by Evie Dunmore
He frowned. “Why? You object to being my mistress. Are you saying you don’t want to be my wife, either?”
She tried to push away from him, but he would not let her.
As she stared up into his unnaturally bright eyes, fear gripped her.
“What I want is not the point,” she stammered. “I don’t want to be your mistress, but I certainly can’t be your wife.”
He tilted his head. “And why not?”
“You’ve fallen on your head all right! You know why; it’s impossible.”
“It isn’t, actually. I ask, you say yes. That is all it takes.”
That is all it takes.
She felt oddly light-headed. Her most secret, outlandish dreams were a simple syllable away.
“No,” she managed to say. “No, I would never ask you to ruin your name, your life for me—”
“You wouldn’t ruin my life.”
She strained against him, and his arms tightened around her, just short of crushing her.
“No,” she said, “please, release me.”
He did so with an exasperated huff, and she sprung back as if he were scalding her.
“Hear me out,” he said, his hands clenching by his sides. “For years, I worried I would fall off my horse before I had produced an heir. And now it has happened, and I was sure I was going to break my neck, and on my last breath, did I think of Castle Montgomery, or my title, my father, or my heir?”
Again he reached for her, again she evaded, and his face darkened.
“I thought of you, damn it,” he said. “I saw your face, as clearly as I see it now as you are standing in front of me, and all I felt was the most profound regret that my time with you had been so very short. My unfinished business here is you and I, Annabelle.”
Oh, heaven help her. He was dead serious about this.
Or so he thought.
She forced herself to sound calm. “I am honored,” she said, “of course I am. But surely you must know that right now, you are not yourself, not thinking clearly.”
In truth, his eyes had never looked more lucid.
She began to shiver. His will was so strong, stronger than hers, and he was offering her her heart’s desire. But it would be a disaster.
She turned her back to him, desperate to gather her scattered wits. “What about the scandal it would cause?” she said. “What about your brother? If we married, it would taint him, you said so yourself. Your heirs would be shamed—are these reasons not true anymore?”
“Why don’t you let me take care of these things,” came his bemused voice. “Your part is simply to say yes.”
Say yes. Say yes.
“Tomorrow,” she said hoarsely. “Why don’t we talk about it tomorrow.”
“Turn around and look at me,” he said, “and I shall tell you that tomorrow will not make a difference. Nor will next week.”
She whirled, his stubborn insistence on the impossible enraging her. “You cannot marry the daughter of a vicar. One day you might wake up and look at the shambles of your life, and nothing I am could ever compensate you for it.”
His gaze turned assessing and merciless. “You don’t trust me,” he said flatly. “You don’t trust that I know my own mind.”
“You’ve just looked death in the face. I imagine it skews a man’s perspective.”
His eyes were hard and gray as granite. “Or it finally puts the perspective right. I am not a fickle boy, Annabelle. Don’t punish us both for the boys you have known in the past.”
She flinched as the barb hit its mark, ammunition she herself had handed him in confidence. No, she must not think of their time wrapped in each other’s arms in his bed, cocooned in intimate bliss . . .
Somewhere, Mrs. Forsyth’s dog was barking still, rattled and furious.
She pressed her palms to her pounding temples. “I can’t,” she whispered. “We can’t.”
“Annabelle.” His voice was ragged. “I didn’t know I was looking for you until we met. Had we never crossed paths, I might have lived and died a content and sensible man, but now I know what I can feel, and it cannot be undone, I cannot pretend that what we have is a folly that will fade. I can choose to live with a sense of loss over you until the day I die, or to live with you come what may. These are my choices, a life with you, or an existence without you, and as with all choices, it is a matter of paying a price. I know that what we could have is worth anything.”
Every word hit her heart like a knife, rapid, dull impacts that would soon bloom into a sharp pain and bleed her dry. How calm he sounded in his madness, when her own sanity was crumbling rapidly. She could have lost him forever today. Her every instinct urged her to be in his arms and never let him go again.
She struggled to draw her next breath. “We can’t.”
Her lifeless tone made him pause.
For the first time, she sensed a flicker of uncertainty in him. “You are serious,” he said slowly. “You are rejecting my proposal.”
“Yes,” she said, her throat aching with the effort.
He went stark white. An agonizing feeling came over her, rendering her mute.
Honor would forbid him to break an engagement, even if made under duress. Tomorrow, or next week, he would thank her for not having maneuvered himself into an untenable position, he would.
“You know,” he said, almost conversationally, “I’m beginning to think you would refuse to be with me in any capacity. And I think it has nothing to do with your morals, or my reputation, but with your own cowardice.”
The words stung her from her paralysis like a slap. “Whatever do you mean?”
“You are afraid. Of a man managing you for a change, and I’m not referring to husbandly rule. In fact, I reckon you could exist quite well under draconian rules, because there is a fortress at your very core no one can breach with force. But I have breached it already; you have given yourself to me. Why not let me make an honest woman out of you now?”
Because I love you more than my own happiness.
Renewed determination was etched in every line of his face, and she understood that as long as he thought she loved him, he would not abandon this insane scheme. He’d sacrifice everything. He’d disgrace himself, become an object of ridicule among his peers, in the press. His home, his political standing would be lost, his ancient family line destroyed. He’d ruin his life’s work over a country woman. And inevitably, his infatuation would wane, and he would come to resent her, or worse, himself, for everything he had given up.
She wrapped her arms around her quivering body. “If you must know, I had a much more reasonable offer just this morning.”
Firing a pistol at Sebastian would have had the same effect, a flash of surprise, and he went rigid.
When he finally spoke, she hardly recognized his voice. “The professor.”
She gave a nod.
“Have you accepted him?”
“I have been rusticated,” she said, “and he—”
“Have you accepted him?” he repeated, and the look in his eyes had her touch her throat.
“No,” she said softly. Guiltily.
“But you have considered it. By God, you are considering it.”
“It would be a suitable match—”
His head tipped back on a harsh laugh. “No, madam, no. If you marry him, it will make you more of a whore than you would have ever been as my mistress.”
“Why would you say such a thing?” she choked.
He moved suddenly, circling her like a sinewy predator until he paused right behind her. “Because, my sweet, you do not love him,” he murmured, his cool breath moving the downy hair on her nape. “You don’t love him, and you would have him for the things he can give you, not because you want him.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t love you, either.�
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“That is a lie,” he breathed. “You should see the look in your eyes after I kiss you.”
“Of course you would think so, but any woman would be dazzled by the attentions of a man of your position. But the truth is, it was always about the suffragist cause. It was why I was at Claremont in the first place . . . we spied on you. Every conversation we had was me trying to gain your support for the cause. We even have a file, a profile sheet about you.”
She was grabbed and turned around.
His expression was icy. “A file?” he demanded. “What are you saying?”
“The truth,” she whispered. “The truth.”
His grip on her shoulders tightened. “You are lying. You forget I held you in my arms just a few nights ago. I know you, and I know you are lying.”
“Do you?” she said tremulously. “You didn’t see the truth about your own wife until she ran off with someone else, and she was in your bed for months.”
Before her eyes, his face turned still like a death mask.
He released her abruptly, as if he had noticed that he was holding a toxic thing.
The faint, contemptuous curl of his lip cut her to the bone.
She watched, frozen and mute, as he turned his back to her and walked out.
The sound of the door falling shut behind him never reached her ears. A strange ringing noise filled her head. She sank onto the edge of the bed.
This was the right thing. She couldn’t breathe, but it was the right thing. At least this tragedy would not make English history. It would be borne in private, and one day die with her.
She didn’t know how much time had passed—a minute? an hour?— when Mrs. Forsyth planted herself before her. The unflappable chaperone was red-faced; she glared down at Annabelle with wrathful eyes. “I said no men,” she spat, “and on the first night, you bring a ruffian into my home.”
“I’m sorry,” Annabelle said tonelessly.
“I’m not a cruel woman,” Mrs. Forsyth said, “so you may stay the night. But tomorrow, I expect you to be gone.”
Chapter 29
Annabelle stole out of Mrs. Forsyth’s front door at dawn, her chest heavy with fatigue. The sting of cold morning air was like a reviving slap to her cheeks, but she was still bleary-eyed by the time she reached the arched entrance door of St. John’s lodge.
It had taken a kindly porter with a handcart to get both her trunks from Lady Margaret Hall to Mrs. Forsyth’s house last evening, and perhaps there’d be an equally obliging one in St. John’s to help her move her belongings again. The porters here knew her from her comings and goings for Christopher Jenkins’s tutorials. The question was where to move her trunks. Catriona and her father had an apartment in the college’s residential west wing. A fleeting association with Annabelle’s luggage probably wouldn’t do her friend’s reputation any harm, though what story she’d tell about her eviction, she didn’t know. The mere thought of spinning yet another half-truth made her feel ill.
The porter’s lodge lay abandoned. The quadrangle of the college was preternaturally still, except for a lone student strolling along in the shadows of the arcade opposite.
She hovered on the limestone path. Last night had taken her rudder and her sail, leaving her adrift like flotsam. Turning left to the west wing or back to the lodge was an impossible decision.
The student disappeared through the archway to the next quad. No doubt he was going someplace warm and purposeful.
She turned back to the lodge.
The lights had been lit, and there was movement behind the windows.
She walked back to the door and gave a hesitant knock.
From the corner of her eye, she saw the archway at the end of the limestone path to her right, and she frowned, unable to pinpoint the niggling feeling at the back of her mind.
The door to the lodge creaked open and revealed a stout, white-haired porter. “Good morning, miss,” he said. “How may I help you?”
“Good morning. I’m a student at Lady Margaret Hall and I—”
And then she knew. The student. The student in the arcade. His lanky form. The ambling gait.
All the fine hairs rose on her body.
She turned on her heels.
“Miss?” the porter exclaimed.
She was already walking toward the archway, the hasty fall of her footsteps echoing from the surrounding walls. By the time she reached the archway, she had broken into a run. Panting, she looked left, right—and caught the movement of a door to the west wing falling shut.
She dashed.
The door opened to a narrow, poorly lit corridor, musty with the smell of ancient stone walls.
The young man had turned right and was moving quickly toward the door at the end of the corridor.
“Sir!”
He didn’t break his stride; if anything, he walked faster.
She started after him. “Sir, a word.”
His shoulders went rigid.
Bother. What would she say if he was in fact not who she thought he was?
Still, she was surprisingly unprepared when he turned and she was face to face with Peregrin Devereux.
“Oh, goodness,” she exclaimed.
Long, lank hair and a pasty pallor detracted considerably from Peregrin’s charms. He looked like a creature that only came out at night.
She rushed to him. “Are you all right?”
“Why, good morning, Miss Archer,” he said, politely ignoring the hand she had instinctively put on his arm. She snatched it back. “What an unexpected pleasure,” he continued. “What brings you to St. John’s at this ungodly hour?”
He stiffened when the door behind him swung open.
Annabelle glanced around him, and her chest flooded with relief when she saw Catriona standing in the doorway. “Catriona,” she said, “I was just looking for you.”
She made to move toward her friend when she noticed the small basket under her arm.
And her utterly guilty expression.
“Catriona?”
Catriona gave her a weak smile. “Annabelle. And Lord Devereux. What a surprise.” She sounded guilty, too, and tried hiding her basket, all shifty.
One could almost hear the sound of Peregrin rolling his eyes.
Annabelle stared from one to the other as memories began to strike: Catriona’s blushes whenever Peregrin was near, her effort to go without glasses for the ball at Claremont . . . oh, by the fires of Hades.
Her gaze dropped to the damning basket on Catriona’s hip. “This is food, isn’t it,” she said, “food for Lord Devereux?”
Catriona glanced at Peregrin. Asking for permission, was she?
“Do you know that he has been missing for more than a month?” she demanded. “That Scotland Yard is turning over every stone in England to find him as we speak?”
Peregrin and Catriona gasped in unison.
“So you knew,” Annabelle said, incredulous.
“How do you know?” Peregrin demanded.
She whirled on him. “Does your brother know you are here?”
His brows flew up at the Duke of Montgomery being called “his brother.”
“Miss—”
“Well? Does he?”
“With all due respect, I’m not certain why you ask.”
Because he had just been kissing me when he learned that you were gone. Because I held him and could feel his heart crack inside his chest when his own brother had betrayed him. Because whatever hurts him hurts me.
Hypocrite. She had hurt him most of all last night, when she had mercilessly tossed his love, his proposal, and his trust back at him.
She rose to her toes, right into Peregrin’s gaunt, aristocratic face. “How could you?” she said. “He doesn’t know whether you are dead or alive.”
Peregrin’s
gaze narrowed slightly. “I apologize, miss,” he said. “Again, I’m not quite certain what for exactly, but it was not my intention to agitate you.”
Oh, his polite restraint could go rot. “I’ll speak frankly, then,” she said. “You disappeared. You ran away instead of following perfectly reasonable orders, and while you hide in some cozy nook and leech off a girl’s goodwill, your brother hardly sleeps because he’s worried sick about you.”
Two hectic flags of color burned on Peregrin’s cheeks; if she were a man, he’d probably deck her. “For some reason, you know a great deal, miss, I grant you that,” he drawled, “but you are wrong about one thing—Montgomery is never, ever worried sick about anything. He has neither the temper nor the heart for it, and should I indeed have elicited emotions of the kind in him, I assure you it has much to do with my position as his heir, and very little to do with myself.”
Annabelle’s hand flew up. She checked it, just in time, but for a blink both she and Peregrin stared at it, suspended in the air, ready to slap a nobleman’s cheek.
As Peregrin’s gaze traveled from her hand to her face, a suspicion passed behind his eyes. “Miss?”
“How little you know him,” she said softly. “Poor Montgomery, to never be seen for what he is by the very people he loves. He does have a heart, you see, a restrained, honorable heart, but it bruises just like yours and mine, and I wager it is a hundred times more steadfast. He is a rare man, not because he is wealthy, or powerful, but because he says what he means and does what he says. He could be a self-indulgent tyrant, and yet he chooses to work hard to keep everyone’s lives running smoothly, thinking of everything so others don’t have to. And if you, my lord, had but one honorable bone in your body you would help him carry his infernal load of responsibilities instead of acting like a spoiled brat.”
She all but spat the word brat.
Peregrin had gone pale beneath his pallor.
“Annabelle.” Catriona had wedged herself between them, her upturned face a blur.
“He does have a heart,” Annabelle said, “and I love him.”
“Annabelle,” Catriona said, “you mustn’t—”
“I love him, but I lied to him, and now he will forever think badly of me.” There was a break in her voice.