Again the Magic (Wallflowers 0.5)(11)

By the time Aline reached the study, she felt as if her stomach had turned into a block of ice. The coldness spread outward through her limbs until it had reached the tips of her fingers and toes. There was no question in her mind about why she had received this unusual command from her father. The earl must have found out somehow about her involvement with McKenna. If it were anything else, he would have had her mother or Mrs. Faircloth speak to her. But the fact that he was bothering to communicate with her directly conveyed that the matter was one of importance. And her instincts warned that the coming confrontation was going to be ugly indeed. Frantically she tried to think of how to react, how best to protect McKenna. She would do anything, promise anything, to keep him safe from the earl’s wrath.

Chilled and sweating, she reached the study, with its dark-paneled interior and the massive mahogany desk where much of the estate business was conducted. The door was open, and a lamp was burning inside. She entered the room and found her father standing by the desk.

The earl was not a handsome man—his features were too broad and harsh, as if fashioned by a sculptor who had been in too much of a hurry to refine the deep strikes of his chisel. Had the earl possessed a measure of warmth or wit, or any increment of kindness, his features might have lent themselves to a certain hard attractiveness. Unfortunately he was an utterly humorless man, who, with all his God-given advantages, had found life to be a bitter disappointment. He took no pleasure in anything, especially in his family, who seemed to be little more than a collective burden to him. The only approval he had ever shown to Aline was a reluctant pride in the physical beauty that friends and strangers had complimented so often. As for her thoughts, her character, her hopes and fears—he knew and cared nothing about such intangibles. He had made it clear that Aline’s only purpose in life was to marry well.

As she faced her father, Aline wondered how it was possible to have so little feeling for the man who had sired her. One of the many bonds between her and McKenna was the fact that neither of them had ever known what it was like to be loved by a mother or father. It was only because of Mrs. Faircloth that either of them had any concept of parental affection.

Reading the active hatred in her father’s gaze, Aline reflected that this was how he had always looked at Livia. Poor Livia, who through no fault of her own had been sired by one of the countess’s lovers.

“You sent for me, Father?” she murmured tonelessly.

The lamplight sent jagged shadows across the Earl of Westcliff’s face as he regarded her coldly. “At this moment,” he remarked, “I have never been more certain that daughters are a curse from hell.”

Aline made her face blank, though she was forced to take a quick breath as her lungs contracted.

“You’ve been seen with the stable boy,” the earl continued. “Kissing, with your hands on each other…” He paused, his mouth contorting briefly before he managed to school his features. “It seems your mother’s blood has finally risen to the fore. She has a similar taste for the lower order…although even she has the discernment to indulge in footmen, whereas you seem to have confined your interest to nothing better than stable offal.”

The words filled Aline with a hatred that was almost lethal in its intensity. She wanted to strike at her father’s sneering face, vanquish him, hurt him to the bottom of his soul…if he had one. Focusing on a small square of paneling, Aline schooled herself into perfect stillness, flinching only a little as her father reached out and seized her jaw in one hand. The clench of his fingers bit cruelly into the small muscles of her face.

“Has he taken your virtue?” he barked.

Aline looked directly into the obsidian surface of his eyes. “No.”

She saw that he didn’t believe her. The bruising grip on her face tightened. “And if I summon a physician to examine you, he will confirm that?”

Aline did not blink, only stared back at him, silently daring him. “Yes.” The word came out like a hiss. “But had it been left to me, my virginity would be long gone. I offered it freely to McKenna—I only wish that he had accepted it.”

The earl let go of her with an infuriated sound and struck out swiftly, his palm cracking against her cheek. The force of the slap numbed her face and snapped her head to the side. Stunned, Aline held her palm to her swelling cheek and stared at him with round eyes.

The sight of her astonishment and pain seemed to calm the earl somewhat. Letting out a deep breath, he went to his chair and sat with haughty grace. His glittering black gaze found her. “The boy will be gone from the estate by the morrow. And you will ensure that he never dares to approach you again. Because I will find out if he does—and I will use every means at my disposal to ruin him. You know that I have the power, and the will, to do it. No matter where he goes, I will have him hunted and found. And I will take the greatest pleasure in making certain that his life is brought to a miserable and torturous end. He deserves no less for defiling the daughter of a Marsden.”

Aline had never truly understood before that to her father she was a piece of property, that her feelings meant nothing to him. She knew he meant every word—he would crush McKenna like a hapless rodent beneath his foot. That must not happen. McKenna must be shielded from her father’s vindictiveness, and provided for. She couldn’t allow him to be punished simply because he had dared to love her.

While fear gnawed at her heart, she spoke in a brittle voice that didn’t seem to be her own. “McKenna won’t come back if he believes that I want him gone.”