A Duke Worth Falling For by Sarah MacLean

10

“Ibollocksed it.”

Simon considered Max through the small crack in the door of the Fox and Falcon the next morning, before letting him in, wet and bedraggled, Atlas on his heels. Peering out into the torrential rain in the street beyond, the owner of the pub said, “Must have done if you’re out in this.”

Closing the door, the pub owner turned to his new guests, wincing when Atlas shook the rain from his coat and went to lie down by the fireplace. “My pub is going to smell like wet dog.”

“Think of it as an improvement,” Max said before getting to the important bit. “Simon . . . she left.”

Simon nodded to a stool at the bar and Max moved to sit. “We knew she was leaving, didn’t we? Back to America, no?”

“I had three more days.” Max rubbed a hand across his chest, hating the ache there—one he hadn’t felt in a lifetime. “We were supposed to have three more days, and she left.”

“Because you’re naff at women.”

“I’m not naff at women.”

“All right, I’ll play.” Simon checked his watch. “Why are you here at twenty past eight in the morning? Instead of abed with your pretty dartsmistress?”

“Because my pretty dartsmistress is gone.”

“Because you’re naff at women.” Simon slipped behind the bar and said, “Pint?”

“It’s twenty past eight in the morning, Simon.”

“Coffee it is, then.” Simon turned away. “So, what, you told her you were duke and she took to the hills, afraid of a long line of aristocratic inbreeding?”

“No.”

Simon stilled and turned back. “Shit, Max. You told her you were Duke eventually, didn’t you?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t think it would matter in the long run. Not if she was leaving. Not if we were just . . .”

Simon stilled. “You didn’t think it mattered that you owned the house she was staying in.”

The house they were both staying in.

“And half of Devon,” his friend added.

Max rubbed his face with both hands, shoving his fingers through his wet hair.

“And a large swath of London.”

Christ, he was an ass.

“You didn’t think she might like to know that you’re one of the richest men in Britain?”

That got Max’s attention. Simon and he never talked about the dukedom. They talked about the pub and the sheep and the land, about Lottie’s art and Simon’s mother’s ailments. But they never talked about Max’s money.

Simon gave him a half-smile. “You think I grew up in the back room of this pub, in the shadow of Salterton Abbey, and didn’t know that my best friend was rich as royalty? Richer than royalty?”

“Christ, Si.” Max dipped his head, loathing the conversation. “Come on.”

“I didn’t invent Google. Take it up with your fellow billionaires. Look. You are a good friend, and a great partner in a brawl, and I’m fairly certain you bailed out this place when my father ran it into the ground.” It was true, but Max had promised Simon’s father that he’d never admit it, and he wouldn’t. “The rest doesn’t matter. Just as I’m guessing it wouldn’t have mattered to her.”

“It wouldn’t have changed anything,” he said. “She’d still be gone. She would always have left. Nothing I could say would change that—telling her the truth would only have hastened the inevitable.”

There was a long pause, like an eternity.

“It wouldn’t have changed anything,” Max said, filling it. “She’d still be gone.”

Simon watched him for a stretch, and then said, “You look like you’ve been rolled down the hill and into my pub. How long has she been gone?”

Max shook his head. “I don’t know.” He’d left her after she’d fallen asleep on the other side of the bed, out of his arms for the first time since the first night. Gone back to his apartments. Woken at dawn without her and returned to the cottage, ready to explain everything, even if it meant losing out on those last few precious days—and nights—at her side. But it had been too late. She’d left.

As he’d always known she would.

“A few hours.”

He filled Simon in, telling him the story of their arrangement, designed only to last until Lilah went back to London and returned to her life, filled with celebrities and superstars and leaving no room for Max, who—even if she knew the truth—would never be able to give her what she wanted.

But that wasn’t all Max told his friend. He told him about Lilah—about her brilliant photographs, and her easy laugh, and the way she’d won him again and again, and made him believe, more and more, that it was possible for him to be Max forever. And her to be Lilah forever. And for them to live in farmhouse idyll forever.

“When she asked me to go with her, I told her I couldn’t,” he said. He’d watched as disappointment and resignation had clouded her gaze, even as she’d promised him she understood, hating it even as he told himself it was for the best. That it was the best way to keep her from a larger, more devastating disappointment.

To keep from disappointing her.

“Wait. What?” Simon didn’t seem to agree. “Why couldn’t you go?”

“Because I’m not what she wants. Not really.”

“Sorry,” said his friend, leaning down on the bar. “I don’t follow. Did she or did she not invite you to London to go to this posh party?”

“She did. But she doesn’t know that I’ve been a part of that world, and I can’t make her happy in it.”

Silence fell, the sound of the rain on the ancient stained glass windows all there was as Simon turned away to fetch the coffee. Only once he’d poured the cup and slid it across the bar to Max, he said, “Would you like to know, Max, what I thought the first time you brought Georgiana to Salterton?” He paused. “What we all thought?”

Max looked to Simon—his oldest friend, who’d always known about his family and his fortune and never once seemed to care. “I don’t suppose I have a choice.”

“Ha, no. We all thought you were doomed to unhappiness.”

The words were a blow. Max’s brow furrowed. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, we threw you a stag and dressed up for church and toasted you heartily and hoped we were wrong, but we could see the truth.” Simon backed up to his favorite place for pontificating, against the far wall of the bar, arms crossed over his massive chest. “You and Georgiana whateverhernamewas—”

“Chesterton,” Max said. “She’s Countess of Hyde, now.”

“Good for her,” Simon retorted. “Point is, the two of you were twenty-three and had the brains to prove it. She was put together as they come—more money than any person needs and reading posh accents at school, or whatever.”

“History of Art, actually. And she’s not exactly faffing about in Ibiza, Simon. She’s head of the British Museum.”

“Oh, well, what in hell was she doing with you to begin with, then?”

“That’s my point,” Max said, lifting the cup. “She shouldn’t have been with me. I made her miserable.”

“No, you didn’t,” Simon said. “You made each other miserable. She was born for a world with plummy titles and posh friends and her picture in Tatler every month, and good for her for realizing that and telling you that she wanted that life and not this one when you were sulking around here, dreaming of a girl who could rate in Wellington boots and didn’t mind the stink of your dog.”

Atlas sighed in the corner, used to being maligned by Simon, who was still going.

“The point is, you were both wrong. And Lady Hyde is sorted. Turns out she wasn’t doomed to unhappiness after all.”

She wasn’t. Last he’d heard from her, Georgiana was happy and successful and wildly in love with her husband and children.

It had been a long time since Max had thought about happiness.

No. It wasn’t true.

Lilah made him happy.

He looked up, meeting Simon’s knowing eyes. “I love her.”

“Of course you do,” his friend said. “You were half in love with her the other night when you were in here playing darts and flirting up a storm.”

It had been the best night of his life. Except for all the others with her.

And still, “I don’t want to disappoint her.”

“How do you know you will?”

“I know, because she’s spent the last eighteen months trying to get back to that world. She’s been at the center of it for years—she’s met more aristocrats than I have! And when she talks about losing it . . . ” Max met his friend’s gaze, and was surprised to find sympathy there. “When she talks about losing it, I can tell she’d do anything to get it back. She wants someone who will love it like she does. And I can’t be that. I’ve tried, but I can’t.”

More than that, he couldn’t bear to live through the moment when Lilah realized he wasn’t what she thought, wasn’t what she wanted, wasn’t . . . enough.

“Did you ask her what she wants?”

Max stilled. “No. That wasn’t part of the deal. The deal was nine days, until she left.”

“Oh, well then, if the deal was nine days, then—” Simon’s words were dry as sand. “Max. Are you saying, this girl asked you—idiot farmer—to stand next to her during one of the most important nights of her life, and you think that wasn’t a blatant invitation to a future?”

Max swallowed back frustration at the question. “I’ve said yes to that invitation before. And I’ve made a hash of it.”

“Well, seems like you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t, mate. But one way, you’ve got the girl.” Simon shook his head. “You know what? You’re right. You do not deserve that woman. From what I can see, she is brilliant, beautiful, a ringer at darts, and legions too good for you.”

It was all true.

“All right,” Simon drawled, as though he was speaking to a small child. “How about this? Has it occurred to you that you have enough money to travel the world and take the woman you love to a gala at the British Museum, or a party in New York, or a week in the Maldives because that’s what she wants—oh and because she’s a fucking superstar you don’t deserve—you can do that, and be back here with your sheep and your hay and your dog within hours? Has it occurred to you that what felt like all or nothing at twenty-two might be more nuanced at thirty-five?”

Hope flared.

“Has it occurred to you that you could try again?”

He didn’t have to wait here, on the ramparts, terrified she might never return.

They could fight together.

And come home together.

“This isn’t the same, bruv,” Simon said, not a hint of sarcasm in his tone. “You’re not twenty anymore, trying to work out how to become a man and a duke all in one breath. And she’s not twenty, trying to make a go of it in the world and also not disappoint her husband. Lilah Rose is a grown woman who knows what she wants, Max. And—though it flummoxes me more than I can say—it appears she wants you.”

“You’re an ass,” Max said.

“But a brilliant one,” Simon retorted. “Why don’t you believe her?”

Because no one had ever wanted him for more than that world. From the moment he was born, that had been his value. Access to that world.

Simon seemed to hear the thoughts. He came off the back wall and leaned down, his elbows on the slick mahogany bar. “It might not work out, mate. For any number of reasons, which doesn’t make you a special case, by the way. But doesn’t Lilah at least deserve the chance to throw you over for the right reason, knowing all the facts? Or to choose to try, eyes wide-open?”

And like that, Max saw it.

He’d been so caught up in thinking about what he could bear and what he couldn't, he’d discounted Lilah. Why the hell had he tried to fight this battle alone, when he’d had the strongest, cleverest, most creative and perceptive woman in the world ready and able to help win this war?

Their future was not written.

They could write it. Different. Perfect.

Together.

“And if it doesn’t work out,” Simon concluded, “you’ll come here and drink yourself into a stupor and I’ll charge you double for whinging into your pint about how hard it is to be a duke, poor fucking baby.”

“I have to tell her who I am.”

An idea came, half-formed. Coalescing.

Max felt like one of his marauding ancestors, girding his loins for the battle of his life. “I have to get to her.”

“Right then.” Simon nodded with satisfaction. “Tell her the dart board is always open for her.”