Tamed by her Duke (Seductive Mysteries #4)

Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26

C aleb hated seeing his wife cry. It was a battle he couldn’t fight, an enemy he couldn’t vanquish. All he could do was hold her through her tears—which he did, feeling like the most useless sod in Britain while he did it.

He didn’t like the crying, which she did on and off all through the night, but it did not start to alarm him until, in the wee hours, she lurched from her bed, rushed into her bathing chamber, and was noisily sick.

Caleb ground a knuckle into his forehead, careful to ensure that any signs of his distress were erased by the time she returned, patting her mouth with a damp cloth. She had her own worries; she didn’t need to carry his, as well.

Not after he’d already almost killed her father right in front of her.

He would have done it, too, if she hadn’t stopped him.

And yet she still reached for him as she came back to bed, still curled sweetly as his side, still pressed her face into him as if she could not get close enough.

“Are ye well, leannan? ” he asked quietly.

She nodded against him, then shook her head before pausing and nodding again.

Caleb brushed a tendril of hair back from her face, his fingers clumsy and unpracticed when it came to tenderness.

He was doing all of this wrong. As the sun kissed the horizon, however, he steeled himself. There was one thing he could do right, one way he could spare her more pain.

“ Leannan ,” he said, gently petting her hair, knowing she wasn’t asleep; her breathing was too ragged. “I think…I think tomorrow I’m going to head back north, to the estate.”

She nodded lazily against his side. He fought not to sense.

“I’ll ask Mrs. O’Mailey to help pack my things,” she murmured.

God, this hurt. How did it hurt more than being stabbed?

“No, lass,” he said gently. “I think ye should stay here. In London.”

She shot up so fast she nearly cracked her head against his chin, her eyes wild as she stared at him.

“You’re—you’re leaving?” she stammered. “Without me?”

No, he wanted to say. Never .

“Aye,” he forced out. “I think it’s best.”

She skittered away from him like he’d burst into flames. He ached to draw her back into his arms.

“I see,” she said icily. “And I suppose, what? I should write you if it turns out it hasn’t actually taken?”

He frowned at her. He hated the way her face had closed off, a smooth, if angry mask pasting itself over the tender vulnerability she’d shown only moments before. He also had no bloody idea what she was talking about.

"The arrest?” he asked. “Graham willnae bother ye again, lass—even if I’m away at the estate, yer brother will see to it.”

“What?” she said, her own confusion flickering through that placidity for a moment. “No, no, not the arrest. If I don’t turn out to be pregnant after all, I mean.”

Caleb’s eyes, on instinct, shot to her middle as if he expected to find her suddenly round with his babe.

“You’re pregnant?” he croaked.

The look she gave him was scornful but laced with genuine hurt. “Well, I don’t know yet, do I? But we’ve been married a month, and I’ve not had my courses the entire time we’ve been wed.”

Goodness, he hadn’t thought about that at all. Or if he had, in some abstract part of his mind, he’d assumed she’d bled in the weeks before he’d taken her to his bed.

“And I was sick this morning,” she added. “It’s a common sign—often a good one that the babe will grow strong.”

“Pregnant,” he said again.

“Possibly,” she corrected. “I’ll let you know, I suppose, if your broodmare is bred. If not, I suppose I’ll travel north for you to give it another go, hm? Was that what you were thinking?”

Truthfully, he’d not been thinking of heirs or pregnancies at all. He’d been thinking of the way her tears had soaked through his shirt, of the bright smile on her face when she’d been reunited with her friends. He’d thought of the scream that had come from her when she’d stood, cold on a clifftop and night, and looked down upon the place where she’d been held captive, treated like an animal.

He'd been thinking that she’d had enough time stolen from her.

“I know ye dinnae choose to marry me,” he said, choosing his words with care. “And I know I dinnae treat ye well when ye first came to the estate.”

She snorted out a laugh. “And what? You thought you’d repeat that, since it worked so well last time? Not let me choose again? Toss me aside?”

“No, Grace I—” Christ, he was mucking this up. Why did he always muck things up? He’d never known the right thing to say, not once in all his days, and now, when it was more important than ever, he still couldn’t find anything but the worst.

“I daenae want ye to hurt any more than ye’ve already been hurt,” he tried.

From the unchanged expression on her face, he did not succeed.

“So, you thought…what? You’d get all the hurt out in one go? Very well. I understand. Go.”

She turned to walk away from him, but he couldn’t let her go, even though he should . Just not like this.

He reached out and seized her wrist. ‘Grace, leannan , please?—”

“Don’t call me that!” she shouted. “I don’t know what your stupid Gaelic nickname is, and I don’t want to know, but don’t, all right? Just don’t .”

He blinked. “Sweetheart,” he said.

She tugged at her wrist, but he didn’t release her. “Surely you can see how that’s worse , Caleb?—”

“No,” he interjected. He pulled her closer, grabbed her by the shoulders. She was likely to hurt herself with all that tugging. “That’s what it means. Leannan . It means ‘sweetheart.’ Or ‘darling,’ I suppose.”

She stopped tugging. Tears sprang to her eyes.

These tears felt infinitely worse, because Caleb knew, without a doubt, that he had caused them. He was not entirely sure how or why he’d caused them, but they were indisputably his fault.

“Oh, leannan, ” he said, the endearment tripping off his tongue before he could remember not to speak it. “Please don’t cry.”

“I—” She paused, sniffed. “I don’t understand. You’ve…you’ve been calling me that for ages.”

Caleb felt almost bashful despite himself. “Aye, I suppose I have.”

“But—” She glanced wildly around the room, as if their surroundings might somehow provide illumination. “But why? Can’t you see that it’s unkind to call me sweet names when you don’t want me? Is it…is it some sort of joke to you?”

It was perhaps the most pain he’d ever heard in her voice. She’d been so steady when confronting her father, when telling him of all the horrors she’d endured. But now she sounded small, fragile. Like one wrong word could shatter her to pieces.

For Caleb, a solider and a brute, never a poet, this was a precarious position to find himself in. So, lacking any better option, he told the truth.

“Of course I want ye, sweetheart,” he said, choosing the English word even if it didn’t feel quite right. She was his leannan , as much a part of him as was his mother tongue. “How can ye think otherwise?”

She raised a hand to her snarled curls as if she could physically cram understanding into her head.

“Because you’re leaving me!” she shouted, and her anger was ever so much easier to bear than her sorrow. “Because you’re doing what you said you’d do from the beginning—getting an heir upon me and then sending me away so that you don’t have to deal with the inconvenience of a wife any longer.”

“Grace,” he said softly, comprehension settling over him. He could not stop himself from reaching for her face. “I’m nae doing that because I daenae want ye. I’m doing that because ye daenae want me .”

His fingers had just grazed her cheek; she’d just begun to lean into the caress. When his words registered, however, she smacked his hand away.

“Oh, I don’t want you, do I?” she demanded. The ice had been replaced by fire. “How very thoughtful of you to tell me how I feel without bothering to ask me!” This time, when she yanked her hand away from him, he let her.

Something stubborn inside Caleb refused to hope, to even consider what those words might mean. Hope had never been a luxury he could afford. He’d been pragmatic all his life, and it had gotten him through a brutal childhood with a violent father, through being the odd Scottish boy at Eton, through the army. Through losing his brother and his mother.

If he gave in to hope now, only to have it snatched back away from him, he did not think he could bear it. He had survived all those things, but this, he feared, might well and truly break him.

“Grace,” he said hoarsely. “Ye watched me nearly kill your father.”

She looked away from him. “He’s not my father, not anymore. And he tried to kill me—or at least made it very possible for it to happen. Do you know how many times I wondered, while I was away, if I was living my last day on earth?”

Her words were like knives, but she shook her head as if they didn’t matter, as if that past pain was nothing compared to what she felt now.

When she turned back to him, her gaze was fierce.

“If you think that watching you defend me against someone who failed so miserably in protecting me—if you think watching you stand up for me when nobody else did—if you think those things make me want you to leave, then you are a fool.” She squared her shoulders, even as tears sparkled in her eyes.

“I am done being afraid. I refuse to cower. I am going to say what I mean, even if you didn’t ask, even if you hate me for it. I love you, Caleb Gulliver, you foolish, impossible, bothersome man. I love you, even if you persist in believing that I am a shrinking little flower who is afraid of you. I love you, even if half the time I want to smack you for your obstinance. I love you because you are brave, and dutiful, and steadfast, and you make me feel safe, damn it, when nothing else does. And if you don’t like that, well. That’s just too bad, because it’s how I feel, and that is something I control. Me. Just me.”

Caleb had long prided himself on his courage. He took the right path, even when it was hard. He plunged into danger when it was necessary, stood his ground when the situation called for it.

And yet, now, he realized he’d been too easy on himself. He was a coward—one who felt shamed by this brave, marvelous woman in front of him.

Her hands were on her hips, her mouth set into a mulish expression. She paid no attention to the tears sparkling against her cheeks.

God above, how he loved her.

“Grace,” he said, determined to get this one thing right. This one thing . “I am nae always good with words. I may never be the most expressive man. I’ve said unkind things, I know. I’ll likely err again. I’m stubborn. Perhaps even a fool, as ye said.”

She was watching him warily and he knew that he could not leave any part of this to implication or innuendo. He had to say it all clearly, here and now.

“But so long as I breathe,” he said, “I will love ye.”

She let out a fractured little whimper that stabbed him straight in his heart.

“But you didn’t want a wife.”

Caleb chuckled. Lord, how had he not known that saying it out loud would feel so good .

“Nae, I dinnae. And I dinnae get a wife —I got ye , Grace. And if ye think I am stubborn, well ye are just as much so. If ye think I am brave, then I am a coward before ye.” When he reached a tentative hand toward her, she slipped her fingers in his, almost shyly. “I cannae say ye are a fool like me, alas, for ye are far too clever than is for yer own good—or for mine.”

She giggled. He prayed he could hear that sound for all his days.

“If ye daenae wish me to go, I willnae go. Even if it means staying in this godforksaken city?—”

“Oh, goodness no,” she said, blinking as if flustered, and God help him, it was just the thing, wasn’t it, for her to be flustered by this statement instead of the declarations of love he’d had to mine from the depths of his soul.

“No,” she said again, “I don’t want to live in London. I want to go home. To the estate.”

“Ye do?” He furrowed his brow. “But it’s so near to where ye…”

“Yes, well…” She tilted her head. “I was thinking. My fa—Graham. He said he was selling a property in the north—he said it at that awful dinner. I didn’t put it together right away, of course, but I’m thinking…what if we bought it?”

He found himself so idiotically pleased with her use of the word we that it took him a moment to really think through what she was asking.

“Ye want to…have that place?”

“The mill works ,” she said. “And I know that’s not what you’re asking, and, oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll never be able to step foot in there again. But for years, I remember being so angry that the stupid mill worked and yet those lazy fools didn’t do anything with it. I think…” She paused.

“I think I should like it to be something that works, that makes the village better. I think I should like to be able to control making it better. Or,” she added thoughtfully, “we could burn it to the ground.”

“Is it nae made of stone?”

“Or we could smash it to bits with very large hammers,” she amended. “I don’t know. I just think…it’s our people who live in that town. What if we took this awful thing and made it better?”

Realistically, Caleb would have given her anything she’d asked for just then. The moon, the stars, the sun from the sky. A mill was nothing in comparison. His only qualm had been for her.

But the look in her eye was a determined kind of hope. This, he thought, might be good for her.

And, if it kept her close to him, in their home, at his side, all the better. He would get to see her grow round with his child—with his children, God willing. He could soothe her nightmares, hold her when she got frightened.

And she could heal him, too, he thought. She might be the only person who could.

“Aye, leannan ,” he said. “I think that’s a fine idea.”

Her smile was all the thanks he needed—but if she wanted to throw her arms around his neck and press a fervent kiss to his mouth, well. He was a gentleman. Naturally, he would accept any favor that the lady chose to give.

The kiss was growing heated, her hands growing curious, when she pulled back to look at him, a playfully wicked gleam in her eye.

“Caleb,” she said, coy with lowered lashes. “Do you remember how you said you are not good at speaking your feelings out loud?”

“Aye,” he said carefully. He knew he’d enjoy having his flaws thrown in his face by this woman for the rest of his born days, but still. Caution didn’t hurt, when you had a wife as clever and wily as he did.

Her grin grew sharp, and Caleb’s body reacted on pure instinct.

“Do you think you could instead perhaps show me how you feel?”

Her words were clear enough, but even if they weren’t, the way she ground herself into his lap was unmistakable.

It was a marvel, wasn’t it, how he’d managed to marry the finest woman in the world?

“Aye, leannan ,” he said, already hauling her atop him and into the bed. “I think that can be arranged.”