Ross watched Sara flee the room with her head bent. Just moments ago she had come apart in his arms and everything had been perfect. The shame on her face when she ran from the room had nearly destroyed him.
“I’m disappointed in you, Gabriel. I specifically asked you to stay away from her.”
He had tried, but it had been impossible. He could no more have turned Sara away than he could have stemmed the tide of the ocean. Oh, he’d had every intention. Maybe. He could have stayed away from the study, knowing that Sara would come here looking for him.
No, he was weak when it came to Lady Sara Emerson.
“The fault lies on my shoulders,” he said stiffly.
“Oh, Gabriel.” His mother put her hand to her forehead and rubbed it. “You have ruined her.”
Like a lad who knew he was caught, he shifted from one foot to the other. “If it’s any consolation, she’s not completely ruined.”
She glared at him from between her fingers. “It is of no consolation.” She wearily made her way to the settee, made to sit down, thought better of it, and moved to the chair. “Tell me everything. I know there is something more happening that you are not telling me.”
Ross slumped into the settee. For a moment the image of her writhing beneath him came to mind, but he ruthlessly pushed it away. “Sara is receiving letters from someone who claims he was present the night Meredith was murdered.”
His mother drew in a surprised gasp. “Is this letter writer threatening her?”
“Not yet, but I fear in time he will.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know. Montgomery is helping us track him, but we have too few leads.”
The duchess stared at him for the longest time. “She came to you for protection, Gabriel, and you have compromised her.”
He dropped his head in his hands. “I’m aware.” He felt despicable. “I’m also aware that I failed to protect Meredith, and now I am tasked with protecting her cousin. I cannot fail in this.”
“Oh, Gabriel.” His mother knelt before him and pulled his hands away from his face, just as she had when he was a boy and distraught over something. She pulled him toward her until his head was lying on her shoulder. “All this time I thought you mourned Meredith, but in reality you felt guilty. It’s not your fault. The silly girl left the safety of her home in the middle of the night.”
He pulled away. “It is not her fault that she was killed.”
His mother looked up at him in sorrow. “Gabriel, you can’t continue to blame yourself.”
“Who else am I to blame?”
“The person who killed her. Meredith herself.”
Ross considered his mother. “You didn’t like her.” The revelation rocked him in his boots. She’d never given any indication while Meredith was alive, but he could see it in her face now.
The duchess looked away, red creeping up to stain her cheeks.
“I thought you approved of our union,” he said.
“At first I did. She is of a fine family, and the union would have made you very powerful, but the more I got to know her and saw you with her, the more I had doubts. You were not yourself around her. It was as if you were bewitched.”
Ross stood to pace away. “I was not bewitched.”
“Maybe ‘bewitched’ is not the right word, but she definitely changed you, and I didn’t like it.”
He didn’t know what to think. The revelation was so shocking. “All this time and you never said anything.” What would he have done if he had known? And why did her revelation bring back his guilt? He had loved Meredith. He had. But toward the end he’d started to see some of the same things that his mother spoke of.
“Forgive me,” she whispered.
He shook his head. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
“Do you understand what I’m saying about Sara? She is the opposite of Meredith, and I fear you will overpower her. She needs someone…softer.”
“I’m not harsh,” he said, surprised.
“That’s not what I mean.”
“You fear she will lose herself with me.”
“I fear that she is no match for your will, and tonight proves that. She needs a gentle hand. She can’t possibly stay here any longer.”
Ross’s head jerked up. “She’s not leaving.”
“Gabriel—”
“No. In this I am firm, Mother. She’s here under my protection, and my protection she will receive. As for the other…” It pained him to even speak of this to his mother. “I will stay away from her.”
She didn’t look convinced, and neither was he.
Sara didn’t want to answer the knock on her bedroom door. She knew who it was, and it wasn’t the person she wanted it to be. She shuffled to the door and opened it to find the Duchess of Rossmoyne on the other side. Just as she had suspected.
Since she’d just been found doing indecent—but oh, so delectable—things to the woman’s son, Sara didn’t feel the need to stand on ceremony. She turned her back and returned to her bed, where she curled up against the headboard and watched the duchess warily.
Elizabeth sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her in sorrow.
“Forgive me,” Sara whispered. She wasn’t asking for forgiveness of the act. No, she would not regret that. She was asking to be forgiven because she had done such a thing under this roof. And because the duchess had to witness something so intimate.
“I have to ask—did he coerce you in any way?”
Sara sat up. “No! You must not believe that. If there is anyone to blame, it is I.”
Elizabeth’s lips twitched in a smile. “Interesting that Rossmoyne said the same thing.”
“He tried to warn me away. He told me to return to my room, but I didn’t listen.”
Elizabeth stared at her for a long while, and Sara could practically feel the woman thinking.
“I will leave,” Sara said quietly. She didn’t want to, but it was for the best.
“I think you will have a fight on your hands if you do. Rossmoyne will hear nothing of it.”
Which meant the duchess had tried to convince him to make Sara leave. She wanted to shrink into the bed, pull the covers over her head, and disappear. She was mortified that the duchess had caught them.
“I’m normally not that kind of girl,” she said in weak defense.
The duchess laughed. “Oh, Sara, I know that. Do you think I don’t remember what it’s like to be young? It’s intoxicating and frightening at the same time. But I do feel the need to lecture you, just as I lectured Rossmoyne.”
Sara inwardly smiled at the thought of this woman lecturing the mighty Rossmoyne. He could be so imposing, but she doubted that deterred his mother.
“Sara, darling, Ross is…” She stopped and appeared to think. “He’s a duke. And as a duke, he is used to getting his way.”
“I understand.” Sara was not good enough for this woman’s son. It hurt to hear it, but it wasn’t something she didn’t already know. Meredith might have been good enough, with her shining personality and her ability to control anyone around her with a single look, but not Sara. She wasn’t even good enough for her own mother.
The duchess touched Sara’s knee. “There’s some man out there for you. Someone who understands you better than my son.”
Sara turned her head away. “I have no wish to wed, nor can I right now.”
The duchess was quiet for so long that Sara peeked over at her. Elizabeth’s lips were pressed together in what Sara could only imagine was displeasure. “I despise that you are giving up your life for your father.”
“I’m all he has.”
Elizabeth rose and looked down on her. “Your mother should be taken to task for what she has done.”
A frisson of anger melted some of Sara’s sadness. “My mother was affected by Meredith’s death as much as anyone. She reacted the only way she knew how.”
“By disappearing?” Elizabeth waved her hand in the air. “Never mind. It’s not my business. I do not know your parents well enough to comment. I just don’t want to see you caught in the middle.”
“I’m not.”
The duchess stared at her for a long moment before she patted Sara’s leg and left.
Sara buried her face in the pillow and bit her lip to keep from sobbing. How mortifying that the duchess had told Ross that Sara didn’t possess the qualities he needed in a wife. And how sad that something so beautiful had been marred, so that whenever she thought of her one experience with Ross, she would think of the humiliating experience after.