Page 98 of Greed: The Savage
Addien’s gaze trickled back to the painting. In the canvas, she saw Malric’s lands…and the woman he chose to walk those hills with.
For certain, he’d find another. It wouldn’t be a lady because, as he’d said, he had no use for a Diamond. Hewantedrevenge against his father, and what Malric wanted…he got.
“…You were made for me, Addien…Just as I was made for you… I want to marry you. And you’re going to, and do you know why that is…? You want me…the same way I want you.”
Addien shivered, still enflamed by that hungry, driven, possessiveness with which he’d spoken of claiming her.
But he won’t have me.
There should be triumph in her denial of the man who’d hurt her. His shock and anger this morning were visceral, raw. A man such as Malric, driven by primal pride, wouldn’t just be angry. He’dburnat the rejection, every fiber of him chafing against it.
Addien’s lips curled in a smile as broken as she was inside.
He’d find another woman. It’d be a woman similar to Addien, one who loved his command and control of her body and didn’t give a shite about propriety or politeness.
A woman, his father, the duke, could never approve of.
There were plenty of them out there.
Certainly, more of them than the minuscule number of diamonds and debutantes with their gold-plated twats.
There’d always remain a key difference between Addien and Malric’s eventual wife; unlike Addien, the chosen lady carried his impeccable lineage.
And she’d know it too. She’d know it and wouldn’t be able to bear it. Addien had run to a place Malric could never reach her. Not that she believed he would even attempt to. That was not out of anything other than his obstinate will to win out over Addien.
But she would not be free of him. Here, in this palace of polished vice, there’d be no escaping talk of the nobility. Aside from debauchery, gossip was the second staple in a nobleman’s diet.
When a marquess, at that, an heir to a dukedom, married, the whole world took notice.
A knot twisted in her insides.
Her gaze, all her attention and energy, tunneled in on the painted landscape before her. It pulled Addien back into the dream she’d once spun just to survive an unforgiving cold. She was only just realizing there were deaths of all sorts. The sharpest winter bite would have been kinder than this hollow ache consuming her now.
Addien longed to climb inside that frame, to vanish into a world where she alone existed, among flowers, on a bed of grass she’d never felt beneath her bare feet, and never would, except in dreams.
“Pretty, isn’t it?”
That voice came suddenly—smooth, languid, a dark baritone that slid over her skin instead of startling her, though it should have.
Before she’d turned, she hadn’t a doubt of the gentleman’s identity.
Addien lifted her chin. “Your Grace.”
He executed a bow dark with irony, sensual in its restraint. “In the flesh.”
From across the room, she studied the tall gentleman lounging with his back against the door, casual yet watchful. His form—broad-shouldered, lean, athletic—held the kind of balance artists chased. His symmetry called to mind what Alice once remarked at the Devil’s Den, when casually speaking about a canvas she’d been painting.
For all his seeming ease, there wasn’t anythingcasualabout the human Apollo before her.
He was Cain and Abel both—temptation wrapped in virtue, ruin in the guise of grace.
Dangerous but a darling.
“Please, you must call me Argyll.” The Duke of Argyll was nothing more than the serpent of sin dressed in a handsome face. A man too beautiful to be real and with a smile that lured a person to trust, but who was devoid of sincerity.
Unlike Malric, who wore no masks and needed no pretenses—whose integrity was as plain as his strength—the man before her was nothing of the sort.
She had to leave.
