Page 83 of The Beast of Beswick
“No, you’ve set me straight, Aunt. I know what I have to do.”
Chapter Twenty-three
The notorious ill-tempered, stone-hearted, intractable Beast of Beswick was back in residence. The man’s erratic mood swings were enough to give a person bloody whiplash! Astrid scowled as Alice fastened her stays at the thought of her husband. He’d gone from tender to tyrant in the space of one evening at the opera, and now everyone in the house was tiptoeing on tenterhooks for fear of incurring the beast’s wrath. Even she had not been exempt from his mercurial temper.
The night of the opera, on the way home, she’d ventured to ask if he would attend Lady Hammerton’s ball in the interests of supporting Isobel. He’d been uncharacteristically withdrawn during the second half, but she’d put it down to the entire outing being trying for him.
How wrong she’d been.
He’d stared at her in the carriage, his mouth twisting into an ugly shape. “No.”
“You said you would help,” she’d said quietly. “Protect Isobel. She needs us.”
“I am not going to a bloody ball, Astrid.”
“What are you so afraid of?”
“Afraid?”He’d laughed, the sound dark and devoid of humor. “Have you forgotten what the monster you married looks like, my lady? Let me remind you.” He’d ripped off his hat, leaned forward, and growled in her face, his fury palpable and the landscape of his scars outlined in stark, gruesome detail.
“If you gave people a chance, they might—”
“Might what?” He’d scoffed. “Allow me into their homes? To sit at their hearths, share stories, and offer me tea? You are naive, my foolish wife.”
“And you’re being childish.”
His eyes had flashed with rage. “Have a care, Astrid.”
She hadn’t paid heed, thinking only of her sister’s request. “It’s just that I want Isobel to be safe. And to have a chance to be happy and free.”
“None of us is free. Your sister simply hopes to trade one cage for another. Isn’t that what marriage is?”
“That’s not what we have.”
He’d sneered at her. “No, darling, we have convenience. Even better, no? You wanted a name, and all I ever hoped for was a warm, willing body, which I eventually got. Don’t make our association any more than it is. What a trade. Duchess by day, doxy by night.”
“You’re a brute.”
“I never pretended to be anything else.”
No, he hadn’t, and that had been Astrid’s own fault. She’d believed in something that hadn’t been there. She’d believed in the man he could be, not the one he was. And she had only herself to blame. She never should have trusted him.
After the hurt, the anger had come.
How dare he make promises and then break them? How dare he call her names? He wanted her to be a doxy? Then, by God, that was what she would be. Astrid stared in the mirror at her reflection. Alice had covered the dark circles beneath her eyes with powder. She would have preferred to stay in bed, but the thought of being in the same house with her ogre of a husband rankled.
“Thank you, Alice,” she said, once the maid had finished with the final touches of her attire. “That will be all.”
Grabbing her reticule, she descended the staircase and, for the first time since the altercation in the coach, came face-to-face with her husband.
“You were not at dinner this evening,” the duke growled, amber eyes narrowing on her clover-green evening gown. He looked tired, too. Tired and drawn. “Culbert said you were not feeling well.”
She shot him a smile, ignoring the dull ache in her heart at the magnetic tug of him. Despite his cruelty and coldness, she wanted nothing more than to soothe those lines of tension over his brow, draw him close, and find the man who’d wooed her in the conservatory, the man who had bought her buildings for a school, the man who had made love to her with such tenderness that it made her chest ache.
But that version of him had been false…a version she’d obviously romanticized because she’d been lonely, and she’d wanted to believe the best of him.
“I was,” she said with forced cheer, “but I am much recovered.”
“Are you going out?”
