Page 14 of Married to the Forbidden Duke
He watched her with no affection on his face. Of course, it would be hard for him to feel anything approaching tenderness for her, but he looked at her as though she was nothing more than a thorn in his side.
An epiphany arrived just then. One so eccentric and bizarre that it just may help assuage her feelings and put everything to rights. One that made her smile sweetly up at him a moment after.
Yes, she had been forced to marry him, but perhaps that was a blessing in disguise. As his wife, she had access to parts of his life that she could never have reached as a mere spectator.
She couldruinhim just as thoroughly as he hadruinedher.
As for her—she was a Duchess now. She had a title. She had status. And she had more material things than she could shake her stick at. This was so much more than she had ever expected, and certainly far more than she had ever wanted.
She would lose nothing by destroying him.
And he wouldn’t even see it coming.
Frederick peeked at his new wife with mistrust as he handed her into the carriage. Traditionally, he knew, marriages were celebrated with a wedding breakfast, but he felt as though there was little enough to celebrate.
It seemed his new wife agreed. She had not stopped scowling at him since she had first arrived at the church.
A shame he couldn’t fully dislike her. She acted as a reminder of everything he had done as a boy—everything terrible. But he found her defiance intriguing, and the spark in her eyes made him wonder if her passion extended beyond hatred.
Oh, she could hate him and bed him. The two were not mutually exclusive.
He could find her defiance intriguing and still find it ignited the kernel of his own rage. He could want her and despise her in equal measure. That was the nature of humans; they did not experience things in isolation. He did not hate her the way she evidently hated him, but that was not to say helikedher either.
He placed the stick beside her and climbed in opposite. After banging on the roof to tell the coach driver to set off, heexamined his new bride. She eyed him with hostility, that gleam in her eyes promising vengeance.
“It is not a long ride to London,” he murmured eventually into the tense silence and cocked a brow at her. “As no doubt you recall from when you journeyed there yourself.”
She met his gaze with a glare of her own. “And back again. If you had not arrived at my aunt and uncle’s house, they would have been none the wiser!”
“Am I supposed to applaud your dedication?”
She shrugged a little. “I don’t care what you do. You have gotten everything you wanted.”
“Is that so?” He couldn’t help himself, irritation rising up his throat at her dismissal. “And what do you know of what I want,wife?”
“You are a powerful and wealthy Duke—is there anything in the world you stillwant?”
Frederick narrowed his eyes. “As it happens, yes. Plenty of things. I can hardly just demand my every whim be fulfilled.”
“I doubt that. You have the affluence and influence to see it happen.” The corner of her lush lips curled. “After all, you evaded justice for the death of my parents,” she finished a little more quietly.
And there it was. He should have known it was coming.
“Justice,” he said evenly, pressing his palms against his thighs so he wouldn’t show how much they were sweating. “And what do you judge justice to be in my case?”
“Hanging?” She let the word sink to the ground between them for a moment, assessing his reaction. “A life for a life—it seems fair. Really, you took the lives of two honorable people, but I would settle for just the one death in return.”
Frederick leaned back a little. “You would rather I died…?”
“Should I not?” She grabbed the skirts of her dress and dragged them to her knees, revealing two stockinged legs. Both were thin, but while one still retained its ordinary shapeliness, the other looked…twistedwas the only way he could think of to describe it. Mangled. Under the white of her stocking, he could not see the skin, but he could see the way the muscle had shrunk, misshapen, and disused.
Hehad done this.
He’d known, of course, that she had not escaped unscathed. He had visited her, after all, and she had told him to get out of her sight. He had known. He’d seen her limp and judged it to pain her.
But seeing the empirical evidence before his very eyes was a different sensation altogether.
The world felt as though it was swaying, as though he had taken his last breath before being plunged under ice water. He was helpless to stop it as it closed overhead.
