Ice Cold Duke (Frigid Dukes #2)

Chapter 30

Chapter Thirty

“ W hat are you talking about?” Lucien asked at once. He knew immediately how stupid he sounded; it was obvious to everyone that something had gone wrong with him and Emery. It was only a matter of time until one of his sisters asked him about it. Still, he felt defensive and angry. Seeing her today had filled him with such strong and painful emotions, and he felt the temptation to take out all his sadness and anger on his sister.

“Don’t give me that,” Leah snapped, folding her arms across her chest. “I know something is wrong, and you can’t be surprised that I’m asking about it. You and Emery are both miserable.”

“We…are?” Lucien asked, a small tendril of hopefulness appearing in his chest. Emery is miserable?! Does that mean she still might love me?

“Of course you are!” Leah shook her head, clearly very frustrated. “It is painfully obvious to everyone who has to share a house with the two of you that you are desperately unhappy without one another.”

“Who says we are without one another?” Lucien countered. “We have never had a traditional marriage, Leah. It is not as if we had planned to marry one another, so you cannot fault us if we are spending more time apart.”

“She moved out of your bedroom!”

“That really is not a very ladylike thing to comment upon,” Lucien said, trying his best to sound affronted. “I taught you better than to mention such things as where a duke and duchess spend the night.”

“Oh, I don’t care about any of that!” Leah cried, throwing up her hands. The carriage began to rumble back along the road toward the house, and Lucien wondered how much time they had until he could escape his sister’s interrogation. “And I don’t think you care about any of it either.” She glared across the carriage at him. “Now tell me. What happened? Why are you both moping around the house, avoiding one another and refusing to tell me what has gone wrong?”

“She hasn’t told you?” he asked, surprised.

“No. So you better tell me the truth. And I’ll know if you’re lying.”

“I have no reason to lie!” Lucien spluttered. “I chose to separate from Emery for perfectly legitimate reasons.”

Leah raised her eyebrows at him. “Such as…?”

“Such as the fact that my feelings for her were blinding me to my duty.”

“What does that mean?” Leah asked. “How have you ever been blind to your beauty?”

“It was the O’Farrell’s garden party,” he said at last, turning away from her. “I took Emery off to the hedge maze in order to have a moment alone, and when I did--well, I can’t tell you exactly what happened, but I found your brother there as well. He had completely abandoned chaperoning you, and I hadn’t realized it, because I was so distracted by my desire to be alone with Emery.”

His cheeks heated as he said it, and embarrassment flooded him. He did not like telling his sister that he had wanted a moment alone with his wife.

But when he looked back at her, it wasn’t embarrassment he saw on her face, it was puzzlement.

“That’s it?” she asked after a moment. “That’s the entire reason why you decided to separate from Emery? Because you didn’t make sure someone wasn’t chaperoning me for five minutes?”

Lucien frowned at her. “Well, when you put it like that, it doesn’t sound so bad, but I assure you, it was! Anything could have happened.”

“What could have happened at a garden party?” Leah countered. “Anyway, I am a responsible young lady; if I had noticed I didn’t have a chaperone, it wouldn’t have induced me to immediately start behaving in an unladylike way. You have taught me well, Lucien. I know how to behave myself. So I don’t see what the problem was.”

“I let myself be distracted!” Lucien said, banging his fist down on the seat beside him. “I shirked my duty! Just as Mama and Papa did when they focused all their attention on one another, abandoning us and nearly bankrupting the estate.”

Leah didn’t say anything for a long moment, but her eyes were very soft and very understanding. Never in his life had he seen his sister look at him like this; like she could actually see him.

“Lucien,” she murmured, and she reached forward and took his hands in hers. “I know that you took on far too heavy a burden when Mama and Papa died. I know that it was too much for a young man, and that you have spent every day since then trying to undo the damage they did. But you are not them. You are not doomed to repeat their mistakes. Anyway, it wasn’t love that made them act irresponsibly.”

“It wasn’t?” Lucien asked, his voice oddly choked.

“Of course not,” she said, shaking her head and laughing slightly. “They were just irresponsible people! If they’d been unhappily married, I’m sure they would have found a way to bankrupt the estate doing other things for themselves, just separately. They were good people, and deep down, I know they loved us very much. But they were selfish. And you are not like that.” Her hands gripped his tighter, and he saw tears fill her eyes.

“It would kill me if you threw away your chance at happiness just because you were afraid of becoming them,” she murmured. “Because trust me: you are not them, and you couldn’t become them if you tried. Emery wouldn’t let you. She would never allow you to shirk your duty for her. You’ve seen how much she cares for us as a family. And if, for some reason, you found yourself getting distracted by your feelings for her--which I very much doubt would happen--she would set you back on the right path.”

Lucien swallowed. His throat still felt tight and raw, but he also felt a strange calmness coming over him. His sister’s words were like a balm over a wound. And he wondered, as they sank deeper into him, if there just might be some truth in them.

“You’ve spent so much of this past year thinking about me making the perfect match,” Leah continued, “that I think you’ve forgotten to ask yourself what you want from a marriage. I will marry, then Celeste will wed, then Eve. Henry is already married! And when we are all gone, who do you want to spend your days with? Because if you ask any of us, Lucien, we will tell you we all want to see you happy with the woman you love. And I believe she’s the woman you married.”

“But--” Lucien thought about what Emery had said to him, about how she wanted a man who was brave enough to love her. “I think it might be too late.”

“Then you have to show her that it’s not,” Leah said. She leaned back in her seat and released his hands, giving him a hard, determined look. “And you have to do it today.”

“Emery, would you mind if I had a private moment alone?”

Emery had just been walking across the entrance hall to where the wedding breakfast was being hosted in the breakfast room when her husband had stopped her. She hadn’t seen him at first, waiting in the shadows near his office, and her heart hammered in her chest as she looked up at him. He had a blazing look on his face that she didn’t recognize, and she felt strangely nervous as he held her gaze.

“I--I am needed at the wedding breakfast,” she said, turning to glance around the hall, where other guests were beginning to arrive. The butler was taking their coats, and they were talking excitedly to one another, but Lucien didn’t seem to notice. He had eyes only for her.

“It won’t take long,” he said, his voice low and soft. “I really do need to speak to you.”

“Well…” she glanced around again, but no one was paying attention to them. “I suppose we could talk for a few minutes.”

“What is this about?”

“Just come with me,” he said, displaying some of his old impatience and commanding energy that made him such a formidable duke. Taking her arm, he led her away, out of the entrance hall, and down the corridor to the music room. Opening the door, he pulled her inside, then shut the door with a snap behind her.

The room was dark, and Emery immediately moved away from her husband, looking around. Her heart was thumping painfully in her chest now. She didn’t know why Lucien was acting so strangely, but she had a bad feeling it would only lead to more heartbreak.

“What is it?” she asked, turning back around to face him. He was still near the door, his face half in shadow, and she felt goosebumps prickle up her arms. He cannot stop staring at me.

“We should discuss the wedding breakfast,” he said after a moment. “It would be improper for us not to attend it together and thank our guests properly.”

“What are you talking about?” she snapped. “We already are attending the wedding breakfast together. We’re hosting it! You’re the one who is currently taking us away from it by dragging me in here.”

Lucien didn’t answer for a moment. Then he took a step toward her, and she felt herself shrink back. She wasn’t sure why exactly, except that being near him was so painful that she felt an instinctive urge to protect herself from his nearness.

“Fine,” he murmured after a moment. “That’s not the reason I wanted to talk to you.”

“Then what is?” she demanded. “Because you haven’t spoken to me in days, and now you’re pulling me into empty rooms demanding to speak to me at the worst possible moment, and it’s very confusing!”

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to confuse you.”

“Don’t mean to confuse me?” she repeated, incredulous. “That is all you have ever meant to do!”

He frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean--” and suddenly Emery couldn’t hold it in anymore. Suddenly she was raging at him, tears streaming down her cheeks at the same time, and she didn’t even care if errant guests heard her. All the pain she had held inside came crashing out, and she didn’t even try to stop herself. “I mean that you have spun my head in every direction! You forced me to marry you, then you told me you didn’t want a traditional marriage. And I accepted that, even though I knew it meant a lifetime of living without love or children! I was furious and hurt, but I forced myself to accept it! And just as I was getting used to that, you began to make me feel as if you had feelings for me! You courted me! You even kissed me--twice! You got my hopes up that perhaps I was going to have everything I wanted, a real husband, a loving husband, and a family of my own. But then you took that away as well! All because of this idiotic notion that if you let yourself love me you will no longer take care of your family! As if you could ever stop caring for them even if you tried. As if it’s not who you are, at your most fundamental, to care for those you love!”

She was fully sobbing now, the tears hot and sticky on her face, but she didn’t care. Lucien had an arrested look on his face, and it made her even more angry to see it.

“I know you’ll probably tell me to stop acting like a child, that it’s unladylike and not the duchess way to behave to make a scene like this. But I don’t care! You have jerked me around, confused me, and hurt me to my very core.”

“Emery,” the duke began, and there was an urgency to his voice that made her breath catch in her throat. “I need to tell you something. I--”

“ You made me love you !” she shouted, all dignity forgotten. “ And then you took that away! And I will never, ever forgive you for it!”

“Please forgive me for it,” Lucien said, and suddenly he was standing in front of her, both his hands on her arms, and there were tears filling his eyes. She’d never seen him like this before, his face crumbling, his lip quivering, and then tears running down his face. “Please, Emery, you have to forgive me,” he said again, his fingers digging into her arms. “Because it was the biggest mistake of my life, and I will never, ever forgive myself for hurting you, but I will spend every day for the rest of my life trying to earn you back, even if it takes my entire life. Please, Emery, please… I have been a fool.”

She was so shocked that she stopped crying, and some of the anger melted away as she gazed up at him.

“What are you saying?” she whispered, barely daring to hope.

“I’m saying that I love you and that I made a mistake. A terrible mistake.” His eyes blazed with that familiar intensity, and she felt a pulse of longing for him go through her.

“You l-love me?” she whispered, the word thrilling through her like an electric shock.

“Of course I love you,” he murmured back, a small smile breaking across his lips. “But you were right about me: I was scared to let you love me; scared of becoming my parents; and most of all scared of losing everyone I loved by behaving selfishly and thoughtlessly.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I thought love would make me weak. But seeing my brother and his wife--and being around you--I realize it’s the opposite. Love is what makes us strong.”

“Of course love is what makes us strong,” she said. “It’s what motivates us to get up every day, even when life is hard: to keep showing up for those we care about. Sometimes it felt, when I was terribly lonely with my parents, that my love for Georgina and you brother--as a friend--were the only things getting me through it all.”

“I realize that now,” he said, nodding. “And I realize I’m not going to abandon my family or my duty to them because I love you. In fact, I’m going to be an even better brother to them because I have the best and strongest woman by my side. You make me stronger; you make me better. And I would do anything on this earth to win you back, Emery. Anything.”

“You just have to kiss me,” she murmured, unable to hold back her smile any longer. “And promise me that you will never again abandon me for duty.”

“I will never, ever abandon you for duty,” he whispered. “That is a promise.”

His right hand released her arm and came to her chin, and for a moment, he stroked the line of her jaw. His thumb was soft and gentle, and it sent another jolt of longing through her. The memory of all their past kisses flooded her, and she shuddered.

“I really do love you,” he said. “I want to have a real marriage with you and a family of our own. Do you still think you want that?”

“I want that with all my heart,” she whispered. “And I have no doubt that our love for each other will make us better parents, not worse ones. We will shower our children with all the love and affection we feel for one another.”

“Yes,” he murmured, and he lowered his lips to hers. “We will.” And then he kissed her, and Emery felt as if the rest of the world had melted away, leaving just the two of them in the most perfect moment she could ever imagine. And, while it probably wasn’t very ladylike, she couldn’t help herself: she wrapped her arms all the way around her husband and pulled him closer, kissing him even harder, and vowed to herself that she would never, ever let him go again.