Page 70 of Her Ruse with the Rakish Duke
“When are you going to stop being a coward?” Harry said glaring at him.
He turned to his friend with an exasperated look, dropping the shirt he’d been folding.
“I am not being a coward.”
“Oh and running away from your problems is a mark of bravery?” he asked incredulously.
“Harry, you do not understand. I?—”
“You are obviously a fool who is so set on his ways he can’t see he is walking down a dark and lonely path. Rather than fight to keep the woman you so obviously love, you’d rather run away and stomach the thought of another man being with her, of touching her and having her in his bed? That really isbraveof you.”
“What will you have me do, then?” he growled. “Trap her in a marriage to me? A marriage where I will not make her happy? Is that better?"
“There’s no way you will not make her happy, Victor.”
“I am my father. I am his blood. The spitting image of him.”
His friend sighed. “Fine. Fine, you are like him. You are selfish like him. So selfish you’d put your own feelings above those of the people who love you.”
“Harry—”
“That is why you’d rather she suffer a loveless and passionless marriage to that man.”
The thought of Daphne being touched by Percy brought a disgusting taste into his mouth. Still, he didn’t let himself be caught by Harry’s attempt to get a rise out of him.
“It is what is best,” he answered locking his trunk. “If you were in my shoes, you’d do the same.”
“No. I really wouldn’t.”
Resisting the urge to scoff, he turned away from his longtime friend.
“I guess we will never know,” he muttered. “I am sorry I will be missing the wedding tomorrow but…”
The sound of Harry slamming the door shut stopped him finishing what he was about to say.
ChapterSeventeen
“You may now kiss the bride,” the bishop said.
Harry proceeded to slant his lips over Amelia’s, planting a sweet kiss. The applause and hoots from the crowd startled them back to reality and they turned to the rest of the church with identical blushes on their cheeks.
Daphne was so happy for her sister and considering all the drama that had occurred in the days leading up to the wedding, she was grateful that the ceremony was a success and Amelia, her sweet sister, was now officially a married woman.
Her parents would be ecstatic that at least one of their daughters was off the marriage market. They had matching wide smiles and held each other as they both cried when the couple said their vows.
She was supposed to be overjoyed but she couldn’t quite shake the feeling of melancholy that had plagued her since her discussion with Victor the night before.
It hadn’t helped that the seating arrangements at the church had forced her to sit beside Percy and endure his commentary about different members of thetonpresent as the ceremony progressed.
In some part of her mind, the little girl she had once been kept wondering how her beloved childhood friend had changed. How had Percy gone from the sweet boy he once was to this man? The man she was now to spend the rest of her life with…
The whole night, she’d tossed and turned as her mind plagued her with conversations she’d had in an attempt to dissuade her heart from pushing her to call off the engagement which she was seriously considering the more she looked at her sister and brother-in-law.
They were a love match, and if anything, she wanted more than just blandness from her own marriage. Having experienced the pleasure that Victor had wrought on her body with his hands and lips, she didn’t want to imagine Percy seeing or touching her so intimately — she didn’t trust him like that.
She replayed his words to her that night about how Victor would only use her body, but she didn’t even mind that when compared to a loveless and passionless future she saw stretching out before her.
His words had hurt but she agreed that they might not have hurt as much if they were untrue. Even while she enjoyed the pleasures that Victor effortlessly wrought on her body, some part of her mind reminded her that it was a transient experience and that in a few weeks, she would just be another notch on his bedpost.
