Page 53 of The Marquess' Wicked Wager
“I do not believeanyman will keep you safe, Edna. And why should I? You are too defiant for it, too bright to live a life without peril.”
It almost sounded as though he meant it. He couldn’t. It didn’t make sense, not after he had so forcefully tried to make a match with the terrible Duke. “Then…what?”
He shrugged, the dark shoulders of his tweed coat rising and falling as he…began to laugh!“I shall have to settle for the fact that you will never do what is best for you, and that you will simply have to protect yourself.”
Edna was stunned. So many years of fighting her father’s iron fist forthis.It certainly was not the admission of her dreams, and it did not do all it needed for her to forgive him.“You’re toying with me, father.”
“I wish I was.” He leaned over the edge of the bridge. “Your mother was the same way. Constantly darting head forth into danger. She was ambitious to a fault. Wanted to know everything. See everything. Do everything.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t the illness that took her in the end. It was the atrophy, the boredom.”
Edna’s eyes misted over. “I don’t remember her in that way.”
“You wouldn’t. You were too young.” Wordlessly, he grabbed her hand. “I thought if I could set you up for a life of normalcy, agoodlife...I might not find myself losing you too.”
Edna sighed. She could not tell whether her father spoke with any honesty. In truth, she found it hard to believe a word that came out of his mouth after what he had put her through. To speak ofnormalcy, now, to speak of dreams of agoodlife—was this not the man who had given her to a brute like Craster? “And you’re quite certain his money had nothing to do with it?” Her father was quiet. “Whatever you intended for me, it didn’t work.”
“No,” he replied. “It would never work. I realized it as soon as Violet told me you had left with the Marquess.I pushed her toofar, I told myself. It was my doing. I lost you, just as you said I would.” He looked at her, finally, and she felt as though she was seeing her father for the first time. “I’m not a good man, Edna—I never have been. I’ve erred more than I can say...but I would like to try to be a father to you now. And I can admit, with not a grain of doubt in my heart, that you are the one perfect thing of mine in a lifetime of mistakes.”
She bit her cheek to stop from crying. Edna could not offer her father the redemption he so desperately sought in her eyes…but she could offer him peace, for one day.
“Then allow me to marry the man I love, and we shall never speak of the rest of it again.
* * *
Albert was alone—or he may as well have been for Edna’s departure. He had watched her walk off with her father, knowing there was a chance, however slight, that he would convince his daughter that their plan was madness. She deserved better, he would say, and he would be right. Each minute that passed without their return was passed in agony.
He paced around the drive outside the blacksmith’s, his coat jacket draped over his shoulder. The back and forth strolling did little to quell his fear as he looped around the drive’s flower beds. Heneededher to return. He needed to walk into the smithy, not as a shadow of his father, but as his own man. With a definite growl, he turned toward his uncle and Violet. Before he could think to voice his concerns, footsteps sounded from the entranceway.
But they did not belong to Edna or her father.
Heavily, the tanned, leather slippers crunched against the pebbles.
God in heaven—he hadn’t even heard a horse approach!
Still, there he was, the one blemish on an otherwise spotless day. His father, the Duke of Craster, stormed toward them.
Jonathan was on his feet before Albert could lunge for the man. He would kill him, his own father, if it meant putting an end to this. Hours and hours from London, and still his father dogged him! On Albert’s wedding day,stillhis father dogged him! He had no scruple, no morals, noheart. Men like that did not deserve to exist.
“No, Albie!” Jonathan cried. He put an arm before Albert to block his path. “Do not stoop to his level by giving him exactly what he wants.”
“HewantsEdna. I plan to give him a wake.”
“There’s my darling boy,” the Duke intonated. “My, what a perfect groom you are!”
Albert blazed with anger. There was no room for rational thought—not when his father looked at him likethaton a day like this. “Leave, or so help me God—”
“What, Albert? What is it you think you might do to me, hm? To father dearest.” He glanced at Jonathan. “A chip off the old block. I should have expectedyouwould be here.” With a taunting laugh, his father looked around the shop. “Now, if you would be so kind as to tell me where I might find the girl who is rightfully mine.”
“Release her from your obsession. She is not yours to play with. Not now. Not ever.”
“How queer…” The Duke adjusted his cravat. “I seem to remember you throwing similar threats my way when last me met. Yet, here I am. That’s all you are, Albert. Talk.”
“He’s a finer man than you!” his uncle cried.
His father tutted, wagging his finger. “He’s half the man I am, and half the devil his mother was.” Looking Albert up and down, he added, “I should have expected you’d grow up a coward, born from a coward’s womb.”
Albert clenched his fist at his side. He wanted nothing more than to wipe the smug smirk from his father’s face. He would have tried, had it not been for Edna and her father rounding the corner. His father snapped his head back.
From where he stood, Albert could see the look of horror on Edna’s face.
