“Love is not everything.”

The saddle arrived then, and King made quick work of fitting it to his horse. Warnick was quiet for a long time, watching him work before replying. “That may be the case, but with the way you look, I wouldn’t believe it. And with the way you look, I’m damn grateful I’ve escaped it myself.”

“That, you should be,” King said, pulling himself into the saddle.

“She’ll want children, you know,” Warnick said. “They all want children.”

The words brought back the vision of those little, blue-eyed girls. The ones he’d been sure he’d never know.

He’d been right all along.

The line ended with him.

“She should have thought of that before she married me.”

Chapter 21

MISERABLE MARQUESS

MAKES MASSIVE MISTAKE

He returned to Lyne Castle as darkness fell, the dwindling light having already seen the house and its residents to their chambers—sun set late during a North Country summer. He was happy for the quiet and the dark—the best conditions for getting drunk. He would leave on the morrow, to his house in Yorkshire.

The library was obviously out of the question, as it was filled with her memory, and so he took himself to the only place he knew there was decent scotch. His father’s study.

He did not expect to find his father in residence.

And he certainly did not expect to find Agnes in his father’s arms.

They broke apart the moment the door opened, Agnes immediately turning away from the door. Good Lord—she was relacing her bodice.

Good Lord.

King turned his back on the tableau as quickly as he could. “I— Christ. I beg your pardon.” And then he realized just what he’d seen. His father, in flagrante, with Agnes.

His father, the duke, in the arms of his housekeeper.

“You may look, Aloysius,” she said quietly.

He turned back to them both, standing at separate ends of the great window at the far end of the study. He considered the duo, his father silver-haired and distinguished, and Agnes, as beautiful as she’d ever been.

He glared at his father. “What in hell are you doing?”

The duke raised a black brow, a smirk on his lips. “I imagine you’re well able to divine it.”

Agnes blushed. “George,” she admonished.

King couldn’t believe he’d heard it correctly. He’d never heard anyone refer to his father as anything other than his title. In honesty, it would have taken King a moment to remember his father’s given name.

Agnes did not even hesitate over it.

His father turned and winked at her. “We aren’t children, Nessie. He needn’t be so shocked.”

“I am, indeed, shocked,” King said, “How long has this—” He shook his head and looked to Agnes. “How long has he been taking advantage of you?”

They both laughed at that, as though King had told a wonderful joke.

As though he did not want to kill someone.

As though this day were not the single worst of his life.

“I do not jest,” he said. “What in hell is going on?”

“What is going on is that we’ve a houseful of visitors, and Agnes insists on our skulking about rather than telling the truth.” His father moved to a sideboard and poured two tumblers of scotch. He looked up at King. “Drink?”

King nodded, watching, flabbergasted, as the duke poured a third glass and delivered it to Agnes with a warm, unfamiliar smile before crossing to offer the remaining scotch to him. “What is the truth, Father?”

The Duke of Lyne met King’s gaze. “I love Agnes.”

If his father had sprouted wings and flown about the room, King could not have been more shocked. “Since when?”

“Since forever.”

Forever.

God, how he hated that word.

“How long is that?” King drank, hoping the spirits would bring reason.

Agnes replied. “Nearly fifteen years.” As though it were the most ordinary thing in the world.

He looked to his father. “Fifteen years.”

The duke met his gaze, all seriousness. “Since you left.”

Anger flared. And frustration. And not a small amount of jealousy. His father had had Agnes. He’d had no one. “You didn’t marry her.”

“I’ve asked her every day for the lion’s share of that time,” the duke said, looking to Agnes, and damned if King didn’t see the truth in that look. They loved each other. “She won’t say yes.”

King turned to Agnes. “Why in hell not?”

The duke put up his hands. “Perhaps you will understand it.”

Agnes ignored his father. “I’m a housekeeper.”

“Oh, yes. That’s much better than being a duchess,” King said.

“It is, rather,” she said.

And in her words, he heard Sophie, in her slippers, nose to nose with him on the Great North Road, lambasting the aristocracy and him with it. Arrogant, vapid, without purpose, and altogether too reliant on your title and fortune, which you have come by without any effort of your own. And somehow I am looking to trap you into marriage?

Agnes explained. “I don’t want the whole world thinking I trapped him. Thinking he’s saddled with me for some idiotic reason. I don’t want the aristocracy in our business.”

“Hang the aristocracy, Nessie,” his father said, going to her.

“Easier said than done,” Agnes replied, lifting her hand to his face, stroking his cheek. “I don’t wish to marry you. I wish to love you. And that will just have to be enough.”