Epilogue
“You cannot just barge in here!” the butler demanded.
Damien and Caroline ignored the man as they stormed through the foyer of the Mason Estate and headed toward Agatha’s study.
Caroline was leading the charge now; her head held high, her spine straight, and her footsteps sure.
Pride billowed in Damien’s chest as he watched her take control of her life and not run away from it.
He would be there to help her if she needed it.
Until then, he was simply happy to watch her have her glory.
Then suddenly the butler ran ahead of him and stretched out his arm toward Caroline. In a second, Damien was there, snatching the man’s wrist and wrenching it backward.
“Do not touch her.” His tone was soft. Deadly. Almost welcoming the man to disobey him. The butler’s eyes widened as he paled.
“You should go,” Damien suggested, leaning toward the butler’s face. “Pack your things. Something tells me that you are about to lose your job.”
He shoved the butler away from him and did not wait to see what he did, instead moving in quick steps to catch up to Caroline, who had just shoved open the study door with so much force that it ricocheted into the opposite wall.
Damien entered just as Agatha was rising from her seat, her face twisted into an ugly mask of rage. Still, it was not her face he was focused on. It was another woman’s. The one who had been sitting across from Agatha before Caroline stormed in.
“You,” he whispered, taking in the familiar features.
The memories of the day George was brought to him flashed vividly in his mind, and suddenly he knew. This was the woman who had brought George to him, claiming that he was his son.
“How dare y—”
“Sit. Down. Agatha,” Caroline demanded, punctuating each word.
Rage ebbed from the two women glaring at one another as the room fell silent; neither one was willing to back down.
Questions about the third woman erupted by the dozens in Damien’s mind, but he pushed them aside.
He would get his answers from her soon enough, but for now, he was going to help his wife take her power back.
He tore his gaze away from the third woman and strode around Agatha’s desk. He placed two fingers on her shoulder and reveled in the way she tried to flinch away from him.
You should be scared, he thought devilishly.
“My wife has asked you to sit,” he said calmly, applying the slightest pressure to Agatha’s shoulder. Already she was trembling under the small weight, trying to fight it. “I suggest you do so.”
He pressed a little harder, right into the pressure point he knew so well, and Agatha’s knees folded, sending her back into her chair with a thump.
“This is how you are going to handle your business?” Agatha hissed, turning her glare up to Damien. “Sending your guard dog to maul me into silence and keep your filthy secrets?”
Damien’s eyes shifted to Caroline as he heard her chuckle, and his heart and cock pulsed together as he saw the look of power in her eyes.
“Well, he is a very good guard dog,” Caroline practically purred.
Another shot of lust exploded in his groin at her words, and he did not have to look into a mirror to know that his eyes had darkened with need.
When this was over, when the threat was gone, he was going to show her just how right she was.
Caroline, to his surprise, could be just as ruthless as he was.
He watched Caroline’s eyes mirror his own desire as they locked eyes for a moment, and heat sizzled through the room. Then she turned, that lust in her eyes shifting to rage in a second, and focused on her stepmother.
“First, let us sort out this contract business,” Caroline began, walking to Agatha’s desk with clenched fists. “How did you get it?”
“As if I would tell you anything!” Agatha hissed back. “You might have your dog at my back, little girl, but remember I have your future in my pocket, and if you two do not obey, I will ruin you both.”
Caroline lunged at once, even startling Damien as she slapped her palms against the top of Agatha’s desk and shoved her face close to her stepmother’s.
“Do you not understand?” Caroline demanded. “You cannot touch me! You have tried to ruin me from the moment my father died, and you have failed at every turn! You tried to break me, and for a while, I believed you had. But I know better now, mother, and I am not afraid of you anymore!”
“Oh, you will be,” Agatha seethed and swung back her hand.
Despite being enthralled by the moment, Damien caught Agatha’s hand with a quickness, and forced it, palm down, to lie on the desk as he bent close enough to whisper with deadly intent in her ear, “Try and strike my wife again, and I will forget you are a woman.”
Agatha’s head whirled to look at him, but through her obvious hatred, he saw the telltale glint of fear.
“Fingers are some of the easiest bones in the body to break, you know,” he stated, his tone cool and matter-of-fact as he pressed his hand down harder over hers.
“Enough!”
Damien and everyone else’s heads snapped toward the door as the new voice boomed, and he was surprised and annoyed to see that it was Lilian. He shivered at the thought of what might have happened if he had not lifted her veil all those weeks ago and discovered that it was her, not Caroline.
“Leave us be, Lilian,” Caroline warned. “I know you do whatever your mother says. I know you were as cruel to me as she was. But I do not want to blame you. You were raised to think like her.”
Lilian’s eyes burned with defiance for another moment, then her gaze cooled, and she bowed her head.
“This needs to stop,” she repeated, softer this time. “I am tired, Mama.”
For a moment, Damien felt a flicker of pity for the young woman who had stepped in. He had believed she had gone along with her mother’s plans willingly, but as he looked at her now, he realized that was not entirely true.
“Our marriage contract,” Damien said, keeping his tone neutral. “Does she truly have it?”
“Yes,” Lilian replied softly, her fingers pointing toward the desk. “It is in the bottom drawer. She keeps it locked, but the key is under the inkwell.”
“Lilian!” Agatha snarled, but everyone ignored it.
“She had me sneak into your study the night of the ball and steal it,” Lilian explained as Damien retrieved the key and opened the drawer. “While she had you cornered.”
Damien picked up the leather portfolio and opened it. Sure enough, there was their contract. He closed and folded the thing, then shoved it into his inner jacket pocket.
“What about Father’s will?”
“It is in there, too,” Lilian said. “You should… You should read it.”
Caroline moved around the desk at once, and Damien stepped aside so she could rummage through the drawer herself.
“Put that back!” Agatha all but snarled. “That is mine!”
Caroline and Damien both ignored her as Caroline drew her fingers around the document and lifted it carefully out of the drawer.
An eerie silence filled the room as she walked with it over to the sitting area, where two couches and a knee-high table sat.
She opened the will, spreading the large document out onto the table, and read silently for what seemed like an eternity.
Damien yearned to go to her, not only to wrap his arms around his wife and comfort her, but also to read the document himself. That feeling only grew when Caroline lifted her head and drew a haunting look toward Agatha.
“What did you do?” she whispered.
Damien’s gaze shifted down to Agatha, confused, but she was still glaring daggers at Lilian. Slowly, she shifted that rage to Caroline.
“Your father humiliated me! He needed to pay for what he did to me, but he was dead. So, I decided that his children would suffer instead,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Caroline,” Damien gently urged. “What does it say?”
Caroline’s eyes slowly shifted from Agatha to him, and he nearly stopped breathing when he saw fresh regret move through her gaze.
“George’s parentage...” she answered, her voice wavering. “My father’s will proves it. He is my father’s son. And he and I are who my father truly left his fortune to.”
Shock hit Damien’s chest so suddenly that if the air had moved, he would have lost his footing.
“George is your brother?” he rasped.
“How could you hide all this from me, Agatha?”
“Did you know, Caroline? Your father was already married when he asked for my hand,” Agatha explained bitterly.
“He had a secret family no one here knew about in Scotland. When I saw his will, I knew that our marriage was illegitimate and that I would be ruined. So I changed my fate. Did you expect me to risk Lilian’s future because your father was an immoral, good-for-nothing son of—”
“George’s mother,” Caroline demanded, glaring through her tears. “Did you hurt her? Where is she?”
“I did not need to,” Agatha said with a careless shrug.
“By a stroke of luck, she passed away from sickness right before I found him. I tucked him away in an orphanage for three years under a false name, thinking I would be rid of him, but I still feared that someday he would learn the truth. So I sent Polly here to go fetch him a few months ago. I had already planned to have Damien marry Lilian, and I thought keeping the boy close would be better insurance. Lilian was supposed to make the boy and Damien believe that they were father and son, but your dog here would not take her in your stead.”
As she said the last part, Agatha glared up at Damien with pure disgust.
“You just had to have your pathetic little mouse, didn’t you?”
Damien’s hand itched to slap her, but before he could even raise his hand, Caroline was across the room, delivering the strike with her own hand across Agatha’s cheek that echoed with force throughout the quiet room.
“I am not a mouse anymore,” Caroline seethed as Agatha’s face turned red. “And do not ever talk to my husband like that again.”
Agatha’s mouth and chin began to tremble as fat tears rolled down her already swelling cheek, but she said nothing.
“Caroline?” Lilian’s soft voice broke the silence again.
Damien and Caroline both turned to her.
“We do not deserve it, but please, let us end this quietly,” Lilian implored.
“There is still much of your father’s fortune left.
Now that you have your father’s true will, you can access it.
My mother has somehow managed to earn her own money.
We will repay what we owe you, just let us go.
We will leave, disappear into a small town in the country, and I swear to you that you will never hear from or see us again. ”
Damien glanced at Caroline, and she gave him a quiet nod. He could see in her eyes that she wanted nothing more than to be done with it all, and he was more than willing to ensure that she was.
“She does not need your money,” he stated coldly on Caroline’s behalf.
“And you need to understand that if we do see you again, hear from you, even so much as a whisper that you are near us, I will have you both punished for your crimes,” he told Lilian.
“You have done awful things, but in the eyes of the crown, aside from stealing our marriage contract, you have broken no laws. Your mother, on the other hand, has broken many, and she will be forced to pay for that if I hand her over to the constable.”
“I understand,” Lilian whispered, then walked toward her mother. “Come, Mama, we must pack. We are leaving tonight.”
She tried to help Agatha stand, but she pushed at her as she shouted, “No! After all I have done, I am not giving up so—”
“It is over, Mama!” Lilian exclaimed, pulling her out of her seat. She pressed her hands to Agatha’s cheeks and made her meet her eyes.
“Don’t you understand?” Lilian breathed.
“You should have. I went along with this for far too long, but we were wrong, Mama. And now we have a chance—one chance to walk away from it. And we are going to take it. I am sorry Caroline’s father hurt you.
But our lives are more important than your hurt feelings. ”
Damien watched as the glowing bitterness in Agatha’s eyes slowly burned out until all that was left was heartache.
He would have possibly felt bad for her if she had not tried to ruin his and Caroline’s lives and had nearly ruined George’s.
The fact that the poor child had been made to suffer through living in an orphanage because of her bruised heart disgusted him to his core.
“Come on, Mama,” Lilian urged, speaking softly again, and this time, Agatha followed her daughter.
“We will be gone by nightfall,” Lilian promised, throwing one more glance toward Caroline as they paused at the door.
Caroline only nodded.
“I am sorry,” Lilian whispered, a slow, sad smile forming on her lips. “If I could go back, I would hope that I could be a much better sister to you.”
Caroline clapped a hand over her mouth, stifling a sob, and at once Damien was at her side, pulling her into his arms and holding her close. She was ready to crumble, but he could not let her. Not yet. There was still one more person to contend with.
He looked away from the door and settled his hard gaze on the woman—Polly—who had brought George to him.
“You should disappear as well,” he warned. “By tomorrow morning, I will ensure that every house in London will refuse to hire you.”
Polly did not wait, did not argue. As she had been through the whole ordeal, she remained silent as she shoved out of her chair and hurried out of the room just as Caroline’s sobs broke free.
“It is over, my love,” Damien whispered, pulling her close until no space existed between them. “It is over.”
For a long time, neither of them moved until Caroline’s sobs gradually subsided. Damien held her throughout, resting his chin on her head, with one hand moving in slow, steady circles over her back.
When she finally pulled away, her eyes were red, and her cheeks were wet, but there was something different in her expression.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I think I am,” she said, and sounded almost surprised by it.
He brushed the last of her tears from her cheeks with his thumbs, and she caught his hands and held them there.
“I love you,” she whispered, looking up at him. “I know I do not say it nearly enough, but I do. So very much.”
“I love you,” he said quietly. “I have loved you for a very long time. And I intend to spend the rest of my life making certain you never forget it.”
Caroline smiled, and it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
“Take me home,” she whispered. “I want to see George.”
The End?