Page 81 of If the Duke Demands

“Hmm. Then what do you plan to do about it?”

What could he do? “Nothing.”

“Because you’re a duke,” she said deliberately, “and she’s the niece of our tenant farmer…who most likely lights her own fires.”

He gritted his teeth at that subtle rebuke. “It isn’t the same, and you know it. Father wasn’t a peer when you married him. He was an army officer, free to marry whomever he pleased.”

She set her glass away, apparently not having a taste for brandy after all. “Do you care about her, Sebastian?” she asked quietly but bluntly. “Or was she simply an evening’s entertainment?”

He lowered his gaze to the fire, unable to bear looking at his father’s picture as he admitted quietly, “I love her.”

His mother’s lips parted in surprise. She was too shocked by that to say anything.

“I know,” he admitted, blowing out a hard breath. “Stuns the hell out of me, too.”

Needing something to do, he set down his empty glass and took up the poker again, although the fire didn’t need to be tended. After a few halfhearted jabs at the coals, he gave up, returned the poker, and began to pace.

“She’s nothing like I thought she was,” he admitted. “She’s not at all flighty, just vivacious, although a bit beyond control when she gets swept up into the excitement of the moment.” The memory of the opera came back to him in vivid detail, and he couldn’t help but remember how excited she’d been that night. A faint smile tugged at his lips. “Do you know she reads Milton and rewrites Shakespeare?”

Mother blinked. “RewritesShakespeare?”

“There should have been a pirate scene inHamlet,” he explained, and truly, wasn’t that obvious? Then the smile he’d been holding back fully blossomed into a grin of pride. “And you’d be so pleased with what she’s done with the orphans.”

“I am,” she confirmed softly. “All the women who sit on the orphanage board think she’s done a remarkable job.”

“She isn’t at all the annoying girl from next door any longer.” And that was the problem. In the past few months, Miranda had grown into a woman in her own right.

“Does she make you happy?”

He stopped pacing and faced her, fighting back the urge to refill his glass. “More than I thought possible of any woman.”

His mother hesitated, needing a moment to digest that bit of information, then asked softly, “Does she know how you feel about her?”

“She knows I cannot marry her.”

“Cannot,” she pressed, “orwillnot?”

In what his life had become, there was no difference. “I need a duchess, not only a wife.” He shook his head. “A country bluestocking who knew nothing about society or its rules until this season…How can she ever become the duchess I need?”

Mother gazed at him sympathetically. “The same wayIwent from being a country girl to a duchess,” she answered quietly. “One day at a time, with the love and help of my husband.”

He shook his head. He desperately wanted to believe her. He wanted to hope that he could be happy in his choice of wife and the future they’d have together, but the situation wasn’t as simple as she made it out to be. “She’s the orphaned niece of our tenant farmer,” he said. “She’s no better in society’s eyes than a shop girl, barmaid, or—”

“Actress?” she interjected gently.

He froze, his body flashing numb. The events of that terrible night of his father’s death came crashing back, and he could barely breathe under the weight of it. She knew…Motherknew! But that—that was impossible. He’d covered his tracks too well, and he’d never seen the woman again after that night.

“That’s where you were the night your father died. With an actress you’d met at the theater.” Her eyes softened on him. “And you haven’t forgiven yourself for it.”

Her soft words pierced him like a knife, and he stared at her, searching her face for answers. How long had she known? Dear God, how much had he hurt her all these years, only for her to suffer his thoughtlessness in silence?

He squeezed his eyes shut against the memory, but it did little to stop the pain. “I should have been with my family, not with her.”

She laid her hand gently on his shoulder. “How could you have known what would happen that night? Even if you’d been there, you couldn’t have stopped the accident. No one could have.”

The anguished words tore from him—“I could have been there to say good-bye.”

“Oh, my poor boy.” She cupped his face in her hands and tenderly kissed his temple. “That’s the punishment you’re still carrying inside you, isn’t it?” she whispered, her voice strangled with tears. “The blame you still place on yourself…that if you hadn’t been with that woman you would have been by his side. But we don’t know that, either.”