The Seduction (Notorious 1)

Vanessa…

His hand jerked upward the instant that he fired. In the same fleeting moment, he heard the explosion from his opponent’s pistol, felt the ball burn through his flesh like a shaft of fire…

The blow of the gunshot felled him. Damien lay motionless on the ground, struggling for breath against the surprising pain. Through his daze came shouts from the sidelines. The next thing he knew, Clune was bending over him.

“Bloody hell, man, do you have a death wish? Why the devil did you delope?”

Damien frowned. In some twisted way perhaps he did have a death wish. At the last second he’d raised the muzzle of his weapon skyward and fired in the air, leaving himself vulnerable to a bullet. But he couldn’t go through with killing Clune. For Vanessa’s sake, he’d had to stop. He couldn’t add murder to the crimes he had already committed in her eyes. He couldn’t put her through that pain.

“Keep still, Sin, you’re wounded.”

He felt his jacket being ripped open and winced as Clune probed his left shoulder.

“My lord, if I may examine him.”

Vaguely Damien was aware of someone else kneeling beside him. The doctor perhaps…

“Looks as if the ball is lodged there. I shall have to dig it out.”

“Is it serious?”

“Quite, but not fatal, I think.”

Damien closed his eyes, savoring the pain. He should be grateful Clune hadn’t killed him, perhaps, but a fatal wound would have been fitting punishment for his sins.

His recuperation was slow and painful. Damien was laid up for four days at his friend Lambton’s hunting box before the doctor even declared him well enough

to move.

When he returned home to Rosewood, Olivia refused to speak to him once she’d satisfied herself that he wasn’t in danger of dying. She was furious with him, and not only for risking his life in a duel. She wouldn’t forgive him for driving Vanessa away.

Nor could he forgive himself.

Lying in bed day after day, Damien had had ample time to confront his wickedness. He had nearly destroyed the woman he loved-sullying her innocence and dragging her down to his debauched level. He’d done far worse to her than Clune ever had. He had prepared her for whoredom; that was the ugly truth.

He wondered how many years would pass before he could face the memory without being sick at heart from it. Even when he’d offered to make her his wife, he’d shown her none of the respect or consideration she deserved. Instead, he acted as if he were conferring an honor, never saying a word about how much she had come to mean to him.

It was little wonder she had refused him.

You aren’t the kind of man I could ever love.

Damien shut his eyes, blocking out the cheerful morning sunlight. He could take no pride in the life he had chosen, or the man he had become.

Bloodlines often bred true. He had inherited an ingrained tendency toward vice and dissipation, and never questioned those proclivities. He’d placed no limits on his wildness and thrill seeking, ignoring the warning signs, even when he’d begun to feel ravaged by the excesses in his life.

Damien murmured a low oath. It seemed he had degenerated into as thorough a libertine as his detested father. The thought left him filled with self-loathing.

Perhaps it wasn’t too late to change, though. Perhaps he could still redeem himself in Vanessa’s eyes.

He took the first step when Clune came to visit his sickroom seven days after the duel.

“I would like,” Clune began in a contrite voice, “to offer my apologies once again-and to thank you for not putting a period to my existence. It was unforgivable of me to have compromised Lady Wyndham as I did, and I am truly sorry.”

Damien’s mouth curled in the grimace of a smile. “And I’m thankful your aim wasn’t an inch further to the left.”

“It was still closer than I intended.”

“You never were a proficient marksman.”