Abruptly he pushed away from the desk.
Startled, she blinked, surprised when he stood. She got to her feet as he rounded the desk.
“I’m going riding.”
The growled words froze her where she stood.
For one instant, his eyes, full of dark fire and unreadable emotion, pinned her, then he stalked past her, flung open the door, and was gone.
Utterly stunned, she stared at the open doorway. And listened to his footsteps, angry and quick, fade away.
Hamish laughed so hard he fell off the wall.
Disgusted, when his half brother continued to chortle, Royce nudged his shoulder with his boot. “If you don’t stop, I’ll have to get down and thrash you to within an inch of your life.”
“Och, aye.” Hamish hauled in a breath and wiped tears from his eyes. “You and which sassenach army?”
Royce looked down at him. “We always won.”
“True.” Hamish struggled to tamp down his mirth. “You won the wars, but not every battle.” Staggering to his feet, he wheezed; one hand held to his side, he hoisted himself back up beside Royce.
They both looked out across the hills.
Hamish shook his curly head. “I still keep wanting to laugh—oh, not about why you need to bed your bride with all urgency—that’s the sort of thing our ancestors went to war over—but the notion of you—you—being hounded by these great ladies, all waving lists and wanting you to choose…heh, lad, you have to admit it’s funny.”
“Not from where I sit—and as yet it’s only Minerva waving a list.” Royce looked at his hands, loosely clasped between his knees. “But that’s not the worst of it. Choosing a bride, having a wedding—doing it all now—that’s merely an irritation. But…I’m not sure I can manage the estate, and everything that’s bound up in that—the social, the political, the business, the people—without Minerva, but she’s not going to stay once I marry.”
Hamish frowned. “That would be a loss.” A moment passed, then he said, “Nay—I can’t see it. She’s more Wolverstone than you. She’s lived here, what? Twenty years? I can’t see her leaving, not unless you want her to.”
Royce nodded. “So I thought, but I’ve since learned better. When I first returned, she told me she wouldn’t be my chatelaine forever, that when I married and she could pass the keys to my wife, she’d leave. That sounded reasonable at the time, but since then I’ve learned how important she is to the estate, how much she contributes to its management even outside the castle, and how vital she is to me—I honestly couldn’t have survived the last days without her, not socially. I’d have fallen on my face more than once if she hadn’t been there, literally by my side, to get me over the hurdles.” He’d already explained about the social handicap his exile had saddled him with.
He looked out across the hills toward those that were his. “This morning she told me of the deathbed vows she’d made to my parents—to see me established as duke, which includes seeing me appropriately wed. They are what’s holding her here. I’d assumed she…wasn’t averse to being my chatelaine, that if I asked, she would stay.”
He’d thought she liked being his chatelaine, that she enjoyed the challenge he posed to her management skills, but…after hearing of her vows, he no longer felt he had any claim at all on her, on her loyalty, her…affection.
Given his continued desire for her, and her continued lack of desire for him, the news of those vows had shaken him—and he wasn’t accustomed to that sort of shaking. Never had he felt such a hollow, desolate feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“I don’t suppose,” Hamish suggested, looking toward Wolverstone, too, “that there’s an easy way out of this?”
“What easy way?”
“Mayhap Minerva’s name could find its way onto your list?”
“Would that it could, but neither she nor anyone else will put it there. This morning’s list named six young ladies, all of whom have significant fortunes
and hail from the senior noble families in the realm. Minerva’s well-bred, but not in that league, and her fortune can’t compare. Not that any of that matters to me, but it does to society, and therefore to her because of her damned vows.” He drew breath, held it. “But aside from all that—and I swear if you laugh at this I will hit you—she’s one of those rare females who have absolutely no interest in me.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw Hamish suck in his lips, trying manfully not to be hit. A very long pregnant moment passed, then Hamish dragged in a huge breath, and managed to get out, “Mayhap she’s grown hardened to the Varisey charm, seeing as she’s lived among you so long.”
His voice had quavered only a little, not enough for Royce to retaliate. It had been decades since he’d felt that going a few rounds with Hamish—one of the few men he’d have to work to fight—might make him feel better. Might let him release some of the tension inside.
That tension sang in his voice as he replied, “Presumably. Regardless, all those facts rule out the easy way—I want no reluctant, sacrificial bride. She’s not attracted to me, she wants me to marry appropriately so she can leave, yet if I offer for her, in the circumstances she might feel she has to, against all her expectations and inclinations, agree. I couldn’t stomach that.”
“Och, no.” Hamish’s expression suggested he couldn’t stomach it, either.
“Unfortunately, her resistance to the Varisey charm rules out the not-quite-so-easy way, too.”
Hamish frowned. “What’s that?”