Chapter Twenty-One #3
He’d called her stubborn. Unchanging.
She’d accused him of the same.
They’d both been right.
But they were both wrong.
And she’d show him just how much.
“Sir Alexander was just leaving,” she said, her gaze pointed at her cousin. “He will not be returning.”
A muscle jumped in Alexander’s cheek, but his smile was genteel. “A lack of manners does not suit you, Annabeth. I thought my father and I taught you better.”
Jackson stiffened.
But Anna wasn’t without power, without support. Not when her husband held his tongue yet again, allowing her to lead this fight. To do what needed doing for her to regain a piece of herself too long left forgotten.
No more secrets.
No more hiding from the shadows.
“What you taught me, cousin, was that those possessing a title do not always, in fact, deserve the honorifics.” She stepped forward, and a sense of justice washed through her as her cousin jolted back.
“You are as weak and repulsive a creature as you ever were. A man without morals or decency or basic familial loyalty. And I pity you.” Saying the words out loud, Anna knew them as truth. Her truth.
A truth that she would never let be silenced again.
Her slippered feet marched across the wooden boards underfoot.
One step. Two. Another.
And another. Six years of fear and trauma dispelled, one for each step forward until she stood directly in front of her cousin.
She looked up into his frozen face, nothing but challenge in her eyes, for him to look away, to forget all he’d taken from her.
“You were the monster of my waking hours. Always lurking, always watching. Looking where you had no business. Touching when you had no right.” She bit the inside of her cheek, the pain keeping the tears burning behind her eyes from falling.
A shake of her head. “I know the egregious way my uncle treated you, the ways he too acted in ways a father should never toward their children.”
Alexander paled. “You knew?”
Anna nodded. Her uncle had been an unwell man: the hitting, the beratement, the harassment, taking sick pleasure in causing those weaker than him pain. None more so than toward his son.
“I was there. I suffered alongside you, by you. I felt. I heard. I saw.” She wouldn’t look away now. “And I understand you.”
The words were like glass in her throat, but Anna kept going.
“You’ve had every opportunity to see the truth of the world for yourself. To witness right from wrong with your own two eyes, away from the cruelties of your father, and you’ve chosen to remain as you’ve always been.”
She raised her chin once again, this time for the last time. “For your insult here, I will never forgive you. We may share blood, but that is all we will ever share.”
Words had power. So did airing one’s grievances. Something like peace settled around her shoulders, and a smile curled her lips, because she was free.
At last.
A small laugh escaped her, and she figuratively turned her back on her cousin for once and for all. “You are dismissed, Sir Alexander.”
Her cousin stared at her, and Anna must have imagined his crumbled expression held a note of regret.
He shuffled toward the door, defeat in his shoulders.
A last thread of pity pulled tight. “Elise is well,” Anna called.
Alexander stilled.
Anna went on, “She’s as facetious as ever, but healthy. Content.” Refusing to answer any of Anna’s letters since her return to London, but that could very well mean Elise was lying low, probably having realized Alexander was in town before Anna had.
This time, when Alexander glanced back, there was a glassy quality to his eyes. He said nothing, but the nod he gave was grateful. He continued toward the door . . .
Where Jackson stepped aside without comment. He’d remained silent through their entire exchange.
Of course, she could hardly expect her protective husband to abandon his nature entirely.
Jackson’s eyes were on her, piercing, searching, so beautiful, her chest ached. Without looking away, he held up a single hand to stop her cousin’s exit. “You will never address my duchess by her given name ever again. She is and forever will be Your Grace.”
Alexander paused.
Anna did too. Jackson’s tone was so cold, so emotionless.
Alexander nodded again. A jerky gesture.
But Jackson wasn’t finished. This time, Jackson’s attention zeroed in on Alexander’s face, and whatever her cousin saw there had him taking a step backward. “Hear me well, Sir Alexander: insult my wife ever again, and I will dispose of you.”
Silence.
One second. Two.
Alexander continued to stay rooted to the floor.
“Leave, you insufferable rodent, before I sic the dogs on you and let them make a feast of your innards,” Jackson said. In the same tone a gentleman may have made a passing remark on the weather or a certain horse’s chances at winning the next race. And all the more terrifying.
Alexander scrambled out.
Something in the foyer crashed.
Anna didn’t look. Her eyes were on her husband. On the hard set to his jaw, and the stiffness of his shoulders. A man who stood there, body humming with restrained want. A man of action. A man who’d stayed his hand. Barely controlling his anger.
For her.
Always for her.
He’d lied by omission, but words had never been their first language.
Unsteady after facing her cousin, Anna stumbled the few remaining steps between them and stopped, her body sparking. Alive. On fire.
For him.
The man she loved. Had always loved.
A man she’d been afraid to let in.
The same man who’d never left her heart for a single second.
She grabbed him by the lapels, her nails digging into the supple fabric. “Husband,” she said.
His throat worked, the heat of anger in his eyes banking with uncertainty.
“You will refer to me as ‘wife,’” she ordered.
“Wife.” One word. Gruff. Feral.
Perfect.
He didn’t understand yet. But he would.
“You trusted me,” she said.
Those blue eyes blazed with new life. “I’ve always trusted you.”
She nodded, her eyes burning for a completely different reason. He saw her. Had always seen her. It was her turn to see. “You didn’t push me away six years ago because you stopped caring for me.”
“I’ve always cared for you.” Mirrored words, a repetition that held no less impact.
He’d never turned her away.
Love washed away the last sourness of her interlude with her cousin.
Alexander was gone.
Jackson was here.
And she loved him beyond measure. Him. The man, the duke, the violent brawler, and the gentleman.
Anna nodded again. “Now that that is settled—”
She kissed him.
A pressing of lips that had them both groaning at the contact.
Large hands grasped her waist and pulled, nearly crushing her to his chest.
Not close enough.
Her hands loosened in his coat and slid up and over his shoulders to find the satin curls at the back of his neck to drag him closer still.