One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club #1)(107)

Claudia was with child.

“You poor thing.” She stroked the girl’s wet hair. “I’m so sorry.” What a terrible burden for a fifteen-year-old girl to struggle under on her own. “Did it happen in York?”

Claudia nodded against her. “My music master. I was so lonely there, and he was so kind to me, at first. He promised I wouldn’t …” The girl’s voice broke, and Amelia held her tighter still. “Oh, Amelia. I was such a fool. And how will I ever tell him?”

Amelia knew she wasn’t referring to the music master.

“I can’t bear it,” the girl sobbed. “He’ll be so furious with me.”

“Shh,” Amelia said, shifting to cradle the girl in her arms. She rocked them both, gently. “I will tell him. And if he reacts with anger, it won’t be anger at you. He cares for you so much.”

“I thought … if I ran away, married—”

“Everyone would believe the child was Jack’s,” Amelia finished for her. “And you would never have to tell the truth.” She rubbed Claudia’s back briskly, feeling the girl warm in her arms. Wet muslin clung to her body, clearly delineating a rounded belly—the telltale sign her high-waisted gowns had heretofore concealed.

“It was all her idea.” From the other side of the small room, Jack spoke up. “I didn’t know she was with child until the rain soaked us through. You must believe me. She just came to me, and I was so desperate …” His back met the stone wall, and he slid down it until he sat on the floor. “I haven’t touched her, I swear it.”

“Yes, but why, Jack? How can you do this to me? Don’t you know how I’ve defended you? Again and again, I’ve helped you, believed in you. And this is your thanks, absconding with my husband’s ward?”

“I’m in a bad way, Amelia.”

“Yes, Spencer told me.”

“It’s worse than even he knows. Exile or death, those are my options.” He buried his face in his stacked arms. “Not sure I’d mind the second.”

His words caught Amelia sharply in the chest, driving a wedge between her ribs and slowly levering them apart. She thought of going to her brother, but then Claudia whimpered. Instead, she tightened her arms about the girl to offer more comfort and warmth.

And then she began to shiver with fear. Between Claudia and Jack, the two of them needed so much. Not only comfort and warmth, but reassurance, assistance, absolution. Amelia wasn’t sure she had enough within her to give them, and even if she did … there might be nothing left. Perhaps she would simply disappear.

“You mustn’t blame him,” Claudia whispered. “He’s right. It was all my idea.”

“Yes, but he should have known better. You’re fifteen years old.”

“Nearly sixteen,” she sniffed.

“Sixteen.” Jack raised his head and stared unfocused toward the ceiling. “Don’t you remember the summer you were sixteen, Amelia? You were engaged to Poste. Hugh and I, we spent the whole summer up here at the gatehouse, plotting to stop the wedding. We may have been only thirteen and twelve, but we were blood sworn to never surrender you to that decrepit troll. We made black-powder grenades to create a diversion, a catapult …” He gave a hollow chuckle. “There was some strategy involving riled-up chickens, as I recall.”

Tears welled in Amelia’s eyes, even as she laughed to imagine the confluence of chickens, black powder, and a catapult interrupting her wedding. Old Mr. Poste would have likely expired on the spot. “What valiant plans. You must have been gravely disappointed when I cried off.”

“No.” His gaze met hers—utterly devoid of cynicism or deceit. “We were relieved, Amelia. Not just me and Hugh, but everyone. You deserved so much better. That’s why …” He cleared his throat. “It’s damned miserable, knowing I’ve driven you to marry Morland now.”

“Jack, that’s completely different. Spencer is nothing like Mr. Poste. I love him.”

“You love everyone, no matter how undeserving. He’s still not good enough for you. No one is.” He shook his head. “If Hugh were alive, we’d have found a way to interrupt that wedding, too. Chickens, black powder, whatever it took.”

Had they laid siege to all Bryanston Square, she doubted Spencer could have been dissuaded. If he wouldn’t stop the wedding to answer murder allegations, a homemade catapult wouldn’t have stood a chance.

“Of course,” Jack said, “if Hugh were alive, everything would be different, wouldn’t it?” Her brother tipped his head back against the wall and stared up at the leaking ceiling. “We spent our boyhoods in this crumbling heap. Couldn’t bear to come back here, after. Thought I’d be relieved to see it sold, but …”

Her heart squeezed. So that’s why she hadn’t been able to get Jack out here last year. The same memories that comforted her were simply too much for him.

“I should have gone with him. I hated Laurent for buying Hugh a commission, and not me. I always followed him everywhere.”

“I know,” she said. “But you can’t follow him now, Jack. Not to the grave.”

“Can’t I?”

“No,” she said forcefully.

Water dripped slowly from the rafters. Plink, plink, plink. And then a realization exploded inside her.