiasm and energy into matters of the bedroom as she did into her everyday life. They may have never consummated their love, but they had done nearly everything leading up to the final act, fumbling and laughing and moaning their way through.

  “This… is a mistake,” she gasped, wrenching her mouth free and raising her palms to press them flat against his chest. “Reginald, this is a mistake.”

  “No,” he growled fiercely. “This is right.” He kissed her again, his lips sliding across hers in a sinuous dance they had performed a hundred times before. The hand on her hip tightened, drawing her closer.

  With Abby clutched in his arms he didn’t feel like a man aged fifty years. He felt like a young boy again, drowning in lust and love.

  Drowning in Abby.

  Their tongues met hesitantly, entwining and retreating in a waltz of remembrance and regret. This is what he had been missing. The sensation of being a part of someone else. Of drawing one breath and becoming one person.

  His fingertips skimmed along the curve of her spine before tracing up along her ribs, so tightly confined beneath the rigid bones of her corset. When he cupped her breasts she stiffened and started to draw back, but an easy flick of his thumb across her budding nipple had her sighing and leaning into his palm instead of away.

  The heat he remembered was still there, burning between them like an open flame. He murmured her name as his lips traced a path down her neck and along the slender line of her exposed collarbone, suckling her flesh as though it were a feast laid out for him and him alone. When he dared moved his mouth lower she finally stopped him with a resistance that was more than token and he stepped away, albeit with great reluctance, for he knew any further would cause the tenuous hold he maintained on his pulsing body to snap.

  Her hair a disheveled spill of curls around her shoulders, her lips bright red and swollen, her eyes wide and glassy, Abigail stared at him as though she were seeing a ghost. “That… That should not have happened.”

  “Why?” he challenged, anger and unquenched passion thickening his voice. “It should have happened a long time ago. Bloody hell, Abby. We’re meant to be together.”

  But she was already shaking her head. “We were never meant, Reginald. Not then, and not now.” Drawing a deep, shuddering breath she retreated behind a green chaise lounge, the fabric faded and worn by age. The afternoon sun shone at her back, illuminating her body in a soft, ethereal glow that stripped away the years and made her appear as the innocent girl she had once been. She shifted, the beam of light faded, and she was again a woman full grown with cynicism in her eyes and doubt in her heart.

  If he could have taken both away he would have done it gladly, but there was no easy solution to a broken heart, nor a simple way to mend it. “I am so sorry, Abby. I was a fool.” He dragged a hand through his hair and glanced up at the ceiling. “A damn fool,” he muttered. “I should have stayed by you.”

  “No,” she said softly, shocking him. “No, you made the right decision, Reginald. If you married me you would have been disinherited. You would have lost everything.”

  Still staring at the ceiling, he set his jaw. “A small price to pay.”

  “An enormous price,” she corrected, “and one you could ill afford. Your family has presided over Ashburn House for generations. I would not have wanted to be the one who caused your title and lands to pass to another. For a while, perhaps, we would have been happy, but you would have come to resent me in time and I would have not been able to live with the guilt.”

  Some small part of him acknowledged the wisdom in Abby’s words, loathe as he was to admit it. His mother had not threatened him with disinheritance in jest. Young debutantes were the not the only ones who had their futures decided for them by others. Since birth he had been weighed down by his title and the obligations it carried with it. There were only a handful of dukes in all of England; most of them descended from royal blood. It was an honor and a privilege to count himself among them, something which he had never taken for granted.

  Yes, he could have left it all behind for Abby… and ruined his family name in the process. What life would he have been able to provide for her then? They would have been shunned by Society. His titles would have been stripped, his lands passed on to another. All because of a woman too high and mighty for her own good. A woman who thought she could control the fates of those around her like a puppeteer, yanking on one string or another to get the results she wanted.

  “Do not hate her,” Abigail said, drawing his eye from the ceiling. She was resting on the edge of the windowsill with her hands in her lap, pretty as a picture, but her eyes were unbearably sad. “Your mother did what she thought was best for her family and it cost her dearly.”

  His laugh was short and incredulous. “It cost her? Pray tell, what did
my marrying someone she handpicked for me cost her?”

  “A son,” she said quietly. “It cost her a son.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It rained for the next three days.

  From within the cozy confines of her parlor where a small fire hissed and snapped, Abigail chatted with Dianna over tea and crumpets. Her niece had returned from Sussex the day before after a short visit with Charlotte and Gavin Graystone. They were expecting their first child, Dianna joyfully revealed, and had wanted to share the news in person.

  Since Martha and Rodger had left for the country in their daughter’s absence, Dianna would now be staying with Abigail until the Season began in seven short weeks. Her presence would be a welcome distraction, for try as she might Abigail could not stop thinking about Reginald.

  He was on her mind from the moment she woke to the very second she fell asleep. The dratted man was even in her dreams, although she could hardly complain about those, for they really were quite nice. It had been quite a while since she’d had thoughts of an intimate nature, having decided after her last affair – a quiet, mutual arrangement with a widower lasting six months – she would remain celibate. It was simply too much work to seek out a man who wanted the same thing she did: namely, a discreet partner with which to spend time in and out of the bedroom. There had been four of them over the years; sweet, honorable gentlemen all, but none of whom she had ever been moved to marry even though two had asked on numerous occasions.

  “Are you thinking about him?” Curled up in a plush green armchair with her legs dangling over the side nearest the fire, Dianna regarded her aunt with both eyebrows raised and a knowing smile.

  “Thinking about who?” Abigail said evasively.

  “You know exactly of whom I am speaking.” Swinging her feet to the ground, Dianna pushed herself into a sitting position and arranged her cream colored skirts so they fell neatly around her ankles. “Your duke, of course.”