Ash had never struck a woman, and he didn’t intend to start. But he was tempted now, in ways he could never have conceived. Fury exploded within him like a barrage of cannon fire.
“If you were a man,” he said, “you would be facing the end of my pistol tomorrow at dawn. As it is, I’m tempted to call out your brother to answer for your behavior.”
“You want to call out my brother?” She laughed bitterly. “My brother wanted to challenge you back in April. You can thank me for talking him out of it. I convinced him there would be richer satisfaction in letting you live out the remainder of your miserable days. Twisted. Monstrous. Alone.”
“I’m not alone,” he said. “Not anymore. And that’s what bothers you. Isn’t it?”
“I can’t imagine what you mean.”
“Can’t you? It’s all becoming quite clear to me. You’re humiliated, but not because of Emma’s presence. You’re ashamed for the ton to see me. Because once they do, everyone will understand the reason behind our broken engagement. They’ll know precisely what a vain, shallow creature you are—and they will see that Emma is worth a hundred of you. Yes, Annabelle. I can imagine that would be humiliating.”
Annabelle opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again.
Ash was certain the silence wouldn’t last. He turned, eager to gather Emma and get the hell out of this theater.
But when he did, his wife was nowhere to be found. She must have slipped out. He’d been so occupied berating Annabelle, he hadn’t even noticed.
With a muttered curse, Ash bolted down the corridor and raced down the staircase. He didn’t see her in the entry, so he dashed out into the night. The rain had started, and that didn’t help his cause.
He found the coach—no, they hadn’t seen Her Grace—and then he ran up the steps in front of the theater, searching through the rain for any glimpse of red.
The play would end soon. Once the audience poured out into the streets, he would lose any hope of finding her in the crowd.
He picked a direction at random and charged down it, stopping at the corner to look in all directions. He pushed the rain from his face, impatient.
There.
There, down a narrow side lane—was that a bit of red?
He jogged in pursuit. “Emma! Emma!”
By the time he’d covered half the distance, she turned around. “Stop,” she shouted. “Leave me be.”
He slowed to a walk. For every step he took toward her, she made one in reverse.
“Can’t we discuss this somewhere less wet?” he called to her.
“What is there to discuss?”
“Emma, don’t play games. I know you’re distraught.”
“I’m fine, Duke. That’s what you wanted me to call you, isn’t it? Duke?”
“You’re clearly not fine.” He held up his hands in a truce. “Don’t mind anything she said up there. Her ire wasn’t aimed at you, it was aimed at me. Annabelle is . . . Annabelle. Still, you’ve every reason to be angry or overwrought.”
She gave a defiant sniff. “There’s nothing to be angry or overwrought about, Duke.”
“Really, you can cease calling me that.”
She wiped the droplets from her face. “Perhaps I will use Ash, after all. It’s growing on me. So very flexible, you know. Horse’s Ash . . . Jack-Ash . . . Ash-hole. ”
Very well. He deserved that. And if he had been any less desperate to get her out of this rain, he probably would have laughed.
The rain became a downpour. Ash tried to get close enough to wrap her in his cloak, but she only retreated further, staying out of his reach.
“Emma.”
She hugged herself tight. “It’s my own fault. You never promised me anything. You specifically promised me nothing. We had a bargain. A cold, impersonal agreement of convenience. Somewhere along the way, I stupidly allowed myself to dream a little. To hope that . . . that there might be more.”
Dream. Hope. More.
She was standing in the rain in a darkened alleyway, weeping and distraught. Ash should have felt remorseful, he supposed. Instead he swelled with joy.
Dream. Hope. More.
Those words gave him life. Three slender threads he could braid into a rope and cling to with everything he had.
“You weren’t foolish. Or if you are a fool, I’m one, too.”
“At least it finally makes sense. I always wondered why you chose me. Now I know. You married me to get back at her.”
“No.” He moved toward her again, and this time she allowed him to approach. “I’m telling you, that’s all wrong.”
“She refused you, and you wanted to humiliate her in return.”
“She never refused me. I refused her.”
She stared at him through the sheets of rain. “But you said . . . Everyone said—”
“That’s the way it’s done. A broken engagement is always said to be the lady’s choice, to protect her reputation. It was the decent thing to do.”
“Decent. Of all the people in the world, you would be decent to her.”
“At the time, I believed she deserved it. And I cared about her.”
She stumbled back a step, blinking the wetness from her thick, dark lashes.
Ash, you idiot. That was the worst possible thing to say.
“Her family desperately wanted the connection, the title. And my money, of course. She was willing to go through with it, for them. Despite her personal . . . reluctance.”
“Reluctance” was the gentler word. The more accurate one was “revulsion.”
“I cared enough about her not to force her into a marriage she didn’t want. I cared for my pride, as well. I didn’t want a wife who wept every time I bedded her. I didn’t want to listen as she vomited into a basin afterwards.”
“She wouldn’t have—”
“Yes, she would have done so.”
She had done so.
He’d kept his intended bride at bay for months after his return to England. Nearly a year passed before he permitted her to see him. By then, he’d regained the strength to stand, and his open wounds had thickened to scars.
Even so, the horror and disgust on her face as she beheld him . . . It was etched in his memory, carved into his very bones. She’d run from the room, but not far enough. He could hear her every heaving retch as her stomach emptied, and her every sob as her brother tried to comfort her in the corridor.
I can’t, she’d said. I can’t.
You must, he’d replied.
The duke will expect an heir. How could I bear to lie with . . . with that?
With “that,” she said.
Not with “him.”
With “that.”
Ash had prepared himself for her visit, or so he’d believed. He thought he’d steeled his pride sufficiently against a horrified reaction, the reluctant agreement of a joyless bride.
He’d been wrong. Her words had gutted him. He was not even a man anymore. He was a “that.”
“Do you want the truth, Emma?”
The lift of her shoulders was more shiver than shrug. “Why not? We have always had honesty, if nothing else.”
“The truth is this.” He took her in his arms. “I cared for Annabelle Worthing’s feelings more than I cared for yours.”
She sobbed and struggled. “Then let me go.”
“I’d sooner die.” He lashed his right arm around her waist and used his good hand to cup her chin, tilting her face to his. Holding it tight, forbidding her to turn away. “Look at me.”
She sniffed, blinking away the rain.
He gripped her chin and gave her head a little shake. “Damn it, Emma. Look at me.”
Look at me. Look at me. Because you’re the only one who does. Likely the only one who ever will.
At last, her dark eyes tipped up to meet his.
The wounded look in her gaze . . . it clubbed him like a cudgel made of shame. Closing his eyes, he framed her face between his hands. He pressed his forehead to hers, sheltering her face from the rain.
“No, Emma. I didn’t care for your feelings. It didn’t matter if you wanted me or if you didn’t. I didn’t have the patience for courtship, couldn’t take the time to make you feel brave and witty and pretty and intelligent, and all the things I adored about you from the first. I certainly didn’t have the decency to let you walk away. I cared only for myself. Do you hear me? I only knew I had to have you.”