Darian Hunter: Duke of Desire (Dangerous Dukes 3)

‘The utter and complete bastard!’ If Carlisle had been alive today then Darian knew that he would happily have thrust a sword or knife blade through the other man’s cruel black heart, for what he had done to Mariah. Or put a bullet in that same warped and twisted heart.

Mariah pressed her face against Darian’s chest, causing him to bend lower in order to hear her next words. ‘When I discovered just weeks later that I was indeed expecting his child, I wanted to die, to run away. I even thought of ending my own life. And yet I could not do that either, not with the babe inside me. It would have been nothing less than murder. And my father, as Carlisle had predicted, once told of my condition could not refuse the earl’s offer of marriage. Not without causing scandal and ruin for all of us. I was well and truly trapped. Into marrying a man I not only hated, but also had every reason to fear—’ She broke off as a sob caught at the back of her throat.

Darian inwardly cursed himself for having forced the subject to the point that he had put Mariah through the pain of reliving those unhappy memories of her past.

The memory of the taking of what Darian was sure would have to have been her young and inexperienced body.

A body that now trembled almost uncontrollably against his own as Mariah battled to stop the tears from falling.

Darian had no doubt they were tears Mariah should have shed eighteen years ago. For the manner in which she had lost her innocence. For the babe, conceived in fear on Mariah’s part and greed on Carlisle’s.

For the twelve years of unhappiness she had spent as wife to the very man who had raped her.

Chapter Ten

Darian shifted slightly so that his arms were beneath Mariah’s thighs and shoulders as he lifted her up and against his chest before striding across to sit down on one of the ledges along the outside of the temple. He settled Mariah comfortably on his thighs, her head, for the moment, resting against his shoulder.

Darian held on to her tightly. ‘I believe it would be better if you now tell me all, Mariah, when you have already come so far.’

She gave a shake of her head. ‘And I do not care to talk, or think, any more about those horrible memories.’

‘The memories of when Carlisle raped you. What he did was the rape of an innocent, Mariah, nothing more, nothing less,’ Darian insisted grimly as she stiffened in his arms.

‘I am well aware of what it was.’

‘After which, he then forced you into years of suffering an unhappy marriage with him, because of your daughter.’ Darian could barely contain the violence he felt at learning of Carlisle’s brutish behaviour. An impotent violence, in view of the fact that Carlisle was no longer alive to feel the lash of his tongue or the flash of his blade. Carlisle might have been an excellent swordsman, but Darian knew he was better.

‘I may not have wanted the marriage, or Carlisle, but I have loved Christina since the day she was born,’ Mariah instantly defended. ‘She has always been the one shining light in my life.’

Darian nodded, only too well aware of the protectiveness she felt towards her daughter.

As he was also now aware of her reason for objecting so vehemently to the idea of Lady Christina marrying anyone at the age of only seventeen years. The same age as Mariah had been when she was forced to marry Carlisle.

‘But there was no heir?’ Darian prompted slowly.

‘Carlisle did not— He had no interest in my producing his heir. He had a younger cousin he was perfectly happy should inherit the title. His only reason for marrying me was to attain a portion of my father’s considerable fortune.’

‘I have noted that marriage has a way of producing children, whether they are wanted or not,’ Darian drawled ruefully.

‘And I have already told you that Carlisle was completely indifferent to me as his wife.’

Darian looked down at Mariah with incredulous eyes. ‘Are you saying— You cannot possibly mean—’

‘What, Darian?’ Mariah lifted her head to look up at him, her eyes dark and shadowed in the pallor of her face. ‘I cannot possibly mean that my husband’s uninterest in me was such that he did not share my bed, even once, after we were married?’ Her smile was completely lacking in humour as she gave a shake of her head. ‘Why can I not mean that, Darian, when it is the truth?’

A truth that Darian could not even begin to comprehend, when his own desire for Mariah was such that he found it difficult to sleep at night, to stop thinking about her day and night, of the ways in which he wished to make love with her. She had been Carlisle’s wife for twelve years. Surely the other man could not have— Mariah took advantage of his distraction to pull herself abruptly out of his arms before standing up and turning the paleness of her face away in profile, a shutter seeming to have come down over her emotions—no doubt because she deeply regretted having revealed them in the first place.

‘Why should Carlisle have need of the attentions of his very young and very inexperienced wife,’ she continued drily, ‘when his mistress of over twenty years was the housekeeper of our London home?’

‘Carlisle kept his mistress in your home after you were married?’ Darian stood up slowly.

It was well known that many gentlemen of the ton kept a mistress after they were married. But never, ever, in the same house as their wife. It was not done. It simply was not done. And yet, it appeared that that was exactly what Carlisle had done.

‘In truth, I was grateful for Mrs Smith’s existence.’ Mariah shrugged dismissively as she briskly pulled her glove back on to the hand she had earlier dipped into the heated pool. ‘And I was not made uncomfortable by the arrangement, visiting London rarely during the first ten years of our marriage. I much preferred to remain in the country with Christina.’

Darian breathed deeply. ‘But something happened to change that? Did you and Carlisle perhaps reconcile?’

‘There was nothing to reconcile.’ She turned to frown at him. ‘How could there be, when we had never been husband and wife in the true sense of the word?’