Discontentedly she bent to scoop up a smooth black stone and toss it into the waves. The sea’s ceaseless movement echoed her restlessness. Cursing her susceptibility to a rake’s stratagems, she collected a handful of pebbles and pitched them one by one into the water. A stupid, futile activity.
No more stupid and futile than knowing the damage a man could do a woman, yet still finding herself lured to destruction.
With unwonted fervor, she hurled a silvery piece of quartz. It splashed sullenly beyond the breakers. She sighed and chewed on her lip. Her hand opened and the remaining pebbles cascaded to the yellow sand.
She had nothing to gain and everything to lose if she became Merrick’s lover. Away from him, she knew that.
When she was with him…
The more he touched her, the more she wanted his touch.
Curse Merrick, he undermined everything she knew. Blinded by Roberta’s tales of profligacy and ruthlessness, she’d expected Jonas Merrick to be a villain from a fairy story. Instead the man she discovered was more enchanted prince than ogre. Her heart ached for him. Even as every moment she spent with him set her conscience kicking like an angry mule.
Because with every moment, she lied. If only by omission. And the lie was a heinous one that if never exposed would shadow the rest of his life.
Sidonie could prove Jonas Merrick was the rightful Lord Hillbrook.
Cataloguing Barstowe Hall’s library a few weeks ago, she’d discovered the lost marriage lines for Anthony Charles Wentworth Merrick, fifth Viscount Hillbrook, and Consuela Maria Albertina Alvarez y Diego. The document had been hidden inside a battered volume of Don Quixote. As Jonas’s father had claimed, a traveling English clergyman attached to an Oxfordshire parish had performed the ceremony at Fuentedivallejo in Spain in 1791. The officiating parson had died before returning home. When the French sacked Fuentedivallejo in 1813, its archives burned. Sidonie had found the only proof of the wedding still extant.
Sidonie’s hands fisted at her sides as she stared unseeing at the turbulent ocean. Heaven save her, she couldn’t tell Merrick what she’d found. Not without abandoning any hope of rescuing Roberta from the violent hell of her life. William legally owned Roberta like he owned the sheep and cattle on his estate. If he didn’t surrender his hold over his property, willingly or unwillingly, his wife was trapped forever.
Currently the marriage lines lay safe in Sidonie’s London bank. She hadn’t shared her discovery with Roberta—she couldn’t rely on her sister keeping the secret. In a couple of months, armed with her legacy and this information, Sidonie would blackmail William into releasing his wife. Not that she trusted William to give up without fighting dirty. Sidonie’s bankers had instructions to open the sealed envelope and publicize the contents if she suffered any mishap.
The day she’d found the marriage lines, she’d wanted to get Roberta away from William. But caution had swiftly prevailed. Sidonie knew enough of William’s fondness for litigation to ensure the document’s authenticity. Sidonie had written to the clergyman’s former parish requesting confirmation of his Spanish travels and a copy of his signature for verification. No reply had arrived before Roberta played her disastrous card game with Jonas Merrick. In any case, Sidonie would still have come to Castle Craven. William’s loathing for his cousin verged on mania. Even a threat as powerful as losing the title wouldn’t save Roberta from her husband’s retribution if he discovered she’d cuckolded him with his enemy.
Sidonie had immediately recognized that she was wrong to conceal the truth for her own purposes. Then she’d recalled William’s latest attack on Roberta. She’d recalled years of abuse turning her lovely sister into someone Sidonie no longer recognized. Sidonie despised William because he was a cowardly bully, but she also loathed him because he’d stolen her beloved sister from her. Roberta, her childhood protector, had become lost in a world of her own, caring only for the turn of a card or the roll of the dice.
With the marriage lines, Sidonie could remove Roberta from William’s influence and reawaken the warm, vibrant woman who must exist under the nerves and tantrums. The marriage lines would literally save her sister’s life and offer a new, happier future to Roberta’s children, Thomas and Nicholas.
But Sidonie hadn’t yet met Jonas Merrick when she made these optimistic plans.
On that overcast afternoon at Barstowe Hall, stifling her qualms had been easy enough. As far as Sidonie knew then, maintaining the status quo harmed nobody in any material way. William had the title, much as he disgraced the family name; his cousin had the money. Any inconvenience the rightful heir suffered through losing his inheritance must have faded over time.
So Sidonie had told herself. So she’d believed.
Until she looked into Jonas Merrick’s eyes and recognized how bitterly he resented his bastardy. Until her stupid, yearning heart burst to do anything within her power to ease his terrible isolation.
A few words from her and she’d change his life.
A few words from her and Roberta was condemned to lifelong misery.
A prickling behind her neck warned her she was no longer alone on the blustery beach. Slowly she turned from the wild sea. Merrick wore white shirt and breeches, but he’d made a concession to the chill by flinging a loose coat across his shoulders. He looked strong and virile. A breathtaking memory of how he’d kissed her that morning blinded her to everything but his presence.
He strode toward her, his boots striking the sand with hard purpose. “Have you been down here raining curses upon my head?”
She flinched at his question, although he’d spoken with his usual taunting humor. He was like a mistreated dog, swift to snarl to fend off a kick.
Oh, Jonas…
Her heart squeezed with agonizing compassion. He was so wounded, she wasn’t sure anyone could heal him. Certainly not a chance-met girl who dallied a mere week. A girl who betrayed him with every breath. Her decisions had become so vilely complicated. The horrors she’d imagined waiting at Castle Craven paled to insignificance in comparison. She’d thought only to risk her body. Instead she risked her soul.
“Sidonie?” His eyes sharpened on her face.
“I don’t need to be alone to curse you.”
“I suspect not.” He studied her as if guessing she hid something.
Of course she hid something. And not just that against every dictate of virtue and self-preservation, she wanted him.