What should be one of the happiest days in her life was turning out to be the worst. She couldn’t understand her fate, why someone would want her to be utterly miserable, and as she expressionlessly took in her appearance, the urge to scream out a hysterical sob nearly overwhelmed her.
The gown was beautiful, lovingly designed and moulded to her exact shape. White, with silver and gold threading, it swept down to her feet in shining waves. Dani had never been privileged to wear something so wondrously exquisite and she mourned the manner in which the man she was wearing it for would appreciate it not at all.
Victoria smiled approvingly from over her shoulder. “You look… breath-taking, Dani,” she said gently. “Truly lovely.”
Her eyes filled with tears and her throat constricted with agony. It was already raw from crying almost consistently for two weeks straight. It was ridiculous that the human body could produce so much liquid. Surely she should have dehydrated by now? Anything, anything, to quell the flood of sobs that wracked her body on an increasingly regular occasion.
“Oh, dear,” Victoria mumbled sympathetically and reached for a handkerchief from the vanity inside Dani’s chambers. Silently, she walked over to her and dabbed at the tears beginning to squeeze out the corners of her eyes. “There now. You don’t want to look splotchy on your wedding day, do you?”
More tears squeezed out at the show of kindness from the person closest to her and Dani sobbed, “I don’t want to have a wedding day!”
Vicky sighed and relented, allowing the tears to slip down Dani’s cheeks. She was not a delicate crier and for days her face was swollen and red. When she walked down the aisle to meet Rhys, she would certainly not look the part of a happy bride.
“Things will turn out for the best,” she told Dani tenderly.
“I wish people would stop saying that to me,” Dani retorted bitterly, the flow of tears somewhat subsided now as they were replaced by her frustration and anger. “I’m sick of it. Things are not alright now and I am marrying a man who clearly doesn’t want me.”
She glared at her reflection heatedly, fervently wishing the dress would disintegrate into flames on her very body. He did not deserve her to look so pretty for him on their wedding day. He deserved to be as miserable as he had made her. Oh, it was all so horrible and Dani vividly recalled, with humiliating clarity, her many attempts at reconciliation, right up until last night.
Each time she had come away feeling worse than before. But last night… last night had been the worst.
Having come to the conclusion that Rhys might warm up to her again if she were to approach him alone at Falmouth, she had done just that and had come across Grayson asleep against the stairs.
“Grayson?” she asked in surprise, removing her coat and setting it on a table nearby.
The butler lurched awake, his eyes wide and startled as he sought for the source of the voice. “Oh,” he said, hand over his heart as he located Dani, “it’s you, Miss Carmichael.”
“What are you doing on the stairs?” she asked suspiciously.
“Lord Ashcroft requested I post myself near the door all night in case you decided to, and I quote, ‘show your trespassing little face here again’,” he explained drolly.
“Oh.”
“He also informed me to escort you out if you did.”
Dani studied the butler carefully, unable to decipher his motives or his tone. “And are you going to?” she asked tentatively.
Grayson shook his head slowly, a dry smile sweeping over his lips. “Despite what his lordship may think, I’m quite fond of the couple the two of you make,” he drawled. “I also believe that you’re the only one who can fix whatever this little spat is about.”
Dani sighed dejectedly, feeling all the weight of the past few days settle heavily over her shoulders. It had not been a happy time for her, having to endure the rejection and hatred of the man she was going to marry. “Is he in his study?” she asked softly, beginning to ascend the steps of the grand staircase.
“The very place he has been holed up in for two weeks,” Grayson said dryly.
Dani nodded, winding her way to the chamber in question, a feeling of dread and anxiety settling over her. Every encounter with Rhys since the day of the picnic had been disastrous. She had been spurned at every attempt to appease him and she couldn’t be confident that tonight would be any better. All she could hope for was that he would soften towards her because it was the night before their wedding and he would be spending the rest of his life with her. Maybe he would consider making an auspicious start to their union rather than the bitter, hateful beginning he was setting for them.
Dani didn’t bother knocking but merely let herself in.
His head snapped up from his desk, hawkish eyes glowering at her when he saw who had entered his study. His dark hair lay in tousled abandon across his brows, curling against the collar of his shirt. “Get out,” he clipped coldly.
“No,” Dani told him quietly but firmly. Dealing with Rhys’s fury was like standing ground against a hurricane and expecting to come out of the disaster alive.
He ignored her and continued reading the document he had been studying when she had first entered. It hurt, that, but she remained resolute. He would hear her out whether he liked it or not.
“I won’t go away until you hear me out,” she began stoically, studying him proudly from where she stood across the room.
“Oh, really?” he grated angrily, straightening in his chair and forcing a look of utter coldness to shutter his face. “How do you intend to make me listen, then?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I can only hope that you do.”
“Go away, Danielle. I want nothing to do with you.”
Each word was like a venomous blade, piercing her heart and soul with the intention to see them slowly wither and die. She swallowed back her fear, loudly, and squared her shoulders. “You will listen to me, Rhys Ashcroft,” she told him bravely, “because despite what you’re doing to us now, despite how you’ve hurt me, I love you.” He stiffened and she ignored the blinding rage that burned in his eyes. “I love you.”
“Get out!”
Flinching at the violence in his tone, his whole body quivering tautly with ill-concealed rage, Dani almost felt compelled to obey him. “Do you hear me?” she retorted, hurt. “I love you.”
He stalked towards her furiously and Dani refused to let her body flee despite the way her muscles tensed, yearning to do just that. “Do you think I want your love?” he snarled viciously. “Do you?”
Mustering all the love she felt for him to the fore, Dani looked up into his eyes and answered as truthfully as the heart beating furiously in her chest, “Yes.”
“You’re sorely mistaken,” he growled icily, his fingers biting into the skin of her arms. “The only thing I want from you is your body, which will be mine from tomorrow.” He yanked her against him cruelly and Dani didn’t resist, but she couldn’t meet the hatred in his eyes and looked away, finding his cravat a safe sanctuary on which to settle her gaze. “Although, there is no reason to prolong the wedding night,” he hissed savagely, shifting his merciless hands down her waist and digging his fingers into the soft flesh of her hips. He ground her into his rigid thighs forcefully, bringing her into searing contact with the hardness there. “I have already agreed to marry you.”
“Please,” she whispered, hating the way her body was warming up to his nearness despite the coldness of his embrace, “not like this.”
“It’s too late for scruples, my dear.”
What did he mean by that? Dani didn’t have time to think further on it as his mouth crashed down on hers with brutal force, bruising her lips with his callousness, and a fear unlike anything else encompassed her. She writhed in his arms, pounding her fists against his hard, impenetrable shoulders until he was forced to break the connection, his eyes hard and ruthless. “Suddenly you don’t find my attentions so agreeable,” he hissed. “I wonder what ha
s caused the sudden change of mind. Perhaps now that you have cuckolded one man into being your husband, you no longer find the use in tempting him with your body.”
Dani narrowed her eyes at him, despising the mocking tone and words that he had uttered. “Is that what you think?” she asked, slipping out of his stiff, implacable arms and crossing her own defensively. “Is that what you think of me?”
“I have been given no alternative impression.”
“Oh, you despicable man!” she snapped angrily, outraged that he could come to such a horrid conclusion about her person. “How could you? I’ll not marry you tomorrow! I refuse! Not Lucifer nor his hounds could drag me down the altar-”
Furiously, Rhys stepped forward, his eyes flashing, and bent his face close to hers. Seething, he told her, “Oh, you’ll marry me tomorrow, my dear. You wouldn’t miss the chance to bind yourself to your earl, would you?”
“You disgust me,” she hissed.
“The feeling is only mutual, my sweet,” he informed her drolly, forcefully turning her to face the door and pushing her out of it, giving her backside a lecherous slap as he did so. Outraged, she seethed a furious breath of indignation. “Now tell me, do you still love me?”
Dani turned to him furiously. “Go to hell.”
“Good.” The door slammed in her face.
The memory of last night only served to reinforce the urge to flee, to run away. She could take the little possessions she owned and hop ship, begin a new life in the Americas like so many of her countrymen.
Dani stared morosely at her reflection and realised that she couldn’t do that to the people she loved. Oh, she couldn’t care less about what the scandal would do to Rhys. It’s the impact it would have on Fiona and George, Vicky and Gabriel, that worried her the most. Dani just couldn’t abandon her friends and loved ones to clean up the mess she would leave behind.
So she would marry Rhys today. She would force her steps to take her closer to the cold, distantly hateful man waiting for her at the end of the aisle, and she would repeat her vows to him, like the dutiful woman that she was, and all the while she would be dying a little on the inside.
Vicky straightened a belligerent curl of hair that was escaping its pin from behind Dani’s ear. “Are you ready?” she asked, concern etched on her brow.
Dani nodded. Her heart beat a little faster knowing that she was about to take the last steps of the journey that would seal her fate forever.
“Good, because the carriage that’s taking us to the chapel is waiting downstairs,” she said with a timid smile.
Another nod and Dani moved towards the door of her bedroom. “Dani,” Victoria said suddenly, stalling her before she exited the room. She turned her head so that she examined the woman behind her over her almost-bare shoulder. “Just so you know, at Hawthorne you are always welcome. Whenever you want to visit.”
Dani nodded, again. She was doing that a lot lately- it was easier than formulating a response, she supposed.
The journey to the small village chapel was too quick and Dani found that despite the cool façade she was displaying externally, on the inside she was weeping. The closer she moved to Rhys Ashcroft, the more she wanted to scream, to give rise to the volatile emotions warring within her, to howl at the heavens about how unfair her lot in life was, but she didn’t. To the people she shared the carriage with, George, Fiona and Victoria; she remained the coolly emotionless and poised bride, utterly devoid of the happiness she had once felt at the prospect of marrying Rhys.
A small gathering had assembled within the chapel, only the closest acquaintances of the couple having been invited to the nuptials, and Dani knew that in the front of the rows of pews her ominous husband waited her arrival.
She swallowed her nervousness and allowed her uncle to assist her from the carriage while she held her skirt out the way of her feet. Her legs felt quite unstable and she wasn’t sure how she was to make the long journey down the aisle or how she was to command her legs not to obey her imperative desire to turn cowardice and flee. Victoria silently handed her the bouquet of white roses and her aunt silently bestowed a motherly kiss to her cheek before they turned towards the doors of the chapel and disappeared inside, leaving Dani alone with her uncle.
Her uncle scrutinised her quietly for a moment. “You look exceptionally lovely today, Danielle,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“I couldn’t help but notice that you don’t seem to be happy.”
Her eyes swung to his, startled. She hadn’t meant to reveal the true state of her emotions to her uncle, or the seriousness of the way things stood between her and Rhys, but George was an exceptionally perceptive man, especially when it came to the well-being of the people close to him. “Things are different,” Dani admitted slowly.
George Smith nodded slowly and thoughtfully, his grey eyes ponderously and speculatively considering the contours of her face. “Do you want to know what I think about Rhys Ashcroft?” he asked suddenly.
Unsure whether she wanted to hear him out or not, Dani nodded… again. “Lord Ashcroft is a man,” he began, “who values honesty. When he first came to me that morning, he didn’t beat around the bush and attempt to fib his way out of marrying you. He said to me that he had compromised your reputation and would do right by you because he held you in high regard. Admirable trait.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
George looked at her sternly. “I am telling you this, Danielle, to help you make your marriage work.”
“I have never been dishonest with him!” she protested hotly.
“I did not say that you had,” George told her patiently. “I am merely trying to give you a point from which you can draw on to succeed in the future. You may choose to use it as you wish. Shall we?” He held out his arm to her and Dani hesitantly slipped her gloved hand through it, mulling over the significance of his words. Was he informing her that she should be honest with Rhys when that was all she had been doing from the very beginning of their acquaintanceship?
The doors were held open for them as they entered.
The church organ boomed the first notes of her entrance and Rhys’s dark eyes swivelled to her. She hardly noticed anything else around her so pinned were her eyes to his. If somebody asked her later to identify the guests in the pews who stood for her entrance, she wouldn’t be able to. If she had to identify the garlands of flowers adorning either side of the aisle, she would not have been able to if her life depended on it. Rhys’s eyes were so formidable and unwelcoming; they stopped the path of oxygen to her lungs and kindled a wild panic to take root in her limbs.
There was nothing pleasant or familiar about the hard face staring dispassionately at her as she took her first steps down the aisle and Dani’s legs involuntarily froze to the spot, unable to complete the journey. Oh, God. Oh, God! She couldn’t do it. How could she marry a man who didn’t return her affections?
His eyes grew colder.
If it weren’t for George’s gentle tug, urging her forward, Dani wasn’t sure whether she would have been able to complete the rest of the journey to take her rightful place at her husband’s side. After that she must have entered a trance-like state of disassociation, separating herself mentally from the events taking place around her because a few hours later she suddenly realised that she was sitting next to Rhys, the glittering lights from the chandelier in Falmouth Castle’s dining hall hanging with ethereal charm above her head, a band of gold on her finger that sealed her fate to the man next to her, and a toast being made to the newly wedded Lord and Lady Ashcroft.
Oh, God. How did this happen? Maybe it was all a dream and Rhys was actually fond of her. She looked at him unhappily, already sensing the tension emanating from him, and witnessed for herself the terseness of his features, the aloofness of his eyes.
“Do stop looking so miserable, my dear,” he drawled in the tone of voice she was coming to abhor vehemently. “You’re putting some of the guests off their food
.”
Chapter 23
Rhys, unnoticed, silently studied his wife from the threshold of the door that separated their private quarters, trying to ignore the hurt and turmoil he was putting himself through just standing there.
She had her back to him as she slowly, mesmerizingly, ran an ivory comb through her long, dark hair. The action was unconsciously seductive and just the sight of her uninhibited and unaware of his presence made him yearn for her. For her body, that is. He would never want for anything more from her.
I love you.
He shoved the thought aside viciously, detesting the lie. She’d looked him right in the eye when she said it, when she had proclaimed her feigned devotion to him. If she thought that he would accept a lie, accept her deceit, then she was sorely mistaken. Why else would she come to him with words of promise and affection if not to improve her own station in this farcical marriage? She had never felt compelled to utter them before he had discovered her for the lying, deceitful woman that she was. It was only after he had learned that she had summoned Victoria to the castle that day to discover them in a position of debilitating compromise that her feelings had been voiced.
How conveniently timed.
He couldn’t help but notice the thin peignoir wrapped around her body, the sheer white material gleaming transparently in the dim candlelight of the vast room. The robe was draping lazily off one deliciously rounded shoulder as she moved her arms with artless grace in the process of grooming her thick hair. She was lovely and looked inviting and soft, just as she was. Rhys knew better though. He knew he could never trust her again.
If he made a sound, he was unaware of it, or maybe it was because she sensed the sudden force of his anger that made her suddenly turn to face him, blue eyes startled at the dark presence loitering in the threshold. For several moments she did not say anything, her arm suspended in mid-air as it prepared for the next stroke through her hair.
Finally, and on a small, uncertain breath, she said, “What are you doing here?”
Lord Beast Page 18