The coach drew to a stop and Jonas seized her hand in a grip that brooked no resistance. “Close enough. I won’t countenance any scenes at the altar either. It’s all set, Sidonie. You must have known it would be, once I learned you carried my baby. After Roberta told me, I bought a special license. You and I are about to be united in holy wedlock, amore mio.”
Appalled, Sidonie stared at him through the dim interior. Stupidly, although it was hardly the most significant objection, she couldn’t help thinking she wasn’t dressed for a wedding in her secondhand blue gown and faded cloak. “N-now?”
That daunting smile lingered. “No time like the present.” His voice hardened. “If I let you go, I have a disagreeable feeling you’ll disappear again.”
Shame and regret formed a rancid mixture in her belly. “You still don’t trust me.”
“Not an inch.”
The footman opened the door and Jonas stepped out, clutching her hand as if afraid she’d bolt. But she was too heartsore to delay her fate.
Jonas had won.
She welcomed the return of familiar numbness. Jonas was strong. Jonas was certain. He’d make sure her child was safe. For herself, she cared nothing.
“Come, Sidonie.” Through her wretchedness, she heard a hint of kindness.
Kindness was more dangerous than bullying. If he was kind, she might start believing he’d care for her again. “Very well,” she said in a clipped voice that concealed dizzying turmoil.
As she stood outside the church and stared at the door through which she’d enter a spinster and leave a bride, she faltered. It was all too much. She turned toward the street, ready to run.
Jonas’s hand tightened. “Courage, Sidonie.” Briefly she heard the voice of the man she’d fallen in love with.
She inhaled on a sob. Her destiny was set. She married Jonas, for good or ill. Staring at the pavement, she battled the nausea curdling her stomach. She wanted to suggest they go somewhere to eat first. Through the buzzing in her ears, she heard Jonas click his fingers, a few soft words then the clink of coins.
When she looked up, Jonas stared at her, his eyes opaque. His mouth was unsmiling and a muscle twitched in his scarred cheek. He extended a bunch of daffodils toward her and she realized an old lady in ragged clothing sat on the church steps, selling flowers.
“Sidonie?” he prompted when she didn’t accept the humble bouquet.
“Oh.” Without thinking, her fingers curled around the flowers. Their bright, joyful yellow was a piercing reminder of everything she’d never have.
Courage, Sidonie.
Enough of this. For heaven’s sake, she refused to shuffle into her wedding like a beggar. She’d march in on two feet and face whatever fortune tossed her way. She blinked away tears and stiffened her spine.
She could do this. God help her. And Jonas. And their unborn child.
As if recognizing her reviving spirit, Jonas released her. He extended his arm with a courtly gesture. After a slight hesitation, she hooked her trembling hand around his elbow. He glanced down at her and she caught a flash of something in his steely eyes that might be torment rivaling hers. Then his stony expression descended and she realized she was mistaken. Her fingers clenched around the daffodils.
“Our wedding awaits, Miss Forsythe.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
As they mounted the steps, the flower seller called out behind them with a cheerfulness that made Sidonie want to scream. “Heaven bless the bride and groom!”
Sidonie remained quiet as Jonas escorted her inside Merrick House. She knew the place well. Roberta and William had spent more of their married life in the London residence than at Barstowe Hall. Still she paused, surprised, when she entered what was once a dreary, dark hall to find light-filled space.
Jonas didn’t give her time to admire the changes in the house’s fussy décor. Instead, after a footman took their outer wear, he entered the library, little used by either her sister or William in the past but now clearly the center of operations.
“My lord.” A young man set aside his pen and rose from the desk beneath the windows. A larger desk new to the house must be where Jonas worked.
She’d never seen evidence of his business activities. At Castle Craven, he’d been a man of leisure. She supposed now, as his wife, she had a vested interest in his financial affairs. Sadly she doubted he’d ever trust her enough to confide details of his work.
Jonas gestured her toward a brocade chair near the fire, then turned to the man. “Warren, you may finish for the day.”
“Thank you, my lord.” The man, obviously a secretary, bowed to Sidonie. “Felicitations, my lady.”
She murmured a reply, piqued that Jonas had been so sure of her that he’d told his staff he’d return with a wife.
Once they were alone, Jonas strode to the far side of the desk. “I’ll leave George Warren here with you. He’s a capable young man who will help establish you in town. He’ll contact me if need be.”
Sidonie stiffened and turned slowly to face this man she’d wed against her instincts. She spoke with the desperately held control that she’d maintained since recognizing that marriage was inescapable. “Why on earth should he need to contact you?”
Jonas was occupied with checking the desk drawers. “If you need funds or there’s a problem with the house.”
She noticed Jonas didn’t mention the baby, when surely if she needed to communicate with her husband, the subject would be her pregnancy. “Why should I go through Mr. Warren, efficient and obliging as I’m sure he is?”
He slid a leather folder across the desk in her direction. “Everything you need is here, including details of personal and household accounts I’ve opened for you at Child’s Bank. The amounts should be adequate, but I have no intention of being a parsimonious husband. Ask Warren if you need more.” He cast a dismissive glance at her outdated merino dress, which even she recognized as inadequate to a viscountess’s dignity. “I’m happy to give you any money you like for a new wardrobe.”
“I know I need clothes—”
He spoke over her as if she hadn’t interrupted. “You’ll need a doctor. Have you anyone in mind? As my wife, you should have no difficulty being accepted as a patient. The fellow can forward reports to me.”
The flood of information passed over her head like a skater across thick ice. Instead her mind fastened on the implications of what he said. She stood and frowned in confusion. “Jonas, aren’t you going to be here?”
He didn’t meet her eyes. Instead he stalked over to the window and stared out as if fascinated by the leafless trees in his garden. After a pause that made her blood run colder than the church where she’d just married him, he spoke without looking at her. “Sidonie, I have no plans to live with you.”
“Ever?” She shouldn’t be shocked. Today he’d worked hard to maintain his distance. She’d already wondered if he’d want her back in his bed now that she was his wife.
“Ever,” he confirmed in a voice that invited no argument.
“Then why marry me?” she asked bitterly. She withdrew her hands from the hearth and wrapped them around her waist to hide their shaking.
He turned but kept a rein over any emotions. “You know why. For the child.”
She staggered back and curled an unsteady hand around the edge of the mantelpiece to stay upright. Every time she thought she’d plumbed the full pain of this love, she discovered yet another layer of agony. She was torn between shock and distress. “So you won’t try to forgive me? Even now we’re tied together for life?”
His lips tightened, she wasn’t sure whether in anger or regret. “Sidonie, I won’t live with a woman I can’t trust.”
“You can trust me.” She released the mantelpiece and ventured nearer, although the tension in his body warned her not to touch him.
His laugh struck like a whip. “Where the devil is my good sense? Of course I can trust you. You’ve proven yourself so eternally on my side.”
The hard-won neutrality drained from his expression. Her stomach cramped with guilt as she realized how profoundly the rift between them wounded him.
“Yes, I do.” His voice was even, as if he discussed a balance sheet and not their life together. “I know why you hid the pregnancy, too. You’re not the beacon of impossible perfection I once believed, but you’re not evil incarnate either. Your reasons even make sense.”
This should have sounded like a concession. It didn’t.
Pain held her motionless. It hurt to breathe. The way he spoke, it seemed likely she’d never see him again. Over the last bleak months, she’d struggled to accept that outcome, to plan a life encompassing her and her baby. Now that she and Jonas were married, the prospect of parting forever was too devastating. Even when he loathed her.
She stretched out a trembling hand, wanting the connection, but wanting more to ease the fierce loneliness in his eyes. “Then for the sake of our future, our child, won’t you try to make this a real marriage?”
He stared at her hand as he’d stare at an adder baring its fangs. “No.”
She sucked in a choked breath and took the ultimate risk. “Jonas, I love you.”
He whitened, making his scars stand out like beacons. She felt him withdraw beyond reach, even though he didn’t shift a step. “Until something new claims your loyalty, you probably do.”
Dear God, she’d thought he was kind. She was wrong. Shaking, she grabbed the back of the chair he’d offered her. Her knees felt as substantial as jelly. “That’s unjust.”
“Perhaps.”
“Don’t you want what we had at Castle Craven?” Her voice cracked. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t cry.
That muscle flickered in his cheek, indicating strong emotion under even stronger control, but the eyes he settled on her were ice cold. Gray ice. The fissure through which she’d briefly glimpsed his agony had knitted together. He returned to acting the inscrutable monolith. Or a glacier grinding its way down a mountain, unstoppable, destructive, frozen.
“What we had there was a lie.”
“No, it wasn’t.” The ruby ring weighted her hand.
His smile made her shiver. Her grip on the chair tightened until her knuckles shone white. “It doesn’t matter whether it was or it wasn’t, my darling.”
No soft Italian sweetness for his wife. What she’d give to hear a bella or a tesoro. He went on, his voice implacable. “I can’t spend the rest of my life waiting for you to betray me again. You’ve done it twice. Twice you’ve damn near destroyed me. I’m not reckless enough to put myself through that again.”
“Jonas, don’t…”
Despite her determination to stay strong, tears stung her eyes. She’d hurt him so badly and he didn’t deserve it. Even if she counted his less than angelic plans when they’d first met, he didn’t deserve an ounce of the pain she’d caused him. She felt sick with despair and remorse.
Without looking at her, he headed toward the door. “I wish you a happy wedding day, Lady Hillbrook.”
He bowed with a chill that made her flinch and stalked from the room.
Jonas strode into the gaudy, gilded bedroom in Castle Craven, the room that had witnessed those glorious nights in Sidonie’s arms. Immediately after abandoning his wife to sole possession of Merrick House, he’d left London. He’d ridden hell for leather to get here, far enough from any temptation to recall this was his wedding night and if he sodding well wanted to fuck his bride, he had every right to do so.
Mirrors reflected him over and over. Tall, ugly as sin, dressed in black riding coat and boots. He looked as Satanic as a man could this side of hell. If she saw him now, would his wife claim she loved him?
The nearest mirror beckoned him closer. He was filthy and dog tired. His eyes were dull as tarnished tin. At the best of times, he wasn’t a pretty picture. Now he’d scare the horses. He looked as though someone had done him a deathly wrong. He looked as though his best friend in the world had died. He looked like he had no interest in life and no hope for his future.
He looked a bloody disaster.
“Damn, damn, damn,” he whispered, because if he spoke too loudly, his control would snap. Even here, observed only by the battery of looking glasses, he couldn’t allow himself to break down.
Without thinking, he reached out with both hands and wrenched the gold-framed mirror from the wall. It took more effort than expected, but eventually he held the large glass between his hands. The mirror had cracked in the removal. Broken glass distorted his scars but couldn’t make him any more repulsive. If some angel of doom swooped down the chimney at this instant and accosted him with retribution for his sins, he’d welcome annihilation.
In the reflection, he observed his mouth thin, then a flash of what looked like madness in his eyes. As if he watched someone else complete the action, he hoisted the mirror and smashed it hard against the wall.
The crash of shattering glass filled him with satisfaction. His lips curved in a rictus smile as he turned to the next mirror, then the next.
After an hour of ear-shattering mayhem, the only mirror remaining in the room was the one above the bed. Out of reach, bugger it, although he’d struggled hard enough to haul it down. Deadly shards covered the floor. In the corner, the remains of exquisite gilt frames piled one above another like firewood. The plaster walls were bare and marked where he’d flung the mirrors against them.
Without moving from the center of the room, Jonas surveyed the devastation. How he wished he could trample his heart to bloody smithereens amongst the debris.
But his heart, damn it to hell, kept beating.
Chapter Thirty
Storms split the heavens the night Sidonie Merrick arrived at Castle Craven, determined to seize her destiny with both hands.
“Oh, it be ’ee,” Mrs. Bevan said without surprise when she eventually opened the door.
“Good evening, Mrs. Bevan.” Sidonie removed her new cloak and bonnet and passed them to the woman. Nerves jumped like hungry frogs after dragonflies, but she kept her voice steady. Thank goodness her stomach had remained mostly under control for the way from London. Physically she was as well as she’d been for months. “I’ve sent my coachman to the stables. Can you see he finds a bed?”
“Aye.” Mrs. Bevan stumped ahead into the hall. “ ’Ee’ll be wanting maister.”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Before Sidonie came to terms with Mrs. Bevan expressing approval, however laconically, the woman continued. “Maister’s cranky as a bear with a sore head this last week. I’d watch my step if I be ’ee.”
“I will.” Strangely the news of Jonas’s grumpiness was encouraging. Sidonie straightened her shoulders. “He’s upstairs?”
“Aye. Will ’ee be wanting supper?”
“Not immediately, thank you.”
The woman lumbered toward the kitchens. The hall was, as ever, ice cold. A lit candelabra stood on one of the oak chests, its light feeble against the darkness. Again, Sidonie felt the breath of old, hostile ghosts.
Compared to what she faced, mere ghosts couldn’t daunt her.
It was late. She’d intended a less melodramatic entrance in daylight. Storms had made that impossible. Fielding, her coachman, had begged her to stay in Sidmouth and continue her journey on the morrow when, even if they had rain, at least they’d have light. She’d forced him on through the filthy weather. He must think his new employer mad. How could he know she mustered her last reserves of courage to beard Jonas in his den? Any delay might send her scuttling back to London with her tail between her legs.
No, she wasn’t running away. She’d come too far to give up. Whatever Jonas did to her, it couldn’t be worse than her last five days wandering Merrick House, knowing that she could remain a bride but not a wife forever.
With sudden purpose, she grabbed the candelabra. She’d wasted enough time feeling sorry fo
r herself. She needed to reach for what she wanted.
But as she mounted the shadowy stone staircase, she was bleakly aware she might be too late for new beginnings.
Sidonie made for the bedroom. Where else would a man be at this hour? Surely if her husband was awake, he’d come down to see who called so late.
The door was ajar and the room was dark. Although she’d spent all week longing to see Jonas, her pace slowed. Carefully she pushed the door wider and stepped inside. No mirrors reflected her candles. She took another step and something crunched under her half-boots.
Puzzled, she glanced down. The floor was littered with a carpet of jagged and sparkling debris. Slowly she raised the candelabra.
“Dear God…”
The room was a complete shambles. The ornate mirrors that had once lined the walls lay smashed against the floor. The bed linen and curtains were ripped and tattered. Something about the willful, wild destruction struck her as unbearably sad. As though the man who wreaked this devastation wrenched free of human control until all that remained was animal violence.
Oh, Jonas…
She illuminated the bed. The mattress sagged, half off its base. She’d known when she came in that Jonas wasn’t here. The empty bed confirmed it.
Turning, she found herself under her husband’s assessing scrutiny. He leaned against the doorframe, a half-filled glass of wine dangling from his right hand. In spite of the gulf between them, her heart danced with joy at his presence. He wore the familiar breeches and loose white shirt. The last time they’d met, he’d been attired as Viscount Hillbrook. Sidonie didn’t know Viscount Hillbrook, but she knew this man in his untidy clothing, with his hair tumbling over his forehead. This man had greeted her upon her arrival at Castle Craven over three months ago. She knew his cool eyes and lethal tongue and preternatural attention to everything she did.
“Spectacular, isn’t it?” Jonas drawled, lifting the glass to his lips.
“If you wanted to redecorate, you could have had the mirrors carried down to the cellars.”
His beautiful mouth curved, although his eyes remained watchful. “Seemed quicker to take care of matters on the spot.”
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