Four Nights With the Duke (28 page)

By the time Vander reached the top stair, it was as if the shock of Reeve’s return had evaporated. Instead, a new truth ploughed into him with a body-shuddering blow. For good or bad, despite the similarities with his father, he could not live without Mia.

She
was
his.

His woman, his wife.

He stood in the door of Sir Richard’s study as Reeve swiftly and cold-bloodedly pummeled the man into submission.

Watching absent-mindedly, another fact hit Vander hard: something that had been there, but he hadn’t
allowed himself to look at. She was his life. In a few short days, she had worked her way into his soul, and for the first time in his life, everything had felt clean and true.

The hell with his past, with his parents’ relationship. He refused to let her go without fighting for her.

If that aligned him with the tragedy of his father’s marriage, the hell with it. He didn’t give a damn. He had been a fool to walk away.

Vander left without bothering to say a word to Magruder. He no longer gave a damn about the man.

Mia was exasperating and fiery. She would likely disagree with him on a daily basis. She would court scandals, and ride with her eyes closed, and write stories in which men fell on their knees at the drop of a hat.

He would go to bed every night of his life hungry for her. And rise from that bed every morning satisfied.

All he had to do was make her realize that she was meant to be with him. He had to take her back, take her away from Reeve.

Make it clear to her that she loved him, and
only
him.

B
y the time the coach arrived at the Queen’s Minion, the inn closest to Sir Richard’s property, Mia had wept herself to a standstill. Her heart burned in her chest and her throat was sore, but she had no more tears.

She climbed the stairs to her bedchamber, questions pounding through her head. Why was she never good enough? Her father, her brother, now Vander . . . she had been a charity case for all three: easily dismissed, insignificant. Her father never had much love to spare for his daughter; he had spent it all in his adulterous pursuit of the late duchess. Her brother was fond of her, but didn’t trust her with his most prized possession, his son.

And Vander . . .

Vander had genuinely enjoyed her company, especially in bed. But he hadn’t fallen in love with her. She had been just a female body, obtained for a few nights, used, tossed aside.

Losing Vander wouldn’t hurt so much if she hadn’t believed—truly believed—that he was falling in love with her.

Though she might as well be honest, at least with herself.

It wouldn’t hurt so much if she hadn’t cast and recast Vander in the role of hero. In Lucibella Delicosa’s books,
Vander
always rode to his lady’s rescue, and
Vander
always married a seamstress of low birth after love triumphed over every accident of fate—and that would have included being short and round, had she created such a heroine.

A low, bitter laugh wrenched itself from her chest as she dropped into a chair.

The real Vander hadn’t even tried to convince her to stay.

She was a fool, who had to stop nurturing a dream of romantic love that didn’t exist in real life. Vander was right: her father and his mother had engaged in a tawdry, sordid
affaire
that had tarnished everyone in their vicinity.

There was nothing honorable or beautiful about it. At best, it was pitiful, and at worst, it was contemptible. The years she had spent, putting her love for Vander into poetry or fiction? Equally pitiful.

And contemptible.

The most ironic point was that
An Angel’s Form
still needed to be written, no matter how hollow and withered her heart felt. She had to support herself and Charlie when they were jaunting around Bavaria.

She was washing her face when a footman delivered her valise and manuscript, along with a note from Edward apologizing because he would be unable to join Mia for supper.

Presumably he was planning some sort of offensive against Sir Richard. Mia couldn’t bring herself
to feel even a shred of concern for Charlie’s uncle. Sir Richard deserved everything he got.

She ordered supper in her chamber and began reading through her manuscript as she ate, scratching out a line here or there. It was appalling to realize just how much her silly girlhood dreams formed the bedrock of the novel, never clearer than when Frederic—on his knees—vowed that he loved Flora because of her inner beauty.

For a few minutes Mia toyed with the idea of throwing the pages—all her notes and chapters and fragments of dialogue—into the fire.

But no.

She may have lost faith in love, but readers needed her novels, especially when they were sick at heart, desperate, nearing death, or watching a loved one fade.

They needed to believe in the fairy tale that she no longer believed in herself.

After finishing her meal, she slapped the pages down on the desk in the corner of her bedchamber, trimmed the wick on the lamp, and got to work.

Frederic had to change. He was too mealy-mouthed, too passive. A few hours later the lamp guttered, and she rang for more oil. By then she had turned Frederic into a man who was big and strong and prone to telling Flora what to do—although he loved her to the bottom of her dainty toes.

Rather than roaming English byways in search of Flora, growing thin and wan from hunger, Frederic went galloping after her, his greatcoat whipping behind him as he crouched over his magnificent midnight black steed. Or should it be a stallion?

She wasn’t certain what the distinction was. Something young ladies were not supposed to know, she thought. She began compiling a list of vulgar words
that she wanted defined.
Stallion. Cock-pit. Lolpoop. Quim
. She had a pretty good idea of what the last word meant, but she wanted to be certain.
Love custard.

Wasn’t there a dictionary of the vulgar tongue put together by someone named Grose? Obviously, she needed a copy so that she could create realistic characters.

She was searching her memory for more words banned to young ladies, when a leg suddenly appeared over her windowsill. Before she could make a sound, the leg was followed by the rest of Vander.

Mia jumped to her feet, dropping her quill. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, low and fierce. He had thrown her out like yesterday’s bathwater, and it was pure foolishness that the very sight of him set her heart thumping.

He didn’t answer for a moment, his eyes fixed on her.

“What do you want?” she demanded again.

His gaze raked over her, heated, furious. “A nightdress for Reeve?” he growled, ignoring her question.

His words hit her with all the force of a slap. As if a passerby on the street had given her a blow to the chin or called her a whore. “The gown
was
for you, for my husband. I am not a woman who commits adultery.” She meant to shout it, but her voice betrayed her, coming out ragged with distress.

She saw satisfaction flash in his eyes.

Madame duBois had made the nightgown from black silk, which clung to Mia’s every curve. She usually wore white cotton trimmed with eyelet lace, so Vander did have a point.

“I shall give you the name of the modiste, and you can order one for your next duchess,” she replied, in a voice as chilly as she could make it.

“There will be no ‘next duchess,’” Vander said, finally dragging his eyes from her body and stepping closer. “You are my duchess, my only duchess.”

Before she could grasp what he was saying, Mia caught sight of a darkening bruise on his cheek and realized that his linen shirt had been sliced open by a blade. She gasped and took a step forward before stopping herself. “Are you hurt?” He didn’t appear injured; he was moving with the same graceful power that he always had. “You went to Sir Richard’s house! What happened? Was Edward there?”

His eyes darkened ominously at the last question, but she had never quailed before him, and she wasn’t about to start now.

“Yes, he was.” Vander spoke through gritted teeth. “When I saw him last, Reeve was fine.”

A sudden, horrific thought struck her. “Are you here because something has happened to Charlie?”

“No. Charlie rode all day and went to bed exhausted. I came to see you.”

Mia took an unsteady breath. Right. Her panic drained away, replaced by a desperate wish to protect herself. She literally could not survive any more humiliation courtesy of the Duke of Pindar. “Then why are you here?” she managed.

Vander pushed tumbled locks, dark with sweat, from his forehead. “I won’t give you up.”

Mia’s heart bounded. Stay with Vander . . . live with him. Sleep in his bed, make love to him night after night.

The image snapped her back to herself. Where was her self-respect? Even the fact his ripped shirt revealed his muscled chest made her long for his touch. Something about him was destructive to her.

It was pitiful, she reminded herself, to want a man who was not only disrespectful, but unkind. As
pitiful as all those novels she’d written about one duke—Vander—though she’d given him six different names.

“Have you changed your mind so quickly?” She tried for flippant. “Will you change your mind again tomorrow? You never struck me as a fickle man.”

His jaw tightened. “I am not fickle: in point of fact, I am Charlie’s guardian and I don’t intend to give him up.”

Incredulity scorched down Mia’s spine and she drew in a searing breath. “You want me to stay married to you because of Charlie?” The mortification cut like a blade: it seemed that even her eight-year-old nephew was more valuable than she was. She had never felt more unlovable.

“Not merely that,” Vander bit out. Then something else flashed through his eyes. “Look, regardless of what my mother did, my father never stopped loving her, all those years, even when he was in the asylum.”

Somewhat to her relief, Mia discovered that fury was allowing her to view the scene from a distance, as if she had walked into a play.

“I fail to see how that is pertinent to our marriage,” she observed. “If our parents are to be the subject of conversation, I think it’s far more relevant that when I described my father and your mother as loving one another, you countered with an assessment of my father as a bastard who seduced your mother, and moreover, you implied that I was more of the same. A bad apple from a bad tree.”

Another moment of silence followed. “I didn’t say that.”

“In so many words, you did.”

“That wasn’t my intent.”

“You said what you thought at that moment! You said things you believed!”

“Damn it!” The words burst out of him, as if the
thread of his control had finally broken. “My whole life, I believed my father was betrayed by my mother,” Vander said, taking another step toward her. “But then I learned he had been beating her.”

Mia flinched. “I had no idea. I’m—I’m so sorry.”

“He injured her so badly that she was unable to have children after I was born.” Something in Vander’s voice told her that he had never said this aloud before, and might never say it again.

“That is terrible,” Mia said carefully. She had been right about all those glass animals. She would have to send someone over to Vander’s house to box up all the fragile little mothers and their crystal offspring.

“When Reeve arrived this morning, all I could think was that I had married a woman who loved another man, just as my mother did.”

“I—”

He took a final step and curled his hands around her upper arms. His eyes searched hers. “I let you go. Bloody hell, I pushed you away because I was so convinced that you loved another man. But the minute your carriage was out of sight, it hit me. I was wrong. You don’t love him, do you, Duchess? You love me.”

Mia gasped and opened her mouth to hotly refute his statement—but he bent his head and kissed her so ferociously that heat spread like wildfire over her skin. Only a slender instinct for self-preservation gave her the strength to pull away.

“Unfortunate though your parents’ history is, I’m afraid it doesn’t change our situation.” She blurted out everything she’d been thinking about all afternoon. “You and I are not a good match. We’re too volatile and too—” She couldn’t think of the word. “I did things with you that no lady should do, and when you lose your temper, you say things I can’t forgive.”

“I can change,” Vander said, his eyes fierce.

Mia shook her head. “It’s not just that. I lost my dignity when I blackmailed you into marriage, and I lost even more when . . . um . . . well, you know what I mean. If we remain married, over time I would lose what fragments of self-respect I have left.”

Vander’s rough-hewn features were set hard. “There is nothing, and I repeat nothing, in what we did together that you should be embarrassed about. What we did together was a gift, Duchess. And I will have no other duchess.”

“You will not tell me how to feel! Nor can you discard me and then demand to have me back, like a piece of lost luggage. What we shared is not good enough to sustain a marriage.” She stepped to one side and pointed to the window. “Please leave the way you came in.”

Vander’s eyes darkened and without answering, he pulled her back into his arms. Like a flash of lightning, that dangerous warmth spread through her again. When she opened her mouth to protest, he took possession.

Mia didn’t regain sanity for long minutes, coming back to herself only to discover that she was shaking, clinging to her husband, her knees weak. Vander was swearing under his breath as his hands roamed over her body.

Once again she had succumbed to her basest impulses. She was shaming herself again. Ladies didn’t act this way.

She pushed against his chest. “You must go,” she said, her voice cracking. “I cannot do this. You cannot do this to me. I deserve a husband who respects me!”

“I respect you,” Vander stated.

The look in his eyes made her body throb with need. But she managed to clear her head. “You
want
me, which is not the same. You don’t respect me, not
the way a gentleman should respect the woman he marries. The heroes in my books would never say the things that you have said to me. They would never even think them. But you have. A minute ago you asked me if I’d worn this nightdress for another man, even knowing our parents’ history and the toll it took on both of us. You have repeatedly expressed your low opinion of me, no matter what you say now.”

She stepped farther away from him, as though putting physical distance between them would somehow translate to loving him less. “The truth is that I am nothing more than the title to you—the title, and a body to go with it.” Anger once again began to shore up her courage, putting a layer of thick ice between them. “Are you aware that in our short marriage, you have never once used my name? To you, I am always ‘duchess’; at one point I wasn’t sure you even remembered my name. The final proof? Yesterday you and Edward renegotiated our marriage without bothering to ask me about my feelings—though I stood between you in the room.”