Chapter 5
“This is hell. I am in hell,” Evander muttered.
When he was held captive at sea, convinced he was going to die a painful death at any moment, he thought that would be the worst moment of his life.
Now, as he sat in the modiste’s chair surrounded by lacey things he could not help but imagine Helena wearing, he realized he was wrong.
What made it worse was that Helena was not far from him at all, and she had no doubt removed all her clothing to try on her wedding dress.
The woman he loved. The woman he longed for was just a curtain away. Naked. And all he could do was sit still and wait for her to come out in her wedding dress. A wedding dress she would not wear for him, but for another man.
Evander rubbed his temples, wishing he had never agreed to Damien’s favor.
He had braced himself to see Helena again, but the moment his eyes landed on her the day before, looking so stunning and perfect, he had felt like someone had punched through his chest with an anvil, and he had yet to recover.
He had been intent on staying as far away from her as possible, both in space and in conversation, but the moment he saw her pale after spotting this Lord Ingram’s carriage, he broke his own rule.
He hated how sickly she had suddenly looked, as if she, too, had taken a harsh punch to the chest. Whatever the man did to her or her family, it was certainly not good.
Even if she would not admit it, he knew that to be true.
“Nearly finished!” the modiste called from behind the curtains.
“Splendid,” he replied, and bit back a groan as he dropped his head in his hands.
He wanted this over with, and quickly, too. And by God, did he want Aggie to come back. Even with the modiste stealing Helena behind a curtain the moment she had entered the shop, he had become acutely aware of how much more intimate their time felt without a chaperone.
“Oh, my stars!” he heard the modiste gasp. “Oh, Miss Robinson, how lovely you look!”
“You think so? I do not know… I want to ask my companion his opinion,” he heard Helena reply.
Evander sat up in his seat at once, his heart racing. With as much as they had bickered, he was surprised that she would want to hear his opinion on anything at all.
“Oh, no, Miss Robinson, he cannot!” the modiste replied. “It is bad luck for the groom to see his bride in her wedding dress before the ceremony!”
“Worry not, he is not the groom but a simple… family friend,” Helena replied.
Evander felt another punch to his chest.
Not the groom. Simple family friend.
He truly was in hell.
A moment later, the modiste and Helena came around the corner, and Evander had to slap his gloved hand over his mouth so he would not bite through the leather.
The white silk and lace overlay wedding dress was a revelation on her figure.
Its modest cut left plenty to the imagination, yet it did well to accentuate the swell of her breasts and highlight the delicateness of her collarbone and long, graceful neck.
The silk clung to every line of her: the dip of her waist, the flare of her hips, the curve of her backside where the fabric pulled taut. He suddenly had the urge to sink his teeth into these buttocks, the modiste and Jeremy be damned.
Evander’s mouth went dry. He knew, with a certainty that bordered on madness, exactly what he would do if she were his.
He would put his hands on those hips. He would set his mouth to the nape of that graceful neck and work his way down the line of her spine, button by button, until the dress pooled at her feet and there was nothing left between his lips and her bare skin.
He would take his time. He would make her forget she had ever known another man’s name.
His hands curled into fists against his thighs. He would do none of it. He would sit in this chair like a civilized man and watch another man’s bride turn before the glass, and he would say nothing, and he would want her until it killed him.
It was, he thought bitterly, the cruelest joke of all. They had burned the man half to death and named him a monster, and the monster was the only part of him with the mercy to stay in his chair.
They called him a beast. The maids who fainted, the matrons who whispered behind their fans, they were certain of it. But a beast would have crossed the room already. Beasts would rip that dress with their claws and—
“Your Grace, do you think Jeremy will like it?” Helena asked, jolting Evander from his dark thoughts.
His eyes shot up to Helena’s face.
“He is not one to appreciate frills, so it feels rather simple. However, simple can also be elegant, can it not?” she went on, smoothing her hands down over her waist.
He forced a nod as he watched her hands slowly glide over the expanse of her body, fantasizing that it was his hands touching those subtle curves instead of her own. He would trace those curves with his hands. His mouth. His tongue. Then he would—
“Your Grace! Please say something!” she insisted, giving him a pleading look. “You obviously know Jeremy better than I do, so do you think he will like it?”
I do not give a devil’s damnation if he likes it or not. Right now, I hate him.
He swallowed hard, forcing the words down to his gullet, where they would sour his stomach.
“It is… adequate,” he forced out instead, ignoring his rather unfriendly thoughts.
“Adequate,” Helena sighed, her spring green eyes mirroring her obvious exhaustion with him. Her head dipped a little as she closed her eyes for a brief moment, then when she looked back at him, it was not exhaustion, but a pleading look he saw.
“Of course. Why I thought you would help is beyond me,” she said, her hurt clear in her voice.
Evander mentally kicked himself. He hated treating her like this.
Pretending as if he did not have a single care in the world for her when all he cared about was her.
He had to remain cold and distant, though.
He had no choice. One word of praise could lead him to pour his heart out to her, and he simply could not let that happen.
For Jeremy’s sake. For even if Evander hated him in that moment, he was not going to risk stealing his friend’s soon-to-be bride away from him.
Just as he was floundering for a response, Aggie finally returned, and with a quickness, Evander shot out of his chair.
“I shall allow you ladies to finish up on your own and wait for you in the carriage,” he stated, already opening the door.
As he did, a gust of cool wind blew in, and with it, a few droplets of rain. Though he was not cold, he shivered.
“Do make haste,” he said more gruffly than intended. “I do not want this storm forcing us to stay in town.”
Not waiting for any of them to reply, Evander pulled the door shut with a harsh jerk and strode toward the carriage.
Instead of getting in right away, though, he removed his hat, turned his face up to the darkening sky, and let the cold rain fall down on him, hoping its icy temperature would soothe the fire raging in his heart.