Page 85 of The Rebellious Countess
“Bloody hell,” he muttered under his breath. “I knew the dangers he posed, but I’d not thought he would murder me in cold blood. I’ve been sailing under the wrong impression for years. You never told me of his mercenary heart,” he accused.
“He killed your father in front of you.”
“And I hate him for that, but he spared me.”
“Did he? Or did he condemn us both?” The bitter hatred in her voice startled the cardinal even further, and he clutched at Father Charles. “I sent you to England to be raised by a stranger. I would think that would be enough of explanation of the danger he posed. What mother would send her only child away after losing his father?” Aventine asked, and a distant memory surfaced.
His mother on the docks telling him goodbye and the sound of a sob escaping her throat as Tomás led him away. He had not seen her again for several years. Nor had he received any letters or correspondence from her in the years he had lived under his uncle’s cold tutelage as a member of His Majesty’s navy. Throughout the years, he had come to accept his mother had mourned his father’s death, but not the loss of her son. That’s what his uncle had led him to believe—all the lies. Years of emptiness. Even after he returned to France. He had seen her aloofness as an uncaring woman…from the look of despair deep in her eyes that she finally allowed him to see he’d been wrong.
“I would have never sent you away if I believed you to be safe from my father. You were not, and I could not travel to England because of him. There had already been one attempt to kidnap me as leverage against my father by the British Crown. We weredoomed to separation the moment I married your father. I was just too naive and in love to realize it.” Her eyes brightened with tears, but like the strong, indelible woman he knew her to be, any sign of her tears disappeared before they could drop.
His parents’ marriage had been destroyed by their differences, their love defeated by politics. The same politics that were at play in his marriage to Máira. She was a woman of station, sister-in-law to a duke. He was a man with a questionable past and an even more questionable future. Máira may know the truth about his lies now, but she did not understand how fate would tear them apart.
He was a complete fraud, a scoundrel, and for the first time in his life, Elias felt the truth in that statement. He was not good enough to clean her shoes. Máira belonged with a gentleman, not a privateer or a recovery agent always putting himself and his crew in danger. She was too good for him.
The duke continued with his argument against their marriage as if Elias and his mother had said nothing. “There are three gentlemen en route to Caerlaverock as we speak, ready and willing to marry you.”
Máira’s voice did not waver in her reply. “I am already married.”
“Your marriage is to be annulled.” the duke explained.
“No.” Her brow drew as she shook her head in denial.
In that moment, Elias knew the duke’s chosen path for Máira was the right path for the woman he loved. Releasing her from a lifetime of strife and uncertainty was the least he could do. She deserved more than what his mother had endured for love, and releasing her from their sham of a marriage was the right thing to do. The duke had arranged for Máira to marry someone respectable. To lead the life she was born to lead. It had been part of his plan as well…before he’d gone and bedded her like the scoundrel the duke had correctly named him to be.
Máira glared at her brother-in-law, her anger rising above anything Elias had witnessed from her. “My marriage is real?—”
Elias spoke before she could announce that they had consummated their marriage in front of God and everyone else. “Our marriage was never meant to be anything but a ruse to allow me passage to France. His Grace has taken the path which I planned to take upon our return.” He said it with the ring of truth she needed to hear—he left out his change of heart from the moment he bedded her. It would only make her push harder for something that wasn’t meant to be. Nor did she need to know that he planned to honor his vows until his dying breath. She deserved better than a mere knight who put her life in danger at every turn.
Máira’s gaze turned to him, her blue eyes looking bruised and battered with his painful words. He wanted to take them back, but he couldn’t afford for to her resist an honorable and good match the duke had arranged.
“But we—” Her cheeks flared with embarrassment, and Elias knew he had to drive his knife deep into her chest.
“We enjoyed each other’s company. That is all. It is time for you and me to return to our own worlds. I am not a man who stays with one woman for long.”
Máira’s eyes filled with tears at the same time her shoulders straightened, ready to receive the kill shot she didn’t want him to deliver. “What we shared—was it just an act…to…to…?”
He released the killing blow, guaranteeing her hatred. “I have shared many moments like that with many women.”
A tear spilled down her cheek, and Elias wanted to kiss it away and admit it was a lie. He had never shared such intimacy with anyone but her, and he would never again feel that depth of love for another human being as long as he lived. It just wasn’t possible to replace one’s very soul.
If he’d thought he’d fueled Máira’s scorn, it was nothing compared to the fire his words lit in the duke’s veins. His anger roared to life and he hit Tomás like a crazed bull, his shoulder ramming into his midsection with enough force to bust through a castle door. Tomás flew through the air and landed on his back in the briny muck, as the duke charged Elias. Elias knew he deserved the beating the duke was determined to deliver, and because of that, he did not fight or defend the blows. He would thrash any man who threatened her honour in the same manner as he just had. Punch after punch he endured as Tomás came to stop the assault. Máira yelled and his mother drew a blade from her boot, no doubt ready and willing to deliver a deadly throw in his name, but before he could stop her, someone else put an end to the beating he endured.
“Enough!” Astley bellowed, shocking everyone into silence. The duke paused and looked back at the earl as if he wasn’t certain what he’d been doing. Astley slumped against Aventine, his breathing labored. “Sébastien has seen enough violence.”
Máira chose that moment to throw herself over Elias’s body and stare up at the duke as if she would shield him from further assault.
The duke stepped back, his bloodied fists flexing, his own breathing coming with the heavy rise and fall of his chest.
“Who…who is Sébastien?” the duke asked, his chest heaving from the exertion.
When no one knew quite how to answer the question, including the boy who hugged Astley’s side, the earl responded, “My son. Sébastien is my son and heir. His mother died and I came to France to bring him home.”
It wasn’t true. Every person present knew its duplicity, except perhaps the cardinal. Yet no one said a word in denial. Sébastien clung even more desperately to the earl, as if he too accepted the statement as truth and was thankful for it. Theboy had no idea what the earl had just done for him with that statement, because if Astley died…
“Máira,” Astley whispered, and she turned in his direction, unaware of what Elias knew was to come next. “I would be honored…” The earl coughed with the strain the last several hours had placed on his battered body. When he continued, Elias closed his eyes. “If you would become the next Countess of Astley.”
Twenty-One
