Page 80 of A Highly Unlikely Duchess
"My fastest horse," he said. "Now."
As he swung into the saddle, the bitter taste of regret flooded his mouth, more caustic than any brandy. If he had been there… if he hadn't been a coward hiding behind the fog of London and the safety of his own pride, no constable would have dared set foot across his threshold. No man, blood kin or otherwise, would have laid a hand on Frederick while he stood in his way.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
"Iapologize for drawing you from your business in London," Emily began, her voice steady despite the hollow ache in her chest. "I simply thought you needed to know what was happening in your own house."
She had rehearsed those words. She had been rehearsing them for the hours between sending Peggy and hearing him arrive. But she looked at him then, and the rest of her prepared speech died in her throat. Theodore was a sight she had never expected to see; his coat was caked with the dust of the road, his hair was disheveled by the wind, and he was panting, his chest heaving as if he had run half the distance from the city on foot. Sweat beaded at his temples, and the raw, frantic energy radiating from him made her pulse jump. For a fleeting second, a warmth she hadn't felt in weeks flickered in her heart. He had come for her. He had ridden through the night because she sent word.
She caught herself almost immediately, pulling her shoulders back and lifting her chin. She could not afford to be touched; she had to be practical. "I sent for you because the situationbecame... untenable. I thank you for coming so quickly. I know I am asking for too much, and I know our arrangement didn't include —"
Her words were cut off abruptly as Theodore stepped forward and pulled her into his arms.
It was a fierce, crushing hug that seemed to pull the very air from her lungs. One of his hands tangled in the hair at the nape of her neck, holding her to him as if he were trying to anchor them both to the floor. Emily froze, her hands hovering in the air between them, her mind spinning at the sudden collapse of the distance he had maintained for so long.
"When was the last time you slept, Emily?" he murmured against her hair, his voice thick and roughened by exhaustion.
She opened her mouth to answer and discovered that she could not remember.
She collapsed into him, her hands clutching the damp wool of his coat as she leaned into his strength entirely. The tears she had been holding back since George Cluett first darkened her door finally broke free, and she sobbed into his shoulder, her body shaking.
“Your Grace, I don’t think —” she tried to say.
"Stop it, Emily," he murmured, his voice a low, vibrating command against her skin. "Let’s stop pretending, shall we? Youdo not have to do that anymore tonight. You are not made of stone. I am here now. Do you hear me? I am here, and I will take care of everything."
At his words, the last of her structural integrity gave way. The quiet, ladylike weeping turned into a ragged, guttural grief. She clung to him, her fingers digging into his shoulders as if she were drowning and he was the only solid thing in a rising tide. She cried for Frederick, she cried for her sister, and she cried for the weeks she had spent wondering if she was entirely alone in the world after Theodore left.
Theodore did not move. He let her ruin his coat with her tears, his hand moving in slow, rhythmic circles across her back. "Shh," he whispered, pressing a kiss to her temple, the first time he had allowed himself such. "I am not leaving again, Emily. I promise you. I was a fool to go, but I am here now, and I will not step a foot out of this house until Frederick is back in his bed and you are safe."
He pulled back just enough to frame her face with his hands, his thumbs brushing away the salt trails on her cheeks. His eyes were burning with a terrifying, absolute devotion. "I will find him. I do not care what papers Cluett holds or what the law says."
Emily looked up at him through blurred vision. "You cannot promise that, Theo," she said.
"I can," he said. "And I am." He looked at her directly, with the certainty she had always found both infuriating and entirely convincing.
"Why?" Emily whispered, her voice cracking. “Tell me the real reason you left. I know you lied to me.”
Theodore’s hands moved from her face to her shoulders, his grip grounding them both. The exhaustion was etched into every line of his features, but his eyes had never been clearer.
"Because I was a fool, Emily," he said, the admission coming without the usual armor of his pride. "I was a coward. I know what I said before I left. I know you heard what I said to Alistair about children. I know it hurt you."
She had been waiting for this, in the part of herself she had not been looking at, since the night she had walked away from that drawing room with the sound of his voice still sitting in her chest like something lodged. She had heard him tell Alistair he did not want children. She had heard it, she had walked away, and she had told herself it did not matter, that she had not come into this marriage with expectations of that kind, that she was grateful for what she had, and she was not going to be the kind of woman who wanted more than she had been offered.
"Yes," she said. "I heard you."
"I know you want children," Theodore continued, his thumbs tracing the line of her jaw. "And I could feel us... changing. We were becoming more intimate, and I grew terrified that youwould eventually want them from me. I panicked, Emily. I ran because I didn't think I had it in me to be what a child needs."
"But it makes no sense, Theo," Emily argued, her voice thick with confusion as she looked back up at him. "You are wonderful with Frederick. You are patient, you are kind, and he looks at you as if you hung the moon. Why would you ever think you couldn't be a father?"
Theodore let out a short, weary sigh. "Frederick is easy to love because he is already wonderful. He was brought up well, with principles and a kind heart. I merely stepped into a story that was already written. A child from the beginning is different. From the very beginning, with nothing yet formed, needing everything from you, needing you to know things nobody ever taught you and to give things you were never given… But the idea of being the one to install those principles? To be responsible for a soul from its very first breath?" He shook his head. "I was not confident I could do it. I looked at my own father, and I saw a man who failed at the one thing that mattered, and I feared I was made of the same broken parts."
He paused. "However," he said, his lips quirking into a faint, teasing shadow of a smile. "I have had a great deal of time to think on the road, and I have come to realize that I am, after all, Theodore Merrick. I have managed to navigate the House of Lords, run the most complex estates in England, and survive your formidable temper. I believe that if I set my mind to it, I can manage to raise a decent human being or two."
The tease was a small bridge, a way to pull her back from the edge of her grief. Emily felt a tiny, watery laugh escape her throat; the absurdity of his confidence clashing with the vulnerability he had just shown.
"You are impossible," she whispered, leaning her forehead against his chest.
"I am reliably excellent," he said. "At most things. It is a burden. The excellence. I carry it quietly."
