missive could hardly be more different. Instead of elegantly penned lines of clever metaphors, similes, and alliteration, there wasn’t even a complete sentence. Merely an address and a time—this evening, nine o’clock.
Despite her hard-won self-control, uneasiness and something more, something dangerously like anticipation, stirred within her. Stifling it, she debated again, as she had off and on since receiving the summons this morning, whether or not to dispatch a last-minute refusal of his shocking offer.
It was risky, allowing him to be near her. Graveston had possessed the power to restrict her activities and movements, to hurt her physically, but had never been able to touch her soul—a failure that had maddened him and represented her only victory in their battlefield sham of a marriage. Alastair Ransleigh would never touch her in anger...but it was the touch of tenderness, the touch of a man she’d once desired above all else, that threatened her in a way the Duke had never managed, despite his relentless cruelty.
She’d certainly have to be on guard, lest he get close enough to threaten her emotional reserve. Still... Once, she’d been so happy with Alastair. Might giving herself to him bring her a glimpse of that long-vanished happiness?
But then, she was reading much too much into this. The insulting nature of Alastair’s offer was proof he despised her.
Would it have made any difference, had she explained just how the Duke intended to destroy him? Probably not, she concluded. He hadn’t even believed the Duke’s threat of debtors’ prison for Papa, and what the Duke had promised for Alastair had been far more outrageous.
No, there wasn’t any question of warmth or affection between them. She’d humiliated him before all of Society, abused his trust, and like any man, he wanted retribution. She was fair enough to think he deserved it.
Not that yielding her body would prove much of a humiliation for her, not after years of submission to a man who believed he had the right to use her whenever and however he pleased. Whatever his reasons for proposing the liaison, giving herself up to Alastair would be an improvement over the subjugation of her marriage. Alastair, at least, she’d always admired and respected.
In any event, the arrangement probably wouldn’t last long. Once Ransleigh had his fill of her, he’d cast her aside, leaving her free to...do what with the rest of her life?
Frowning, she dropped the note on the dressing table and rose to take a restless turn about the room. Alastair Ransleigh’s sudden reappearance had distracted her from focusing on how to deal with Lord Blankford, a matter of far more importance.
There was a chance Blankford might simply ignore her and Mannington. With a sigh, she quickly dismissed that foolish hope. Her husband’s eldest son had been raised to believe that a duke’s desires were paramount, and that he could manipulate, reward or smite all lesser beings with impunity. It was highly unlikely, given how closely the character of the heir mirrored that of the sire, that the injury he believed she’d committed against him and his mother would go unpunished.
At the very least, he would try to take Mannington away from her. Even if he didn’t have evil designs upon the child, she wouldn’t allow a dog, much less a little boy, to grow up under the influence of such a man. She might not, up until now, have proved herself much of a mother, but she would do everything in her power to prevent her innocent son’s character from being distorted by the same despicable standards held by his father and elder brother.
Even as she thought it, she shook her head. How could she, whom her husband had methodically isolated from any friends and family, prevail against one of the highest-ranked men in England?
Putting aside, for the moment, that unanswerable question, then what? Even if she managed to protect her son from Blankford, Mannington needed more than rescue from evil influences to grow into the confident, compassionate, honourable man she’d like him to be.
She first needed to re-establish some sort of normal, motherly link with the boy—something she’d been forced to avoid while Graveston lived. Now that she need no longer fear showing him affection, how was she to retrieve, from the abyss into which she’d buried it, the natural bond between a mother and her child? That she’d hated the man who sired him was not Mannington’s fault. Like every child, to grow and thrive he needed love—of which, until now, he’d received precious little.
For the first time in many years, she allowed herself to think about her own childhood—a time so idyllic and distant that it seemed to belong to another person, or another life. Despite losing his wife in childbirth at an early age, Papa had managed to submerge his own grief and create a home filled with love, security, joy and laughter. How had he done so?
Settling back on the dressing-table bench, she stared at her image in the mirror, digging through the bits of memory.
They’d certainly not had the material advantages available to a duke. As a younger son from a minor branch of a prominent family, no objection had been posed to Papa pursuing a career as an Oxford tutor, nor of his marrying for love a gentleman’s daughter of great beauty and small dowry. After Mama’s death, they’d taken rooms close to the university, where he might more easily mentor his students and pursue his own botanical studies. As both Mama and Papa had no other close kin, it had always been just the two of them.
She’d learned her letters at his knee, studied her lessons in his office, painted and played piano for him in the adjacent studio. Picnics beside the river turned into treasure hunts, often enlivened by games of hide-and-seek, as she helped Papa search for rare plants. Every day ended with him reading to her, or telling her a bedtime story. Later, as his eyesight began to fail and his health grew more frail, she had read to him.
First thing, then, she ticked off on one finger, she’d need to spend more time with Mannington...James, she corrected herself. No longer a tool of the Duke to control her, but simply a child. Her son.
A frisson of long-suppressed tenderness vibrated deep within her, as barely discernible as the scent of a newly opening rose.
Having deliberately avoided him since he’d been a toddler, she wasn’t sure where to start. Other than accompanying him to the park, what did one do with a young boy?
Perhaps she could start by reading to him at bedtime. All children liked being read to, didn’t they? If he enjoyed the interaction, his happiness should warm her, too, and begin the difficult process of dismantling the barriers she’d put in place to stifle any feeling towards him.
But the creation of a true home meant more than just spending time with him. Her father had not been nearly as prominent or powerful as her husband, but he’d been an enthusiastic, optimistic man who inspired love and admiration in everyone with whom he came into contact. Even students not especially interested in botany grew to appreciate the natural universe whose wonders he unfolded to them.
He’d exuded an infectious joy in life, in every little detail of living, from lauding the warmth of the fire on a cold evening, to savouring tea and cakes with her in the afternoon, to the enthusiasm with which he read to her, altering his voice to play all the parts from Shakespeare, or emoting the sonnets with an understanding that brought the beauty of the words and the depth of their meaning to life. He’d loved being a scholar, never losing his excitement at finding and recording in meticulous drawings all the plants he collected.
She could almost hear his voice, telling her how everything fit together in the natural world, with all having its place. She, too, had been designed with particular talents and abilities, her contributions unique, irreplaceable, and a necessary part to the whole.
She swallowed
