Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(91)

No, she couldn’t wait any longer. The time had come.

She’d never considered herself brave. For so many years, she’d endured her father’s brutal beatings. She’d learned not to defy him, to conform to his wishes, to please him so that he wouldn’t strike her. She had played the part of doting daughter for his friends and business associates, and she had never once gainsaid him. Sometimes, he had hit her anyway, for perceived infractions. Afterward, he had always rewarded her with diamonds and kindness. It was a vicious cycle, and Daisy was going to end it.

Here. Now. Today.

She’d never been brave before, but now she had an innocent babe growing within her, and she loved that life more than she loved her own. She would protect her child with everything in her, fight until the last breath escaped her if there was no other way.

“Open the door,” Abigail commanded. “We’ll go to the servant’s stair. You’ll say nothing. If anyone sees you, you will smile and tell them that I’m ill and you’re seeing me to my rooms to make me a poultice. Belowstairs, they already think you’re an angel, so it won’t be hard for them to believe it. If you say even a word, I’ll—”

Daisy reached into the pocket of her gown with her left hand, her fingers finding the hilt of Sebastian’s blade. It was time. With as much speed as she could manage, she yanked her right arm from Abigail’s grasp and jammed her elbow into the other woman’s midsection. She withdrew the knife, raising it high, a primal scream tearing from her. At the exact moment that her blade connected with the meaty flesh of her opponent’s upper arm, the pistol fired.

Agonizing pain shot through her, but her knife had done its work. Abigail’s sleeve was torn, blood gushing forth from the rent fabric. Her pistol clattered to the floor. Daisy dove for it, knife still in hand.





Sebastian sat at the desk in his study. The flickering gas lamps illuminated the letters he’d only just begun to read. All of them had been penned in Daisy’s neat hand, forwarded from his various estates. Dozens and dozens of them. She must have written until her fingers ached.

How had he ever doubted her? Each fresh line he read was like a booted kick to the stomach. How deeply he had wronged her. By the morning’s light, he couldn’t blame her for telling him to go to the devil the night before. He was everything she’d accused him of and more. Worse. He had married her in lies, cleaved her to him in deception borne of his own inability to resist her, had left her without word or explanation in the name of duty, and had returned believing her in the wrong.

When the only person who had ever been in the wrong was Sebastian Fairmont. Eighth Duke of Trent, First Marquis of Selfish Arsehole. Daisy had always been true and good and undeserving of the situations in which she’d found herself. She’d been used, and everyone had taken advantage of her. First, her father, abusing her and using her as a lure for suitors who would better himself and increase his wealth, then her would-be suitors, and the League by ruining her, forcing her into a falsehood of a marriage. But finally, there had been Sebastian. He’d not only taken advantage of her every weakness, he had stormed past her defenses. She’d told him that she loved him.

And what had he done, coward that he was? He’d disappeared from her life.

As he flipped through her letters, he could sense her mood shifting. Her epistles began with hesitation and hope. As time went on, she began to enumerate all the things she knew would enrage him. Here, in black ink and paper, was all the proof anyone could require. Yes, these letters proved to him that Daisy had only ever been honest with him.

When he reached the final series of letters, he felt as if the wind had been knocked from him.

I write you with unexpected news. I am expecting your child. Though you’ve amply demonstrated your lack of sentiment for myself, I cannot help but hope you may be somewhat less reticent in regards to an innocent.

The letter dropped from his fingers, wafting to his desk without even a whisper of sound. A child. A babe. Daisy carried their babe. And she hadn’t told him. No, instead, she had demanded an annulment.

Dear God, had he been too rough with her last night? How could he have failed to realize what the small changes in her frame implied? He had noted the slight curve in her belly, the generosity in her breasts. But he had enjoyed it, never once imagining how life-altering, how beautiful and wonderful and fucking altogether glorious it all was.

A sudden knock sounded at his door, startling him.

He didn’t want to be wrenched from this moment of unadulterated celebration. This moment of realizing that his wife carried their babe within her body. His carelessness, his stupid bloody recklessness, had in the end, turned out to be his saving grace.

His child. Daisy’s child. Would it be a girl with golden ringlets and an infallible sense of bravery? Or a towheaded boy with moss-green eyes and a penchant for daring? His heart beat with a wild, uncontrollable rhythm. He felt complete for the first time. Replete. Not a part of him missing.

A babe. How bloody amazing. The notion awed him.

The knock sounded again, this time more forceful than the last.

No more avoidance. Give the devil his due.

“Enter,” he called.

But it wasn’t his butler Giles who opened the portal as he’d fancied it would be, and stepped over the threshold as he’d anticipated. It was Griffin. And he wasn’t alone. Sebastian stood, mouth going dry, gut tightening. His blood felt as if it leached from his body as he took in the four men flanking his best friend. Home Office brawn, it would appear, though none of their faces were familiar to him.