Chapter Twenty-Six #2
Rafe flew to his feet so quickly that she took a step back.
“If you gave me half a chance to speak, then you would hear me tell you how wrong those words. I want only you, Victoria!” His chest heaved with his frantic breaths.
“My heart wants you. I want only you and the way you care for our family—the way you view them as your family.” Rafe paused briefly, his beautiful eyes dancing across her features as if memorizing them.
“I have never before felt a part of a family, and it terrifies me…
but I would die before I intentionally did anything to put that in jeopardy.
“I never knew my mother; my father had no idea what to do with me or how to treat me. I’d only ever known love from Alice, and even that was ripped away from me. I’ve gone through life searching for love, though I’d never realized it—I recognize it now because of you.”
Victoria’s knees felt weak. She was torn between desperately needing to search out something to hold onto and not wanting to tear her eyes away from Rafe and his raw admissions.
“Please do not leave,” he begged her, his voice barely above a croak and his eyes glittering suspiciously. “If not for me, then for the children. They love you almost as much as I do.”
The world seemed to stutter like a guttering candle.
Victoria opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out.
Rafe’s eyes glittered suspiciously.
“I am begging you to hear me. I will fall to my knees if it pleads my case.” And he proceeded to do just that.
“I love you. I adore you. I am enamored of you. There is no other person in the world who has made me feel whole, like you do. I may not be worthy of it in return, but I am offering my heart up on a platter. Please, allow me to explain why I said what I did. Please.”
Behind Rafe, the front door banged open, and the void was instantly filled with Luke’s large frame. Hearing the echo of raised voices as he’d stood out in the drive, he’d let himself in.
With emotions as charged as they were in that foyer, it was precisely the worst moment for him to have done so.
Immediately, Rafe shot to his feet and spun on Luke, stalking toward him. “Don’t you dare interfere, Rockford.” She’d never heard her husband’s voice so low and dangerous.
For his part, Luke’s anger was just as volatile in his normally cool, calculating gaze. The situation was unbearably tense, to say the least.
Luke stepped further into the house and directed his booming words at Rafe.
“There is nothing you can do to stop me from removing my sister if that is what she wishes, Blackwood. It is best now if you step aside and allow it to happen. I am not above striking a lord; despite your sense of entitlement, your blood runs just as red as any other man’s. ”
Undeterred, Rafe stepped toe-to-toe with her brother. “Get out,” he snarled.
Victoria, still trying to process all that Rafe had professed before Luke’s arrival, was a bit slower to react than she should have been, but she finally came to her senses.
She dashed over to the men and tried to shove them apart and insinuate herself between their tall, powerful bodies before the situation came to blows.
She’d never seen her husband so angry. He was usually so playful and light with the children, so continuously thoughtful; however, this was a different side of him she hadn’t known existed.
Dark eyes, gritted teeth, white-knuckled fists.
This was a man who would fight for everything and anything he loved.
Victoria included.
The thought made her heart pound furiously.
Despite her efforts, the men refused to budge. She was no more effective than a gnat attempting to separate two warring stallions.
Annoyed by her interference, Luke made to move Victoria to the side…but Rafe caught his hand quicker than Victoria’s eyes could follow.
“Do. Not. Touch. Her.” Rafe’s warning was deadly and dangerous.
“You have no right—”
“I have every bloody right—you are the one who has no right. Victoria is my wife, and I will fight with every breath in my body to see that she is happy. If leaving me is what she wants, then I will not stop her. But I will bloody well not sit by while you barge into our home and demand she go with you. She is intelligent enough to make her own decisions about her life.” Rafe released Luke’s wrist. His eyes were dark pools of agony when they turned back to Victoria.
“Do you wish to leave?” She swore she could hear the shattering of his heart in his voice.
“I—I don’t—” she stammered, looking back and forth from one furious man to the other.
Emitting a frustrated growl, Victoria stalked across the entryway and into the library.
She shoved the heels of her hands into her eyes and willed the world to make sense once again.
She’d been so certain of her choice—of the rightness of leaving her marriage based on money and one-sided love—but could Rafe really be such a brilliant actor as what she’d just witnessed?
Was it possible that he’d lied to Lady Dallow and was telling her, Victoria, the truth?
The tap of two pairs of heavy boots entered the library after granting her only two minutes of peace to sort through her spinning mind.
“What is going on, Victoria?” came Luke’s baritone.
“Can I not have time to think?” she groaned.
“Why do you need time to think? When I saw you last night, you were—it was upsetting to see you in such a state. Why would you desire to stay in a situation that made you feel like that?”
“If she wishes to have time to think, then allow her to do so,” snapped Rafe.
There was a grudging pause before Luke said, “I suppose it will not matter if I take her now or in two hours.”
Victoria suspected it took everything Rafe had not to punch her brother square in the nose. Instead, Rafe said to her gently, “You should eat something.”
The thought of food made her nauseous, but she nodded and Rafe slipped from the room to find a servant to scrounge up food in the kitchen.
Victoria dropped heavily onto the nearest chair and exhaled heavily.
“Why the hesitation?” Luke inquired cautiously.
“This is my marriage,” she croaked, looking up at her brother. “I am not simply walking away from a temporary commitment. We are bound together.”
“And arrangements can be dissolved. If you are truly unhappy, come home with me. Come home to Papa. We will care for you.”
Victoria’s throat began to burn. She thought she’d been wrung dry of tears, but they once more threatened to spill over. “He says I misunderstood what was said,” she whispered, her eyes gazing unfocused into the distance.
“What did you misunderstand?” For all his support, Luke still did not know what had transpired the prior evening.
She exhaled a shaky breath. “He says he loves me.” A confused silence followed her statement, so she supplied, “I overheard him telling someone he did not love me, could never love me, and had only married me for the money I brought.”
“We suspected as much,” Luke said through gritted teeth.
“You suspected as much.” She swiped at the first tear to trail down her cheek.
“And you are far too forgiving.”
“Because I’ve fallen in love with him.” This stunned Luke into silence.
The muscles of his jaw worked furiously before he finally asked, “And what will you do today?”
“I do not know,” Victoria croaked and dropped her head into her hands.
Two hours later, after Victoria had managed to choke down some of the biscuits from the spread the staff had prepared, she felt no closer to a decision.
To their credit, the men left her to think, taking up seats on opposite sides of the room and glaring at one another.
Each of them wanted so badly to sway her one way or the other, but Victoria refused to speak on it.
She desired to keep her own counsel as she considered her choices.
Her stomach roiled from the stress, her head pounded from her thoughts, and her heart ached from the torture it was experiencing.
As if sensing the pall in the home, a distant rumble of thunder flitted through the grey clouds outside.
Suddenly, there was a frantic pounding of feet as Nan arrived in the doorway of the library, red-faced and panting. “Please,” she gasped, “please pardon the interruption. But…we cannot find…” She doubled over, breathing heavily.
Victoria went to her side and held her arm to steady her. “What has happened? What can’t you find?” Something must really be wrong to send the normally steady nursemaid so topsy-turvy.
“We cannot find Lord Dominic,” Nan said finally. A hint of color returned to her cheeks. “We’ve been searching the rooms and the gardens. We thought he was simply playing a game and hiding, so the staff didn’t want to worry you, but he is nowhere to be found.”
Rafe cursed beneath his breath and Victoria’s stomach dropped through the floor beneath her feet. It was a testament to how distracted and distraught all of them had been that none of them had realized this was going on in the rest of the house.
“Who is this lord who has gone missing?” Luke asked, clearly confused by the state of panic. “And why are we so concerned?”
“He is our nephew,” Victoria explained. “And he is only a boy.” More of the staff had collected in the hallway, every one of them with concern in their eyes and anxious stances.
Seeming to deflate, Nan collapsed at their feet and began to sob. “I only went to put the baby down for her morning nap after her feeding with the wet nurse. And he disappeared.”
“And we are certain he is nowhere in the house?” Rafe demanded in a tone that was somehow gentle and firm at once.
Another of the maids stepped forward to help Nan, who was too overcome by emotion and guilt to continue. “We found the back door ajar and some food was missing from the larder, including a fresh loaf of bread which had been left to cool on the table in the kitchen,” she explained.
Victoria went cold with dread. Dominic had run away—or at least he was trying to. There was no telling the kind of trouble or danger he might encounter. She was sure the expression of horror on her husband’s face mirrored her own.
It took two tries, but she was finally able to swallow the lump in her throat. “We will find him,” Victoria said to Rafe a little breathlessly. Though she’d meant to be reassuring, the words sounded frantic and uncertain to even her own ears.