The portal opened.
And there she was, face averted as she gazed at something behind her in the small, dimly lit chamber. She was barreling forward, not a pause in her locomotion, and he made no effort to stop her.
“Lucien, I am almost ready for—” She collided with his chest.
He caught her around the waist. God, she felt so good. So right. Her waist was cinched small, but well-curved. And he knew how if felt bare beneath his hands. Knew what she felt like in his arms, how hot and hungry, how precious.
It hit him then, the realization he had not seen her since that morning over their shooting lessons. He had not held her or touched her in hours. Too damned many hours.
“Why are you here?” she demanded, curt and cold and angry.
He took a breath. “Because I told you wherever you run, I will follow, and I meant it.”
Had it only been yesterday, during their wedding breakfast? It felt as if it had been a lifetime ago.
She shook her head. “Perhaps I do not wish for you to follow.”
“Vi.” Her name was on his lips, emerging from deep within. From a place inside himself that belonged to her alone. A place that had always been hers and had merely been waiting for her to claim it.
She flinched as if he had struck her, her palms on his chest, pushing. Creating distance. He allowed it, taking a step back, but his gaze would not cooperate. His gaze ate her alive. Had it only been hours? In her borrowed morning gown, skirts crushed from her travels, she was the loveliest creature he had ever beheld.
“Do not call me that,” she said coolly. “You do not have the right.”
No, he supposed he did not. But he was still her husband of one day, and she was his wife. He swallowed, stared at her.
“What shall I call you then?” he asked, his voice a rasp, strange and unfamiliar to his ears.
She gazed back at him, unmoving, a slow flush blossoming in her cheeks. Her lips parted. She licked them. Swallowed. “Violet will suffice.”
She felt this untamable energy between them too, the undeniable attraction, burning hotter and brighter and more dangerous than ever. He would bet his life she did. She may be angry with him, and she may have run from him, but she was not impervious. He could see it in her eyes, the way they widened, and how her pupils swelled. He could sense it in her hitched breath, in the manner in which she held herself, so stiff, and yet, unwilling to move away.
Seeking him, and yet, needing to keep him at bay.
It was how he had felt about her, and he knew it well. So very well. And that was how he also knew, no matter how much of a wall she erected between them, it would not matter. He would scale it, smash it apart, render it useless.
The same way she had done to him.
“Violet then,” he forced himself to say at last. “I prefer wife. Or Duchess. Specifically, the Duchess of Strathmore. That is who you are now, is it not? I was not dreaming the ceremony that took place yesterday, or everything that came after it?”
Her flush deepened, but her heightened color gave him no pleasure this time. He did not want to be her forbidden memory. He did not want to be her shameful secret or the man she regretted welcoming to her bed. He wanted to be the man she loved. Her husband. He wanted to be worthy of her. To earn her.
He had not done so before, and it was his fault for failing to notice what was plainly before his eyes. He saw it now. He saw her now, in a way he never had before.
“You were not dreaming,” she said at last, her tone still frigid. “Though it would seem I was, for believing you would ever wish to marry someone like me.”
Someone like her?
He stared at her, trying to comprehend. “What the devil does that mean?”
Her nostrils flared. Her color went from pink to pale white. “Plain. Someone who cannot attract a proper suitor on her own. My brother procured Charles for me. Why would I ever think someone like you would wish to shackle himself to a plain and frumpy spinster, who cannot even crochet a proper scarf?”
Her words were like blades, scoring his flesh, cutting into him, stinging and bringing him pain. “Why would any man not fall at your feet, Vi?”
She was still. Only the skin around her mouth moved, a slow ripple, then a pinch. Her lips were turned down and pressed tight. That mouth had no right to be so small, so sad.
“I told you not to call me that.”
“Why? Does it make you feel something?” he asked, canting his head, considering her, perusing her from head to toe and then back. Allowing his stare to linger like a touch. Damn, but she was beautiful.
She shook her head with so much force, a stray curl that had worked its way free of her coiffure fell across her cheek. He reached out to remove it without thought. It was as natural as breathing. His fingertips grazed her skin. She was warm and smooth as silk, and so unbearably lovely, she made him ache.
“It makes me feel nothing,” she said, but he knew it was a lie from her tone. “You make me feel nothing. And you had better go, Strathmore. My brother is here, his room but one door to the right of mine, and he is intent upon either your murder, or your incarceration. If I were you, I would not linger to investigate which is his preference at the moment.”
“I am not afraid of Arden.” As he said the words, he recognized the truth in them. He had been fearful in the past, it was true, but fearful of being cast into prison. Fearful of his life being stolen from him. He had never, not once, been afraid of the Duke of Arden. “I could beat him to within an inch of his life with my fists.”
Arden was a large fellow, but Griffin possessed bravado. And a healthy respect for the damage his large frame could do when in a position of defending himself.
“I do not want the two of you to fight,” she said.
“What do you want, Vi?” he dared to ask. “Why did you leave me?”
“Why did you follow me?” she countered, her tone bitter.
“Because you are mine,” he gritted, staring at her, consuming her once more with his eyes. The dark hair, the green eyes, that mouth, her lush form. Damnation, she was glorious. Glorious and his. He would win her back. He would earn her however he had to. He would not stop. “You are mine, and I would follow you anywhere. And no one, no man in possession of his faculties, would ever refer to you as plain, darling.”
She pressed her lips together. “You need not feed me your false flattery now, Strathmore. You already got what you wanted from me, did you not? Your stay from imprisonment. I am your pawn and nothing more. Foolish enough to believe every word you said to me the first time. Not foolish enough to believe it the second.”
She had heard everything then.
He had no one to blame but himself, and he knew it. “I love you,” he blurted.
She blanched. “You must think me the simplest woman in the world.”
“No.” He took one step. Just one. Bringing them closer together again. He stood on the threshold of her chamber now, and if she attempted to slam the door upon him, his booted feet would interrupt the motion. “I think you the bravest, the kindest, the most intelligent, the loveliest. I think you the best woman in the world, Vi. And the only woman I want. What I said earlier, when I spoke to Carlisle, O’Malley, and Ludlow…it was my fears ruling me. Convincing me I did not need love. That I did not need you. But I was wrong. My fears were wrong.”
“I was wrong for ever believing in you.” She shook her head, and he did not miss the sheen of tears in her eyes. “I cannot even blame you; I can only blame myself. You never claimed to marry me for any reason other than your own gain. But you did not need to manipulate me the way you did; telling me things, wooing me, coming to my bed. You did not need to make it all seem so real.”
He reached for her hands, but she kept them from him, clenching them in her skirts when he would have taken them in his. He stood there, unwanted, palms facing the low ceilings of the old inn, beseeching. The halls smelled of pipe smoke and a thousand dinners that had been cooked in the kitchens below. At any moment,
they would be interrupted by a fellow traveler or, worse, by Arden himself.
Griffin didn’t care. All he did care about was her. The woman he had married in haste. The raven-haired, jade-eyed creature who always wore purple and crocheted scarves and had lost her mother when she was a girl. The woman who could bring him to his knees with a kiss, with a touch. The woman who could consume him, like a flame held to dry kindling.
“It was real, damn it.” The admission was not an easy one for him to make, but he could. He had to. “Every moment, every kiss, every touch, every word that passed between us was real, Vi.”
Her lips tightened. “Do not pretend. Not any longer. You have no need. My brother will not spare you because of our nuptials. In fact, he is more determined than ever to see you imprisoned. If you value your freedom, you would best be served to leave this inn before he sees you.”
He had married Lady Violet West to save himself by affording himself some additional time and leverage to clear his name, it was true. But now, in this moment, he did not give a damn about his freedom. Not if remaining free meant he would also lose her. She mattered more than anything, and he knew it with a devastating, breathtaking certainty.
Too late, perhaps. He had been too mutton-headed to see what was before him, what he had. Too stubborn and foolish to see loving Violet would be worth any risk.
For the very first time, he understood—completely and without reservation—why his father had risked his reputation and public scrutiny, why he had allowed himself to become a laughingstock amongst his peers by wedding his servant. Because his mother had been worth the gamble.
Love was worth the gamble.
And Violet was worth it. Worth every risk.
“I am not going anywhere. Your brother can bloody well drag me off to prison as he likes.” He sank to his knees. “Here I am, humbling myself before you. Please, Vi. I do not even require your forgiveness, though I promise to do my utmost to work to earn it. All I want is you back where you belong.”
“And where is that?” she asked, her expressive countenance for once going frigid and still. Unreadable.
He gazed up into her beautiful, beloved face, daring her to look away. Daring her to slam the door in his face. “At my side. You are my wife, my duchess.”
She inhaled sharply, as if he had caused her pain. “I am your pawn. I heard you say the words myself. Pray, do not expect me to believe so much has changed between the moment you referred to me with such cold unfeeling and now.”
He clenched his jaw so hard his molars ached, needing somehow to punish himself. He had been wrong and stupid, and he had hurt this fierce woman who had never done anything other than champion him and selflessly offer to aid him. “I wanted to believe you were my pawn. I wanted it to be all you were to me.”
“You could have spared me the misery of making that discovery on my own,” she said, her voice cutting. “You could have been completely honest with me. You did not have to attempt to get me with child to enhance your chance of remaining free.”
“I did not make love to you for that purpose.”
“Indeed?” Her cheeks flushed red. Anger this time, not embarrassment, and she was still glorious in her dudgeon, but he rather wished he was not the source of her fury. “That is certainly what it sounded like to me when I overheard what you said in Mr. Ludlow’s study.”
She may already be carrying my child.
His own stupid words returned to him.
But he had not meant them in the way she had understood them, and the distinction was an important one. If he accomplished nothing else this night as he laid himself low before her on his knees, he wanted her to know he had never made love to her for any reason other than he wanted her more than he wanted his next breath. He had made love to her because she was the most alluring, beautiful woman he had ever known, and because there was a fire burning endlessly inside him for her. A fire which could not be doused.
Because she was his, and he was hers, and together they were incendiary.
He took a deep breath and made his confession. “I made love to you because I desire you. Because you are the first thing I think of in the morning when I wake, and you are the last thing I think of before I sleep. Because you are beautiful and good and kind and strong. Because I have never wanted any other woman the way I want you, and because I have never loved another, but I love you.”
There.
He had said everything he meant to say. Everything he should have said that morning. And all of it was true. Torn from the deepest, darkest part of him, a part he had not even realized existed. And he was horrified to realize somehow, in the act of imparting his soliloquy, tears had welled in his eyes. Fat, horrible, humiliating tears.
Griffin Lynton, the tenth Duke of Strathmore, did not cry. Had not cried over his mother’s grave.
Except, he was. The tears were falling. Rolling down his cheeks, overflowing. He swiped at them, hating himself for this weakness she brought out in him. Hating that he had not simply been honest with himself, and with her, before it had been too late, and he had sent her running back to her brother.
“I…” Violet began to speak, but her words trailed off. And then her hands, previously buried in her skirts, were on his face. Touching him with a gentleness he had not expected. She caught his tears with the soft pads of her fingers, wiping them away. “You are weeping, Strathmore.”
He swallowed against a tide of emotion, ran his tongue over his lower lip, salty with the taste of his own repentance. “Yes.”
“Why?” she whispered.
“Because I hurt you, and that pains me more than anything.” He met her gaze, willing her to look deep enough to read the intensity and the honesty he was giving her now. “Because if anyone should hurt, it should be me, Vi.”
“I told you not to call me that,” she said, but her hands were still trailing over his face, flitting over his cheekbones and his jaw as if she were attempting to commit his face to memory through touch alone.
And so she had told him, but he had ignored her. Because he wanted her to remember who they were to each other. He needed her to remember that.
“You are mine,” he told her firmly. “And I am yours. Tell me otherwise, tell me you want me gone, and I will go.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, and then her hands left his face. “Stand.” Her fingers found his, interlocking, and she tugged. “I do not want you on your knees for me any longer.”
“No,” he countered. “I won’t stand unless you give me an answer.”
Her expression turned stricken. Sad. “To what question? I did not hear you ask.”
“Will you still be my wife?” he asked, and then held his breath. His gut clenched. His stomach knotted. Dread and fear commingled, and he could not have been more worried or terrified if he had been locked inside a lion’s cage. That was how easily she could tear him apart.
One word.
No.
A no from her lips, and he would be lost.
She opened her mouth, ran her tongue over her lower lip, and began to speak. “I—”
“What a charming scene,” a snide masculine voice interrupted, stopping her from answering.
From issuing her final sentence. From letting him know where he stood. Whether or not he had a fighting chance with her.
Violet’s eyes went wide, and there was no mistaking the owner of that voice. Or the reckoning he was about to face.
He looked over his shoulder and saw the Duke of Arden towering like an angry wraith, his face as dark and menacing as thunderclouds. He looked like a man determined to wage war. Like a man about to sink his blade between the ribs of his worst enemy.
“Strathmore, you cowardly, lowly, despicable swine,” Arden bit out. “I suppose I ought to thank you for making my job easier.”
He rose slowly and turned, his hands in the air, as if in surrender. “Hit me if it will make you feel better.”
He was dimly aware of Violet’s voice behind him, fra
ntic. “No, Lucien. Do not hurt him, I beg you.”
“I wish I could spare him for your sake, Lettie, but I cannot. He hurt you, and now he must pay.” The Duke of Arsehole flashed him a grim, tight-lipped smile as he raised his fist. “This is for manipulating my innocent sister.”
Griffin braced himself for the blow, not bothering to offer defense. Yes, he deserved it. He deserved to be punched and more, and Lord knew he would punch himself for the way he had made Violet hurt if he could. But he could not, and so there it was, the strangest circle. No matter how far he ran, it seemed he was forever meant to be at the mercy of the Duke of Arden.
Arden’s fist slammed into his jaw with so much force he saw white stars as he reeled backward. But he had suffered far worse pain. He had endured greater tortures than a mere punch. And so he gathered himself, shook off the shock, and waited for the next.
The Duke of Arsehole’s expression turned savage. “And this is for making her cry.”
When the next fist connected with his jaw, Griffin saw a fresh, brief burst of stars, and then all he saw was blackness. He succumbed to the abyss, his body weightless, falling backward. He knew the sound of Violet’s upset voice, crying out, and then he knew nothing more.
Chapter Nineteen
Violet dropped to her knees alongside Griffin, cradling his head in her hands. The unconscious weight of him was surreal and troubling, all at once. Not a part of his body seemed aware of his surroundings. His beautiful mouth was slack, his eyes closed. The force of Lucien’s blow had rendered him unconscious. So unconscious, she feared for him. That last punch had been brutal to watch. The manner in which Griffin’s head had snapped back, the way he had fallen, as if a garden wall toppled to earth…
It had been troubling.
And infuriating.
Violet was furious.
No, furious was not sufficient enough to describe the emotions roiling through her as she stared at her husband, lying lifeless on the dirty inn floor and her brother, standing over him, shaking his fist as if it smarted. And no doubt it did smart, for the blows he had delivered to Griffin had been ferocious. He had not spared him. No indeed, he had come at him like a prizefighter attempting to earn his victory.
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