Page 87 of A Virgin for the Duke of Thorns

That he was not worthy of her.

Damn him! If he thought he was not worthy of me, should he not have tried harder to win me over?

No, he knew exactly what he was doing to her, and he used that to his great advantage.

She released a shuddering gasp, her fingers sinking into the skin of her upper arms. Fury tore through her like a beast that had been released from its cage, a fierce iciness that froze her heart and destroyed what little affection she had clung to.

She would never forgive Colin Fitzroy, the Duke of Blackthorn.

But more than that, she would never forgive herself for allowing him to do what he did to her.

CHAPTER 36

Colin looked at the envelopes in his hand, recognizing the familiar handwriting on some of them. The name it was addressed to, however, was someone he had never heard of.

“What are these?” he asked his friend with a dark frown.

Daniel merely leaned back in his chair and propped his ankle atop his other knee, looking for all the world like a gentleman without a care in the world. He most probably was, but Colin did not really care at the moment.

From the looks of the envelopes in his hand, his mother was in correspondence with a man. Someone he had never known.

Was this what spurred his father’s jealous rage? Even then, he had no right to murder his own wife before ending his life.

“I suggest you read them before you jump to conclusions,” Daniel told him with an arched eyebrow. “It would do you no good at all if you carried on without knowing the whole story. Ignorance is not always bliss, my friend.”

“Of course, you would think that,” Colin muttered. “You know everything about everyone.”

Instead of being insulted, Daniel looked supremely pleased with that observation. “Knowledge is power.” He grinned. “The more you know, the more leverage you possess.”

But Colin did not care overmuch for what his friend considered to be of paramount importance. There were some things that he was better off not knowing—like the sound of Alice’s laughter in the afternoon sunlight or the feel of her body as it welcomed him.

These were things he would rather forget, but at the same time, he clung to them as if his very life depended on these handfuls of memories he had of her.

They are all you will have of her now, a small voice in the back of his head taunted him. After everything you have done, after you have hurt her beyond fixing, she will never look at you in the same manner again.

He pushed those thoughts aside and opened the first letter. The first words had the effect of lightning striking him indoors.

To my dearest Eleanor, it read. It has only been three days, and already, my longing for you knows no bounds…

Colin frowned as he read one letter after another, each one of them addressed to his mother. All of them came from a man only known as Jacob. All of them spoke of such love that it would make even the most hardened boulder cry.

But perhaps the way men and women saw the world was so different. While his mother might have read these letters with ardent affection, Colin felt a cold shiver run down his spine as he read them.

Each one of them spoke of this Jacob’s longing for his mother, but they also carried an undercurrent of something else more sinister than a torrid affair. They spoke of a man far more knowledgeable about the world, bewitching a naive young girl on the flush of her first love.

“These are all before her marriage to my father,” Colin remarked.

Daniel nodded. “All except the last one.”

Colin pursed his lips as he opened the last letter, still addressed to his mother. This one, however, was from a Mr. Jenkins. The scrawl was barely legible, and there were numerous misspelled words, quite different from the previous letters, which were written in impeccable, flowing script and with such words that would make a young lady’s heart flutter.

To Her Grace, the Duchess of Blackthorn, it read. We regret to inform you of the passing of Mr. Jacob Grantham…

It was dated just a few days before the tragic fire that claimed both his parents and an entire wing of Blackthorn Estate.

“I… do not understand,” Colin murmured. “What does this have to do with anything?”

“Your sister and I came upon this particular collection on the night the Dowager Countess arranged for the treasure hunt at Fitzroy Hall,” Daniel explained. “Evie… was being Evie when she knocked a book off the shelf. That was when we discovered these letters.”

---