Chapter Four #4
He caught the dog eyeing him suspiciously, and Dorian barely resisted the urge to growl at the beast. He resumed walking, but Amelia continued hounding him, so he grabbed her arm and pulled her into the nearby room, shutting the door before Faye could follow.
The dog gave an affronted grunt from the other side of the door.
Amelia spluttered and wrenched herself free from his grasp. He’d tugged them into the two-story library. A low fire burned in the hearth, though it did little to heat or light the room. It created an intimate cocoon of shadows broken infrequently by a flickering warm amber glow.
Dorian whirled on her. Though she stopped berating him, she didn’t lose her glare or her defiant stance. She wasn’t one to be cowed. Not even when she’d been dragged into a deserted room by a man with whom she had bad blood.
“Why must you concern yourself with my business, woman?” he growled, running a hand through his hair. “I do not remember you being this impertinent.”
She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “I don’t remember you being this insufferable, so I suppose we have both changed, haven’t we?”
They stared one another down for several tense seconds before he spun away from her with a violent curse.
Faye began to scratch at the door, uncomfortable with her mistress being out of sight—especially with the sound of a raised male voice.
Dorian turned back to Amelia. “Leave it alone,” he demanded.
“No,” she refused. “This clearly involves me, so it is very much my business.” Temper flaring, she demanded he reveal to her whatever it was Clara had indicated.
“It must be a powerful secret if you’ve kept it so close for this long.
” She threw out her arms in frustration.
Faye scratched at the door harder as their voices grew in volume.
“Come out with it! You cannot hurt me any more than you already have.” He’d shattered her virgin heart she’d foolishly handed over to him once, but she would never make that mistake again.
“You don’t think I was hurt in all this?” he demanded and then scoffed.
She flinched and averted her gaze. Her eyes slid shut as if she were in pain.
After a long, slow exhalation, she said, “I know you were.” She opened her eyes and met his gaze, the green pools shiny with the threat of tears.
“It is long overdue, but I should have apologized for the scene I created—for the scandal you endured after.”
Dorian’s heart battered against his ribcage as she spoke words he’d never thought to hear from her lips.
“I am sorry for handling the situation as I did and for the damage it caused you. Until that night, you’d only ever treated me with respect and kindness far outweighing what I had been taught to expect.
Perhaps it is because you created such a standard that your betrayal stung me so greatly as to make me lose all sense of decorum and decency. ”
“You could have allowed me the opportunity to explain,” he ground out.
While some of the weight in his heart had been lifted by her recognition of the part she’d played in the scorching of his reputation, there were still more issues between them.
If she’d thought so highly of him, then why couldn’t she have afforded him that much?
“And you could have avoided the arms of another woman when you were already betrothed to me!” Amelia snapped. “I can continue to apologize for the way I handled things so publicly, but I cannot absolve you of the sins you did commit—no matter how you want me to.
“Clearly, Clara was correct about your fragile pride. I’ve a mind to ask you a question my younger self always wanted to know, but my wizened self already knows the answer.
You were driven away by the thought of spending your life with a girl like me.
You hated me for what I was and the shackles I represented. ”
She shook her head. “No good can come of us being shut away together in this castle. There is too much history, too much pain. I’ve long ago realized that most women might have overlooked your behavior. And you’ve hated me ever since…because I am not most women.”
“No!” Dorian finally cut her off, his rage having roared past his breaking point.
He stalked toward her as he spoke. “I loved you because you aren’t most women; I hated only what it did to us.
” He was just as shocked as Amelia by the raw sincerity of his words, the gravel in his pain-laced tone.
“I still admire you for your decisiveness.” He’d backed her against the door; it was rattling against Faye’s more urgent scratching.
“And, damn my eyes, I still bloody-well desire you. So help me, I never stopped.”
He claimed her lips, crushing his mouth to hers in an almost bruising contact. Amelia froze against the onslaught with her arms still hanging lost in the air. Dorian felt the war inside of her—would she fight or surrender?
When she touched his biceps with her hands, he braced himself to be thrown off and condemned for the monstrous brute he knew he was embodying.
Instead, she gripped him and surrendered with a sigh.