Love's Patient Fury (The Deverell Series Book 3)

by Susan Ward

  “Trust my heart, grandmamma? I will not trust so fickle of counsel since no matter Varian’s acts it will not relent in its painful want to love him.”

  A month. Damn him.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  When Varian arrived at Bramble Hill he was greet by Lucien. He stood at the base of the stairs, like a sentinel barring entry.

  Lucien said, “If you have a moment, Varian. I would like to speak with you.”

  Varian removed his outer traveling garments and handed them to Moffat. So, Lucien was ready to have it out after months of artful warfare. Lucien was feeling confident about something. “I would prefer to speak first with my wife,” he said.

  “I suggest you join me in my study without haste,” Lucien countered, before moving down the long narrow corridor to his private den.

  Lucien settled at his desk and calmly waited for Moffat to close the door.

  Varian arched a brow. “There was something you wished to discuss. I am impatient to see my wife. I’m sure you can appreciate my eagerness since it’s been nearly a month since I saw Merry.”

  “Merry has given me leave to settle her issues for her.” He picked up the document on his desk and handed it to Varian. “She has consented to a petition of annulment. I’ve been assured it will be granted. You can consider your dealings with my daughter concluded. And I would welcome your immediate leave from Bramble Hill.”

  Varian felt his heart stop. As awful as he’d left matters in London, he hadn’t anticipated Merry doing this. He scanned the petition in a fast, dismissive glance. “What an amusing set of accusations. Are they yours or are they my wife’s?”

  “My daughter assures me it is all true.”

  Varian smiled was amused. “Lucien, I did not commit a fraud to marry her. She married me willingly and she is my wife in all ways.” He set the parchment back on the desk. “You can’t file this petition. Every accusation is untrue. It would benefit none of us, least of all Merry, to file that.”

  “It is true until Merry tells me otherwise. I think we have concluded our discussion. You may leave, Varian.”

  “Do you really wish to humiliate your daughter, Lucien? The marriage has been consummated and my wife is pregnant. A direct refutation to your claims which will become abundantly obvious to everyone soon. Certainly before the ink dries on that petition.”

  “I doubt Merry would be dishonest with me in this, and I am offended at your suggestion she has been.”

  “Merry is narrow of thought in all moments of hurt and anger.” Varian stood. “I would appreciate your indulgence if you would permit me to speak privately with my wife before you act upon that petition.”

  In his worst moments, Lucien Merrick had an inherent decency even he could not escape. There was visible reluctance stamped on his face, but finally he said, “She is in the west drawing room with Rhea. You may speak with her there, and then I would appreciate your quick departure, Varian.”

  As Varian left the study, he realized there was only one way to get the truth out of Merry’s lips quickly and fix this impending disaster with the expedience required. Merry was never more narrow of thought than in anger. He needed to have a good fight with her if he wanted the truth from her mouth into Lucien’s ears this century.

  Merry was in the west drawing room. She was laying on the ground playing cards with Kate. Kate looked once, fearfully noting his arrival, before looking anxiously away. Rhea sat several feet away, patiently working a needle through a sampler. She smiled at him in greeting, but her smile was strained and devoid of her usual welcoming affection.

  Varian settled in a chair beside Merry, and because she’d managed not to look at him, he settled one boot on her bottom. Kate’s blush went from cutely pink to crimson and Merry, for her part, only turned to whack at his leg.

  “How dare you put your boot on me.”

  Varian leaned forward, cupped Merry’s chin and turned her face towards him. “You need to learn how to greet your husband, Little One. If you can’t be eloquent at least be throaty.”

  Kate made a startled squeak like a mouse. Merry jerked her chin from his hand, Varian let her and resolved to sit and watch them. He fixed his gaze unwaveringly on Kate, and he wasn’t sure if it was his presence or Merry’s scowl, but Kate after two hands tossed down the cards.

  He watched Kate rise, nervously smoothing her skirt as she mumbled an excuse and left Merry. Good. He hadn’t given her his unwavering stare for nothing.

  Merry’s agitated fingers gathered the cards into her hands. She was obviously feeling safe in the security of her mother; no other reason kept her in this room with him. So Merry wanted an annulment enough to send her father to London with a lie. Varian allowed himself only a moment of regret for all he’d put her through. And another moment to put his internal arrangement into comfortable order.

  Fighting with Merry was like trying to control a hurricane. There was no telling what direction she might go in, and fighting with her might only aggravate Lucien further. But Varian didn’t have the luxury of time to fix this any other way. There were too many pieces in motion for him to stop this or attempt a more temperate course. Still, it was a gamble, a dangerous gamble.

  Varian took the pillow that had been under his arm, dropped it on the floor and settled in a graceful decent across from his very hostile young wife.

  “You are trying to annoy me, sir,” she accused.

  “I am trying to play cards with you. You were almost pleasant the last time we played cards.”

  “I was not aware His Grace required me to be pleasant.”

  Varian leaned his elbow on floor, with his cheek in palm and black eyes sparkling. “If you would like me to tell you what I require you to be, I would be happy to, Little One. But perhaps we should ask Kate to leave the room. I don’t think I will shock your mother. Would you like me to tell you or would you like to deal?”

  She wanted to move quickly away from this discussion because he was just vile enough to do it front of her mother and Kate. There was no telling what words would come out of his mouth today. Not after having met with her father. She had expected Varian to leave promptly after that discussion, and she couldn’t imagine why he was still here. Or why her father permitted it. She definitely couldn’t make reason of why he wanted to play cards at present. But his mood warned anything could happen.

  She dealt. They played without conversation; she threw her cards down in fury and won the first game. They played two more in silence and she won both of them.

  Picking up the cards, her blue eyes fixed on his face with rapidly forming suspicion. “Why do I always win now?” Merry asked with measured slowness.

  Varian’s eyes were black and innocent. Thoughtfully, he replied, “You won before as I recall.”

  Frowning. “Only the last game. You won nine games to my one.” Varian knew she would figure out about the cards if he played with her and be furious. Mimicking his voice to perfection, she hissed, “‘You are quick, you are clever, but, Little One, you are not wise.’ Damn you, how did you cheat, and don’t bother to tell me that you didn’t.”

  Varian reached out then and brushed a knuckled down the cheek of her angry face. It would only aggravate her further.

  Calmly, he said “You’re behaving childishly.”

  Merry slapped his hand away. Again his voice, “‘Oh, Little One, in the spirit of good will, you may ask me anything.’ I could ask you anything because you would only let me win once. How did you do it? Why did you cheat me at cards?”

  Varian said nothing, but as Merry rapidly studied his face his voice came to her in memory: Little One, have you really shared my life for nearly a year and not realized that everything I do has purpose.

  Her eyes rounded to their fullest. “The questions. They weren’t meaningless at all.”

  Varian’s expression was lightly interested, as though she were trying to work a riddle. Merry stared at him, searching through her memories of that rainy afternoon. There were nine
questions. He had won nine games. He had cheated to win. What were they? She rallied them off, slowly one by one, and together they formed perfect logic.

  Merry sat up then, trembling with fury and screamed in a voice surely heard all through the house, “You calculating son of the devil. You asked me questions that would tell you how to make me desire you. You got me into your bed with what you learned cheating me at cards. You keep me in your bed with what you learned cheating me at cards.”

  Good girl. That fixes your father and puts an end to the annulment.

  Varian was relaxed. He was amused. He was deliberately not contrite. He spread the cards in front of him, backs up and lifted his eyes to meet her. “This, Little One, is not my deck. You are quick, you are clever, you are...” he let the pause artfully develop and cut it off just right, “more wise. You watched my hands. You should have watched my eyes, Merry. Yes, the questions were to learn how to get you to desire me. You were a woman a man could not seduce without all-out battle. It was better for us both if I left the seducing to you, the same way now I leave it to your whim to come to my bed when you wish to.”

  Merry’s own words earlier had been bad enough; Varian’s were beyond shocking. He held her in a hot, lazy gaze that was a caress, and Merry could tell by the softening of his lips and the resolve in his eyes that Varian had baited into fighting with him, like a fool she had done it, and in dismay she realized this fight was far from over.

  “And while we’re on the subject of beds...” Varian began, filling the void made by her search for words, slowly sitting up, the move bringing him closer to her. His flexible, placidly modulated voice filled the room without effort, “...do you not think it a little foolish this pretense of wanting an annulment, especially since nearly every night since we’ve been here you have tiptoed down the hall like a naughty school girl in your dressing gown to be with me, sneaking off before morning when I damn well don’t wish you to, in a vain hope no one will discover how you spend your nights? Andrew sleeps next to us and I think it certain we can assume he knows, though he has not bothered to let your father be aware our marriage is more than a fiction on paper. Regardless of Andrew’s motivation or your unwillingness to accept you have no choice over our marriage, I have explained to your father why this effort to annul our marriage is pointless and far too late. As for this effort to appear to hate me, it is useless since it is not hate that brings you to my bed every night and has only aggravated your father to a point where he is no longer reasonable to deal with.”

  Merry stared at him and was disappointed in herself when she heard herself snap out with more disquiet than she wanted, “You will do as you want with me as you have always done regardless of what I want or my feelings. I have consented to annulment. Quite clearly you object and you will do as you wish regardless of my wishes and who you hurt.”

  She realized at once that they were the wrong words to choose if she had hoped to end this. With tightly leashed annoyance, Varian rose to his full height above her, his black eyes bearing downward as he replied in measured, biting tones, “Submissiveness is not attractive on you, my dear. It does not pleasure me and does not ring true. If you are angry at me, fight with me as you used to. But do not hide behind your father’s interference like a petulant child, pretending I have never been anything to you. I spoke to you once in anger. You have punished us both for that hurt long enough. I will not tolerate it any more. And I have dangled in this, on the whim of your male relatives, being dragged by you through this farce long enough.”

  Struggling for all she was worth, stiffly she said, “I will not discuss it further. I will not argue with you about things that do not matter to me and never will.”

  Varian’s black eyes met Merry’s blue, and she held his gaze evenly, unwilling to even bend an inch to end this rift between them.

  He eased down before her, placing the cup of his hand lightly around her chin, and said with a voice firm in resolve, “If you want me to leave you, you have only to tell me directly. Do not hide behind your father and send him to do your bidding. I will go and I will not return, but I will not continue as we are, Merry, while you try to decide if you really want to send me away. You will never learn the wisdom of stepping back and saving yourself.”

  “You are wrong, sir,” Merry snapped hotly. “I am stepping back now.” She looked away, feeling the moisture stirring in her eyes, and hated he could bring tears from her body when she had already cried far too much over him. “You broke my heart and you think it such a trivial thing. I will not trust you with what is left. You taught me the lesson well.”

  “I can’t change what is already past. No one can, Little One. I would cut off my arm if I could take away every hurt I have given to you. It is part of what we share, but you are allowing it to cost us everything else by wanting to end our marriage. In time, if you will allow me, I will prove the devotion of my heart for you and shed the sting of the hurt I caused you.”

  Her quick rising temper was a welcomed balm, and she countered, “You would prove your devotion and shed the sting of my hurt by continuing in your abhorrent treatment of me in London by humiliating me today in front of my mother and cousin?”

  Through gritted teeth, heavy with frustration, he ground out, “I have proven my devotion to you by my every act since the first day we met. You wanted America, I gave you America. You wanted England. We are in England. You wanted your mother and there she is. You wanted Bramble Hill and here we are. It is time for you to be reminded of your devotion to me.”

  She sprang to her feet. Her eyes were so large in her face she looked like a caricature. “You are an arrogant man if you think I owe you that.”

  Varian arched a brow. “What I am is your husband. An inescapable fate. It is time for you to accept that and past time for your father to realize there isn’t a choice in this.”

  “There is always a choice. Isn’t that what you told me? Perhaps the only true thing you have ever said to me. Well I have made my choice. I choose annulment. I would rather have shame than live out my life with you in misery, knowing I am nothing to you, suffering your grim games, and knowing you only married me out of loyalty to my mother.”

  She had succeeded in kicking up his anger again. It was in total possession of him, unconcealed. “Damn your black and white logic, and your stubborn mind that remembers only what it wishes to. I asked you to marry me in Virginia, when you could have been a pipe cleaner’s daughter for all I knew. It is you who would accept only my bed.”

  The last of that had been spoken at a bellow. And it came to Merry’s memory, a belated chide, that he had asked her to marry him in Virginia. How could she have forgotten that?

  And with that memory came more. Snippets of forgotten words, looks, touches and moments of Varian. The way he had watched her that night in the theater in Richmond. The day in the field when she’d been willing to surrender her body to him, and he had carried and released her on the porch of Winderly. In all moments between them, whether anger and happiness, he held infinite care and gentleness in how he moved with her.

  Another thought occurred to her, belated in arrival as well, but unavoidable. His manner in London had been a mirror image of Morgan aboard ship, an unfeeling and repealing guise to protect her. His callous treatment of her during their week at Merrick Hall had all been an act forced upon her by the dangers he’d warned her of her last night in London.

  What was in Varian’s eyes today was not the heart of a man without feeling for her; they held the look as it had been that night he had first found her in his bed. Merry didn’t know why Varian never spoke the word love. But in absolute certainty she did not doubt Varian loved her. His love for her and the truth of who he was, was in the way her looked at her. The way he was looking at her now. Varian not only loved her, he did so desperately.

  Merry stared into the dark depths of his eyes. Damn you. I am a foolish girl, Varian. You could have spared us much if you had but said the word love and been more direct w
ith me.

  Their voices must have carried beyond the drawing room. Standing in the doorway, stiff and enraged, was Lucien Merrick. His cold blue eyes were fiercely flashing with his anger.

  Seeing her father there was more than Merry could manage to deal with at present. She whirled away from Varian, a little too quickly and swayed into a small tripod table, sending it to crash. If not for Varian’s quick hands and reflexes the sudden dizziness would have sent her slamming to the floor.

  It took Merry several moments to compose herself. She looked at Varian and what she found on his face made her heart clench. His expression was fully unbound and awash with frantic concern.

  She could feel their child moving rapidly in her body and then his hand moved to her gently rounding middle, almost as though he were desperate to assure himself they were both well.

  A look at her mother told her the Rhea had noted the gesture and understood, though Rhea was careful enough in this volatile room not to show any reaction, especially since her father had joined them.

  Into the heavy tension of the room, it was Varian who spoke first. His voice quiet and almost labored, just a hint above whisper. “Rhea, I am not and probably never have been deserving of your generosity of heart. Certainly not for my conduct today or in all matters involving your daughter. It is the one issue Lucien and I agree upon.”

  Varian’s eyes shifted to Merry’s face then. “My behavior has been vile and my conduct inexcusable. Especially since it disturbs you both more than it used to, Little One. It is little wonder you want to leave me.”

  Sinking down on a chair, Varian eased her body up against him and held her near him with the careful placement of his hands on each side of her middle. The movement of their child only increased, and she heard him released a ragged breath before his black eyes lifted to lock on hers.

  In a voice gravelly with regret, Varian said, “I don’t deserve you or this child you carry for me. I have been absolutely horrible to you today, distressing you both when I would prefer only to be tender and gentle with you as it used to be between us. You have every right to be angry with me and every reason not to trust me. I know the words aren’t much in consideration of all I have done. Right now, the words are all that I can give you. I would like to give you more, but I will respect your will in this, if you have no wish to be my wife. If you want me to leave, I will go. Though it will devastate me to lose you. My only wish has ever been for your happiness, Merry. I am sorry.”