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

"Ms. Cauthfield, I don't want to dismiss you," Lord Beckham insisted, his voice weak. "I don't..."

"Then I'll offer instead my resignation, for I can't bear to do this any longer," she said shrilly, In a storm was she off, the bedchamber door slamming behind her; Marshall sat in stunned silence for a long and quiet moment, breath caught in his throat. He smelled the rank burn of the liquor rising from the carpet and swallowed hard.

He gathered himself up, and wandered out of the door to his bedchamber in search of the maidservant, but silence crept across the entirety of the manse. In an emotional haze he stumbled back to the stairwell; deathly silence fell across the chamber, and he spied on the carpet - stamped and ripped - the contract he had drawn up, his own name next to Lord Havenshire's. At the front door stood loyal James, though in his expression Lord Beckham could read the same disappointment with which Ms. Cauthfield had only recently bludgeoned the duke with.

"James," the duke said, acting as if in a trance, his mind addled with some sense of shocked madness.

"M'lord," the butler responded coldly. He saw her in the window... he saw her down the stairs. Always that smile. When Lord Beckham looked upon the dead fireplace at the rear of the foyer, he saw her again; flashes, pained flashes, like the memories of Anna.

He needed to forget Anna, he told himself. Perhaps Ms. Cauthfield had been right.

"A carriage... a carriage," Lord Beckham blurted. He stepped lightly down the stairs, his mind wandering. He could hear Nadia's words echoing through the vaulted ceilings. He saw her face; heard her fiery exhortations.

"A carriage, m'lord, bound for where?" James asked.

"The Emerys estate, I... I need to have Nadia sign this contract," he rambled. "I need..."

"M'lord... I think you need something different," James murmured.

"...Perhaps... perhaps I..." Lord Beckham exhaled.

"Do you love her, m'lord?" James asked.

"I... think, I do," the duke responded hesitantly.

"You'll only ever know what can happen with love if you try," James pleaded. He could only hear her words; every time he closed his eyes he saw her face.

"I think... I do, love her," he shuddered. "But how could anyone truly love me back?"

"You can't let that woman haunt your life forever," James said.

"...prepare a carriage, James... this contract..." Lord Beckham repeated his idea, a curious mantra of self-protection.

"I'll do as you wish, m'lord, but perhaps you should reconsider your course of action," the butler added, before stepping through the grand front doors.

He closed his eyes. He saw her again.

"Perhaps..." Lord Beckham's voice trailed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

"I'm certain your father will be fine, m'lady," Egan murmured as the carriage pulled alongside the front of the Emerys manor. Her heart shattered, Lady Havenshire had spent the trip back across the moors with her mind awash in rage, in pain; she felt utter loss, betrayal. She had never felt something so acute in her life; something so stinging in her chest as a round and utter rejection.

"Father is going to die, Egan, and all he wanted was to see my face happy before that happened," she lamented with a sigh. "I loved that man. I didn't know what real love meant, and..."

Her mind flashed back to the first night together. How she had treated him harshly after hearing of his sister. She thought of the laughs; the smile, before a darkness crept across them. She thought of his stormy eyes; how she had seen him, a darkness against the backdrop of Lord Perrywise's gaudy and ostentatious ballroom; she had seen something different in him. Had he truly been different? Or had he used her as any man would - in all that ways that Ms. Mulwray had warned?

As the horses' hooves clopped along the roadway, her family manor looming close, she closed her eyes and saw him again. She saw his dusky expression at the far end of the dining hall; she felt in her mouth the sweet succor of honey-braised meat, a recipe that felt as delectable in her imagination as it had in person. She smelled the steam of fresh food, heard the echo of his darkly-commanding tone rolling through the dining hall. His quips took her heart away to a different place; to a better time, to laughter at his expense as he saw the terrified lord atop the back of a lazy, aging horse.

It brought her back to that day. The rains fell and she thought her very life in danger at the spine-tingling chill of the rain across swaying autumn trees. Hearing his voice call out a

cross the forest, like a rescuing lifeline. She saw the old cabin; the smell of mold, spurts of dust; dried wood. She recalled his scent; his body. An exceptional body; one she wanted to wake up next to, every single morning.

"Your father will be waiting, m'lady..." Egan broke into the reverie; they had arrived at the front door of the manor, the horses clopping their hooves impatiently, wanting for the embrace of the stable. Her eyes opened and that memory drifted away, even as he heard in her mind memories of her name burning passionately from his gaping mouth. She shivered, recalling the rainy cold of that day; a cold she felt now renewed, as a breeze passed through the opened door of the carriage. She stared at the face of the manor - it felt flat; everything felt flat, as if all the color and all the life and vigor of all the world had withered away without the thought of him brimming in her mind. The vibrant, burning fiery-oranges and reds of the trees in autumn, the blanket of fallen leaves and swaying yellows of bushes dying away for the season felt dull compared to the fire he brought to her life.

Soon, she thought, winter would come; a freezing blanket of white would claim the bright colors of autumn, washing away warmth and filling bones that had once felt the sudden, lively surge of love with the icy fingers of contempt; of loneliness. Frozen in the unchanging, gray doldrums of that dark time would be her memories of him, gleaming within the frozen wilds, always beckoning her back to that embrace. But she couldn't have them; she couldn't cling forever to fall, for winter would come and claim everything she had loved. It would claim her father, as it had claimed her mother; it would claim her fortune, and her freedom. She'd be a captive bird shrilly squeaking from a crushing cage.

"M'lady..." once more her gloomy recollections fell victim to the quiet, meek tone of the portly man at the head of the carriage. The horses whinnied and waited; dark-gray clouds gathered at the far edges of the sky, and she could hear faint rumblings of thunder threatening to bring back those memories all over again. Wherever a storm brewed, she saw him - the stormy man she had fallen for, who had slain her dreams.