He avoided Bella’s gaze as he strode toward the doorway. “I have some estate business in need of my attention—”
“Dante!” Bella called out sharply. Her chin was tilted in challenge as he stopped and slowly turned to face her. “I believe you have avoided talking to me for quite long enough today.”
His heart sank as he knew the moment of truth had arrived. “I have avoided you?” He decided to attack rather than defend. “You were the one who remained in her bedchamber all morning. You did not even deign to come down for your breakfast or luncheon.”
A guilty blush colored her cheeks. “I slept through the former and was busy through the latter.”
“Doing what? Packing?” he challenged. “You have been here such a short time, I do not believe you can have unpacked enough to have needed to spend four hours repacking it.”
“That is true,” she allowed.
Dante could see Bella’s nervousness in the way she clutched her hands together in front of her and the agitated sweep of her tongue across her lips. Lips he had kissed and devoured the previous night. Lips that belonged to him, damn it, as Bella belonged to him. As he belonged to her. They belonged to each other.
“I need a drink.” He ignored the decanter of sherry that had been served to their guests in favor of pouring a glass of the brandy. If he drank enough of it, he knew it would at least dull the pain of parting from Bella. If only for a short time.
“Might I have one too?”
Dante turned to see Bella now stood beside him, her cheeks having taken on a pale hue. Good. Because he did not intend to make their parting easy for her. “Is it so difficult for you to say to me what you feel you need to say?” he mocked as he handed her the second glass of brandy he had poured.
She swallowed some of the fiery liquid before answering him. “I would give anything not to have this conversation with you.”
“Then don’t,” he rasped. “We can leave here together, find somewhere we can spend rest of the summer, and forget about the rest of the world and its cursed demands upon us and our time.”
Bella was tempted. Oh, so very tempted. But what she had to say to Dante could change everything. Could change him.
“That will not do, I am afraid.” She stepped away from him and the burning intensity of his gaze, her fingers curled tightly about the glass in her hand to prevent her from reaching out and touching him. As she so longed to do. “I spent the morning reading the dowager’s journals.”
“Good God.” Dante stared at her in disbelief. “That is how you spent your morning, wasting it on reading the ramblings of a bitter old woman?”
“She was not always a bitter old woman,” Bella chided gently. “She was young once. A bride. A wife. A mother.”
“And now she lies in her crypt and will become nothing but withered flesh and bone.” Dante threw the last of his brandy to the back of his throat before refilling his glass.
“You hate her.”
“Yes.”
“No more than she hated you.” Bella sighed.
“I was a young child when I came to live here,” Dante defended harshly. “An innocent child. I had just lost both my parents, and she—she treated me like an interloper. An unwanted responsibility which she instructed the servants she did not even wish to know was alive, let alone see.”
“I know.”
“She sent me away to school when I was eight,” Dante continued forcefully. “Did not even like me to be with Hal, the only person here even remotely my age. The loneliness was excruciating. If not for the support and friendship of The Sinners, I believe I might have withered away completely.”
Bella was also grateful he had the friendship of those seven gentlemen. She believed he would have need of that friendship again once their own conversation was over.
Tears blurred Bella’s vision in the knowledge she was about to send Dante’s world into complete turmoil for the second time in his life. And he would not thank her for doing so. No one ever thanked the messenger of bad news. “The dowager did not like me and my mother either. Did not like anything which threatened the…the stability of her family. But she had her reasons, Dante,” Bella added imploringly.
He gave a snort. “Then I should like to hear what they were.”
“I think perhaps you will not, but I have to tell you anyway.” Bella swallowed. “The truth is, Dante, David St. Just, Agatha’s husband, was your father.”
“What?” Dante stared at her as if she had gone mad. Or as if the small amount of brandy she had imbibed had robbed her of her wits.
“It’s all in the journals,” Bella assured him. “How David married the elder sister but afterwards fell in love with the younger. How David’s own brother, Michael, married Agatha’s sister Patricia to avoid a scandal when she became pregnant with David’s child.”
“You are talking nonsense. I have no idea why, but you are,” Dante stated furiously. “My father was Michael St. Just.”
She shook her head. “Michael preferred men sexually, Dante. He had no desire to bed any woman or to father a child. The marriage was one of convenience and friendship, a shield for where Michael’s true affections lay and to avoid a scandal by legitimizing Patricia’s child. David and Patricia continued to love each other until Patricia’s death.”
“That’s a damned lie!”
“I assure you it is not,” Bella said softly.
“Get out!” Dante’s eyes blazed darkly, his body tensed as if for attack. “Get away from me now, Bella, before I do something we would both regret.”
The tears fell unheeded down her cheeks as she felt Dante’s pain as if it were her own. “I will leave the journals in my bedchamber when I go so that you might read them for yourself. But be sure to read the very last one too,” she added firmly. “It is very important that you do so.”
“Go, Bella. Please.” A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw as he turned away to stare out the window, although Bella seriously doubted he was seeing any of the parkland. “I have no wish to hurt you.”
“Nor I you.” But Bella had known, after reading the dowager’s journals, she did not have any choice but to tell Dante the truth. And that afterward, he would hate her for being the one to tell him. “Goodbye, Dante.”
He made no reply, but as Bella quietly closed the door behind her, she heard a crash inside the room and knew Dante must have hurled the glass of brandy at something and smashed it into a dozen pieces.
Much as her own heart was now breaking.
Chapter 14
Aston House, London
Ten days later
“His Grace the Duke of Huntley is here to see you, my lady,” Grant informed her blandly.
It was decidedly a moment of déjà vu for Bella.
Her heart leaped at the thought of seeing Dante again, before it as quickly felt like lead in her chest. As she was reclining on the chaise in her private parlor, wearing her night rail and robe and with her hair loose about her shoulders, her answer must necessarily be the same as last time. “Please inform His Grace I am unwell and not up to receiving visitors—”
“You appear well enough— Good God, no, you most decidedly do not look well.” Dante frowned, having entered the room with his usual arrogance but coming to a halt several feet away from Bella as he studied her intently. “What on earth is wrong with you?”
She inwardly cringed to have Dante’s gaze upon her when she knew she did not look anywhere near her best. She had been vomiting on and off this past few days, although she usually felt a little better by dinnertime.
It was bittersweet to look upon and be with Dante again.
She had missed him these past ten days since returning to London.
She had taken one of the Huntley carriages and left Huntley Park the morning after their conversation about the dowager’s journals. Dante had not even taken the time to come out of his study in order to say goodbye to her, even though she had sent Lincoln to ask him if she might borrow one of the dow
ager’s carriages for her journey. She knew Dante must still be deeply upset over the things she had revealed to him, but his obvious disinterest in her departure still hurt. Deeply.
“As I have said, I am unwell—”
“Leave us,” Dante instructed the butler tersely as he handed his hat and gloves to the other man, waiting until Grant had left the room before turning back to Bella. “Has a doctor been to see you?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He believes I have eaten something which disagreed with me,” she dismissed. “It is not helped by the fact the air is not particularly healthy in London during the summer months.”
“Then why have you not removed yourself to the country?”
“Possibly because I am unwell and not up to the journey?”
Dante scowled his irritation with her flippant reply. “You need to be outside in the fresh air rather than cooped up in the house. I called in the hope you might take a carriage ride with me,” he added questioningly.
Much as Bella would have liked to accept his invitation, she really did not feel well enough to wash and dress, let alone accompany him on a carriage ride. Even the thought of the rocking of the carriage was enough to make her stomach feel queasy.
As it was, she struggled to sit up on the chaise. “Dante, you really cannot burst into my private parlor uninvited.”
He raised arrogant brows. “It would seem I have already done so.”
“Then you will know exactly how to see yourself out again.” Se frowned her displeasure. “As you can see, I really am not dressed for receiving visitors.”
“That would depend upon the visitor, surely.”
Bella gave him a sharp glance as she heard the husky tone of his voice. A lover’s voice. “What are you doing here, Dante? The last time we were together—”
“I was a trifle out of sorts,” he acknowledged self-derisively. “But in my defense, you had just told me my father was not really my father, but my Uncle David was.”
It was a very valid defense, Bella acknowledged, having no idea how she would have felt in the same circumstances. Although Dante appeared happy enough today… In fact, he looked his usual devastatingly handsome self, in a dark green superfine, snowy white linen, and pale gray pantaloons, and his highly polished brown-topped Hessians. “You are reconciled to that knowledge now?”
“I was not for several days after we had spoken,” he admitted. “It seemed too outlandish to be true. But then I read the dowager’s journals from the year before I was born and the one after. There can be no doubt I was David’s son and not Michael’s.”
Bella’s heart ached for the bleakness of his expression. “I am so sorry.”
He shrugged broad shoulders. “One cannot change the truth, only accept it or reject it. I have chosen to accept it.”
That was something, at least. “Did you read your aunt’s last journal, as I advised?”
“I did, yes.”
“She intended to tell you the truth, Dante, to explain and apologize for her treatment of you.”
He nodded. “Of you too, apparently. I had no idea she had treated you so abysmally after your mother and Hal died.”
“She was grieving and in pain. I can see that now. I was the closest thing for her to punish for that grief. I have forgiven her.” Bella had thought often of the dowager’s life these past ten days, and could feel only pity for the life Agatha St. Just had been forced to lead if she was not to bring down a scandal on all her family. “She was married for over forty years to a man she knew was in love with her sister and not her. Even after Patricia died.”
“Yes.”
“And you were living proof of that love.”
“It would seem I was, yes.”
“And then her own son died, and you inherited your father’s title after all.”
“Yes.”
Bella did not know what to make of Dante’s short replies, nor could she read any of his emotions in his closed-off expression. But perhaps that was enough of an indication of his present mood? “I am not excusing the dowager’s cruelty toward you, or her bitterness in later life. But it perhaps helps to explain the reason she felt and acted in the way she did.” She could not imagine living in such a scenario herself. It must have been hell on earth.
He nodded. “She is to be pitied rather than hated.”
“That is very…magnanimous of you.” Bella smiled tentatively.
“I have had over a week to grow accustomed to the idea of David St. Just as my father rather than Michael. It does not change the fact that Michael was my father for the first seven years of my life, and that he loved and cared for both myself and my mother.” Dante’s mouth tightened. “After considering the situation for—oh, at least half a day, I have also decided to have Huntley Park pulled down brick by brick.”
Bella gasped. “You have?”
“I have,” he confirmed grimly. “It has long been a place of deep unhappiness, and I believe that unhappiness to have seeped into its very walls and foundations.”
Bella could not disagree with him on that, but pulling the house down completely seemed rather drastic.
“I am having plans drawn up to build a new house a mile or so away from where the original stood,” Dante explained airily. “I had hoped that you might have some interest in helping with the design and décor?”
“I told you—”
“I recall what you told me,” he assured her. “I was hoping… I am here to ask you…”
“Yes?” Bella looked totally bemused by his babbling.
Dante drew in a deep breath and tried again. “I would like you to think about considering…” Dear God, he was still babbling like an idiot.
Dante had only arrived back in London late the previous evening, far too late at night to call on Bella. It had taken every effort of will on his part to stop himself from going straight to Aston House, and Bella, despite the lateness of the hour. He had not slept at all and had quit his bed completely by seven o’clock this morning, only to then have to pace and wait until it was a decent enough hour to call upon her.
In spite of obviously feeling unwell, Bella looked achingly beautiful this morning.
So much so that it was all Dante could do to stop himself from sweeping her up in his arms and holding her. But there was a wariness in her eyes that prevented him from doing so, and he doubted she felt that emotion solely because of the informality of her appearance. They had seen each other completely naked, after all.
More than that, they had been joined in an erotic dance of the senses unlike any other he had ever known. Not once, but several times. Memories Dante had not been able to banish from his mind for a single moment these past ten days.
Bella naked.
Bella in the throes of her arousal.
Bella’s euphoric expression as she came. Against his lips. His tongue. His hands. His cock. Time and time again, until there was nothing else in existence but the pleasure they found in each other.
Bella must have felt some of that unique connection.
And yet she had left him.
She had not even bothered to come to him herself but requested the use of a carriage via his butler. Once that permission was given, she had lost no time in leaving Huntley Park. Dante had been too numbed by her hasty departure to even be able to say goodbye to her.
Because he refused to accept it was goodbye, damn it. Their physical and emotional connection had been all too real. Bella must have felt it too. She must.
He had breezed into her home this morning with his usual arrogance, intending to demand her attention rather than asking for it. One look at Bella’s air of fragility, and that arrogance had left him entirely. He had never been any good at asking for what he wanted, but realized this was one of those occasions when he would need to do so. If Bella should refuse him—
She could not refuse him. He would go quietly and completely insane if she were to ask him to leave. She—
“Have
you or one of your friends caught your French spy yet?” Bella was finding Dante’s lengthy silence more than a little unnerving. His presence here at all was disturbing enough, without this long silence.
His mouth twisted. “Not yet, no. Although the investigations are continuing.”
Bella frowned. “I pity those other six ladies.”
“It is necessary—”
“I understand that, but as one of the ladies under investigation, I also know how it feels to be wrongly accused.”
Dante winced. “I have apologized. I have also declared your innocence to the Crown with little or no proof but your word and my own belief in your innocence. Tell me what else I might do to remedy my mistake, and I will do it.”
In truth, once she was away from Dante and could think logically again, Bella had moved past his earlier accusations. If there was a female spy among the English aristocracy, then she must be identified and stopped, by whatever means necessary.
“It is no longer of any importance,” she dismissed.
Dante wondered, despite their previous intimacy, if he was no longer of importance to her either.
How ironic this situation was. Seven years ago, Bella had declared her youthful love for him and he had necessarily rejected her, believing she was far too young to deal with the darkness inside him. Now that she was a woman and Dante could no longer fight his attraction to her, he could not bear to think she no longer wanted him.
He straightened his spine. “Bella, you have no male relatives for me to ask permission. Except myself, of course,” he added dryly. “So I will have to put my question to you directly.”
“Yes?”
He breathed in deeply. “I request the honor of being allowed to court you. To spend time with you. For us to know each other better. All with the intention of one day asking you to become my duchess.”
Bella could not have been more shocked if Dante had invited her to ride naked beside him in the park.
Dante was asking? He requested?
This was not the Dante she knew and…and loved. Because she did love him. Had always loved him. Even, she had already guiltily acknowledged to herself, during her marriage to Jeremy. Not that she had ever been less than a loving wife to Jeremy. It had simply been a different sort of love, and not the wild and ecstatic emotion she had always felt for Dante.
Wicked Surrender (Regency Sinners 2) Page 13