Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(89)
She gave a bitter laugh, crossing her arms over herself in a defensive posture. “How honorable you were to refrain from consummating our marriage for the span of one whole day.”
Well, Christ. When she put it in those terms… he was a bloody beast, and he knew it. How had this golden angel come to earth, entrusted to him, and he had forsaken her? He passed a hand over his face, trying to gather his thoughts, to marshal them into something worthy of her listening. “I’m not an honorable man. When I should have placed my duty first, I followed my own selfish desires instead, and when I should have placed you first, I answered the call of duty. The truth is stark and ugly, but if you must know one thing, buttercup, know this. I married you out of duty, but I fell in love with you somewhere in between you taking me to task for turning up half-inebriated at breakfast and that morning we lay in bed laughing and making love. Do you remember it?”
She shook her head. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” Another step brought their bodies together. His hands found her waist, anchoring her to him. “Don’t tell you that I love you? How can I not? I love you, Daisy, Duchess of Trent. You sealed my fate from the moment you dared me to take my turn at the Beresford ball. You had such fire, such daring, the likes of which I’ve never seen in a woman. You humble me. You inspire me. You make me want to be better so that I’m worthy of being your husband.”
“No,” she cried out, shaking against him. Her palms flattened to his chest. “Stop it, Sebastian.”
He couldn’t. He held her to him, made her listen, because he couldn’t shake the feeling that if he allowed her to walk away now, he’d lose her forever. And he couldn’t bear that. Even with the accusations in the report running through his mind, fury and jealousy wreaking havoc on him for the entire trip from Liverpool to London, he had been thinking of ways he could reform her, convince her to see reason. Keep her safe and at his side.
“I’ve been living a lie for years. I’ve devoted my entire life to duty and protecting Crown and country. I don’t know how to be different than who I am, but I do know that I love you. I love you, and I will change for you. I’ll do anything for you, buttercup.”
“Don’t you see?” She exhaled, her tone steeped in sadness as she touched his face for a fleeting moment. “I don’t want you to change. All I ever wanted from you was your love and your honesty. But you came to me in lies. Everything we shared emerged from your deceit. Do you think you can tell me the truth and everything else will fall into place, that I’ll swoon into your arms in gratitude? Because I can assure you it won’t. I won’t. I’m stronger than that.”
Of course she was strong. She was the strongest woman he’d ever known. He was in awe of her. “I’m telling you all this because I owe you the truth, Daisy.”
“The truth or your version of it?” Her eyes flashed as she faced him, vibrant in her ire. More beautiful than he’d ever seen her as she stood up to him. “Because as I see it, the truth is that you returned for me tonight believing the gossip and lies and whatever information you’ve received. You believed I had betrayed our vows. I cannot fathom what changed your mind, but I haven’t forgotten your words earlier this evening. You are a hypocrite, sir, to charge me with deceiving you when you are the greatest dissembler of them all. A hypocrite and a liar, and I want nothing more to do with you! Grant me the annulment I was meant to have.”
With that final, parting shot, she spun on her heel and quit the chamber. The door slammed closed, humming on its frame. He remained where he was, in the center of the chamber. He may as well have been in the middle of a bloody wilderness for all that he could find the answers for what to do next.
Because she was right. He was a hypocrite and a liar. And he didn’t deserve a woman as good as Daisy. He didn’t deserve her at all.
Unfortunately, that realization didn’t make him want or love her any less.
“Fuck me,” he growled into the night.
s the sun began to rise over London, Daisy reached a painful conclusion.
She’d spent the night pacing her chamber, struggling to make sense of the tumult within her. Shock had rendered it impossible to sleep. Her feet hurt. Her back ached. She was tired and emotionally drained and more confused than she’d ever been in her life. But she knew what she needed to do.
She was leaving Sebastian.
Her hands skimmed over her burgeoning belly. She needed time and space to decide whether or not she was leaving him forever. There was the babe to consider. He had deceived her, manipulated her, abandoned her.
What a fool she was, falling in love with a man who had merely been carrying out his duty. A man who had suspected her guilty of heinous crimes. A man who had believed the worst of her until it was too late. How na?ve of her to have imagined he was the only person in her life who hadn’t used her for his own gain.
He had used her more thoroughly than anyone ever had.
His betrayal ran so deep she wasn’t sure if she could ever recover from it.
She was so caught up in her tortured thoughts that she didn’t realize she was no longer alone in her chamber until the distinctive sound of a gun being cocked rang into the silence. Heart in her throat, she spun about to find the last person in the world she could have ever imagined pointing a pistol at her.