She drew a shattered breath. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t bear it.”
Gently she freed herself from his embrace and fled.
Standing in the darkness of the secret passageway, Damien pushed open the panel to Vanessa’s bedchamber. The room was empty-as empty as the hollow ache inside him. She was gone.
As if sleepwalking, he moved over to the window to gaze down at the gardens. Her scent remained to haunt him, while her parting words were branded upon his memory with a sharpness and clarity that was painful. Fool that I am, I thought I loved you.
Her admission of love had struck him like a physical blow, as had the look in her luminous eyes-despair, fear, disillusionment. Disillusionment with him.
A terrifying sense of loss gripped him. Only now, in her absence, did he understand the enormity of what he’d done.
You aren’t the kind of man I could ever love…
No, he was the kind of man who ruined innocent women for revenge, a selfish bastard who sought empty, meaningless pleasures of the flesh without thought for anyone or anything but his own gratification.
Vanessa was right. His endless pursuits of debauchery had never brought him joy. He had prowled restlessly from woman to woman because none of them had been able to satisfy his hunger. His emptiness. No one until Vanessa. She filled the empty places inside him. Filled his heart. With love.
He loved her.
The realization staggered him anew. He had never known love. He’d lived a licentious existence too long to recognize that enigmatic emotion easily. He’d called it desire and fought it fiercely. Yet his obsession had burgeoned into something far more profound than desire.
I love her.
There was such sweetness in those simple words, Damien thought. A sweetness he hadn’t known existed. Yet they couldn’t heal the bleakness of his soul.
He had driven her away. And it was too late to make amends.
Moments ago the arrangements had been concluded. The duel was set for tomorrow at dawn.
Dawn’s rosy fingers curled over the eastern horizon, illuminating the small party of gentlemen in the misty clearing: the two principals, their seconds, and a solemn-faced physician.
They stood somberly as Lord Thornhill reviewed the rules that had been agreed upon. The duelists would walk off twenty paces, then turn and fire.
“My lords, do you accept these terms?” Thornhill asked quietly.
Clune’s mouth twisted with grim humor as he contemplated his foe. “Yes, yes, let’s get this unpleasant business over with. Penny, you are to inherit my team of grays should I not survive.”
His face set like flint, Damien made no acknowledgment of the misplaced levity.
The two men moved to the center of the clearing and stood back to back, while the other participants took up positions at the perimeter. The silence in the clearing was total, vibrating with raw tension.
In the hush Damien was surprised to hear Clune’s low murmur.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry to have impugned your lady. I regret causing her reputation any further damage.”
Damien tightened his jaw grimly. “We both have regrets. You don’t bear all the blame.”
“My lords, you may begin,” Thornhill called out. “One…”
Damien took a steadying breath and began to walk.
Slowly they paced off the distance: ten, fifteen, nineteen steps… Damien’s hand curled around the smooth handle of the pistol.
“Twenty…”
Both men turned and took aim.
Damien saw Clune’s finger tighten on the trigger, but the image in his mind’s eye was stronger: Vanessa’s beautiful face as she pleaded with him not to kill another man.