Page 49 of Exiled Duke

He shrugged. “It’s all I have—it’s all they left me with. After they threw me out of Leaven Hall, I went to all of them—all of them to tell them of my father. And to a one, they are cowards. None of them would stand up to the current duke. They were all too worried about their own position in the family—how close they were to inheriting if a series of unfortunate accidents happened. So, revenge was what I was left with. And I still have the future ahead of me. The center.”

“The center?”

“Yes, the duke. His downfall will be the sweetest.”

“What are you planning to do?”

Strider’s voice dipped into a hardness that punctuated each word. “Take every last shilling. Lure his far-too-young wife away from him with several handsome, well-placed footmen that will be more than happy to attend to her every need. Saddle him with children that are not of his blood. Set mistress after mistress on him that will play with his mind, then leave him. Leave him with nothing but regret until his dying breath.”

Pen’s gaping mouth had closed, the look in her green eyes suddenly unreadable. She moved upward on the bed, her shin sliding along his torso as she set her face in front of his. “But that…that is all hate. When are you going to stop? Stop living for revenge? Stop and see what’s right in front of you now? What you could have—happiness—if you just stopped? I have always been waiting for you.”

The side of his mouth twitched. “And I have always been trying to forget you.”

She leaned forward, her stare slicing him in two. “Why do you say these things to me?”

An apologetic half smile lifted his right cheek. “It lessens your expectations of me.”

“I may despise what you have become, the hate in your heart, but I will always have high expectations of you.”

“Ones I cannot live up to.” He sat upright, his gaze locked on her stare. “You live in the world of right. I live in the world of wrong. There is no space for the two of these to be together.”

“No space?” Her eyebrows flew upward. “There was in this bed.”

He had to give her that.

In that bed—that was the one and only place that he had ever felt five minutes of peace, of calm.

He couldn’t afford that. Peace. Calm.

He had to keep moving. Moving so nothing would catch him. Moving so Pen and her world of right could not catch him.

So the fear couldn’t catch him.

For what he’d felt with her thirty minutes ago when he came—the world more right than it had ever been—terrorized him more than anything.

He reached out to her, his palms sliding along her back as he pulled her to him, clasping her to his chest. He leaned back on the pillows, silent, for he refused to argue the merits of right and wrong with her.

An argument that would go nowhere.

She leaned into him willingly, apparently coming to the same conclusion.

The reality of what he’d been trying to ignore for the last half hour sank into his chest.

This could be nothing more than a snag. A short-lived affair that they both escaped from before it did more harm than good.

He couldn’t have Pen and he knew it. They lived in different worlds that would never intersect.

But even more grievous, if he did have her, he would fail her again. Just like he did when they were nine. One way or another, he’d fail her.

He was sure of it.

{ Chapter 16 }

Pen looked out the window of the room they had stayed in at the coaching inn, watching Strider talk to his driver on the street outside.

Even from this angle, he took her breath away. So many years had parted them, but having the last few days with him it was like her soul had found its place in the world again.

Which only made what she had to do next brutal. But she didn’t have a choice. Not after what he told her last night.

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