Page 59 of A Duke to Undo her
It was not a question, but a statement and it struck him like a blow. The Duke of Ashbourne closed his eyes, these words and the images in the painting before them too much to take in together.
“The past is done, my son,” Duchess Nerissa continued. “Benedict and I have both come to terms with what happened to our family, and yet, I feel that you – strongest of all us – have not. Why should that be?”
“Strong,” Cassius repeated with an ironic laugh, opening his eyes again and looking at his father’s face, seeing his own features there now far more than in the image of the youth he had once been. “Father too was strong, was he not? I am like Father in face, in form, in personality. Even the strongest man cannot battle fate and hope to win.”
His mother shook her head firmly.
“I don’t believe in fate, Cassius. I believe in chance, and courage and love. Your father was not fated to die. He was only unlucky. You…Oh, Casssius, you are not fated to die young either. That is is, isn’t it? That is what you have been carrying all these years?”
“How can you be so sure of something like that?” the Duke of Ashbourne demanded, pointing to the portrait. “How can you know that it was not some inherited weakness that killed my father?”
“Cassius, you must not cut yourself off from life, from love…” she tried to stop him but the flow of thoughts into words was now too strong to be easily dammed or diverted.
“I am just like him, aren’t I? You have always said so. Look at the two of us. If I carry the same invisible flaw in my blood or my heart, how could I ever deliberately inflict such grief on any woman, or knowingly pass it down to children? I must live apart.”
“No!” she said more firmly now, raising her voice and seizing his forearms to bring his eyes to hers. “None of that is true, Cassius! Three physicians examined Henry’s body, including the man who attended him before his death. There was no one cause they could find. The best explanation is only that several factors combined and overwhelmed his heart. That was ill-luck, not fate.”
“How can I be sure? It is impossible to know,” he insisted, the idea of a gloomy and mysterious fate clinging too tightly to his soul to be easily shrugged off. “Doctors are not gods, Mother.”
“Use your reason in this, my son, as you use it so well in other matters.,” Duchess Nerissa urged him. “Your grandmother, Henry’s mother, lived to almost ninety, even if her mind failed. Your grandfather, the Eighth Duke of Ashbourne, died in a swimming accident at five-and-seventy. Your great-grandfather William was almost eighty, when he was carried off by flu after painting outside in his nightshirt.”
These were undeniable facts, clearly stated, and he could not ignore them as he might have ignored emotional pleading and attempts at reassurance.
“All three of Henry’s brothers and sisters still live today and your cousins too seem hale and hearty in recent letters,” continued his mother very surely. “There is nothing in your father’s family tree that speaks of inherited weakness. Nothing whatsoever, Cassius.”
The duke swallowed, feeling the burden on his shoulders loosen with the force of such evidence but unsure yet if something so long and so tightly attached could ever really be removed.
“Your father was unlucky, Cassius. We were all unlucky to lose him. That is all. Before that, we were very lucky to have him for as long as we did. I thank God for that every day, and for giving me my two sons.”
“I want to believe what you say,” the duke told his mother. “I really do.”
“You must believe me,” the dowager duchess insisted, still holding her son’s arms although her grip was lighter now. “Look at me, Cassius. You are punishing yourself needlessly for a past that was no one’s fault. Let yourself be happy now. Go to Lady Josephine…”
At this last statement, Cassius froze and stepped back, feeling the deepest reaches of his heart exposed and vulnerable. Had hismother known all along of his feelings for Lady Josephine and his struggle to contain them?
“Mother, I must…”
“You might be willing to continue hurting yourself, although I wish you wouldn’t. But are you really willing to hurt Lady Josephine too, Cassius? She loves you, and you must know it by now.”
Any attempt at denial would be futile. That final conversation at the fountain came back to him, along with that final kiss, so sweet and so painful. Lady Josephine had been weeping and her tears had hurt Cassius too, cutting him to the quick. Only the belief that he was acting for her own good had enabled him to speak as he did.
“Is Lady Josephine not better off without me?” he questioned himself as much as his mother.
The dowager duchess’s answer was again swifter and more decided than his own.
“No, she is not. That girl is deeply, deeply unhappy now, likely as unhappy as you, although her family don’t know why. She has told them nothing of whatever passed between you, it seems, as you have told me nothing.”
Cassius felt his face flush as he remembered his discreet but undeniably improper erotic advances and how Lady Josephinehad responded in full measure. Could his mother have guessed even at that?
“For both of your sakes, I beg of you to put this matter right, and to do it quickly. Lady Elmridge wrote to me yesterday to thank me for our hospitality. She mentioned that Lady Josephine may go to Scotland with another relative shortly. They are worried for her health. Now, I have said my piece. I shall retire and suggest you do the same.”
“Scotland?!” the duke exclaimed. “But that is… so far away.”
“Indeed,” replied Nerissa, coming to kiss his cheek. “I imagine that if Lady Josephine goes, we will not see her for a full year. I suppose she might even choose to stay there, if society in Edinburgh is congenial.”
With this final rejoinder, she departed, leaving Cassius dumbstruck among the candles.
As disheveled and out of breath as his horse after the early morning ride from Ashbourne Castle to London, the Duke of Ashbourne’s already-thumping heart lurched as he heard the response to his enquiry from the white-haired and dignified butler at the front door of Elmridge House.
