To Woo a Widow (The Heart of a Duke #10)(26)

He’d never given proper thought to the expectations his mother put to him years earlier regarding Sybil Cunning. If they married, they would have a polite, companionable union. But was that enough?

Just days prior, he would have answered with a definitive yes. Now, after seeing Philippa again for a fourth time, he’d been forced to reconsider the promise he’d made regarding Sybil. If it hadn’t been for Philippa, he would have not considered all the perils that came in wedding where one’s heart was not engaged. The haunted glimmer in Philippa’s eyes, the pain he saw there, ushered in questions and doubts. Could there ever truly be happiness in that staid, proper affair?

Tamping down an agonized groan, Miles grabbed the bottle and poured himself several fingerfuls of liquor. He thought better of it and then filled his glass to the brim.

He took a long, slow swallow, welcoming the sting as it burned a trail down his throat. But it did little to ease the pain weighting his chest. Her words hadn’t been restricted to the hell she’d lived as a wife, but she’d also spoken of suffering…at the hands of her father. And had her daughter not entered, he would have asked every last bloody question. Fury lanced through him; an unholy desire to drag her dead father and husband from the grave and kill them dead all over again. Was it a wonder the lady would be suspect of any gentleman’s motives? Himself included?

“I believe this is the first time I can recall a scowl from the always affable Marquess of Guilford.”

At that familiar, dry drawl, Miles shot his head up. He set his glass aside. “Bainbridge.” Surprise crept into his tone. The other man, devoted to his two children and hopelessly in love with his wife, was rarely one for their clubs.

Bainbridge dragged out a chair and claimed the opposite seat with all the austere command of a man born and bred to be a duke. A servant rushed over with a glass, but the young duke waved the man off. All the while, he kept his attention trained on Miles. “I’ve read of your own impressive rescue of a lady in Hyde Park earlier this week,” he drawled, folding his arms at his broad chest. He quirked a very ducal eyebrow.

Years earlier, Bainbridge had set the Town abuzz when he’d rescued his now wife from the frozen Thames. “Hardly the manner of heroics evinced by some,” he said dryly. This was the reason for the other man’s visit, then.

“But enough to merit gossip, of course,” the duke spoke with his disdain for Polite Society underscoring his every word.

Miles gave a brusque nod. Gossip he’d only fueled that morning by taking Philippa in his arms.

“The papers purport an illicit relationship.” His friend drummed his gloved fingertips on his sleeves.

A wry smile creased Miles’ lips. “Apparently, in my advancing years, I’ve acquired the reputation of rogue.” The young duke had never been one to dance around matters. His statements were more demands than anything else. Most of the ton feared the man. Miles, however, had known him since he’d been a sullen, lonely boy at Eton. Miles then stood beside that man who’d sobbed at the loss of his wife during childbirth. His dry mirth faded. How easily he’d encouraged the other man to move past his sorrow, but how very near to becoming his late wife Philippa had been.

“Well?” Bainbridge demanded gruffly.

He sighed, not pretending to misunderstand the question there. “The lady is a widow. I found her daughter wandering in Hyde Park and returned her.” And I’ve since seen her three more times, after, drawn like one of those hopeless sailors at sea.

The other man continued beating his fingers in that annoying staccato rhythm. “A lady you’ve since seen again?”

He frowned. “Her daughter forgot her book in the park.”

“Of course,” the young duke drawled.

Shifting in his seat under the speculative glint in Bainbridge’s eyes, Miles added, “Furthermore, it would have been ungentlemanly to not visit and see after the lady’s well-being.”

The ghost of a smile hovered on Bainbridge’s lips. “Indeed, not,” he stretched out those three syllables. Then, the duke had plucked a lady from the frozen Thames and never called again. It was the lady who’d continually sought him out.

Whereas Miles couldn’t bring Lady Philippa ’round to any real interest. That isn’t altogether true. Her breathless moans and soft pleas bespoke a woman not wholly immune to me. Miles rolled his snifter between his hands.

“She’s not solely a young widow you happened to meet though, is she?” the duke said with an astuteness that could only come from years of friendship.

He shook his head once. “She does not wish to marry,” he said quietly. Even with the bond between him and Bainbridge, he could not bring himself to share the whispered words about her childhood. “She nearly…” Miles looked the other man squarely in the eye. “lost her life in childbirth.”

The duke’s expression grew shuttered. But for the faint muscle that jumped at the corner of his mouth, he gave no indication of his thoughts. In all Miles’ urgings that the other man re-enter the living, he’d not ever given consideration to the horror and hell of getting a child on another woman. How, after such a loss, could one ever be the same? Naively, with his own largely uncomplicated until now life, he’d never had the foresight to truly think of the implications in marrying, particularly where Bainbridge had been concerned.