My Darling Duke

He was not whole enough to ever allow himself to fall too deeply for any woman. That could lead only to heartache, and there was enough pain living in his memories and heart.

“I’ve seen how she looks at you,” Eugene said. “She likes you and seems quite frightened by the notion. It is as if she expects you to hurt her in some fashion. What have you done?”

You’ll break me.

That haunted whisper stabbed deep, twisting the most peculiar sensations inside—anger and pain. “I’ve done nothing.” Alexander faced him. “I gather you enjoy Miss Danvers’s company. You have my permission to pursue her if that is what you are after.”

Shock bloomed on Eugene’s face, but there was also want and need there. “Good God, man, are you certain?”

No… Yes… “You are my heir, and you’ll be a duke one day. You have wealth and status. You evidently admire Miss Danvers’s eccentricity. Whatever I feel for her will not go anywhere, for I shan’t allow it, so be free of guilt in your pursuit.”

Then Alexander walked away.

…

The next evening, after a listless night tossing atop his bed and a day spent penning letters to the prime minister and parliament, Alexander looked forward to meeting with his doctors—an unusual state, for he usually felt bothered by the quarterly checks from the team. He met with three of his doctors in his library, quite pleased they had responded to his summons with the appropriate urgency.

He sat in his wheeled chair by the open windows, gathering his thoughts and the matter he wanted to broach. The silence lingered, and as the clock struck the hour, he realized he had been lost in his thoughts for twenty minutes. Alexander worked the wheel of his bath chair and faced his doctors. His two most senior physicians—Appleby and Monroe—glanced at each other, concern masking their creased features.

Dr. Appleby, a man of average height and slender build, with gray-flecked hair and spectacles, sat in a wingback chair by the fireplace. Dr. Monroe, a few years younger than Appleby and tall with surprising bulk to his frame, reposed on the sofa. The third doctor waited by the mantel, peering into the fireplace as if the dancing flames held some secret he desired to unearth.

Monroe cleared his throat. “Your Grace, you seem well. How are you faring since our last visit?”

That was the opening for all notebooks to appear, and his doctors waited on him with keen patience.

“The pain in my lower back is more persistent this week. But I have pushed myself to be active and on my feet more than I normally risk.”

“Have you taken any opium?” Dr. Monroe asked.

Alexander’s gut tightened, hating to remember the haze he had once lost himself in to bear the constant pain and torment. “No. Nor have I been tempted.”

They scribbled in their notebooks.

“What about laudanum?”

“I smoke my cigars,” he drawled mockingly, before saying, “There is a particular woman… When I think of her…I feel a hunger, unlike anything I’ve ever endured.” Alexander smiled without humor and said bluntly, “My member becomes hard, even if only fleetingly. That is a first since my accident; it happens only with her, and it has happened twice.”

The quiet that enveloped the drawing room was keen.

“That is exceedingly heartening news,” Dr. Grant said, the youngest doctor on Alexander’s team and the most enlightened. He alone seemed willing to adopt the latest and most controversial treatment methods, and it was one of the reasons Alexander had kept him on the team who attended him regularly.

“Your Grace,” Appleby began, “I do not wish to encourage false hope. In the ten years since the unfortunate accident, your manhood has been flaccid. It is unlikely—”

Dr. Grant interrupted Appleby, laying a hand on his arm and saying quickly, “I do not believe it to be false hope, Your Grace. I’ve long believed that your…lack of reaction to any such stimuli had to do with the terrible pain your body underwent in its fight to heal. You were not interested in anything else. I did not believe, as my colleagues do, that the nerve damage to your back and legs would prevent you from living a normal life. Your mind and brain simply directed their enormous energy into other areas of your body—healing.”

Alexander frowned thoughtfully. “It has been several years, Dr. Grant.”

“And your body is still healing. You have made incredible strides, Your Grace. The strength and tenacity you have shown I have never seen in another, but your journey is continuing. It would be very shortsighted of us to assume Your Grace’s body has finished healing or that it is not capable of improving further. Our understanding of human anatomy is still so extremely limited.”

Alexander considered the earnest fervor of Dr. Grant, seeing the validity of his statement. The diagnosis of impotence had been given in those difficult early times.

“You will never walk again, Your Grace, nor will you be able to sire issue.” That had been the pronouncement by one of Edinburgh’s finest doctors, and another team from England had reaffirmed it. Yet Alexander had defied their expectations and had painstakingly pushed himself past the crippling agony to walk again.

Whenever he had crumpled to the floor, he had been a beast, snarling at his servants to leave him be. And he had crawled, digging grooves and cuts into his elbows and palms as he had pushed himself to make it from the floor by his own strength. Remembered despair and helplessness swamped his senses.

“Eight years ago, Dr. Monroe, you told me in no uncertain terms I would never leave this bath chair. Yet I do so daily, for hours,” he murmured.

Sympathy lit in the doctor’s light green eyes. “And the cost must be terrible, Your Grace. Your back and legs were shattered in several places from your fall from a three-story window. I am a man of science, but I still believe it a miracle you are alive—and that you can walk today. As for other functions, the treatment we recommended then did not work at all, so I am not sure what to make of this.”