Page 72 of Married to the Duke By Midnight

The room had originally been a bedroom, but Jo had chosen it as her sitting room, since it faced the sea. The main sitting room was at the other end of the house, facing the road, which meant it was easier to heat in the winter, due to less wind. It had large windows facing the road and the garden, but it was still unfurnished and Jo had not found a purpose for it yet. She would have plenty of time now she suspected.

“There is a visitor for you, Your Grace,” Mrs. Brown told her two days later when Jo was sitting in the high-backed chair trying to focus on the book in her lap.

Her heart immediately jumped into her throat and her cheeks flushed at the thought that Robert had traveled here to see her.

“Who… who is it?” she asked Mrs. Brown breathlessly as she half rose from the chair.

“Mr. Hawkins. Your cousin.”

Jo felt her face fall and could see the sympathy on Mrs. Brown’s face.

“Show him in,” Jo told Mrs. Brown in a detached tone as she turned toward the window and the view of the bright, dark blue sea beneath her, hoping to draw a little strength or at least find a modicum of calm to face Ambrose.

When she turned toward the door, her cousin was already there flanked by what looked like two working men. Jo’s stomach turned at the thought that they were there to take her to one of the homes he had once threatened her with, but she immediately discarded the thought and straightened her back. Even though Ambrose had turned into a much fouler creature than she could have imagined, he had no right to do so. No right at all. She was someone else’s wife. She was a duchess now. The last thought made her straighten even further.

“Josephine,” Ambrose snarled and entered the room.

“What do you want?” Jo said instead of greeting him. He was clearly not there as a courtesy.

“The chair,” Ambrose told the two men and pointed toward the high-backed chair that used to belong to Uncle Horace. The two men approached it then hesitated when Jo did not move.

“Beg your pardon, ma’am, we are only doing our job,” one of them said.

His courteous tone made Jo jump into action. She snatched the open book from the chair and stepped aside as much as was possible in the small room. She silently watched the men take Uncle Horace’s favorite chair away before she spoke.

“You gave me permission to take it,” she told Ambrose in a cold voice.

“I did no such thing,” her cousin scoffed and crossed his arms over his chest, not meeting Jo’s eyes. His gaze was all over the room, perhaps searching for trinkets that had belonged to his father. Jo saw his eyes land on the small painting of her uncle that was hanging under the one of herself as a small girl with her parents.

“Here,” she said as she yanked the painting from the wall. “Take it. If it can give your sick and twisted heart peace and ensure I never have to see you again, take it.”

She thrust it against his chest, and he seemed to take it out of reflex. He looked at the small painting, barely larger than his hand, for a second. His face was unreadable. Jo wondered whether he felt anything at all at his father’s death. With adept fingers, as if he had done this a hundred times before, Ambrose removed the painting from the gilded frame, then dropped the small canvas to the ground. Making the corner crack with a disturbing sound. Like a limb breaking.

“I will take this. The painting has no value,” he told her coldly.

Jo stared into his grey-blue eyes, which were exactly like hers.

“What has happened to you?” she whispered. “You were always horrible, but now you are just… cruel.”

“I am cruel? I am horrible?” Ambrose shouted.

Jo saw several members of her staff appear in the hallway, one of them the footman that Robert had sent with her. She shook her head almost imperceptibly and saw him retreat but not close the door to the kitchen fully. It made her feel safer that he was there.

“From the moment you moved into our house you have been stealing my father from me,” Ambrose continued in a loud voice. “He always favored you. ‘Why can’t you be more like Jo?’ ‘Look at how clever Jo is with her lists’. But it was not enough for you, was it? You had to go and spend his money on prostitutes and bastard children, diminishing my inheritance while you have everything. Of course, the brilliant Jo would also ensnare a duke and become one of the richest and most powerful women in the country.”

“I… that is not…” Jo whispered, wide-eyed, as she looked at Ambrose.

He was angrier than she had ever seen him and he was blocking the door. She had never thought he would physically harm her but now she did not feel certain. Her eyes sought the door to the kitchen again, but she did not want to involve her staff unless she had to.

Ambrose deflated a little and went to the window overlooking the sea. Jo hurriedly switched places with him and stood in the doorway, ready to bolt if there was the slightest hint of physical aggression. She tentatively picked up the broken canvas from the floor.

She had never given any thought to what Ambrose had felt about her showing up at his house. He was two years older than her and was already in school when she came to live with her uncle. Jo had always liked Uncle Horace, and in the months they had spent alone before Ambrose returned for a brief holiday, they had settled into a comfortable life: eating their meals together, going for short walks in the garden or rides in the small pony cart in the afternoon, and reading together in the evening.

Jo had always assumed that Ambrose did not want to fit into their lives. He was hardly home, talked back at his father when Uncle Horace reprimanded him, and whispered cruel comments to Jo whenever he could. Perhaps they could have done more to include him in their lives. To make him feel part of the family as well.

It was an explanation at least for his cruel behavior in the past months, although it did not excuse it. Perhaps he had felt left out, but even before when she came to visit with her father, Ambrose had never made her feel welcome. It was time their ways parted. They might be related by blood, but Jo had a new family now.

Even if she and Robert were never able to find each other again, even if they ended up living estranged from each other, Jo felt certain that Robert’s mother and sisters would still welcome her. Thornston would certainly, and Xavier too, in his own quiet way. Not all of them were related by blood, but they were a unit much more than Jo and Ambrose ever had been.