Page 30 of To Follow her Heart

“I’m sure she’d be happy to. I believe she holds you in some esteem, but who is the lady she needs to speak to?”

“Harriet,” Jasper said, his heart pounding in his chest as he admitted his feelings for her aloud for the first time in his life. “Miss Harriet Stanhope.”

***

Speaking to Jasper about the complications of his own affairs had temporarily diverted Luke’s mind from the horror of what he was facing. Sadly, it didn’t last.

“Where the bloody hell have you been?”

Luke stiffened as Mr Derby’s voice rang out across the drawing room of the elegant suite St Clair had assigned them for the duration of their stay. Determined to conduct himself with all the self-assurance and pride that Trevick and his brother had drilled into him over the past years, Luke turned but did not show any reaction to the man’s angry demand.

“Lord St Clair requested my company for the morning, sir,” he said, with icy civility. “As I am to be his guest for the next two weeks, I felt compelled to accept.”

Derby snorted. “Don’t give me the high and mighty Trevick act, boy. I’m the one who taught you it. You must think I was born yesterday. I take it the subject never touched on your pretty little hoyden, that grasping bog-born nobody who would make herself a countess if you’re fool enough to forget what you owe.”

For a moment, Luke almost forgot himself entirely and hit the man. As it was, his fists clenched and he felt the colour rise over his skin as his anger burned. Yet a decade of hiding his feelings—of allowing no one to know what he was truly thinking—rose to the fore.

“Mr Derby,” he said, hearing the measured tone of his words as though listening to a stranger, as inside he was screaming with fury. “Whatever you think of me or my behaviour is a topic you are welcome to comment upon. Miss Connolly and your opinions of her, however, are a subject you touch upon at your peril. She is a lady, and someone I care for deeply. If you hurt her, I will retaliate.”

Luke saw the surprise in Derby’s eyes. He’d long since given up fighting the man. A boy of thirteen had no power again a full-grown man who had the mind of Machiavelli and few scruples in manipulating a child. Mr Derby alternated between bullying, instilling guilt and—on a couple of truly disturbing occasions—a frank man-to-man attitude where he adopted the role of jovial uncle.

As an adult, Luke had learned to agree with Mr Derby and rarely contradict him, no matter his own thoughts or feelings. Until he inherited the title, he had little more power than he’d had as a boy. Trevick paid for everything; Luke had no independent finances, and a gentleman could not work. Not that he cared a damn about the rules, but they had moulded him into the shape of a gentleman and he was now ill-qualified for anything else.

He was trapped.

Of course, he could have just walked away from it all. He’d been tempted many, many times. Once, he’d even threatened to do it. The results played in his mind now.

His mother had… not taken it well.

Hysteria was too mild a word for the tempest that had raged in the hours after he uttered those fateful words. She’d thrown things, smashing whatever came to hand, and then flown at him, hitting him and scratching like a cat, all the while shrieking an incomprehensible litany of abuse. The gist of it had been clear enough, though. Luke was an unnatural child, an ungrateful wretch who wanted to see his mother die of shame.

They had called a doctor to sedate her. Luke had been forced to hold her down for the doctor to accomplish the job. Mr Derby had said nothing. He hadn’t needed to. His expression was eloquent enough. See? it said, this is what happens when you disobey the rules.

Luke knew a similar scene would greet him when his mother learned of his refusal to wed Lady Frances in favour of an Irish nobody whose family’s revival in fortune came from trade.

Now, however, there was a difference. Now, the taste of his beloved’s kisses were still upon his lips. He remembered the feel of her in his arms, and the promise of all there was to come if he faced the appalling prospect like a man and did not flinch, did not turn from his purpose.

“You dare oppose me?” Derby said, his words dangerously quiet. “You dare to threaten me?”

“I do, sir,” Luke replied. “I have done everything you asked of me. I have always done so. For a very long time, I believed there was no other choice. You took from me the only thing I ever wanted, and I believed I had lost it forever. I made myself believe it, I think, because otherwise my life became unendurable. I was a boy then, though, and I believed myself alone in the world. I am a boy no longer, and Miss Connolly never forsook me. This grasping woman you speak of knew nothing of the earldom, as no one else knew, and yet she waited for me. She loves me still, and I love her. I will marry her.”

A taut silence filled the room. It was oppressive, like the heaviness in the sky and the still, thick air that precedes a thunderstorm.

“How touching,” Derby said, his sneer of derision making Luke itch again to hit him, to sink his fist into that supercilious expression and break his damn nose. He watched as Derby took a breath, composing himself before adding, “But there’s no need to be so hasty.”

Luke felt no reassurance at the softening of the man’s features, by the easier tone of voice, rather his disquiet grew.

“You are thinking like the boy I pulled from the mire, Luke, not the man I raised you up to be. You are no longer a nobody, a mere Mr Baxter, you are the heir to an earldom. Once Trevick and I are out of your way, at least,” he added with a wry smile.

Luke did not smile at the man’s tawdry joke. That Derby was itching to be Trevick did not escape him, but his devotion to furthering the line was no less evangelical than the present earl’s. It would change nothing for Luke. The brothers were of one mind as to his future, and that of the family’s fortunes.

“I do not mean to keep your Miss Connolly from you,” he said, the rather confiding man-about-town note sliding into his voice with ease. “If she is so dreadfully important to your happiness, then we must all accept that. All men have their vices and she is clearly yours. So, marry Lady Frances and take the chit as your mistress. We can arrange something discreet and satis—”

He didn’t get to finish the sentence as Luke knocked him down.

Luke watched the big man—who had terrified him so as a boy—sprawl on the floor at his feet. He didn’t look quite so large or as intimidating as he used to. Luke hadn’t even hit him that hard, aware that he was much younger and fitter than the man before him.

“I am sorry, sir,” Luke said stiffly, a little appalled by what he’d done, though he didn’t regret it in the slightest. It had felt bloody marvellous. “But I warned you.”