The Duchess Deal (Girl Meets Duke #1)(48)

She’d almost drifted into a warm, comforted sleep—

When he slipped from the bed and left the room.



It was well after midnight when Ash reached the village.

He slowed his horse to a walk as he approached the borders of the sleepy hamlet, then roped it to a tree branch beside a stream. The gelding deserved a rest, along with water and a graze. And for his part, Ash needed to make a stealthy approach.

It proved easy enough to find the right house—the smug cottage sitting next to the church. Just looking at it made him furious. The white boxes beneath the windows, stuffed with innocent red and pink geraniums. Botanical lies, every last one.

He found a place where a stone fence bordered the house and used it to hoist himself up on the ledge, just below the largest window. The one that looked out on the church.

He was prepared to put a wrapped fist through the window, but he found it was unnecessary. Apparently no one latched their windows in a goodly little village like this.

He lifted the window sash, then thrust his lantern through the opening. Bending himself nearly double, he managed to work one leg through, and then the other. Not the most graceful of entrances, but then—suaveness wasn’t his purpose tonight.

“Who are you?” An old man shot up in bed and pressed his back to the headboard. “What are you?”

“What do you think?” Ashbury raised his lantern to the gnarled, scarred side of his face and took pleasure in the vicar’s anguished whimper. “A demon come to drag you to Hell, you miserable wretch.”

“To Hell? M-me?”

“Yes, you. You crusty botch of nature. You poisonous bunch-backed toad. Sitting in this weaselly little house full to reeking with betrayal and . . .” He waved at the nearest shelf. “And ghastly curtains.”

“What’s wrong with the curtains?”

“Everything!” he roared.

The old bastard drew the covers up to his chin and began to weep.

Excellent.

“Never mind the curtains, you milk-livered, flap-mouthed dotard.” He loomed over the bed. “There aren’t any windows in Hell.”

“No. No, this can’t be.”

Ash stepped back at once. “Oh, it can’t? Perhaps I have the wrong house.” He drew a scrap of something from his pocket and peered down at it. “Vicarage . . . Buggerton, Hertfordshire . . .”

“This is Bellington.”

Ash straightened the paper and made a show of peering at it. “Yes, you’re right. Bellington, Hertfordshire. Reverend George Gladstone. That’s not you?”

The old man moaned. “It’s me.”

“Thank Pluto.” He crumpled the paper and cast it to the floor. “Such a nuisance when I cock these things up. It’s a devil of a delay when there’s so much to be done. Once you arrive in the eternal furnace, there are sinful debts to be settled. ‘Hell to pay’ is not merely a saying. Then there are the endless papers to be signed and filed.”

“Papers to be filed?”

“Naturally there are papers. It should surprise no one to learn that Hell is a vast, inefficient bureaucracy.”

“I suppose not,” the old man said meekly.

“Now where was I? Oh, yes.” He lifted the lantern and made his voice an unholy crescendo. “Prepare for eternal hellfire!”

“B-but I’m a vicar! I have been a faithful servant of the Lord.”

“Liar!”

The clergyman quivered. A dark puddle seeped across the dimly lit bed linens, and one sniff told Ashbury what it was. The craven piece of filth had pissed the bed.

“You are the veriest varlet that ever took to the pulpit. Doesn’t your Holy Bible have something to say about forgiveness?”

The man cowered in silence.

“No, truly. I’m asking. Doesn’t it? I’m a demon, I don’t read the thing.”

“Y-yes, of course. The gospel is a story of grace and redemption.”

Ash stepped toward the foot of the bed, until he loomed over the shrinking reverend, and lifted the lantern high. “Then why, you rank, miserable, piss-soaked serpent, did you fail to offer that grace to your own daughter?”

“Emma?”

“Yes, Emma.” His heart wrenched when he spoke her name, and his voice shook with fury. “Your own flesh and blood. Wasn’t she worthy of this forgiveness you preach?”

“Forgiveness requires penitence. She was warned. Given every explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted in her sinful behavior, and she would not repent of it.”

“She was a girl. Vulnerable. Trusting. Afraid. You threw her to the wolves to protect your own selfish, sinful pride. And you call yourself a man of God. You are nothing but a charlatan.”

“Tell me what I can do to atone. I’ll do anything. Anything.”

“There is nothing you can say. No excuse you can make.”

Ash drew a slow, deep breath. If he were here to satisfy his own wishes, he would have happily killed the old fellow here and now. Dispatched him to Hell in truth. But he hadn’t come all this way to take his own bloody revenge.

He was here for Emma.

Because she’d touched him, kissed him, made him feel human and wanted and whole. Because her disgusting coward of a father had hurt her so deeply, she still didn’t trust her own heart.