“I hurt a lot of people.”
“You took a blade to his face.”
“I assure you, I didn’t have a choice.”
“No. Clearly this world was worth more than your brother.” She shook her head. “You were wrong. I’d choose him over this place any day. I choose him now. Over you.”
The duke’s eyes flashed. “You won’t believe me, but it had nothing to do with this world.”
“No, I’m sure not,” she scoffed. “Not the title or the houses or the money.”
“Believe what you like, Lady Felicity, but it is true. He was a means to an end.” The words weren’t cruel. They were honest.
Her brow furrowed. “What kind of end would require such means?” She loathed this man. “You should be thrashed for what you did to him. He was a boy.”
“So was I.” He paused. Then, casually, “If only you’d been with us then, Lady Felicity. Maybe you could have saved him. Maybe you could have saved us all.”
“He does not need saving,” she said, softly. “He is magnificent. Strong and brave and honorable.”
“Is he?”
Something about the question unsettled, as though the duke were a chess master, and he could see her inevitable end. She pushed against him again, wanting away from this man turned monster. “I thought you were odd. You’re not. You’re horrible.”
“I am. As is he.”
She shook her head. “No.”
His response was instant, filled with darkness. “He is not without sin, my lady. Aren’t you curious as to how you came to know him? As to how he came to have an interest in you?”
She shook her head, thinking back. “It was by chance. I lied—about our engagement—he overheard.”
He did laugh then, the sound sending cold through her. “In our lifetime, nothing has ever happened to us by chance. And now you are a part of us, Felicity Faircloth. Now you are tied to us. And nothing will ever happen to you by chance again. Not engagements. Not the breaking of them. Not golden ballgowns or spies in hedgerows. Even the birds you hear sing to you in the nighttime do not warble by chance.”
Felicity went cold and the room spun with revelation—that this man, this odious, horrid man, was inexorably tied to Devil. That he’d been so for years and, worse, that he knew the extent of her interactions with him. That he’d used her in spite of them. That he’d used her because of them, manipulating her without effort.
“You were using me to get to him.”
“I was. Though, to be fair, I did not set out to use you, specifically. That bit was chance, as a matter of fact.” He turned her, moving her through the room, and to an outside observer, they must have looked riveted to each other—a perfect match. No one could see the way she pushed against him, wishing to be far from him and whatever it was he was about to say.
“I have searched for them for twelve years, did you know that? To no avail. I’d a line on a pair of brothers in Covent Garden. Ice dealers. Possibly smugglers. But they ran the streets, paid well for loyalty, and were well protected. I had no choice but to try a new tack. I came to town, broadcasting the news of my search for a bride.”
Understanding dawned. “To summon them from shadows.”
He inclined his head, surprise in his eyes. “Precisely. They might hide from me, but they would never stay quiet if they thought I was to renege on our only deal.” His gaze fixed on a point beyond her shoulder.
“No heirs.”
More surprise. “He told you that, as well?”
“He never intended for you and I to marry,” she whispered.
The duke barked a laugh, and those around them turned at the unexpected sound. He didn’t care. “Of course he didn’t. We were cut from the same cloth, my lady. You proved very useful to me . . . and exceedingly useful to him, as well.”
“How?”
“You were a message. I am not allowed happiness. I am not allowed a future. As though those things were ever in my cards.”
Her gaze went to his, her heart pounding in her ears alongside the cacophony of the room. “I don’t understand. You didn’t want me. I wasn’t going to bring you happiness.”
“No. But you might have brought me heirs. And those, he would not have allowed. That was the only punishment we could give our father. No heirs. The line ends with me, you see. And I know my brother well enough to know Devon would make certain of it.”
We would mete out endless punishment.
And Felicity was the weapon he’d chosen. The weapon, it seemed, they had both chosen.
And then he added, “And the promise of you would deliver Devon to me.”
She slowed to a stop and the duke allowed it, her skirts swirling around her, even as the rest of the assemblage continued dancing. Heads turned toward them, whispers already beginning. Felicity didn’t care. “I’ll give him his due; he did his work well.” He paused. “I’m guessing he’s already had you. I’m guessing he expected you to come here tonight and end our arrangement. Which of course you did, because you fancy yourself in love with him. Because you fancy yourself able to convince him that he loves you, as well.”
The room whirled around them, the realization that Devil had betrayed her coming hard and fast and making her want to simultaneously cast up her accounts and do physical harm to the arrogant man before her. And then he added in a tone absent of emotion, “Poor girl. You should have known better. Devon cannot love. It’s not in him. He, like all of us, and like our father before us, can do nothing but ruin. I hope yours was at least enjoyable.”
The words threatened to break her. To return her to Forlorn Felicity. Finished Felicity. But she would not allow that. She came to her full height, her shoulders straight and her chin proud, refusing to acknowledge the tears that threatened. She would not have tears. There was no time for them.
Instead, she took a step back, putting distance between them, and the nearest couples slowed, craning their necks to see. They did not have to crane when she let her hand fly, nor did they have to strain to hear the wicked crack of her palm against his cheek.
He took the blow without a word, and the entire room felt its ripple.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Devil spent hours that evening in the muck of the Thames, working the hook, the best way for him to keep his mind off what he’d done. He’d hauled and lifted until his muscles were raw, until his clothes were drenched with sweat and it felt as though the skin from his shoulders had been flayed. Only then did he find it in him to return home, aching and stinking and tired enough to have a promise of a bath and sleep before he woke, hard and hot and reaching for the one thing he could not have.
Christ. It had been barely a day and he missed her like air.
He cursed and unlocked the door to his offices, the building heavy with silence.
Letting exhaustion come, he climbed the stairs and extended a key into the lock, only to discover that no key was necessary. Someone had unlocked the door to his chamber and, while there were half a dozen plausible possibilities, there was only one person he wished it to be, even as he wished for it to be anyone but her.
He pushed the door open, the hinge groaning beneath the slow movement.
Felicity was standing at the center of his offices, in the most b
eautiful pink gown he’d ever seen—the kind of gown any man would kill to remove—still and straight and serene, her eyes instantly on his, as though she’d been standing there forever, waiting for him. As though she would stand there forever, until he returned.
Past and future and glorious, impossible present.
He entered, closing the door behind him, steeling himself for what was to come. Summoning the strength to send her packing again. “I would ask you how you got into the building, but I don’t think I would like the answer.” He lifted his chin at her dress, unable to stop himself from pointing out the finery. “Covent Garden has never seen a frock such as that, my lady.”
She did not look down at it. “I came from the Northumberland ball.”
He whistled, long and low. “Did you give the nobs my regards?”
“I did not, as a matter of fact,” she said. “I was too busy ending my engagement.”
The words rioted through him. He moved toward her without thought. False. There was a single thought. Yes. Yes, she was free, and could finally, finally, be his.
Except she couldn’t. “Why?”
“Because I did not wish to marry the duke, or anyone else in the aristocracy.”
Marry me.
She went on. “Because I thought that if I did it there—if I ended my engagement publicly, in front of all the ton—then you would see that I was willing to turn my back on that world and join you here, in this place.”
His heart began to pound.
“You see, after that . . . after striking the duke in public—”
“You hit him?” He reached for her. “Did he—”
She recoiled from his touch and he stilled, dread and something else settling, instantly, in his gut. Fear. “I did, as a matter of fact. At the center of a ballroom in the seat of one of the most powerful dukedoms in history. I’m well and truly ruined now.”
He didn’t care about ruination. He cared about her. “Why did you hit him? Did he hurt you?”
She laughed, the sound bitter. “Did he hurt me? No.”
“Then why—”
“I suppose some might be hurt by discovering they’d been betrayed by the man they are to marry . . .” She watched him for a long moment, unspeaking. “But I was never to marry him, was I? Not from the beginning?”