Page 112 of The Governess and the Brooding Duke
A prayer as much as it was an epithet.
God in heaven.
He wanted her, he could not deny that, and now he had made promises to her. He could not send her away.
He did not see a scenario wherein he did not destroy her.
If he made her his mistress in public, as he had vowed he would do, as he had promised her he would, then he would kill her reputation in an instant.
If he kept her as his governess and they carried on in secret, it would kill her spirit.
If she loved him...if she loved him, regardless of what position she held in his life, she would be destroyed. And making her his Duchess would not fix that. It would not. For the truth was, he didn’t care what society thought. She was well worthy of being his Duchess. She was more than worthy. That was the problem. What he had not wanted was for her to love him. What he had not wanted was for that to exist as part of the conversation. What he had not wanted was to destroy her. A wife of his could only end up a husk of who she had once been, and perhaps, perhaps he had believed that if she was his mistress the terms might be different. The expectations might remain something else. And yet.
She loved him.
And he wanted it. Everything within him, the walls, every last one of them, trembled beneath that certainty.
He knew what love was.
But he had never known how to show it.
For he feared it above all else.
And that fear had created so much destruction. If he could not avoid being his father by being his opposite, then...
You must be yourself.
Himself?
Easy to be when he was naked in his bed with Mary.
When he did not have to bear the responsibility of being a duke. When he did not have to also be a father.
He was undone.
She loved him.
He wrote to Luke, even though the letter would scarce arrive before he did, and he had his stablemaster ready his horse.
Mary came down the stairs as he was heading out the door.
‘I must go to London,’ he said. ‘I will begin the search for a new governess there. I will be away some days.’
She looked stricken. He knew that she had not expected it, and of course it was not what she wanted to hear just the day after she had professed her love for him, the day after he had offered to change their arrangement. But he did help to reassure her by saying that he was going to enquire about a governess.
‘If you must, Samuel.’
He wrapped his arm around her, aware that they had not explained things to the staff yet. Aware that somebody could walk in. ‘I must. But it is all in hand.’ He did not kiss her. He simply touched her face.
And he willed her to run away from him, he hoped that she could feel it. He would not betray the offer that he had made her, not now. It was too late. He had acted rashly.
Selfishly.
But he needed to speak to his brother, and he needed to do so immediately.
Luke was the spare.
He could do whatever he wanted, as evidenced by the fact that he and his lady wife clearly indulged in games that would have been made into rumour had it involved West.
