“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.”
Phoebe narrowed her eyes. “That is what you’ll say?” The shocked question ripped from her throat before she could call it back.
He paused, and for the slightest span of a moment regret flashed in his eyes, but then as quickly as a flame being snuffed out, all hint of emotion was gone, so she was left to wonder if she’d merely imagined it. “What would you have me say?” Bitterness swelled in her chest. Of course she had imagined any and all emotion from the marquess—just as she’d imagined anything and everything to pass between them these past days together.
Edmund took a step toward her and she retreated so quickly, her back thumped noisily against the door. Pain radiated along her spine and shot down her thighs, but she welcomed the discomfort for it detracted from the agony of her heart, still cracking from the truth of his ruthlessness. He continued coming and she held a hand up. “Stop!” She detested that pleading entreaty in her tone. With agony lancing through her, Phoebe turned her palms up, willing for him to deny all. “Tell me it is untrue. Tell me you would not do something so vile as destroy my family over having your desires thwarted.” For none of this made any sense.
He flexed his jaw. “I cannot tell you that,” he said in that flat, emotionless manner of his.
Tension spiraled through her, thick and consuming and out of control. “Why can you not tell me?” She barely recognized the high-pitched tone as her own.
His broad shoulders lifted up and down in a shrug. “Because it is true.”
Of their own volition,
her eyes slid closed. It is true. “Why?” That strangled response emerged broken and choked. Why would this aloof, emotionless stranger go to such lengths to possess her?
“I want you,” he said with an icy matter-of-factness that chilled her.
She resisted the urge to rub warmth into her arms. She’d not allow him the pleasure of knowing how he’d ravaged her world with his throwaway words to her father a short while ago. Phoebe angled her chin up. “And how does Honoria fit into your twisted life, Edmund?”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. He was a man no doubt unaccustomed to anyone putting questions or demands to him and for an instant, she thought he’d ignore her question, and for an even longer moment, coward that she was, she wanted him to. She slid her eyes closed willing all of this to be nothing more than a nightmare.
“Your Miss Fairfax had the misfortune of sharing the blood of a…previous acquaintance. I intended to ruin Miss Fairfax and then wed her.” Edmund’s chilling words forced her eyes open. Cold stole through her as he moved an unreadable black stare over her. How coolly methodical he was in his telling. He may as well have spoken of the weather or last evening’s festivities. Who was this ruthless stranger?
“Whose blood does she share?” That question emerged garbled.
He hesitated.
“Who?” she demanded on a high-pitched cry.
“Margaret, the Duchess of Monteith.” His expression grew shuttered. “The young woman I’d once dueled for.” Oh, God, it had never been about Phoebe. Edmund’s kisses and whispers and promises…they’d all been nothing more than lies borne of revenge against the woman who truly held his heart. She folded her arms and rubbed her hands over them in a bid to restore warmth to the chilled limbs.
Edmund slashed the air with his hand. “Matters changed, Phoebe.”
Her heart wrenched. All along Phoebe had loved him and she’d been nothing more than a secondary pawn in his scheme to hurt another. “You love her that much.” Her words emerged hollow. Why should it matter that this ruthless blackguard who’d threatened her family, a man she’d given her virtue to, loved another? And yet, God help her, it mattered still.
His lips peeled back in a mocking grin. “Do not be ridiculous.” The hard glint in his eyes hinted at a man incapable of loving anyone. Not even himself.
“Then why?” She shoved away from the door. “Why would you seek revenge against Honoria?” Using me. “She’s done nothing to you.”
“It wasn’t about Miss Fairfax,” he said with such calm she wanted to slap her hands over her ears and blot out his voice. He took another step toward her. “I always have what I want. Including,” me? “matters of revenge.” Of course, not her. He’d never truly wanted her. Not in the sweet, seductive way she’d convinced herself. That dream of a life for them, together, with their broken pasts behind them and their limitless futures before them, had belonged to her alone. He’d merely fed her the words she’d longed to hear in that carriage. A film of tears blurred her vision and she blinked back the sad, sorry, pathetic droplets. He was not worth a single shred of her emotion.
“This changes nothing between us,” he said, pulling her from the precipice of her own misery.
Shock ran through her, and Phoebe cocked her head. “Are you mad?” The barely-there whisper echoed from the walls of her father’s office.
“There have been worse charges leveled at me than the one of madman.”
His bored, tired tone snapped the thin thread of Phoebe’s self-control. She shot out a hand. The slap of flesh meeting flesh thundered around them. Heart hammering wildly, she pulled her stinging palm back and clutched at the folds of her skirts.
Edmund flexed his jaw and touched his gloved fingertips to the crimson mark left by her blow. All the while his black stare remained fixed on her. This man. This stranger. This betrayer with his false words and broken, empty promises and fear shot through her. Phoebe took a stumbling step away from him. “D-don’t.” That tremulous order came out ineffectual and she hurried to put distance between them. As he continued his advance, she moved out of his reach.
“Do you think I would harm you?” he asked in clipped tones.
Phoebe backed into the leather button sofa and her knees knocked the edge. Path of escape effectively blocked, she came to a forced stop. Not wanting him to see the hell he’d wrought upon her world, she tipped her head back. “I don’t think you would harm me.” Some of the tension seeped from his tautly held frame. “I know you would. You already have.”
Chapter 15
How singularly odd. To go through life, knowing there was nothing but cold in your veins and black emptiness to your heart, and yet to feel…this, whatever this unpleasant, harsh tightening in his chest was. Edmund looked at Phoebe, the color drained from her cheeks as she stood, pressed against the sofa. With trembling fingers, she clutched at her throat. He studied that faint quaking and then lifted his gaze to hers. She dropped her hands to the back of the sofa. Then her lip peeled back in a sneer.
Inevitably, everyone was broken. Ruined by life. For some, it was those early moments of childhood when one’s father forced you, a boy of seven years, to observe the extent of your mother’s depravity and faithlessness. For others, it came later with the betrayal and deception from one that was once trusted. By the icy derision in Phoebe’s eyes and the cynical twist of her bow-shaped lips, she’d been broken. Yes, everyone was eventually ruined. But there was an empty, ugly ache in knowing he’d been the one to break her. The sight of her silent suffering squeezed the vise all the tighter about his chest. Apparently, he was human, after all. What an unfortunate moment to realize it.
Once again, she proved herself far stronger and more courageous than he’d ever been. She broke the silence. “I will not accept your offer of marriage. I’d rather sever my left hand than bind it to one such as you,” she spat.
“It was not an offer.”
She blinked several times in rapid succession.
Edmund stalked over to her. Her slender frame shook slightly and he abhorred the faint tremble that hinted at her fear of him. “I am marrying you.” For even with the icy loathing teeming from her blue-eyed gaze, he wanted her, as his, and only his.
“You are m—” He gave her a pointed look and the tired accusation died on her lips.
He palmed her cheek and at his touch, she went stiff. “I always get what I want.”
For a too-brief moment he believed she’d turn into his caress and angle her lips up toward his, begging for his kiss as she’d done. Then, she slapped his hand away and the foolish thought shriveled, leaving him cold. “I am not an object. I am not a material possession to be added to your collection. I am a person, my lord. You may want my body, but I will sooner bed the devil than take you as my husband and lie with you again.” She made to storm around him.
Edmund stole a hand around her wrist, staying her movement. A gasp escaped her lips and Phoebe alternated her gaze between his firm hold and his face. Horror, fear, and revulsion teamed together, warring for a place with ultimately her proving triumphant. Phoebe yanked her hand hard but he held firm. This gripping need for her no less than when she’d looked upon him with hope in her eyes.
Hope that I killed. “I’ll have you as my wife, Phoebe.”
“Or what, my lord?” Edmund. I am Edmund to you. A physical hungering to hear his name upon her lips once more filled him. “You will ruin Honoria? Let Society know I’m no longer a virgin? Marry my s…” Her skin turned an ashen hue. “Marry my…” Then she widened her eyes and tugged free of him the same moment he relinquished his hold and she toppled into the seat. Phoebe flung her arms out and caught herself upon the cushions. She glowered up at him. “You would wed my sister.”
That is what she believed. How could she still not know that this consuming need to possess her blotted out all rational thought and blinded him to all others? And yet, she’d showed her weakness and, with that, he’d secure her as his wife.
Only…the words would not
come. He could not force the words past his lips. Not this lie. Not this time.
Except, Phoebe took his silence for unspoken confirmation. “You bastard,” she hissed, shoving to her feet.
Her tangible hatred ran through him, staggering him with the extent of his own weakness in caring as he did. Edmund donned the indifferent mask he’d worn the better part of his life. “A bastard, now?” he drawled. “That is, at the very least, a deal better than a monster.”
She shot another hand out and this time he easily caught her wrist. He dragged her delicate flesh close to his mouth and touched his lips to the soft skin. “You might detest me, as you should, but you desire me.” Once, she’d been affected by him. The intake of her soft breath that had once stolen his sleep and entered his dreams, the tremble on her lips as she’d come undone in his arms. All gone. Regret churned in his gut.
“Do you think I should still desire you?” Incredibility underscored her question. “Do you think I’m so very weak that I would want the man who used me to exact revenge upon another? Who’d wed my sister if I reject his suit?” She scoffed. “I am not weak as the other women you’ve taken to your bed.”
She was nothing like the women he’d taken to his bed. Everyone before her had been grasping and bitter and just as jaded as he himself was. They’d not possessed her peculiarly cheerful outlook on life, despite the ugly she’d known. There was nothing cheerful about her now. Now, she bore a shocking cynicism better suited to the person he’d always been. And yet he wanted her as she’d been, wanted her as they had been. That truth ran ragged through him, terrifying for the power of regret churning through him.
“What? Nothing to say?” she jeered.
He let her wrist go once more and she stepped around him. People had never mocked him. They’d known there were consequences in their treatment of the Marquess of Rutland. Yet, this slip of a woman was as bold and brave as Joan of Arc and his appreciation of who she intrinsically was swelled, powerful inside him. There would be time enough to worry about his reaction to her later. Now, as she stalked over to the entrance of the room, all he knew was he wanted her, regardless, just as he’d said—in any way and every way. She’d represented the last hint of possible salvation where his black, vile soul was concerned. If in his actions he’d destroyed her, would anything remain of him?
A Heart of a Duke Collection: Volume 1-A Regency Bundle Page 156