Prologue #3
“Lady Verity can decide for herself whether she wishes to be excused from the conversation,” he intervened smoothly. “Do you not think, Duchess?”
The duchess turned a shocked gaze upon him, her lips parted.
He could well understand her confusion. Theirs had been an easy relationship thus far.
King liked her. She was the perfect foil for Riverdale, daring enough to keep him in order, and a witty conversationalist. But if there were to be lines drawn between them, King knew without a doubt that his side was Lady Verity’s.
“O-of course she can,” the duchess stammered. “I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise. I only thought… Well, it hardly matters, I suppose.”
She turned with a troubled frown to her husband, who was eyeing King as if he were contemplating the best means of dispatching him.
“I don’t understand why everyone is suddenly so serious,” Verity interjected with her customary effervescence. “One would think you would be happy. Weddings are a cause for celebration.”
Weddings made King bilious. But he didn’t say so.
It wasn’t the wedding that mattered, after all.
It was what came after the ridiculous ceremony.
It was making Verity his. Now that he had made his decision, the notion of claiming her was becoming something of an obsession.
It filled his mind, raging and hot, like a fire unleashing its fury across the dry and brittle rib cage of an old building. It was positively incendiary.
“They are indeed a cause for celebration,” the duchess agreed, her tone placating.
King might have pointed out that the duchess’s own wedding to Riverdale had not been a cause for celebration, given that his chum had married her in secret haste. But he was feeling magnanimous. He would have Verity. He didn’t need to prod at the bear in his cage as well.
King gave Verity’s fingers a reassuring squeeze and then raised her hand to his lips for another kiss. “How are you feeling, darling? I shall defer to you.”
“A bit tired,” she admitted, her lush lips turning down at the corners. “My head is aching again.”
“Then you should have your rest,” he decided. “I will see you another day.”
“Tomorrow?” she asked.
“If you wish it.”
“Perhaps you and my brother can discuss…the details,” she murmured. “I know we wanted to have our honeymoon abroad, but now I can’t seem to recall just where.”
“I believe it was France,” he told her. “Paris for some new gowns, then perhaps a jaunt to the Riviera.”
It sounded plausible to him.
Her gaze searched his, growing distant. “I don’t remember deciding upon France.”
“You may always choose a new destination if there is one that you would prefer better,” he suggested.
“Kingham, I need to speak with you,” Riverdale bit out. “Alone.”
How tedious.
He sent his old chum a smile. “Of course.”
“Tomorrow,” Lady Verity repeated to him, her hold on him imperative, as if she feared he might disappear.
Likely, it was some deep-seated memory of the betrothed she had loved and lost worming through her thoughts now.
She didn’t want to lose him a second time.
He felt another pang somewhere deep within at her rare show of vulnerability.
He’d spied it once before, when he had caught her weeping at a ball.
“Tomorrow,” he promised softly.
Which was quite unusual for him. He never made promises. Not to women anyway, for he had no intention of keeping them. Frivolous, useless things, oaths and vows and promises. Or so he had always thought.
Lady Verity released her hold on him, and he mourned the loss of her touch. Some wild part of him yearned to snatch her up in his arms and carry her away at once. To take her to his town house and keep her there, where she belonged. But he couldn’t do that just yet.
So he watched politely as the duchess and Lady Verity excused themselves and then departed the drawing room before facing his irate friend.
The door had scarcely closed on the ladies’ backs when Riverdale turned on King with a snarl, his expression predictably murderous. “Would you care to explain to me just what the bloody hell is happening here?”
“I should think it rather straightforward. I am engaged to your sister.”
“The hell you are.”
King shrugged. “The lady and I say otherwise.”
“Verity isn’t herself, curse you.” Riverdale glowered. “The physician has explained that the blow to her head has addled some of her thoughts. She has no memory of the fire or what happened to her in the orphanage.”
“But she remembers that we have had an understanding,” he lied without conscience.
Riverdale was his friend, yes. Like the other members of their set—Brandon, Camden, Whitby, and Richford—King considered him a brother.
But there was something about what he felt for Lady Verity that transcended any fraternal connection to Riverdale.
King had always been unafraid to seize what he wanted, without compunction.
Loyalty to old bonds did not alter that.
“You had no understanding,” Riverdale countered.
King simply stared at his friend, willing him to deny it, not faltering. “We have been growing close.”
That much was true.
His calm reminder made Riverdale blanch. “If you have been improper with her—”
“I’ve done nothing of the sort,” King interrupted.
He was a scoundrel and a cad, and he was shockingly in dearth of morals, but even he would not stoop to seducing his friend’s innocent sister out of wedlock.
Riverdale nodded, looking relieved. “Thank Christ for that. But you must agree that this is highly irregular.”
King shrugged. “What is irregular? I waited a proper amount of time to allow my betrothed to recover from her injuries before calling. We would have told you about our plans. Eventually. The fire merely produced an unwanted impediment.”
Riverdale shook his head. “But none of this makes sense. Verity has been confused since she awoke. She’s not once spoken of Lord Leopold, the man she has been mourning for ten years. Instead, all she could speak of was you. It is as if he has been erased from her memory.”
King raised a brow. “I tend to have that effect upon the fairer sex. I blot out all memory of the unfortunate souls who have preceded me.”
“The physician said that her memory could have been affected by the blow,” Riverdale insisted.
“She seems to remember me quite well,” King pointed out cruelly.
His old friend glared at him. Riverdale was no doubt thinking of further arguments he might make. But there were none. No one was going to keep King from what he wanted. It didn’t matter how impossible, how perverse.
“Curse you, I don’t want you to marry my sister,” Riverdale bit out at last.
“Why not?”
“Need I elaborate?”
King held his friend’s glare. “I think you must.”
“You are a conscienceless rake,” Riverdale pointed out. “Perhaps the worst among us.”
“You are not wrong,” King allowed.
“Verity is kind and good.”
“Also true.”
“She deserves better,” Riverdale spat.
King smiled. “On that, my friend, we are in agreement. But tell me, what would you have her do, hmm? Would you prefer for your sister to remain unwed all her life? To never become a wife, a mother? To live in the past, forever tied to a dead man’s memory, with no future of her own?”
Riverdale paled again, and King knew he had laid his trap neatly. His friend was caught.
“You are saying you want to marry her, to begin a family?” Riverdale demanded.
Christ no. King didn’t want brats. He couldn’t bear the thought of children since Daphne. But King was no fool. He understood that this was the path to gaining what he wanted.
“Yes, I am,” he confirmed.
“I’m afraid I don’t believe a bloody word you’ve said.” Riverdale’s eyes narrowed. “If you do this, if you insist upon marrying my sister, I will never forgive you. Our friendship is dead. Do you understand me?”
King didn’t blink or hesitate. “If that must be the way of it, I understand completely.”
His mind had been made, and he wasn’t surrendering until he had his prize.