Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(57)
“She’s colluding with the Fenians,” Griffin finished for him. “Tell me you don’t think she’s innocent, Bast.”
“Her father is colluding with the Fenians,” he corrected coldly. “Her father who beat her savagely from the time she was a wee, defenseless girl of four. Her father who she never wants to see again. Vanreid is the enemy we seek to bring to heel, not Daisy.”
Griffin’s expression remained hard as stone, unreadable. “I suppose we’ll find out the truth of that soon enough.”
There was something his friend hadn’t said, and he knew it. “Meaning?”
“It’s time, Bast.” Griffin rubbed his bruised jaw. “Carlisle wants you to proceed with approaching Vanreid about a dowry. He expected you to do it sooner than this, and he isn’t pleased. You’re to invite him to your home. We need to pin the firearms to him. We’ve word from our American agents that an attack is imminent. They’ve commissioned a bloody submarine, Bast. It’s built and seaworthy, and they have every intention of using it to bombard one of our vessels. This is war.”
Sebastian’s blood went cold. He knew what was expected of him, but he’d been hoping like hell that there would be another way. That Carlisle would change his battle plans and leave Sebastian with a more palatable option.
The thought of having Vanreid present in his home made his skin crawl. The son-of-a-bitch ought to be disemboweled for what he’d done to Daisy, and that was a bloody, nasty business. Sebastian had seen the aftermath of just such a killing, and though it haunted him to this day, even an end as ghastly as that would be too merciful for Vanreid.
Now he was to pretend as though all was roses and rainbows, to invite Vanreid to his study and play the part of dissolute rakehell. To bring the bastard close enough to Daisy to hurt her once more.
He didn’t know if he could do it. He needed time. Time to think. To clear his mind. He had hit the one man in the world who was like a brother to him. But Griffin had not hit him back. For some reason, that troubled Sebastian the most.
“Thank you for the message,” he said tersely, and then he spun on his heel and threw himself atop his horse once more before riding hell for leather away from the only person he’d ever believed he could trust. Away from unwanted duty. Away from everyone and everything.
Griffin’s words echoed in the staccato of his horse’s hooves.
This is war.
Yes, bloody hell, it was.
Daisy descended the stairs for dinner at precisely a quarter past eight that evening, just as she had every night since her first dinner with him. What had begun as a small assertion of her independence had quickly changed. She kept him waiting, and he took her to task, though increasingly with more sensual heat than genuine irritation. It had become rather a diversion of sorts between them.
He pushed, she pulled. He was inflexible and disciplined where she longed to experience life free of the constraints that had once contained her. She wanted to soak up every moment of every day in this new life she led, while Sebastian seemed somehow restrained. The sadness in him remained, haunting his beautiful eyes. It was only when she teased him that he came to life at last, shedding his armor and allowing himself to simply be.
She’d come to realize that her husband was a rigid and disciplined man. He woke before dawn, breakfasted early, devoted himself to his estates and other matters, took his exercise, and then awaited her at dinner. And she liked keeping him waiting, even if it meant she secretly paced the floor of her chamber, sneaking glances at the mantle clock, as she made certain not to be punctual.
But there was an undeniably different air about him tonight as she glossed her right hand lightly over the polished balustrade, holding her skirts slightly aloft with her left. She’d become adept at sweeping down the staircase as though she glided, and she’d chosen a seafoam blue silk evening gown trimmed with rosettes and a revealing décolletage, but none of those trivialities mattered when her eyes found him as she was halfway down the stairs.
He wasn’t pacing tonight. His back was to her, head bowed forward as though in prayer, hands clasped at his back. She didn’t know him to be a particularly pious man, and in the fortnight they’d been married, he’d never missed the opportunity to unleash his caged energy on the parquet floor as he awaited her.
Something had changed, and she felt it the same way she’d experience a chill running straight down her spine. She paused, on the fourth stair from the bottom, watching him. This was not the reunion she’d anticipated after receiving a library’s worth of books, all carefully chosen with her interests in mind. And especially not after an inscription that called her a favorite.
A favorite.
As though she were someone to be cherished. Perhaps loved, though that was a finer emotion that she didn’t expect from him after only a fortnight of marriage. Hearts did what they would, and just because hers had stubbornly decided to fall for him didn’t mean his in turn could be expected to feel the same.
Still, those words had worked their way deep inside her to a place she hadn’t even known existed, making her smile all day long. Those words had been responsible for the soft hums of pleasure emerging from her as she made herself at home in the library. Those words were what caused the frisson of desire to glide through her even now, accompanied by the swift fluttering of her heart.