Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Frederick sat in the pleasantly appointed drawing room, his foot tapping gently against the carpet as he waited. Lord Timberley sat opposite him, looking equally as discomfited as his wife, Lady Timberley, went on the hunt for Miss Ravenshire.
It had taken Frederick a fair amount of time, money, and effort to identify her.
She did not live in London, and she had not associated with London Society in some years—she had quite fallen out of the public eye.
But when he researched her family, he discovered that the Ravenshires were an old family, one going back generations.
Miss Ravenshire was, then, irrefutably a lady, although she had not behaved as one.
“Ah,” Lord Timberley said as the door opened, a note of relief in his voice. “Here she is now.”
…And here she was indeed.
She limped into the room, her eyes flashing with defiance and her jaw hard. Frederick was not accustomed to people so outwardly despising him. Oh, plenty had done in his past, he knew. And he deserved their condemnation.
But this girl—this chit of a girl who had traveled down to London and interrupted his wedding, causing a scandal large enough that his bride’s father had pulled her out of the wedding entirely—did not share the same right to hate him.
If she hadn’t limped so badly, her weight resting rather heavily on her left leg rather than her right, he admitted that she might have been rather pretty. Despite that, even, there was something taking about her expression, the challenge in it.
The sharp angle of her jaw, the slim line of her nose, and those large, hazel eyes of hers. Today, they looked especially dark.
Behind her, Lady Timberley bobbed a curtsy. “Here she is, Your Grace.”
“Excellent.” He balanced the papers he had brought with him on his knee. “What do you have to say for yourself, Miss Ravenshire.”
He didn’t miss the way she glanced at her aunt and uncle, or the way her thin fists clutched at the material of her skirts. “I have nothing to say, Your Grace.”
“Is that so…” he said dryly. “I distinctly recall that not being the case when you interrupted my wedding. Quite the accusations you hurled at me, and in the hearing of my father-in-law-to-be, which was no doubt your intention. The wedding was called off, of course, as I’m sure you’re aware by now.
“The question is… why would you do such a thing?”
He left a pause, which she made no attempt to fill. Her ashen-faced aunt and uncle gaped at him in horror. When he’d arrived at the house, he’d assumed they’d known, either condoning her actions or not, but now, it seemed they were ignorant of her intentions.
“And how do you intend to repair the damage to my reputation?” he finished bluntly.
She sank into a chair, doing her best to conceal her motions, but he caught a flicker of discomfort across her face. Whatever ailed her leg obviously caused her pain, too. He would have more sympathy if she had not behaved in such a terrible, hoydenish way.
“Is this true?” her uncle demanded, the ire in his voice a mere rasp.
Miss Ravenshire’s nostrils flared, and she glanced at Frederick before looking away again. “I confronted him, yes,” she spoke in a low, measured tone. “And I would do it again. If your bride abandoned you, Your Grace, you only have yourself to blame.”
“That is categorically not true.” His anger sharpened, honed by days of poor sleep and hollow, gut-clenching stress. In one fell swoop, he had lost near everything, and all of London was ablaze with chatter about what he had done to this ‘poor’ girl.
His fists clenched at the thought. “Do you know what is being said about you? They are saying that you must have been my mistress and that I must have gotten you with child and abandoned you.” At the way her face paled, he gave an almost incredulous laugh.
“Would you truly ruin your own reputation in an attempt to ruin mine?”
“You ruined me first,” she whispered.
“Alice!” Lady Timberley turned to him with an apology written all over her face. “You must excuse her, Your Grace. I can’t think what has gotten into her—she must know that she has no acquaintance with you, or—”
“Do you truly not remember?” Miss Ravenshire demanded. “No, you have not gotten me with child, but you are the reason I am here like this, in this condition.” She waved a hand at her leg. “You are the reason my parents are dead!”
The words settled around them then, and he stared at her in newfound horror… and a bizarre fascination.
True, he had thought he’d recognized something about her, and the name Ravenshire had sparked a memory, but he had not connected the name to that of the family he had crashed into.
Brexton.
That had been the title of the couple he had killed.
Viscount and Viscountess Brexton.
He had even attended their funeral, sick with shame and grief.
Their daughter, Miss Alice Ravenshire, had not been in attendance.
He had seen her only once, when he had gone to apologize to her after the funeral, when she had looked through him with empty eyes and told him to never come near her again.
That shell of a girl was not the woman before him now.
Surely it couldn’t be. Where once her hazel eyes had been devoid of life, now they sparked with angry vengeance.
Where her lips had been pale and bloodless, now they were flushed and slightly parted, a temptation he could not even consider giving into.
She loathed him.
He had known it from the moment she’d walked into the church. And yet the reason why came crashing down around him all at once.
“Do you deny it?” she demanded into the silence.
How could he?
“I—” He gave a little shake of his head. “No, I do not.”
“Then you must see why I did what I did, and why I cannot offer you any recompense, not least in the form of marriage!”
His resolve hardened. “On the contrary, Miss Ravenshire, it means I am more responsible for protecting you. And such protection is necessary. My acquaintances have discovered your name, and it is being bandied about in conjunction with mine. The rumors are such that you will be ruined if you do not marry me, and my honor will be called into question if I do not marry you.”
He almost had the temptation to laugh at the exaggerated expression of horror that crossed her face. “No doubt that will not be a factor in your decision, but there’s little enough to be done about that. You will be ruined if you do not do this, and I cannot allow that.”
“You no longer have any say in my future,” she hissed, fingers clutching her skirts.
“Perhaps not, but here, I’m afraid I must insist. It is either that, or the financial compensation I came here intending to collect.” He glanced at her uncle. “Equal to three times the amount of the dowry I would have received otherwise.”
Lord Timberley’s face paled still further. The man had very little backbone, and no doubt he didn’t have the money to easily spend for this. And particularly not when marriage was being offered.
For Frederick, marriage made a particularly sick kind of sense. A way of making up for the terrible sin he had committed.
He could not bring the former viscount and viscountess back from the dead, but he could make their daughter a Duchess. He could give her a life of comfort and stability.
Not the life, perhaps, he would have chosen for himself. And having her around as a reminder of his guilt would be a constant torment. But he deserved no less.
As a way to atone, he would endure it.
She shook her head jerkily. “I will not marry you.”
“I am afraid, Alice,” her uncle said wearily, “there is no other choice.”
Alice felt as though she was trapped underwater as she watched the Duke and her uncle draw up the terms of her marriage. She had a respectable, if not large, dowry, and that was easily enough settled on the Duke.
“I will draw up marriage settlements, of course,” the Duke said with a languid flick of his hand. “If anything were to happen to me, she would retain her dowry and inheritance in full.”
How generous of you, she thought with so much bitterness, it bubbled up inside her. She wanted to scream and shout, but her aunt had a hand clamped on her arm.
The mention of money as compensation had been enough to loosen her uncle’s tongue and commit her to a marriage she would rather die than enter. Things were tight enough with Harriet about to embark on their London Season.
All the way through, Alice expected the Duke to mention something about her leg making her unsuitable for a bride, and to perhaps demand more compensation for that alone.
At the time of her accident, she had been courted by another gentleman—a Lord Billingsgate, who had the benefit of being young and handsome and wealthy.
But when he’d seen the damage the accident had wrought, he had dropped her faster than a hot coal.
In his eyes, she had become worthless.
But to her surprise, the Duke did not mention her handicap. He made no mention of her limp, nor her stick. Instead, though she sensed his anger, he approached everything from a brisk, businesslike sense. Her uncle, she knew, appreciated that about him.
Alice did not.
She would rather he had shouted at her. Proved himself to be the one at fault, rather than her. Not for the first time, she wished she had been less impulsive. Yes, she had wanted to ruin his marriage, but she had not wanted this.
She had not thought the Duke would find her. And if he did—a possibility she had been foolish to discount—she had not thought he would want her hand as a form of repayment.
Yet his motives did make sense.
She had read the scandal papers. She knew the world thought he had not done his duty by her; the only way of repairing that damage was to marry her.
Her reputation, it was true, was equally besmirched, but she hadn’t cared much for that. Thanks to her limp, she had few prospects as it was.
“I think that’s everything we need to discuss,” the Duke said, finally turning his attention back to her.
His ice-blue eyes were cold and distant, for all they were beautiful.
She hated admitting that any part of him was beautiful, but there it was—he was handsome. Anyone with eyes could see that much.
Only, underneath that fair hair and Roman good looks concealed a black soul.
“I will post an announcement at once,” her uncle nodded soberly. “In every newspaper, so there can be no missing the event.”
The Duke gave a thin smile at this but made no comment. Alice returned his stare, examining him as openly and defiantly as he examined her.
She would not bow to his impudence.
“Is there anything you would like to add, Miss Ravenshire?” he asked, but although his words were polite, there was a challenge in his expression, a silent warning.
He knew that she had no desire to marry him, and he was not really giving her the floor to vent her woes—no matter what she said, the marriage would still go ahead.
“I think you are despicable,” she muttered. “And I hope you regret this ill-fated marriage.”
“Alice!” her aunt hissed, fingers digging into her arm painfully.
But to her surprise, the Duke merely tipped his head back and laughed. “No doubt I shall. In fact, I think that extremely likely.”
He rose and offered her his hand, and although she still sensed that quiet anger about him, there was a certain level of… was that amusement in his eyes now?
Her rage amused him!
He carried no remorse for what he had done, or he could never have looked at her with such twinkling patience, such an expectation that she would snub him and that he would find it deeply amusing.
She gripped the arm of the chair, using it to lever herself up to her feet. “You may think you have the best of me, but in committing the rest of your life to me, you have made a grave error.”
“And yet we are to be married anyway.” He took her free hand and brought it to his lips.
“You are a firework, and no mistake, Miss Ravenshire, but I hope you will come to view our union with equanimity, even if you cannot view it with a kindly eye. After all, it is not merely my life you are condemning.”
He pressed his lips to the back of her hand, and she jerked violently. No one had kissed her bare skin before—during her London Season, she had always been wearing gloves. Always, in public, the model of propriety.
His mouth was soft and warm against her skin, and she felt her heart give an odd leap. When he looked at her, too, it was with a sense of puzzlement, as though he had expected the experience to be equally as unpleasant as she had, but found it was not.
“Goodbye, Miss Ravenshire,” he murmured, dropping her hand and allowing her uncle to show him to the door.
Alice dropped back into her chair, leg twinging, and looking after him.
Her aunt looked at her with a mixture of exasperation and pity. “If you had not behaved in such a rash way, you would not be in this position now. Really, Alice, if you could hold your tongue. He is a Duke, and you would do well to remember that.”
“He killed my parents,” she whispered, turning to her aunt, the tears finally forming. “How can he not see how terrible that is? What right does he have to escape with his life and happiness intact when I have suffered all these years.”
“Oh, my dear.” Her aunt stroked her finger across Alice’s cheek sympathetically. “What makes you think he has kept his happiness all these years? There is a shadow to him.”
Alice had seen no shadow. She’d seen his mockery, his determination, his implicit expectation that he would be obeyed. That was not a man suffering for his choices.
“You could do a lot worse,” her aunt continued. “And considering what you risked when you went to London—without our consent, I might add—I think you have gotten off very lightly.”
“Married to a murderer?”
“It was an accident, Alice. A terrible, terrible accident, the consequences of which he will have to bear for the rest of his life. And he has spent the past few years attempting to make amends. Consider all the ways he has changed.”
Alice closed her eyes. Even if that was true, it didn’t change the fact that he had ended lives. Other men—men who were not peers of the realm—would have suffered terrible things in exchange. All he had done was pay a fine and endure some talk until it passed.
“I don’t know if I can ever forgive him,” she whispered.
“For the sake of your marriage,” her aunt replied, “I hope you try.”