Chapter 17 #2
He chuckled and extended his arm to her. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that, my dear. Will you not accompany me back to the ball? It’s only fair that you cease depriving the gathering of your presence.”
She eyed his arm. “I don’t know…”
“There is also the matter of your brother and your mother,” he pressed. “I would imagine they are both looking for you and wondering where you have gone. It would ease their minds if you emerged from hiding.”
She hesitated, thinking of what he had said. Maman and Riverdale would likely indeed be wondering at where she had gone. She didn’t want either of them to worry. Then there was also her new sister-in-law, the duchess. It was most unsporting of Verity to keep herself from the ball in Sybil’s honor.
“Come now, Lady Verity,” Kingham coaxed. “I don’t bite.”
She settled her hand in the crook of his elbow. “Very well.”
“Unless I’m asked to in very polite fashion,” he added with a flawless grin.
The memory faded.
How charming he had been. How handsome and debonair, caring and amusing, how very like the man she had come to know so intimately.
He had swept her out of the alcove, and later, they had danced.
From there, she recalled, they had struck an unlikely friendship.
He had donated to the Children’s Foundling Hospital.
But they had been friends.
Not in love.
Never in love.
King would have known that. And yet, when she suffered amnesia and had blithely announced their plans of marrying, he had not corrected her. Instead, he had gone along with her. He had married her.
They had been living as husband and wife all this time, sharing a bed, sharing a life.
Had any of it been true?
She was shaking. Trembling. There was no way she could return to the ball. Not in this state. She was sick. Her head hurt. Her heart ached.
And everything she thought she had known was a lie.
A growing sense of dread knotting in his gut, King took the steps two at a time.
He had finished his fifth circumnavigation of the ballroom by the time he was certain that Verity was not within its crowded confines.
Polite inquiries had yielded no hint of her whereabouts until, at last, a shamefaced Marchioness of Greetham, who had been soundly in her cups, confessed to accidentally spilling an entire flute of champagne on Verity’s gown.
The withdrawing room had yielded no spoils.
Finally, it had come down to Mrs. Sendall informing him that one of the chambermaids observed the duchess going into her apartments.
Presumably, she had done so to repair the damage to her gown.
But something didn’t sit right about her absence.
It had been far too long since he had last seen her across the ballroom.
This was her ball.
Her cause.
It hardly seemed like his wife to disappear.
Had she taken ill? Had someone paid her an insult?
With each step that took him closer, his heart pounded harder.
He needed to know that all was well, even as he told himself that his concern was unnecessary.
What could have happened to Verity in their own household, during the ball she had planned and organized and brought so beautifully to fruition?
He reached her door and knocked, but there was no answer within.
“Verity?”
He heard a muffled sound. One that sounded alarmingly like a sob.
King knocked again. “Verity, it’s King. I’m coming in.”
With that warning, he tried the latch, and the door swung open.
There, seated on the Axminster in a pile of crushed purple silk velvet skirts, was Verity. Her cheeks were wet, her eyes red. Her diamond parure was gone. In the place of the elaborate, sparkling necklace at her throat, she wore the simple gold locket.
And she was looking at him as if he were a stranger.
That was when he noticed the letters spilling out of the wooden box she had carried home from Riverdale’s town house.
His entire body seemed to freeze into ice, his blood pumping slower, thick in his veins. He felt vaguely light-headed, bile climbing up his throat.
She remembered.
Fucking hell, Verity remembered.
“What are you doing in here?” he managed to ask, finding his voice at last past all the emotion clogging his throat.
She didn’t speak for what seemed an eternity.
And then, finally, she did. “I know, Peregrine.”
Not King but Peregrine. His stupid, hated given name.
The one he never used because it had belonged to his sire before him, and he’d be damned if he would be forced to answer to the name and the title of the man he’d abhorred.
King was who he was. Verity had never, not once, referred to him by that loathsome name. He hated that she was doing so now.
“What do you know?” he asked with a calm detachment that was likely down to shock.
Her jaw clenched. “That you are not Leo. That I am not in love with you. I know that the two of us were never truly betrothed.”
That I am not in love with you.
For a moment, he didn’t move. The words struck with a precision that left him oddly hollow, as though something vital had been quietly removed. He ground his molars, trying to steel himself against the agony. “You are correct. I am not he.”
She shook her head, a fresh rush of tears cascading down her cheeks. “I don’t understand. I was confused, and you must have known that. Why did you not correct me?”
Why, indeed? It was a question he had asked himself many times.
If he had gently explained, if he had demurred, everything might have unfolded differently between them.
But then, if he had done so, he never would have had her.
And not having Verity in his life was an anguish he couldn’t bear to face.
“Because I didn’t wish to,” he answered as honestly and carefully as possible.
“You didn’t wish to?” she repeated, her voice incredulous.
“As I said. I chose instead to go along with what you said that day.”
“Why? What could you have possibly stood to gain?”
Everything.
The word was there, on the tip of his tongue. But it felt too vulnerable. Too revealing. How to explain to her emotions that were more complex and confusing than any he had ever known? He could scarcely even make sense of it himself.
“I wanted you,” he said instead.
“Me? You could have had any woman in London falling at your feet if you had but snapped your fingers.”
Yes, but she would not have been you.
He couldn’t bring himself to make that admission either.
Belatedly, he realized he was still standing at the threshold, holding the door, where anyone in the hall could eavesdrop upon them. The shock had rendered him too numb to move, but he forced himself into motion now, allowing the portal to close at his back and moving toward her.
“Did you leave the ball to read these old letters?” he asked softly, trying to comprehend what had happened.
“No.” She shook her head, then dashed at the tears on her cheeks with the back of her hand.
“I came here because I wanted to mop the champagne off my gown. The lady’s withdrawing room had a line.
But when I traveled up the steps and reached this room, everything returned to me all at once.
It was as if I had been hit in the head a second time.
I remembered the ball, you coming to me in the alcove and giving me your handkerchief.
I remembered Leo. I remembered why I was crying. I-I remembered it all.”
He reached Verity and sank to his haunches so that he was no longer hovering over her, but instead eye to eye. “I intended to tell you.”
Her face crumpled. “Then why didn’t you?”
Goddamn. It was as if his own heart were being torn from his chest, bloody and still beating, and he could do nothing but watch as the life left him.
“I was trying to find a way,” he forced out, “a time, to make it easier for you.”
“Well.” She laughed bitterly. “Thank you so much for your consideration, Your Grace.”
“I can explain, Verity.”
“I very much doubt that you can.”
“Let me try,” he begged.
“Why should I?” she cried, shaking an unfolded letter at him as if it were a weapon she might use to cudgel him. “What can you say that will change the fact that we have been living a lie?”
“We haven’t been living a lie,” he denied. “The lie was that we were engaged and were in love. But what we have built together is true.”
“You let me believe I was in love with you and that you were in love with me.” She pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle a sob.
“My God, you even told me you loved me. How you must have been laughing to yourself this whole time. Was this nothing more than a charade to you? Did I amuse you sufficiently?”
He reached for her. “I do love you, Verity. If you believe anything I say, believe that.”
“Don’t touch me,” she spat. “I don’t think you even know what love is.”
He recoiled, not wanting to push her. She was distraught and understandably so.
“None of this was a lark to me,” he told her, needing her to know that much. “I have never laughed at you, and neither did I set out intending to deceive you.”
“Then what were your intentions? I cannot comprehend why you would do this. Why would you marry me? Why not simply be honest? You could have told me that day over tea. You could have explained. I may not have remembered, but I would have understood. But this…what you have done…it is unforgivable.”
He was losing her.
King could see it in her eyes, the resentment, the anger, the betrayal. The love that had been there mere hours ago—never truly his to claim—was gone.
“I am sorry, Verity,” he rasped. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“But you did.” She blinked as her eyes filled with new tears. “I swore I would never marry after Leo died, and you took that away from me.”
“Would you have preferred to wither away, dressed in your mourning weeds, forever a dependent upon your brother, with no life of your own?” he demanded, frustrated with himself, with her.
This was not how he had wanted to reveal the truth to her. Not with a ballroom full of bloody guests milling about below.
“I wasn’t withering,” she denied. “I was living the life I had chosen for myself. The one you took away from me.”
“You were the one who wanted to marry.”
More tears ran down her cheeks. “Because I took a blow to the head.”
He wanted to dry those tears. Christ, how he hated that he was the cause of them.
He ground his molars, stifling the impulse, before he responded. “I had no notion of whether you would ever recall anything of the past.”
“No doubt, you hoped I wouldn’t. That would have been so much more convenient for you.”
“Not if it meant hurting you,” he snapped. “Damn it, Verity. You know me. You know us. You know how good we are together.”
She shook her head again. “I don’t think I know anything about you. Not really.”
That hurt, cutting through him with as much precision as a blade. Because he had shown himself to her. He had lowered his guard. He had told her about his own past, had revealed parts of himself to her he had never shared with another soul.
“You do know me,” he countered. “I am still the man you married, the man you professed to love.”
“But you aren’t the man I love,” she cried. “Because he is dead and buried.”
The words hit him like a slap.
He nodded, feeling numb. “Right. Perhaps this is a discussion we should have later, when we aren’t hosting a charity ball with hundreds of guests invading our home.”
She sniffed, wiping at her tears with her hand.
He extended his handkerchief, but she eyed it dubiously.
“Take it,” he urged.
“I don’t want it,” she said.
“Because it is mine?”
“Yes.”
“Fine.” He stuffed the bloody linen square back into his coat pocket and stood. “Shall I ring for your lady’s maid to help you refresh your toilette?”
“I’m not wearing the diamonds if that is what concerns you,” she said bitterly.
“No, Verity. The fucking diamonds are the least of what concerns me,” he snarled, feeling raw and vicious and angry. So blasted angry. “Throw them out the goddamned window to the street below for all I care.”
Her lips trembled as she clutched the gold locket from her dead beau. “Now I understand why you never wanted me to wear this. It must have been a reminder of your lies and the fact that I am still in love with Leo.”
He had feared she would act as if the love they had for each other had ceased to exist the moment she regained her memory. And that was worse than her anger and resentment.
It was worse than a death.
“Yes,” he admitted hoarsely. “It was a reminder. I didn’t know what was in it, and I didn’t want to make love to my wife if she was wearing a lock of her dead lover’s hair.”
Her lips tightened. “His hair isn’t in the locket.
It’s the first flower he ever gave me, a forget-me-not that I pressed in a book and slipped inside so I would never forget the day he told me he loved me.
We were walking by the stream together at Riverdale Abbey, and he recited his favorite poem to me.
After the fire, I thought it was you. You knew that, but you never corrected me. ”
King stared down at her, surrounded by the evidence of her everlasting love for another man, tears on her cheeks, and knew he would never love anyone the way he loved her.
“If I had corrected you, then I never would have married you, and if I had never married you, I never would have had the chance to love you,” he managed. “Forgive me for thinking the risk worth the reward.”
She stared at him, her face unreadable, save for the sadness. Even in her fury, skirts pooled around her in a heap, tears on her cheeks, her nose and eyes red from sobbing, she was breathtaking. She was the other half of him, and he was going to do everything he could to win her back.
But first, they had a ball to host.
“I’ll send for your lady’s maid,” he repeated when she didn’t speak. “Wear the locket if it pleases you. Be angry with me all you like, but you owe it to yourself to come back to the ballroom and finish your duties as hostess. The orphans are depending upon you.”
She took a deep, hitched breath, nodding. “I will collect myself and return forthwith.”
He offered her a formal bow, feeling so much like a stranger to her, although he had touched and kissed and tasted every inch of her body. “I’ll await you below.”
With that, he turned and walked away from the only woman he had ever loved, leaving her surrounded by the memories of the man she had never stopped loving.
The ghost had won.