Page 81 of Duke of Emeralds
She crossed the room and perched on the edge of the settee. The silence was companionable but not easy. “You are breaking the pattern, then,” she said. “I had assumed you’d be sketching ships or castles or perhaps… wolves.”
He grinned, but it was a thin effort. “Am I truly supposed to be the wolf in this story, Hester?”
“You tell me,” she replied, and then, because she couldn’t help it, she added, “You are not nearly as frightening as society would have us believe. At least, not when you are reading poetry and ignoring the world.”
He set the book aside. “That’s yer mistake, Duchess. Ye let a man show ye his throat, and ye think he’s harmless.”
She snorted though her pulse quickened. “You are many things, Thomas, but harmless is not among them.”
He cocked a brow. “Neither are ye.”
They sat, locked in a stare, until Hester broke it with a sharp sigh. “I heard something at the ball. About your—about your past.” She watched his jaw set, the faintest recoil in his shoulders.
Thomas said nothing at first then ran a hand down his bearded jaw. “What exactly did you hear?”
“That you worked. For Craton, perhaps, or someone else.” She waited, heart pounding. “That you were… a servant.”
He made a sound that was half laugh, half grunt. “Aye. I was.” He looked at her then, the blue of his eyes as cold and hard as river glass. “You want to know the story, do ye?”
“I do,” she said. “I want to knowyou, Thomas.”
He sat up and clasped his hands between his knees, staring at the rug as if the right words might be hidden in its worn pattern. “My father died when I was ten. Left nothing but debts and hunger and a mother who’d never worked a day in her life.” He paused and blinked slowly. “We lost the cottage then the land. My mother worked on the farms, Elspet took in washing, and I went to the nearest estate to find work. Any work. A blacksmith gave me work. I hammered iron on anvil for four years during the day and carried goods to warehouses at night.”
Hester felt a sharp, unexpected pain behind her breastbone. “Four years,” she echoed, as if that could lessen it.
“After that, I was tall enough to be useful in the fields. I could out-plow any man twice my age by the time I was fifteen.” He grinned but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Never made much of it, though. Men like me don’t get promoted, we get beaten.”
She thought of the scar on his cheek, the way he sometimes flinched from casual touch. “They hurt you.”
He shrugged. “Nae more than was needed to remind me of my place.” He glanced at her then away. “I worked for a nobleman a few seasons and saw how a proper estate was run. Learned how to fix a roof, mend a fence, balance accounts. That’s all a duke’s work is in the end—fixing, mending, balancing. If anyone tells you differently, they’re lying.”
She wanted to reach for him, but her hands remained clasped in her lap. “What about your mother? And your sister?”
He stilled, the muscle in his jaw working. “Elspet married when I was thirteen to a baronet, Sir Robert McMillan. I thought she was selling her happiness to help us, but she insisted. My mother…” He sighed. “She died when I was fourteen. A fever took her. Though Elspet helped us, we dinnae want to burden her, and our ma continued working hard until her body grew weak, and she was unable to fight the fever.”
Thomas met her eyes, the pain raw and unguarded now. “I lived on my own and assured Elspet that all was well. I blame myself for allowing my mother to work too hard and my sister to marry a man she dinnae love.”
Hester touched his arm. “You were a boy. It was beyond you.”
“I know that now, but I had nothing, Hester. Nae even a name worth the dirt it was scrawled on. When the Lushton line died out, and the title went hunting for blood kin, it found me in a London office managing Craton’s estate. That’s the miracle, Duchess. The biggest one of all.”
She blinked and tried to imagine it. Her own childhood with its music and books, the secure geometry of privilege—compared to this.
“That is not a miracle, Thomas. It is survival,” she said softly,
He shrugged, but she could see the shame in it. “I survived, aye. That’s about all I did.”
“You did more than that.” She found herself angry—at the world, at the snobs at the ball, even at Thomas for thinking so little of himself. “You kept your family alive. You learned every skill worth knowing. You built yourself into something no one could ever buy or falsify.” She leaned forward, her voice rising. “Do you know how rare that is?”
He looked startled then amused. “You’re passionate tonight, Duchess. What’s in that punch you drank?”
She flushed. “I am not drunk. I am…” She trailed off, uncertain.
He supplied, “Hungry?”
She met his gaze, unflinching. “Yes. Hungry for the truth. For something real.” She drew in a breath. “I have never known anything so real as you, Thomas. And I have never been so terrified in my life.”
He laughed, a sound that cut through the sorrow. “Are ye afraid of me, then?”
