Page 91 of Beyond Scandal and Desire
“You’re wrong.”
She arrived at Hedley Hall in a hansom that she had walked miles to find. Past the area where Mick’s buildings loomed, she’d marched with dogged determination. He’d offered use of his carriage, but she wanted nothing from him. He’d used her, she’d been part of his scheme. Even with her disgust of him radiating from her, he’d walked along behind her, serving as her silent protector until she’d finally located a hansom.
The front door was locked, but she used the key she’d procured. The silence that greeted her wasn’t surprising. If things were locked up, everyone was abed.
Gathering what little strength remained to her, she dragged herself up the stairs. All she wanted was to take a bath, to wash him off. Every touch, every caress, every kiss, every lick. The things he’d done to her, she’d done to him. The cries, the raw need, the way her body had sung to his tune only added to her humiliation, to her anger, to her fury.
Opening the door to her bedchamber, she came up short at the sight of the solitary lamp illuminating the figure sitting in a chair in the corner.
“Where have you been?” Kip asked.
“None of your concern.” Closing the door quietly behind her, she wandered nearer to him. He looked awful, worse than she’d ever seen him, with his hair greasy and unkempt, his jacket wrinkled, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his neck cloth unknotted. He’d not shaved in days, in nights. His eyes were bloodshot, the lids swollen and red-rimmed. His cheeks were hollowed out, his skin sallow. She could clearly envision him as Aiden had described him: desperate to win that final hand at all costs.
He’d paid the price with his heritage, his pride, his manhood.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m in trouble, Aslyn.” Leaning forward, he braced his elbows on his thighs, bent his head as though it weighed too much to hold upright. Finally he lifted it, met her gaze. “I’ve lost everything. Everything.”
She’d known that, of course. Knew what he’d lost, the circumstances that had led to the loss. He’d played so easily into Mick’s hands. At that moment she despised them both.
Shakily he shoved himself to his feet, held out a trembling hand toward her. “I need you.” How she had once longed for words spoken so passionately from him. “If we marry quickly, soon, I will be given access to your trust and can put everything back to rights before Father finds out what I’ve done. Else I am ruined.”
How was it that she managed to circle herself with men who wanted her only for their own gain? She was bloody well tired of it. She angled up her chin, faced him squarely. “What’s in it for me?”
He seemed taken aback, whether from the bluntness of her question or her demanding tone, she didn’t know. “You will become a countess, one day you will be a duchess.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to be a duchess. I want only to be loved.” As she’d believed Mick loved her. Moments filled with smiles, laughter and believing that happily-ever-afters existed.
“I love you. Of course I do.”
“Not as much as you love your gambling.”
“I’ll do as you ask. I’ll give it up.”
“I can’t marry you.” She didn’t trust him to keep his word. Nor had she fallen in love with him as she’d fallen in love with another. Now that she knew what it was to want, to desire, to yearn for—how could she ever settle for less? Even as her heart ached with Mick’s betrayal, she wouldn’t marry a man who couldn’t stir passion within her breast, who didn’t make her more than she’d thought herself capable of being.
“We have an understanding.”
“We don’t. I’ve been trying for days to meet with you so we could officially call off our betrothal, so I could stop making excuses to your mother for not discussing the details of the wedding. Kip, I love you as a brother, not as a man to warm my bed.”
“Are you going to marryhim? Trewlove?”
“No.” He’d betrayed her, used her, schemed to destroy those she loved—all for want of an acknowledgment that would gain him nothing he didn’t already possess. “He’s your brother.”
He blinked, looked as though he might be more ill. “I beg your pardon?”
“He’s your father’s by-blow.”
“Did Trewlove tell you that?”
She nodded, sank into a chair. “But once he told me, I could see it. I don’t know why I didn’t see it sooner.”
“You care for him.”
She had. What she felt now was a maelstrom of conflicting emotions. She wanted to never see him again, wanted him to comfort her. She wanted him to have been honest from beginning, yearned to know if he’d ever meant anything he’d ever said to her or if it had all just been posturing, to put himself in a position to destroy the duke. She hated him with every fiber of her being.
Unfortunately she loved him just as deeply—which was the reason that the truth of him hurt so damned much.
