Chapter 5 #2
Unfortunately, their cousin’s attempts were futile.
“But if Meghan didn’t invite Hartwell, then who—”
“That will be all.” The duke spoke with a chilling lack of emotion.
Not a further word was spoken.
Fleur was the first returned home to her parents, Lord and Lady Abington’s Mayfair residence.
Meghan sneaked a glance through the heavy velvet curtains as her cousin—lucky girl—was escorted inside by the loyal family butler.
Then the carriage continued down the cobbled street to Meghan’s more modest, less ostentatious, less everything family townhouse.
“Thank you for delivering us home, Your Grace!” Andromena said happily. “As I said, we had a most wonderful evening.” Her innocent, always cheer-filled sister looked at Meghan. “Isn’t that right, Meghan?”
Meghan’s gaze remained locked on stoic-faced, Hartwell.
Her betrothed answered for her. “You may go, Miss Smith.”
For a moment, something shifted in Andromena’s eyes. Her sister looked worriedly at Meghan.
She mustered a smile for the younger girl’s benefit.
A servant arrived and helped Andromena down.
In a desperate bid, Meghan took a step to follow her retreating sister.
“Not you yet, my dear,” he said coolly. “I require a word with you.”
No, the Duke of Hartwell would not let her off so easily.
The moment the door shut, he spoke.
“Not a word,” he clipped out in austere tones—far more menacing than any bellow would have been. “Not a single word,” he repeated.
His was nothing more than an exercise to display his control of Meghan. A reminder of his superiority. She scrunched her toes deep into the soles of her slippers until her arches ached.
“Have I been a less than tolerable betrothed to you?” he asked, promptly volleying another charge. “Are you determined to humiliate me, Miss Smith?”
Meghan met him with calm. “No,” she said evenly. “I would never—”
Hartwell glared her into silence.
“Then what, by God, would dare make you steal off in the middle of the night to Lord and Lady Rutland’s masquerade?” It was in that final query that he raised his voice.
Heart racing, Meghan jumped.
This is who would be her husband for the remainder of her days? She would be damned if she cowered.
Meghan set her jaw and refused to look away. “It was not about you, Your Grace,” she said with forced steadiness. “I came for myself. I came because I had never been.”
He peered down the length of his hawkish nose at her. “Miss Smith, let it be clear—if you had been before, you would not, even now, be my betrothed.”
Her heart leapt. Was he saying…?
He mocked with a thin smile. “Worry not your pretty head, you shall be my duchess.”
That’s what he thought she cared about? “I assure you,” she said tightly, “I have no interest in being a duchess.”
The moment those words left her mouth, Meghan understood how they must sound to him.
One frosty brow winged upward.
“Ah,” he said coolly, “then you should have proceeded far differently with my courtship of you.”
She was making a mess of this.
“No, Your Grace. I didn’t mean to suggest… That is…what I intended to—”
The duke lifted a staying hand, and her words trailed off at once.
“The wedding proceeds as planned, Miss Smith.”
Miss Smith.
Her panic mounted.
In less than a fortnight, she would marry this man she referred to as Your Grace, and who referred to her currently as Miss Smith. There would be no warmth. No affection.
But there would be a shipping alliance further cemented.
“Do not look so doleful, my dear betrothed,” he said, infusing his tone with a falsified warmth. “You will be free to have your affairs—no matter how sordid they may be.” He paused deliberately. “That is, after you provide me with a rightful heir. And another son to quickly follow.”
“A broodmare,” she seethed.
He shaped his mouth to something cutting. “What other reason is there for marriage?”
Meghan lingered, searching his face for a fracture, some sign he didn’t mean what he said. She found none.
The sparse contents of her stomach threatened to climb back up.
How could she walk down the aisle and surrender herself: name, body, and very soul to such a cold-hearted gentleman? In one breath, he demanded her obedience and in the next revealed how little he cared for Meghan by speaking of her with another man.
A clammy sweat popped upon her skin. She shifted awkwardly to leave the carriage like some sort of lackwit, staring at his stoic visage. In all the months of dutiful smiles and practiced gratitude, she had never glimpsed this side of him: ruthless, isolating, and unyielding.
“I hurt you,” she blurted. It needed to be said. “That’s why you are behaving so.”
The duke arched an eyebrow.
Encouraged, she leaned closer. “I understand that you are displeased with me,” she said softly. “But I would have you know, Your Grace, I am eager to be your wife. A true partner, as Linnie is to Captain Tremaine.” Did she in part issue that as a reminder?
“Eager, are you?” His voice emerged smooth like a silk-wrapped blade, and sharp as one too.
The crudity of his tone she had never heard before. It unnerved far more than anger ever could. It transported to the day they’d been explicitly introduced for the possibility of a match.
He had sized Meghan up like she was the trussed Christmas goose and he a cook measuring her market worth.
She felt even smaller now.
And he knows it too…
The duke shot a hand up. Meghan’s gasp was drowned out by the thwack of his fist connecting with the carriage ceiling.
His bewigged footman brought the door closed, shutting Meghan and the duke away—alone.
Her heart hammered.
And where with August, she couldn’t have brought herself to leave, everything within her now urged flight.
Holding her gaze, the duke patted his knee once and then stretched his arms wide along either side of the leather squabs.
Meghan glanced down at his lap.
Confused, she looked at him.
“Come, my dear girl. None of the McQuoid ladies is known for their intellect, but you’re clever enough to know when your future husband gives an order.”
Slap-slap.
Meghan looked at his broad thighs, thighs more powerful than a duke’s ought to be, and stilled.
She forced herself to meet his eyes.
The duke, like some cold, cruel king delighting in his power over the peons in his realm, smiled.
He wanted her to climb onto his lap like a disobedient child.
Her stomach twisted. Tell him no. Tell him to go to the Devil.
But she couldn’t. And he knew that.
She forced herself to move. To comply. This, she realized, was to be her penance. His way of showing her who would hold the power when they married.
After she settled stiffly on his lap, only then did he lower his other hand. He slid it over her back, then higher. Until his fingers closed around her neck. Too tight ever to be warm. Gentle enough not to bruise. Just as it’d been at Lord and Lady Rutland’s.
Hartwell forced her gaze to his. “Tell me, my dear bride-to-be,” he said quietly, “have any other lips been here?”
He raised his free hand and brushed cold, impersonal fingers across her mouth.
Meghan shook her head—grateful beyond measure that August had not claimed her lips as he had her wrist. Had he marked her mouth, she would have borne the evidence plainly. And she was a terrible liar.
The duke studied her, his gaze intent and unreadable.
He finally spoke. “I believe there is only one way to ascertain,” he murmured. “Kiss me.”
His was another ducal command.
Her stomach fell. “K-kiss you?”
“Yes. Get on with it, Miss Smith.”
Stiffly, Meghan leaned close. Her heart lodged in her throat as she forced herself to place her lips against his. His remained rigid and unyielding beneath hers.
She eased away at once.
His expression met hers—dark with amusement. And beneath it, something else. Satisfaction.
“Very good,” he said. “Miss Smith, you will do.”
He patted her back as one might a child who had earned praise, then set her off his lap. This time, he opened the carriage door himself, stepped down, and assisted her after him.
She’d be damned if she scurried off like a chastened child. She had run enough this night. She’d have the final words—with none at all.
Meghan pushed her shoulders back and proceeded in measured steps.
And yet, all the while, the voice of reason in her head screamed at her to run—from him, from the marriage awaiting her.