Mastered by Love (Bastion Club 8)
She rushed around a corner—and just managed not to collide with him again. His face still carved granite, he looked at her, then stepped around her and strode on.
Hauling in a breath, she whirled and hurried even more to catch up with him. “Royce—the grandes dames are waiting to leave.”
His stride didn’t falter. “So?”
“So you have to give them your decision.”
“What decision?”
She mentally cursed; his tone was far too mild. “The name of which lady you’ve chosen as your bride.”
The front hall loomed ahead. Voices carried in the corridors; the ladies had heard. They stirred, rising to their feet, looking at him expectantly.
r /> He glanced back at her, then looked stonily at them. “No.”
The word was an absolute, incontestable negative.
Without breaking his stride, he inclined his head coldly as he strode past the assembled female might of the ton. “I wish you Godspeed.”
With that, he swung onto the main stairs, rapidly climbed them, and disappeared into the gallery above.
Leaving Minerva, and all the grandes dames, staring after him.
A moment of stunned silence ensued.
Dragging in a breath, she turned to the grandes dames—and discovered every eagle eye riveted on her.
Augusta gestured up the stairs. “Do you want to? Or should we?”
“No.” She didn’t want him saying something irretrievable and alienating any of them; they were, despite all, well disposed toward him, and their support would be invaluable—to him and even more to his chosen bride—in the years to come. She swung back to the stairs. “I’ll talk to him.”
Lifting her skirts, she climbed quickly up, then hurried after him into the keep. She needed to seize the moment, engage with him now, and get him to make some acceptable statement, or the grandes dames would stay. And stay. They were as determined as he was stubborn.
She assumed he would make for the study, but…“Damn!” She heard his footsteps change course for his apartments.
His private apartments; she recognized the implied warning, but had to ignore it. She’d failed to dissuade the grandes dames, so here she now was, chasing a snarling wolf into his lair.
No choice.
Royce swept into his sitting room, sending the door swinging wide. He fetched up in the middle of the Aubusson rug, listened intently, then cursed and left the door open; she was still coming on.
A very unwise decision.
All the turbulent emotions of the previous evening, barely calmed to manageable levels by his long, bruising ride, had roared back to furious, aggressive life at the sight of the grandes dames camped in his front hall—metaphorically at his gates—intent on forcing him to agree to marry one of the ciphers on their infernal list.
He’d studied the damned list. He had no idea in any personal sense of who any of the females were—they were all significantly younger than he—but how—how?—could the grandes dames imagine he could simply—so cold-bloodedly—just choose one, and then spend the rest of his life tied to her, condemning her to a life tied to him…
Condemning them both to living—no, existing—in exactly the same sort of married life his father and his mother had had.
Not the married life his friends enjoyed, not the supportive unions his ex-colleagues had forged, and nothing like the marriage Hamish had.
No. Because he was Wolverstone, he was to be denied any such comfort, condemned instead to the loveless union his family had traditionally engaged in, simply because of the name he bore.
Because they—all of them—thought they knew him, thought that, because of his name, they knew what sort of man he was.
He didn’t know what sort of man he truly was—how could they?
Uncertainty had plagued him from the moment he’d stepped away from the created persona of Dalziel, then been compounded massively by his accession to the title so unexpectedly, so unprepared. At twenty-two he’d been entirely certain who Royce Henry Varisey was, but when he’d looked again sixteen years later…none of his previous certainties had fitted.