Phoebe shifted under their scrutiny. “I…” There had been no talk of love. I want you…. “I do not know if he loves me,” she said at last. It would seem she had more traces of her father in her than she’d ever wished for she would wager both her happiness and heart upon the hope that he’d love her in return. “I love him,” she said softly, freed by that truth. “And I believe he will come to love me.”
Her friends looked at her for a long moment and then some of the tension left Honoria’s stiffly held shoulders. “I do not doubt it. How can anyone not help but love you, Phoebe? Forgive me for being skeptical. I wish you and the marquess only happiness and love.”
Except, as they carried on their visit, Phoebe did not know why her friends’ words had only roused the faint misgivings stirring at the back of her mind.
Chapter 14
The following morning, as promised to Phoebe, Edmund drew his black stallion to a halt before the Viscount Waters’ townhouse. In the light of day, with space between him and Phoebe, he acknowledged the practicality of this visit, and more, the logicalness of the offer he’d put to her father. With her gentle lavender scent no longer clouding his senses and that full, delectable mouth made for his, he’d been able to divorce those earlier, tumultuous sentiments she’d unleashed within him from the emotionless reasons to make her his marchioness.
Edmund dismounted from Lucifer and with reins in his hand, eyed the front of Waters’ townhouse. The curtains rustled from a floor-length window and Phoebe peeked around the fabric. Their gazes caught and held.
There was no emotion involved in this decision. Nothing but an insatiable lust, a desire to make her his. Then she winked at him and with a slight wave of her fingertips, dropped the curtain back into place and the heart he didn’t know still beat thumped hard in response. You bloody liar. There was nothing practical or logical in making Phoebe his wife and yet he wanted her anyway—would have her anyway. A primitive male need filled him. For in doing this, in marrying her, she would belong to him in ways she’d never belong to another. Edmund’s stare landed upon the viscount’s waiting servant.
The liveried groom blanched and darted his gaze about, seeming to contemplate escape, and then ultimately sidled closer to claim the reins.
Edmund started past the young man and climbed the viscount’s steps. The old butler who was fast becoming a familiar face opened the door in anticipation. A slight smile lined his aged cheeks which he quickly buried. “My lord,” he greeted and stepping aside, he sketched a bow.
Edmund shrugged out of his cloak then handed it off to a waiting footman. “I’m here for the viscount.” He withdrew a card and held it out to the butler, who took it and eyed it a moment, before nodding and motioning him forward.
“If you’ll follow me.”
The other man didn’t wait to see if he followed and moved at a surprisingly brisk pace down the corridor. Edmund tugged at his lapels and trailed after the man. He gritted his teeth at the quick movements that strained the muscles of his leg.
Alas, their journey was not to be a quick one. “Rutland, my friend.”
He winced at the jovial greeting issued by the lady’s younger brother who stepped into their path. Tamping down a sigh of annoyance, Edmund executed a stiff bow. “Barrett.”
Except, that crisp, laconic utterance proved little deterrence. “Were you coming to call?”
By the hopeful glint in the young man’s eyes it registered. He blanched. By God, the pup thought he was here to see him. He opened his mouth to deliver the blunt, coolly aloof response he would have at any other point in his life—before her. Edmund caught himself and forced a grin, the expression painful. “I’ve matters of business to attend with the viscount.”
“The viscount?” Barrett scratched his brow. Then he widened his eyes with a dawning understanding. “The viscount! My father. Of course. Yes.” He all but jumped sideways in his haste to clear once more the path to the viscount’s office. “I’ll allow you to attend your business.”
Anxiety turned in his gut and he was grateful when the butler resumed the path once more. These people and their emotions, their unfettered smiles and… He shuddered, and their goodness that he did not know what to do with. All these sentiments were as foreign to him as ancient tongues. He quickened his pace and with each step that sense of disquiet grew. Until young Barrett had stepped into his path mere moments ago, he’d failed to consider that in wedding Phoebe, it brought additional connections and obligations. She brought a brother and a sister, an absent mother he’d not given thought to before now, and those friends. Guilt knotted in his belly. One of those young ladies whom he’d intended to wed and who he’d ultimately see ruined for her connection to Margaret, the Duchess of Monteith.
The butler stopped beside the viscount’s office door and Edmund came to a stop behind him, staring at the wood panel as the servant rapped once.
He’d spent eleven years considering how he’d be avenged for Margaret’s defection and the humiliation she’d brought him. Yet, since Phoebe had snagged herself upon Lord Delenworth’s spear, revenge had been the furthest thing from his thoughts. Instead, he’d been consumed by this need for Phoebe. When she belonged to him in both name and body, then he could reclaim control of his ordered world. Only then could he know that no other bastard would lay his hands upon the satiny softness of her skin…or own her heart.
The butler shot an apologetic glance over his shoulder and then knocked once more. “Enter.” The servant shoved the door open. “I said enter,” the viscount thundered, his words however died at spying the figure framed behind his overly loyal servant in the doorway.
Waters’ cheeks turned ashen as he remained frozen in the seat behind his desk with his fingers wrapped about a decanter of brandy.
Edmund sent a single eyebrow arching up and the decanter slipped from the man’s chubby fingers as he scrambled to his feet. The butler wisely backed out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him.
“R-rutland,” Phoebe’s father stammered, scurrying out from behind his desk like a rodent racing about in search of a new hiding place. “I-is, d-do you require my daughter’s whereabouts because I don’t—”
“I do not,” he intoned on a silken whisper that drained the remaining color from the usually florid cheeks. In a deliberate show of disrespect, he flicked his gaze up and down the other man’s fat torso and peeled his lip back in a sneer. “I’ve come for other reasons, Waters.” Shrewd enough to not give the viscount any indication he was in possession of the only person or item Edmund had any desire of, he flicked an imaginary piece of lint from his immaculate black sleeve and strolled over to the window. He clasped his hands at his back and peered down into the streets, presenting his back to Waters. “I’m here for your daughter.”
The crystal pane of the window reflected Waters’ furrowed brow. “My daughter?” The notorious reprobate scratched his bald pate. “I-I already told you I didn’t know where she was. I can find out.”
He tossed a glance over his shoulder. “And I’ve already told you I’m not looking for the lady’s whereabouts.”
Confusion made the other man reckless. “But you said…” Then his bulging, blue eyes went round with a slow understanding. “Ah, my daughter.” His jowls shook with the force of his laughter; the sound crude and raucous, as he emitted great snorting gasps like a pig wallowing in its own filth. “You want the younger one, do you? I told you, my Justina is a lovely girl. She’ll make you a good wife.”
His patience snapped. Edmund spun around. “I’ve already told you. I want to wed your eldest, Phoebe.”
Waters cocked his head. “Wed, you say?”
*
Phoebe paced a path before the empty hearth, while periodically stealing a glance at the loudly ticking ormolu clock. The untouched volume of her Captain Cook’s work lay forgotten on the mahogany side table.
“They’ll finish their discussion soon, my dear.”
She paused mid-stride and glanced
with some surprise at her mother. The viscountess sat with her head bent over her embroidery frame, attending her needlepoint.
“I suspect the marquess has come to make an offer for you?” At last, her mother paused and picked her head up, a twinkle lit her eyes. “Come, surely you do not believe I’m one of those self-absorbed mothers who fails to note my eldest daughter’s frequently blushing cheeks and the rumors being whispered about her and a certain gentleman who—”
“She has the look of longing for,” Justina said from her spot at the windowseat, absorbed in her reading.
Heat burned Phoebe’s cheeks. “I do not have…” Her mother and sister both gave her a pointed look and she sighed, letting the thought go unfinished. There was no need debating the matter with them. In this, they were, in fact—correct. She glanced to the clock once more and the thin thread she had on her control snapped. “I’m going to fetch my book while I wait.” Both women looked up once more. She forced a serene smile to her lips. “It is my latest Captain Cook. I thought it should help occupy my thoughts.”
Justina furrowed her brow and moved her gaze from Phoebe to the unfortunately forgotten until now leather volume. “Isn’t that—?”
Phoebe swung a pleading stare in her direction and her sister widened her eyes in sudden understanding.
Their mother continued working to pull her needle through the fabric on the embroidery frame. “It doesn’t do to appear too eager. Not to a man as powerful as the marquess,” she said, directing her words to the muslin in her hands.
“Er, yes, indeed,” Phoebe agreed. “Perhaps I shall just read abovestairs until the marquess concludes his meeting.”
Before her mother could say anything further on it, Phoebe hurried from the room and started down the corridor. She passed the occasional servant hurrying to attend their day’s responsibilities. It wouldn’t do to appear too eager. Her ever incorrect mama, in this, was indeed surprisingly correct and yet, since their exchange in Hyde Park, Phoebe had been consumed by a need to see him, be with him. This hard, unflappable man misperceived by all, broken of heart and yet daring to trust in her. With each step she took, her heartbeat grew increasingly erratic in rhythm. Phoebe turned right at the hall and tiptoed several steps past two doors, and then paused outside her father’s office.
With her shoulder pressed against the wall, she strained to hear a hint of his voice. “I want to wed your eldest, Phoebe….” A grin that likely would have earned the disappointed groans of Honoria and ever optimistic Gillian played on her lips.
I don’t want anyone and I do not need anyone, but I want you, and I’d have you marry me… From the moment he’d uttered those words, she’d belonged to him.
“…thought you wanted the Fairfax girl?” Her father’s muffled question cut into her musings and she blinked several times in rapid succession. Surely, she’d misheard—
“Matters have changed.”
Even with the wood panel between them, the lethality of his whisper cut through the door and pierced her slow-moving thoughts. Matters have changed? What was he saying? Phoebe forcibly tamped down the reservations. Of course a man who’d long protected his heart as Edmund had done would not share the depth of his feelings with one such as her father, a man he’d never before known.
“Which one do you want, you say?” Her father spoke the way a breeder would when selling horseflesh to the highest bidder.
“Your eldest.”
A chill ran along her spine. Not “Phoebe”. Or “the woman I gave my heart to”. But rather, “your eldest”.
“…you said you wanted your revenge using the Fairfax girl,” her father wheedled and the dark tendrils of ice plucked at the edge of her heart. “I’ve done my part where that one is concerned. Wed her. I need my Phoebe to settle my debt with Allswood.” The Fairfax girl? Her father’s debt with Allswood? Phoebe’s mind went numb as she sought to put order to those confounding words. “Or take Justina.”
“You would deny me her hand?” For one beat of her heart, hope lived on where Edmund, the man she loved, battled her father for her hand. His next words slayed that fledgling wish. “I own you, Waters. I possess your eldest daughter’s dowry. No one would see your girls wed with the state you’ve left them in. Your family will not be welcomed in even the most unfashionable halls when I am through with you. Your children’s worth will be even less to you if you thwart me.”
A chill went through her at that ruthless pledge of a stranger, not the man she’d lain with under the stars and given her virtue to. She folded her arms close and held tight but nothing could or would ever dull the agony twisting in her belly.
Her father cursed. “After you wed my girl, my debt to you is paid.” With each word her father uttered, the cold fanned out and froze her thoughts, her words, her emotions, until she was an empty shell of a person trying to make order in a suddenly disordered world.
“You will not presume to tell me when your debt is paid,” Edmund’s crisp, clear command slipped into the corridor.
She shook her head slowly back and forth to rid the thick haze of confusion blanketing her mind. And then the floodgates of understanding opened and sent spiraling through her the ugly, black truth—lies. Everything. Anything between them had been based on some sickened, twisted game of revenge. To what end? The air lodged in her chest. She concentrated on the harsh, raspy sounds of her own breathing as it filled her ears to keep from focusing on those words. Her friend had warned her, seen more to the jaded lord’s interest in Phoebe. She dug her fingers against her temples and rubbed hard. Think. Think. This did not make sense. If his was a matter of revenge, why would he enlist her? Her father was wrong. He’d been wrong about so many things through life…he’d likely misunderstood…whatever it is that had brought Edmund into his life.
Her father had been indebted to him? Edmund, the man who’d professed a love of Captain Cook and shared his dreams and hopes and worse, a man whom she’d shared her dreams and hopes with, the man she’d given her virginity to, had been the kind of man to keep company with her depraved father. Oh, God, had he seduced her all in a twisted bid to forever tie her to him? Phoebe pressed her eyes closed as nausea churned through her belly. She folded her arms across her waist and hugged tight. Who was this man she’d never known? A dissembler. A stranger. An actor upon a Drury Lane stage and she’d been an unwitting player along with him. Bile burned her throat as she fought to keep from casting the accounts of her stomach up. What had she done?
“Are we clear?” Edmund asked with a wintriness she’d never known of him. A tone that would likely strike terror in children and grown men alike. Alas, her father possessed far more courage than she’d have ever expected, or mayhap it was stupidity, for he persisted. “And you’re sure you’d rather have my eldest? I can pass her off to Allswood, and you can have my youngest. Surely a man with your singular tastes would prefer the more beautiful of my daughters.”
Oh, God. Bile burned her throat and threatened to choke her. A loud humming filled Phoebe’s ears. Her sister. Her sweet, innocent, and all things good sister wed to this blackguard? She’d sooner kill the Marquess of Rutland with her own hands than see him destroy Justina; not as he’d destroyed her.
“I—”
Phoebe didn’t want to hear Edmund’s likely acceptance of her father’s depraved counteroffer. She threw open the door. Both men swung their gazes toward her in unison.
Edmund stiffened and his thick, dark lashes swept low, obscuring his obsidian eyes. Say something, anything! Deny all my father’s charges. The silence stretched on, interminable and just like a candle’s dying flame, all hope was extinguished. Her heart spasmed, tightening the muscles of her chest.
Edmund’s shuttered expression gave no indication as to whether he felt shame, regret, or sadness. Then, a man such as he was incapable of feeling.
“What are you doing in here, gel?” her father sputtered. “M-my daughter knows better than this.” His cheeks flushed, as he seemed to realize those
words even now flew in the face of that claim as evidences of her presence here.
Phoebe and Edmund ignored him. Their gazes locked on one another. She clenched and unclenched her hands into tight fists at her side. How could he be so coolly unaffected?
Her breath came in ragged spurts. She’d only thought to interrupt whatever intentions he’d utter that pertained to her sister. Except, now, as she stood a trembling, quaking mess before this man she’d foolishly loved and given her heart to, she had no grand words. She didn’t have the vile epithets for one who’d speak so casually of destroying her and those she loved. Instead, she just stared at him, praying the hatred gleamed stronger within their depths than that aching agony wrought by his betrayal.
“Leave.”
It took a moment to register that clipped command belonged to Edmund. Her father, unprotestingly hurried from the room as quickly as his large frame permitted. He paused beside her at the threshold of the door. “Do not do anything to ruin this, gel,” he bit out.
Phoebe tipped her chin up a notch, never taking her gaze from Edmund. Her father could go to Hell and he could take the monstrous Marquess of Rutland right along with him in his travels.
Her faithless sire opened his mouth to say something further, but Edmund leveled him with a harsh stare, and her father left. The door closed. The click of it shutting thundered like a shot at night, leaving her and Edmund—alone.
The room echoed with the harsh rapidity of her own painfully drawn breaths and the hum of silence. Through it, Edmund said nothing. He did not move. He remained as frozen as his blasted heart of ice. Then, with a calm she wanted to slap his smug face for, he flicked an imagined piece of lint from his immaculate black coat sleeve. “It is unfortunate you heard that.”
The Heart of a Scoundrel Page 18