AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I…I’m sorry,” she whispered.
The duke stood motionless, jaw tight.
“Tell me about him? Were you similar in disposition?” She could maintain it was for Mari. To understand her charge better, and although there existed some truth in that, she also could not bear the helpless anguish in this man’s inky eyes. He may be a mighty duke but Isabelle recognised a deep pain in him.
She felt similar when dwelling on the past, had been assaulted by it this very afternoon when she’d been alone in that dark storeroom.
Perhaps it was the duke’s mind that was trapped in that same dark.
He tapped a finger against his glass. “My brother… Tristan was a natural at conversing and carousing. Enjoyed social events and balls, always joshing and the one with the perfect droll line.” He sipped his brandy. “Whereas I was serious, knew that the responsibility of the earldom and all its lands would be bequeathed to me one day.” He glanced up. “I never knew what to say to people. As a child I was too long at lessons with a tutor and was perceived as stern. But it mattered not because I had Tris… He was my balance. A part of me. My twin.”
Isabelle’s fingers gripped her glass. “He married young?”
“At nineteen, would you believe? A bold and beautiful girl who he worshipped. I used to call him and Sarah turtle doves, wished I could find someone of my own and even started…” He shuttered his gaze. “Sarah died in her second childbirth, a mere twenty-two years of life to her name, the babe with her. Tris was desolate, but we mourned together, drank overmuch together and…recovered from her loss together.”
“You sound very close. A true twin’s bond.”
“Indeed, and as life unfolded in the ten or so years that followed the loss of Sarah, it was he who took me out of myself, taught me to loosen a little.” The duke stared to the fire as flames sparked. “Now he’s gone, and sometimes I feel all that is left of me is the serious child and the stern uninteresting title of a man.” He scuffed his boot along the hearth edge. “How I so wish Tris had stayed home that day.”
“How did… How did it happen?”
“Tris… Since boyhood, he’d adored the open seas, could forever be found down by the beach with his model boats. During school holidays, he’d pester the estate carpenter and the fishermen, shunning academia for woodwork and sailing, and when we returned from university, he began to build his own boats. My Lady was his third, built with his own hands, and damn it but I used to tease him for being covered in sawdust and grime.” He emptied his glass in one gulp. “That day, the sky was clear, the sea a calm aquamarine. We’d bickered over…something ridiculous and I was angry with him.” He closed his pained gaze. “But he still clapped me on the back and said we’d settle it over billiards later.”
Isabelle had viewed their portraits in the hallway – two lads as peas in a pod but for their eyes – for Lord Tristan’s were a laughing green, the duke’s a serious ebony. She could imagine that day the duke recounted – a brotherly argument, the bright sunshine, his twin’s departure…
The wait for news.
“The squall came in quick as night,” he said, returning to the window. “Tris was experienced but even so, I ran down to the beach with some men, the wind howling about us like a demon. I could see no sailboat, the waves high and…” He placed a fist to the frame. “Then the rain began. We tried to put the other boat out to sea, to search for him, but…couldn’t even make it past the swash it was so damn rough.” His head dropped. “I had men searching the breadth of the coast, and some wreckage was recovered two days later, washed onto those cliffs. But the seas took Tristan for their own as is their wont.”
The rain took that moment to still – the fire crackled and the clock ticked its relentless pace.
“I…” Isabelle followed to stand to the rear of him, reached out a hand… Then let it drop. “Words, I know, can never be enough but… For myself, I do not believe your brother left behind a stern uninteresting title of a man as you say. Because his love, his laughter, it lives in you, Your Grace, forevermore. You remember his jokes, do you not? The matters you laughed over together?”
“Hell, yes!” He pivoted, and he was so close, sandalwood teasing. “There was an awful joke about a…” A cough. “No. Not polite.”
“And so, if you remember your brother in this way, he has not left you at all. And his daughter is here in your household – with all of your twin’s verve and spirit.”
He raised his hand and she felt the heat of it on her cheek. “Perhaps so.” His thumb brushed.
“I should…retire, Monsieur le duc.”
She thought a shiver rippled his palm.
“He would have liked you,” he whispered. “Practical, astute yet…”
“Yet?”
He smiled. “Thank you for tending to Hugh.” Both his hand and smile dropped. “I couldn’t bear to lose him also.”
“It was no trouble, and I hope my trusty salve will aid him.” She glanced up. “Mr Cadwalader is a most amicable gentleman but a…a…”
“A scandalous scoundrel. You can say it, Miss Beaujeu.” The duke laughed, his features at last softening. “The London Ton adores his handsome mug and flatterer’s tongue. He’s invited everywhere and knows everyone.”
“Is he your sole heir? Mari refers to him as cousin but…”
He quirked a brow. “It’s near enough. My grandfather, the tenth Earl of Llanedwyn, had no other…legitimate sons except for my father, so the line then goes back to the eighth earl who had two sons, the eldest being my great-grandfather, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
