Once a Wallflower, At Last His Love (Scandalous Seasons #6)(84)

Hermione frowned. “That really wasn’t well done of you. Scaring the maids.” She gave a toss of her nonexistent curls. “And I asked where we were going, Sebastian.” She really wished there was at least a hint interesting with her dull, dark locks.

He stepped around her. “We are not going anywhere, madam.”

She placed herself between him and the door handle. She would have to be deafer than the village vicar’s eighty-something-year-old wife to not hear the slight emphasis on that particular word.

“Very well, are you going somewhere, Your Grace?”

“You are, madam.”

She tipped her head. “I am what?”

“Leaving.” His tone crisp, terse, and all so very ducal. “You are leaving,” he bit out.

She pursed her lips feeding the indignation at his packing her up and sending her off like some wayward child; sentiments that protected her from the pain of his coldness. Hermione shook her head, slowly. The faint movement rattled the door at her back. “No.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “You are.”

“No.” She shook her head again. “I am not.” With determined steps she marched over to the opened trunk at the foot of her bed and proceeded to pull out the items already packed. She expected him to leave.

Instead, he folded his arms across his broad chest and leaned against the closed door, studying her with that aloof, distant expression in his green eyes.

Hermione hated the dreadful ache in her heart at how very desperate he was to be free of her. She carried another blasted yellow dress over to the armoire and stuffed it inside. The cheery fabric was a mockery of this hell of her own making. All the while, Sebastian’s gaze threatened to burn a hole into her back. She returned for another gown. She could not really blame him for his anger, considering she’d gone and trapped him, but surely something, anything to come before that shameful moment in her life had meant something to him.

Yet, her feelings for him aside, she could not allow him to pack her off, forcing her to leave behind her siblings for…for… Well, wherever it was one sent an unwanted wife.

“Hermione,” he said, his tone harsh. “You are going to Leeds.”

So, it would seem it was Leeds where those unwanted wives were sent off to. She jumped and turned to face him. His expression remained an inscrutable mask that bore no traces of the warmth she’d once known in him. She sucked in a steadying breath. “I understand you are displeased with me,” she began. But she’d not be packed away and scuttled off with no control, no say over her own fate.

He snorted. Which was a good deal more encouraging than the black glowers and scathing glances he’d shot her way since their very public discovery at Lady Brookfield’s ball.

“However, I’d rather not leave,” she finished. And more, she had no intention of leaving.

He shoved away from the door jamb and stalked toward her. She gulped. Now she knew how that poor mouse set free inside the lion’s cage had felt at the Bullock’s Museum menagerie. Hermione took a step backward. He continued advancing with a military-like precision to his steps. She retreated. The backs of her knees met the side of the bed and she stumbled into a sitting position.

He stopped and passed a look, teeming with loathing up and down her person. “You’ve what you desired all along, Hermione,” his words, his every action scraping along her heart. “You’ve your grand title of duchess.” Which she didn’t give a jot about. “And enough wealth to pay for whatever French fabrics your heart should desire.” Did he truly believe one dressed in yellow taffeta ruffles, with such an ill-begotten fashion sense would trap a duke for a love of fine fabrics? “The country estate in Leeds will be yours.”

Her heart cracked. She didn’t want his country estate in Leeds. Not unless he intended to share that home with her. She shook her head. “No.” She didn’t crave a single material possession from him. She wanted him. And in one moment of weakness, she’d selfishly tossed aside any hope of them, for the protection of his name. “What an utter waste,” she whispered to herself.

His eyebrows dipped. “What was that, madam?” A hard, silken edge lined his words.

“Er, that is, no thank you.” Though she was astute enough to know his displeasure had nothing to do with her apparent lack of gratefulness at his generous offer. “I’m very much content here.” She glanced around at the rumpled sheets of her coverlet and colored. “Er…well not here, precisely.”

A muscle ticked at the right corner of his lip. His stony silence more disconcerting than his icy words.

“But here,” she clarified, desperate to fill the quiet with even her empty words. “In your townhouse.”

He said nothing for so long she shifted on her feet, the pit in her stomach growing with each passing moment. Then, he closed the remaining distance between them. “The operative word, madam, being my.” A hard smile, devoid of all warmth turned his lips.

She’d wronged him and would forever regret robbing him of choice, but she would not be bullied by him. Hermione ticked her chin up a notch. “Your.”

He cocked his head, a question reflected in his eyes, replacing his earlier fury.

“You said the operative word being ‘my’, when, I’d actually said—”