by Tanya Wilde
Willow exploded into her chamber in high dudgeon, quickly turning to slam the door and lock into place. She jumped when a hand halted her fireworks, shoving the door open and filling the entrance.
“Get out,” Willow snapped. Tears threatened to spill.
“We need to address this, Willow.”
“I don’t ever want to speak to you again!” she exclaimed, snatching a pillow and throwing it at him. “I mean nothing to you!”
“That’s not true,” he denied. “You are much more than nothing.”
Willow gave a hollow laugh. “I thought to give you the benefit of doubt. I believed that this marriage could become more than what it started out as, but I was wrong. There is no heart in you.”
“That’s not true,” he growled.
“The truth lies in your actions, Ambrose, and they seem clear to me.”
“Damnation!” He ran a hand through his hair, a muscle working in his jaw. For a moment, it looked like her husband was going to say something—something crucial. But then he only looked away, a mask falling over his face.
“Nothing to say?” she mocked. “Of course not, once again you have disappeared behind your mask of control.”
He remained silent.
Willow squared her shoulders. “What you did is reprehensible, and I cannot help but resent you for it, Ambrose.”
“Willow, I—”
“No, do not lie to me. Your actions tell me all I need to know.”
A pained look crossed his face before a look of determination replaced it. Silence settled between them.
Willow turned and paced across the chamber, stopping beside the fireplace, her heart in her throat. He was impossible to look at, stealing her ability to think, her ability to reason, to draw breath. She stared at the cold hearth, no embers crackling tonight. Her heart was breaking. For their future that suddenly seemed doomed. For her sister.
If there was no future for them, then perhaps they could at least finally have the truth.
“Why do you have a set of rules?” she asked, afraid to look at him, afraid he’d deny her this. He didn’t.
“Eleven years ago, my sister fell ill.” He paused, inhaled a ragged breath. “Celia never quite recovered from her illness, always getting tired early and sleeping late. She refused to allow those limitations to stilt her life. She lived to the fullest, or at least, as full as a thirteen-year-old girl could live—insisting on dance lessons, running barefoot in the country fields, and climbing trees—even when the physicians argued against it. She never once slowed down, until a year later, the strain on her heart was too much, and it just stopped beating. At least, that is what the doctor said.”
She turned towards him. “I’m sorry . . .”
He raked a hand over his face. “He claimed her heart finally failed due to fast, unhealthy living. That we could have prevented an early death if we had kept her under lock and key.”
Willow’s heart slammed against her chest, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. She imagined him ten years ago, his ravaged features as he sat beside his sister’s bed, blaming himself for not taking better care of her.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered, clenching her fists into her skirts to keep herself from going to him.
“I could have prolonged her life if I had forced her to live a slow-paced, routine-filled life.”
“She was sick, Ambrose, and your sister knew that. She chose to live her life on her terms. Had you forced her to live any other way, she’d have been miserable and passed on that way, too.”
“But she could have lived longer if she’d lived by rules. Perhaps become well again.” His obsidian eyes were shadowed with pain as they lifted to meet hers.
“That is no way to live.” She motioned between them and the chamber. “We both deserve the freedom of our choices. Or else what is the point of living?”
“I agree.”
“You agree?” Willow asked, taken aback.
“I know you are not my sister, Willow,” he dragged a hand through his hair. “I will always believe I could have done more to save her, and I will always be a devil to live with, but that is why I have not enforced the rules with you. I didn’t want you to feel like a prisoner in our home.”
“Then why draw them up?”
He shook his head. “I only created them because when the reality set in that I was about to take a wife—become the protector of another woman—I panicked. The pain of losing my sister rushed back, and I did not wish to go through that again.”
His soft admission brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them away. Their gazes collided, and what she saw in them sent a burning sensation through her belly. She had fallen hopelessly in love with her husband.
“Now you know.”
Yes, but it didn’t change anything. It didn’t change what he’d hidden from her or that he’d chosen grievance of her sister over their future.
Staring down at the doom of her future, Willow wondered at the next step. Liberate her sister, she supposed. After that was anyone’s guess.
His eyes were guarded, watching her from beneath long lashes. He looked miserable, and Willow wanted to give in and fly to his arms. But she wouldn’t.
“There was always the possibility you’d not change your mind,” she closed her eyes before opening them again, “but I’d at least thought you’d inform me that you found my sister. That you planned on going through with your intentions.”
The statement hung between them, silence stretching.
Curses! The man had her vacillating between wanting to kiss him and kill him. Willow glanced away from him, back to the empty fireside. To think only an hour ago they’d been happy. An hour ago, they had been sleeping in each other’s arms, content and sated. An hour ago, she’d been thrilled by the prospect of a true family with Ambrose. Now . . . now she didn’t know what she wanted.
She didn’t know if she could ever forgive him.
She didn’t know what that meant for her dreams.
“Please go.”
“Willow. . .”
“Please, I just want to be alone,” she practically begged. “I understand now, the way you are, but it doesn’t change what happened. It does not change that you chose to keep my sister from me. It does tell me that I don’t mean as much to you as I had begun to believe.” She paused, keeping her eyes on the dead hearth almost symbolic in its appearance. “Please go.”
Willow would plead no favors. She would not beg he release her sister. It was time to take matters into her own hands.
“Please just read the rules on your desk.”
There was a moment of punishing silence, and only once the soft thud of his footsteps receded did Willow whirl around and glare at the door separating them. Honestly! He wanted her to read his rules at a time like this? After what he’d just confessed. Fine, she would read his blasted rules, then she would burn them, then she would go forth and purposefully break each and every one of them!
She marched over to the desk and tried to set them on fire with her eyes. When that failed, she snatched them up, fully intending to read them out loud—to scream them out at the adjoining room.
Boundaries for the Duchess of St. Ives.
What a lark. She flipped the page over to cry out the first rule at the top of her voice. Frowned. And flipped through the rest of the papers, examining them top to bottom, back to front.
They were all blank.
Much to her mortification, she burst into tears.
Ambrose strode back to his room, seething and despairing.
He should never have waited. He should have told her the moment his men informed him that they’d found Holly. But instead, he’d teetered with indecision and then pettily thought that Miss Middleton could wait a night for him to make his grand announcement.
Damn Warton to the seven bowls of hell. Everything had gone to shit and all because that bastard had marched into their home with thunder and bluster in the middle of the night. He’d tramp
led on Ambrose’s plan and he’d ruined the ground Ambrose had gained with his wife.
With a curse, he paced the length of his chamber, dragging his hands through his hair. She had made no demands for him to release her sister, hadn’t made the slightest reference to the fact, only stared into the empty hearth with a resignation he had put there. That alone confirmed what he’d realized standing on the stairs bickering with Warton.
Ambrose could no longer let Holly go. At least, not in the straight-forward manner.
His wife firmly believed he did not trust her, that all they had shared was a lie. He would never convince her he cared for her if he freed her sister from consequence now. She’d believe it an act, a tactic of some sort. She’d never believe him if he said he’d come to the decision before Warton ousted his secret. She’d never believe he was going to tell her in the morning. So, even if he released Holly, they’d never be able to overcome the matter. Willow had lost all trust in him.
Ambrose inhaled a deep breath.
And that is where the new, albeit highly difficult plan came into action. He’d known standing on those stairs, shaken and furious, that the only way forward was to give his wife space to be who she was at heart—a lovely, meddlesome creature. It was the only way Ambrose could see to make her understand he accepted her wholly, unreservedly, and without question. He passively allowed her to meddle. He’d give up control.
So she would devise a plan to free her sister.
And he would let her.
Once Holly was free, he’d make sure his wife understood that he’d sat back and surrendered long before she’d won.
His inaction would be his action.
He would give up the reins—like he had done with his new set of rules—and then, only then, would Willow believe that he was sincere. He damned well hoped. Prayed.
He sank down onto the bed, resting his head in his hands.
What a bloody disaster.
But it would be worth it. Because he loved her.
It was a truth he could no longer deny. Nor wanted to.
He loved his wife.
Chapter 24
“This is ridiculous, Jonathan. It will never work.”
“It was your plan.”
“Yes, but you ought to have pointed out how horribly it would fail.” Her eyes flicked around her husband’s study, reminding Willow of one little obstacle—her husband’s intelligence. He was bound to see straight through their plan. Fortunately, he had given her space. Verbal space. Unfortunately, his presence—always lingering—touched her to the bone. It was there in each beating pulse under her skin, in the gooseflesh rippling over her arms. Her awareness of him was absolute.
As were those blank pages he had left on her desk.
They had called into question everything.
“It won’t fail as long as he drinks the brandy.”
“That’s all well and good. But I have to drink the brandy, too, or at least give the appearance of drinking.”
“As long as you don’t drink more than a tiny sip, you’ll be fine.”
“And if he notices I’m not drinking?”
“Why would he notice that? You’re a woman.”
Willow turned to glare at him.
Jonathan held up his hands in surrender. “Just use words like freedom, separation, and lover. He will drink. Trust me.”
Willow shook her head, unconvinced. “If I throw words like that around—mind you, I still don’t know how I’m going to incorporate them into a sentence—Ambrose will most assuredly want to keep his wits about him and not drink.”
“Trust me, little sister, there is no one alive who can navigate my brother’s mind better than I—he will drink.”
She scoffed, her eyes darting to the brandy in question. “How do you know?”
“Call it male intuition, but faced with the prospect of losing you, his wife, Ambrose will claw up to the ceiling.”
Willow scrunched her brows together. “What?”
“His faculties will desert him,” Jonathan clarified.
“That’s assuming he had any in the first place.”
“I believe he cares more about you than even he is aware.”
Here’s to hoping, Willow thought bitterly, then sighed.
Naturally, she felt she was partly to blame for her current predicament. In the course of her weeks married to Ambrose, she had ample time to fight for her sister. Instead, she had taken a subtler approach, attempting to work on the man rather than the matter. It mattered little that Willow had thought she’d have more time to persuade him to let his grievance go, or that she’d given him the benefit of the doubt to do the right thing. She’d still ended up here, having to orchestrate a kidnapping of her husband in service of her sister’s future.
A future Jonathan had aided in securing when he discovered Holly’s whereabouts and freed her. Whereupon her sister had made one request: A wedding.
Tomorrow.
Which brought them to this moment—attempting a hairbrained scheme to get Ambrose well and truly out of the way. Plus, the timeline gave them precious little time to not only remove him from the equation but also put together a wedding.
“I still cannot believe my sister fell in love again so soon. And with the Marquis of Warton, of all men! And after I told her not to!”
“The heart wants what the heart wants,” Jonathan murmured. He cast her A Look. “Regardless of what you demand of it.”
Willow stuck out her tongue. But her mind was already wandering back to those blank pages. She had thought Ambrose incapable of change after that fateful night she discovered his deception. Her mind had demanded she cut him loose. Her heart was stubbornly refusing.
To her heart, those pages resembled hope.
“Tell me the plan again.”
Willow inhaled a fortifying breath. “Drive Ambrose to drink with silly words. Once he is passed out from whatever you laced it with, you will haul him up to my bedroom and bind him.”
“You’ve given orders to the servants to remain clear of your chambers?”
Willow nodded.
“Marvelous.”
“What if he doesn’t believe I’m sincere?” So many things could go wrong. She could lose her nerve, for one.
“Trust me.”
Willow gave Jonathan one last skeptical look before deciding to trust him. After all, no one knew Ambrose better than his brother. But she felt horrid for what she was about to do.
And then he was there, appearing in the doorway, handsome as sin and sculpted in stone. His gaze flicked between her and Jonathan before they narrowed.
“Am I interrupting?”
Willow smoothed her hands over her skirts. “No, I was—”
“Speak with your wife, Ambrose,” Jonathan interrupted with a distinct note of disapproval. “And do recall our last conversation.”
Willow flung her eyes to him. Every single line of Jonathan’s face etched in stony disapproval. Remarkable! This was not a side of him she had ever seen or imagined existed. He was such a happy fellow.
Ambrose bore his eyes down on her, and she swallowed.
“Er, yes, well, I would like to speak with you.”
Her husband arched a brow, entering. Jonathan gave a curt nod and strode from the room, not bothering to spare her so much as a parting good luck glance.
She squirmed, Ambrose’s hard eyes penetrating deep into her soul. You’re doing this for Holly, Willow reminded herself. Just think about her.
When she just hovered there, awkwardly intertwining her fingers, his brows furrowed.
“You wish to speak with me?”
Willow flushed at the mocking notes infused in his voice. It gave her the courage to hold her head high. “I wish to address the matter of our marriage.”
Her palms were sweaty. Perspiration beat at her brow. If she were the swooning type, she’d be sprawled on the floor already.
“What about it?” He leaned casually against his desk, his arms crossing over h
is chest.
Lord, the man could be so infuriatingly composed at times. Anger sparked low in her belly.
“I want a separation.”
He stared at her—unblinking—for a torturous moment before he stalked over to the decanter and poured two glasses of brandy. Jonathan had been right. Willow just hoped Ambrose swallowed his in one breath. Then, perhaps, she might not have to go any further with this charade. She was a terrible actress.
For a moment he said nothing, handing her a glass and taking a healthy swallow of his own, his gaze brooding.
Willow bit the inside of her lip to keep from blurting out something inappropriate. She took a small sip, merely touching the liquid to the tip of her tongue, really, and sank down in one of the armchairs. He mimicked her, settling in an opposite chair.
Heavens! She hoped he did not mimic her drinking progress or their plan was doomed.
“This arrangement—” she began.
“Marriage,” he snapped, swallowing the entire glass and then jumping up to refill it. This time, he remained standing, so Willow stood as well, turning to him.
She studied his features. He had hardly shaved since their wedding day, the growth of hair staining his cheeks giving him a rugged appearance—not that of a polished duke.
Furthermore, he hadn’t pushed her to read his rules, hadn’t taken her over his knee for sneaking out at midnight. He hadn’t even called out Warton for his insults.
All signs pointed to the possibility that perhaps he hadn’t been entirely in control since their marriage.
But, here, in this moment, all signs of control were gone altogether. Oddly, the idea warmed her. Just as those blank pages had. Did they mean he was letting his rules go? They no longer existed? She wanted desperately to ask him about them but pushed the thought away. That was not part of the plan.
“Right,” she said when he just continued to stare at her. “Marriage. I wish to be separated from it.”
“Why?”
Why? Well . . . how was she to answer that?
“I . . . er . . .” What had Jonathan said? Something, something, and lover. “I wish to explore my options.”