The Duke's Headstrong Woman (Strong Women Find True Love 2)

"It's not my choice, Nadia. It's my destiny to fail the ones I love, and I can't put you through that," he lamented. "Please. Let me at least do some good, for you. Some small amount of good. Let me save your father's heart; let me give to you what he wants for you."

"My father wanted me to be happy. Did he not tell you that? The estate—all of it. He cared more for my heart, for love - than he did for title or peerage," Nadia exclaimed. Lord Beckham struggled, his hands shaking; so close to that precipice or seeing reality, of seeing the heart breaking in Nadia's chest.

"He's a good man... and he will understand me in making this decision," Lord Beckham said, turning his shoulder to the woman as she cried.

"...That's it, then? Ms. Cauthfield... she had hope of saving you. I suppose I did, too. I had hoped, from that first night, that our hearts could find one another. It was only a glimmer of hope, a whisper of it, but I held on to it. The morning we rode together... I had never felt any sort of joy or excitement for so simple, so dull a task. But with you, I saw something. I saw the sun. And you've stifled it; choked the life from it. I loved you."

"This is how it has to be, Nadia. I'm deeply sorry," Lord Beckham insisted. "Please... go back to your estate. Make your father happy. He's a good man. He would like to spend what time he has left with you, I'm certain. We will resolve matters of title, and then you shant need to see me in your life ever again. You'll be happy, Nadia. That I promise you."

"No, I won't," she spat bitterly as she stormed down the stairs, giving him one last searing look. "You don't have to fail again, and again... but you will, because you insist upon it," she said, and with that she threw open the doors and left the estate, her heart heavy.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The door to Lord Beckham's bedchamber flung open, he retreated to the only place he knew he could; the only refuge he had from the memories; from the pain. The only place no one could force him to face reality. From the window he watched her leave the manor's front door; she stormed towards her family's carriage, and she tried so firmly to appear angry; but as she reached the vehicle he watched what lay beneath. He watched her fall to her knees and begin to weep; he could hear her sobs, even at his window, carrying cries of sorrow soaring over the moors. He looked away, swallowing hard, his expression canted towards the carpet; trying to drown out the pain with something, anything; any thoughts.

But everything in his mind came back to her.

He pulled the curtains shut; the sight had only reaffirmed precisely what he had gotten into his head. He would fail; he would always fail. Just as Anna had fled him, racing up the stairs with tears in her eyes. Good, he thought to himself; she had to learn eventually. Nadia would have found herself hating him; it was the only natural consequence, just as it had been before.

He closed his eyes. He felt his own chest welling with emotion; he, too, wished to weep, looking upon another failure. You'll never be th

e sort of man a woman will ever want. He heard her voice calling to him; from the rafters of his bedchamber, shrieking through his dreams, like a ghost he could never escape; a doom he could never hope to outrun. He closed his eyes, but even then he saw her; now, he saw Nadia, too, her face crossed with tears, stained a blushing red, another ghoulish failure of his past. He heard her berate him, just as he had heard Anna. You only fail because you insist upon it!

He threw himself upon the chair to his writing desk, fighting back the tears and the rage; his hands balled into fists he grasped at his liquor shelf, squat with a door of glass, pulling it open. He thought it the only way of forgetting the dreams; the dreams of failure, dreams that soon would bear home to a new haunting memory, one of the beautiful woman he had taken to the cabin; the beautiful, free-spirited firebrand of a woman whose innocence he had claimed so shamelessly.

He swallowed hard; through flames of tears and rage swelling his eyes and blotting his sight Lord Beckham grasped a bottle of muddy-brown liquor, stoppered with a simple cork. He slammed it upon his desk and took in a deep breath, trying to still his shaking hands and cool the flow of emotion pouring from within him. He examined the glass; examined his hand. He closed his eyes, and she hadn't left him yet; he saw her nude, wriggling in the warmth of the fire, whispering to him just how much she wanted him.

If only she had known.

Trembling he grasped the bottle. He pulled the stopper from its mouth, overpowering and heady scent striking his nostrils. He lifted the foul decanter to his lips, taking a deep and unsteady breath.

Knock knock knock! A pounding upon the door shook him from his destruction and spite-filled reverie, and he gulped loudly as a brief, gleaming sunbeam of reality poured into his widened, melancholy-stricken eyes.

"I've no time for conversations," he replied in a muddied, weak tone. He waited, the haze drifting painfully through his mind. He heard no further protest, and turned his gaze once more to the bottle, the swill stinging his nostrils. He recoiled, before another loud knocking interrupted him.

Knock knock!

"Begone!" he retorted, beginning to fear his demons had coalesced into a hate-gnashing mob, come to drag him to his rightful spot in hell. He focused his mania on the bottle before him, his shaking hands lifting it to his mouth, but before he could sip, he heard the hinges to his bedchamber door squeaking quietly open. He heard footsteps... no, he wouldn't look away. He had made his decision. He would hear no more protest.

"M'lord," came a quiet voice.

"Ms. Cauthfield, I'm not in need of a dressing-down in any sort of fashion at this particular moment," the duke dismissed her with an obstinate venom.

"No, I think you are," she responded, like the bite of an angry beast whose rage had been simmering for some time. The old woman threw the door shut behind her and she charged heedless at her master, slapping the bottle from his hand, sending it careening to the carpet, shattering, its contents spilling and the foul, ichorous smell permeating the bedchamber. Lord Beckham blinked in utter amazement; his mouth agape and astonishment in his eyes, he watched as Ms. Cauthfield, who had spent so long a time as a reticent observer of his self-destructive tendencies, positively seethed at him. She had never seen her so, and it... well, it quite scared him.

"I've watched you struggle along this path alone for far too long, Marshall, and I'll not tolerate it any longer," she sneered.

"Ms. Cauthfield, this is outrageous," Lord Beckham rumbled in protest. "You—"

"No, you're outrageous! You're utterly outrageous, Marshall, and I'll not stand for seeing it any longer," Ms. Cauthfield exhorted him, tears beginning to stream from her own eyes. "I'll not watch you destroy yourself again. That girl loves you!"

"Anna loved me too," Lord Beckham lamented. "Anna—"

"Enough with Anna! Enough! How could your mind be on something from so long ago with a beautiful young girl who's fallen in love with you, pleading to have you? How?!" Ms. Cauthfield exclaimed, and in a sudden surge of emotion the older woman slapped her master across the face, stunning him. Her eyes widened; she couldn't rightly believe her own actions, her wrinkled cheeks reddened with tearful rage. She cleared her throat, shivering.

"Ms. Cauthfield..." Lord Beckham mumbled halfheartedly.

"I'll not... apologize, for what I've done, and if you'll have me dismissed for it, so be it," Ms. Cauthfield said, shaky. "I'd far prefer to be dismissed, to find myself on the streets of London, than to stay in this manor, and watch it die; watch the family I've served loyally my whole life wile away, to watch the boy I've known for so long give in to his self-hate, to destroy himself, and destroy so true a love as he has right in front of him," she exclaimed through sniffles. Try as she may to maintain her professional dignity, Ms. Cauthfield couldn't let her emotions simmer. "Decades of braised honey beef and scraped knees; decades of service to your father, your mother; to you, and I promised your parents - promised them - I'd watch after you, until I no longer served the Beckham household. And I suppose I shall consider today to be that day, because I cannot simply watch that poor girl walk away, Marshall, because you despise yourself so deeply! Because of that blasted woman, and that day in the Delshire Moors. She never loved you, Marshall! But Nadia, this poor girl, you showed her something she's never seen before," Ms. Cauthfield seethed.