He had not returned to the house in Bloomsbury. It felt pointless. Fifteen days. That’s how long he had tried. Letters. Visits. Apologies half-formed and never spoken—she hadn’t given him the chance. He had waited at her door like a supplicant, been refused by servants, turned away like a beggar. Once, he had waited in the rain. He had even sent Charlotte. That earned no better result.
So, he stopped. There was nothing dramatic about it. No grand final attempt. No final insults exchanged. Just silence. A door that remained closed. And a man who stopped knocking.
Now, he rose at six. Washed in cold water. Stood still while his valet shaved him with mechanical precision. Read dispatches from Horse Guards and returned them with commentary, reasoned and impeccable. He walked to the gentlemen’s club when weather allowed, refused drink, and stayed clear-eyed through strategy meetings. He was himself again. Or close to it. And perhaps it was better this way.
But tonight, he was in his study. A single candle burned low. The fire had been left to gutter, not quite dead. He stood at the sideboard for a long moment before finally reaching for the decanter of brandy. His hand hovered over the stopper. Then, slowly, he poured. One glass. No more.
The drink caught in his chest like fire. He had drowned himself in it for a fortnight, since the day she’d screamed at himand thrown him out. Since the door had slammed in his face. Since Jane told him she wanted nothing more to do with him.
And still, he missed her. Oh, how he missed her.
He had offered her his name, his protection, a house of her own. And she thought him cruel. Cold. She thought he’d made her a prisoner.Ungrateful woman.
She was pregnant. She was vulnerable. And he’d done what a man of honor must. He had married her. He could have cast her off. Made her his mistress. Let her child be born nameless and raised in shame. No one would have faulted him for it. But he hadn’t.
He took another sip. His fingers clenched around the glass.
She didn’t understand. The secrecy had never been cowardice—it had been protection. Temporary. Necessary. She was already heavy with child. What would the world think? It was scandal enough that the next Duchess of Westford had been plucked from the nursery wing. Should he have added ‘the pregnant governess’ to the jest as well?
It had been the only way to obscure the timing of the birth. But she hadn’t seen it. She’d called it shame. Or whatever else she thought. And refused to admit him to the very house he had bought for her.
He set the glass down hard, brandy sloshing over the rim.
If he wished, he could send for his solicitor tonight. One letter, one instruction—and the babe, the moment it was born, would be taken to Westford Castle. Raised as his heir, under his name. She would never see it again. She had no legal claim. The law gave her nothing.
But of course he wouldn’t. Because he loved her. God damn her. He loved that maddening, defiant, impossible woman more than breath. And he would not hurt her more than he already had.
Even now, he heard her voice in his head. Not the fury. Not the way she’d screamed at him. But the quiet part. The part that had cut through everything.
And what did I risk? My position. My body. My child’s name. Myself.
Yes. She had. She had laid herself bare to him—body and soul—and it had nearly ruined her. And he had thought himself the one who sacrificed. He wasn’t fit to touch her.
And now, with war rising, he might never do so again. He would be gone before the end of the month. He might die on some foreign land while Jane gave birth alone, with only servants by her side. He might never hold them in his arms.
Maybe that was what she wanted. At least then, she would be free of him.
* * *
White’s had been unbearable. Lord Clifford had cornered him in the card room, reeking of port, and returned to the same refrain William had heard thrice since breaking with Philomena: make another attempt. The man would not leave it. He spoke of politics, of alliances, of how a duchess was not a wife but a strategy. William had nearly told him outright: I am married. Married to Jane. Married to a governess you would think beneath your notice. Just to shut the old fool’s mouth.
But it was not the time. Not yet.
By the time William left the club, his temper was brittle. Lord Clifford’s voice still rang in his head, pompous and tedious.
The March evening was damp, the street slick from an earlier shower. His carriage carried him back to Grosvenor Square, and when he entered Westford House, he only wanted silence.
Instead, the butler stepped forward with his usual composure. “My lord, General Ashford is waiting in the study.”
William’s jaw tightened. “Is he?”
The butler inclined his head, his tone neutral but his meaning clear. “He was not fit for company when he arrived.”
That did not surprise William. He shrugged out of his coat, gave his hat into the waiting hands of a footman, and moved down the paneled corridor. The study door opened to the faint smell of leather and woodsmoke, though the fire had long since burned low.
Ashford sat there like a man carved from fury and shame, still in his coat, damp from the rain, gloves on his hands as if he meant to strike someone with them. He had been waiting hours, by the look of him.
William pulled off his gloves deliberately and arched a brow. “Well. What is it now, Ashford? Come to duel me?”
