The Bride of Devil's Acre (25 page)

“No, thank you. I’ll see to it myself.” What Jacqueline didn’t say was that she feared her father might not agree to see her if given warning of her arrival.

“Shall I come with you?” Henry asked, handing off his coat to a waiting footman.

Jacqueline glanced at the door to her father’s study. “Would you mind terribly waiting in the library. at least until I’ve had a chance to have a few words with my father?”

“Of course not,” Henry said, taking Jacqueline’s hand and pressing a quick kiss to the back of her fingers.
 

Jacqueline suffered the familiarity. It seemed now that she’d agreed to marry him, Henry couldn’t keep from touching her. Ever since his arrival that afternoon, he’d constantly had a hand on her. It was considered acceptable from a man she’d agreed to marry, and she realized she had best get used to it.
 

“If you’ll follow me, sir,” Benson stepped forward and indicated the way to the library. “I shall have tea brought for the both of you.”

“Thank you, Benson.” Jacqueline watched and waited until both men disappeared into the library.

Alone in the foyer, Jacqueline walked slowly toward her father’s study. The door was closed, symbolic of their relationship. Had she ever really known her father? He loved her, to be sure. But he resented her, and that resentment eclipsed all other emotion.

“Come.”

Jacqueline didn’t realize she’d knocked until her father answered. With hands that shook, she opened the door and stepped inside.

Nothing had changed. The study was as she remembered it, the dark wood and worn leather surrounding her father with masculine grace. He sat behind his desk, head bent over the papers he was reading. There was a glass of brandy at his elbow, and the bottle stood near at hand.

She hadn’t been gone that long, and nothing had changed—except everything.

“Hello, Papa.”

Lord John’s head snapped up.
 

Father and daughter stared at each other across the room.

“What do you want?”

“I…I…” Jacqueline gripped her fingers. “I want to come home.”

Lord John slowly sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “That husband of yours toss you out?”

Jacqueline’s chin went up. “I left him.”

Lord John’s heart clenched at the gesture. Jacqueline’s mother used to look at him the same way.

“I’m getting an annulment,” Jacqueline explained. “I was hoping you would help me, and that I could come home.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Why would you lie?” Jacqueline hadn’t meant to confront her father, not yet.

Lord John’s eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”

“Henry accompanied me today; he told me about his proposal. How could you, Papa? How could you lie to him? To
me
?”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“By lying?”

“By doing what was necessary. Gates isn’t good enough for you, girl.” Lord John stood, planting his hands on his desk. “He was never going to be good enough for you.”

“He’s better than nothing!”
Better than marrying the man who kidnapped me
, Jacqueline thought.

“Nothing? Is that what your life here was, nothing?” Lord John’s voice rose. “I gave you everything! A beautiful home, expensive gowns, the best governess that money could buy, and you would leave it all to marry that…that…milquetoast of a man!”

“What about love? Family? Children?” Jacqueline could still remember the light in Catherine’s eyes as the woman held her son. “You would throw away my chance at happiness, just to keep me here.”

“I didn’t want to lose you!” Lord John shouted. “You are all I have left!”

Jacqueline blinked, her mouth snapping shut.
 

Lord John’s chest heaved as he panted. “After your mother…you’re all I have left.”

“I’m nothing more than a painful reminder, and you hate me for taking her away from you,” Jacqueline whispered, giving voice to the painful truth.

“I don’t hate you,” Lord John said, pain making his voice tight. “I could never hate the one piece of her I have left.”

“I’m more than just a piece of my mother.” Jacqueline ached for the mother’s love she had never known but resented being held up against the memory of a woman she had never met.

Lord John stared at his daughter, and for the first time forced himself to note the differences. Jacqueline’s hair was darker, thicker, and curled at the ends. Her eyes were hazel, more like his than her mother’s, and she stood taller and fuller of figure.
 

But the chin, the chin was all Ann.

“You look so much like she did on the day I married her.”

Jacqueline was quiet. This was the first time her father spoke of her mother without the usual anger coloring his words.
 

“After you were born, I held the two of you in my arms as the life bled out of her. She stared at your face as she died. You were the one thing that mattered most to her, and she begged me to take care of you. I haven’t done a very good job.”

“Papa—”
 

“I loved your mother from the first moment I saw her. I can still remember it. I was at a ball, dragged there by a friend chasing after some skirt, and there she was. She wasn’t the most beautiful woman in the room, but there was something about her—a vitality.”
 

Lord John looked away from his daughter, his gaze falling on the glass of brandy. But he didn’t pick it up. There had been enough of that to last a lifetime.
 

“Your mother completed some piece of me, and when she died, it died, too. And every time I look at you, I see what’s missing.

“I’m sorry, Papa.” Jacqueline’s heart broke, for herself, for her father, for the things she couldn’t change.
 

Lord John circled his desk and tentatively took his daughter into his arms. “It’s not your fault,” he said, resting his cheek on the top of her head. “I know I’ve blamed you, and I was wrong. I always thought I was a strong man, but I’m weak and I broke under the weight of my grief.”

“I can’t bring her back,” Jacqueline said quietly. “But maybe I could help you to miss her a little less.”
 

“If I have you, that’s all that matters.” Lord John held his daughter, giving her a final squeeze before stepping back. Staring down into her face, he asked, “Now, what’s this about your getting an annulment?”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to accompany you?” Henry asked, handing Jacqueline up into her father’s carriage.

“I’ll be fine.” Jacqueline smiled down at Henry. The meeting with her father had gone well, better than expected. While he wasn’t thrilled at the idea of her getting an annulment only to turn around and marry again, he was willing to grant that it was the best option available.
 

Her father had echoed Marcus’ sentiments almost exactly.
 

“You don’t have to marry Gates,” Lord John told his daughter after her explanation. “I will help you secure an annulment. After that, you can stay here.”

“I can’t remain in London,” Jacqueline said quietly. “Not unless I marry.”

“Perhaps it’s time we take on traveling,” Lord John suggested, a bit desperate at the idea of reconciling with his daughter, only to lose her again. “We can take a trip to the Continent; you’ve always wanted to see Egypt.”

Jacqueline’s heart lightened. She was sitting beside her father, the two of them taking tea. There was a tentative peace between them, this one fragile with the possibility of permanence.
 

“And then what?” she asked, ever the pragmatist. She was notorious, and news of her annulment was unlikely to help. “We can’t stay away forever; eventually we will have to return.” Hesitantly, she covered her father’s hand with her own. “I’m not leaving you,” she said, addressing the crux of her father’s fear.
 

Lord John had smiled, turning his hand over to grasp his daughter’s fingers.
 

“Lord Gates’ townhouse is not far from here, and I promise to visit often.” They had discussed the particulars of Jacqueline’s situation. Tomorrow morning she would move back home, and her father and Henry’s father, Lord Gates, would start the process of securing an annulment. After that, she and Henry would be married and Jacqueline would move into the Gates’ townhouse where Henry lived with his mother, father, and two youngest brothers.
 

“If you’re sure this is what you want.”

“It is,” Jacqueline said. She hoped her smile was sufficiently convincing.

She’d left her father then, collecting Henry and apologizing for leaving him waiting.
 

“I’m perfectly capable of seeing you home,” Henry groused.
 

Jacqueline’s father insisted on sending her in his carriage to pack her things. “I know, Henry, but he’s trying to make amends.”

Henry nodded reluctantly. It wouldn’t do to alienate Lord Edwards, not after the man agreed to help. “Very well, but I will call on you tomorrow to escort you home.”

Jacqueline stifled a sigh. Henry was quickly becoming suffocating, a particular annoyance after the past several days of relative freedom. “Fine, but not too early.”

Henry bowed and closed the carriage door, watching as the conveyance rolled away and turned out of sight.
 

The ride back to Marcus’ townhouse was short. Stepping from the carriage, Jacqueline eyed the front door. She wasn’t ready to go inside. Her mind was a mess, her thoughts swirling around in her head.

Turning, she crossed the street and stepped onto the path that wound through a small park she’d spied from her bedroom window. Jacqueline had the path to herself, most of the men and women having returned home to get ready for the evening. The quiet suited her perfectly, clearing a place for her thoughts to settle.

Gravel crunched beneath Jacqueline’s slippers, and the early evening air was fresh with the scent of blooming flowers. The future is looking hopeful, she told herself. There was tentative hope for her relationship with her father, and marriage to Henry to look forward to.
 

If the idea of an annulment set off a painful sensation in her chest, Jacqueline studiously ignored it. There was nothing back there for her. Her marriage to Devil had been nothing but a series of lies.

Except, his acceptance of her scars hadn’t been a lie. Unbidden, the memory of Devil’s face as he kissed her belly and wished the man responsible dead appeared before her mind’s eye. He hadn’t been lying to her then, or when he made love to her.

Heat pooled at the memory of their lovemaking and the way her body had given over to his touch. Never before had she experienced such exquisite pleasure, and certainly not since. Henry’s kiss the other day paled in comparison, as did Henry when held up against the memory of her husband.

Damn, Devil!

He’d given her a glimpse into another world, a world of unfettered passion and gaiety, and then destroyed it with a lie.

“Well, hello there, pretty. Did you miss me?” Carver wrapped his arms around Devil’s wife, pulling her back against his chest and covering her mouth with his hand. Her buttocks cradled his arousal, and his shaft thickened as she started to struggle.

Fear slammed into Jacqueline, her heart pounding in her chest as the voice of her nightmares whispered in her ear.
 

“I certainly didn’t expect you to make it so easy,” Carver whispered. He’d followed her to and from her father’s house, hoping to get a glimpse of the woman who had taken over his dreams. Night after night, he drove his knife into her sweet-smelling flesh, her cries of pain mingling with his cries of passion.

Surprise had turned into excitement when she eschewed the safety of Eddington’s townhouse and turned toward the park. A quick jog through the trees had put him alongside her path, and the relative quiet made this an opportunity he could not afford to pass up.

Jacqueline screamed, the sound muffled by the trees and the hand clamped across her mouth. Bands of slick muscle bound her arms to her side, Carver lifting her off her feet and dragging her backward toward the trees.
 

If he succeeded in getting her from the path, Jacqueline knew she was as good as dead.

I won’t have you be a victim ever again
.

Devil’s words to her came rushing back.
 

Kicking with her feet, Jacqueline beat at Carver’s shins with her heels.

Carver grunted but didn’t let go. “I’m so glad to see Devil didn’t fuck the fight out of you,” he purred. “You are so unlike the whores, unlike anything else I’ve ever had. That’s why I came back for you. Those other women, the whores, they were half-dead already, if you ask me. They should be thanking me for putting them out of their misery.”

Fear turned to cold terror as Carver’s meaning sunk in. Good Lord, how many women had he killed?

“I would have come for you sooner,” Carver said, ignoring the small strikes of pain. Just a few more steps, and they would be safely to the trees. He had left his horse tied to a nearby tree, the mare waiting to take him back to St. Giles. “But your husband has been a busy man. He has his men out searching high and low. Damn inconvenient. I had to wait until he was sufficiently distracted before I paid a visit.”

Shock momentarily stilled her struggles. Devil had been looking for Carver? Tears stung the backs of Jacqueline’s eyes. Devil knew the man was alive, and he hadn’t told her.
 

“No, no, no,” Carver cooed, feeling the first tear fall onto the back of his fingers. “From now on, you shall cry only for me.”

Jacqueline shivered, her body shuddering. Carver shifted, juggling her slightly. His grip on her waist remained steady, but the hand on her mouth relaxed. Opening her mouth, Jacqueline bit down, clamping her back teeth and grinding them together.

Carver howled.

Jacqueline tasted blood and gagged as the coppery liquid filled her mouth.

“Bitch!” Carver ripped his hand free.

Jacqueline screamed, her lungs expending every bit of oxygen she possessed in an effort to save herself. In that moment, she honestly didn’t expect to be heard, but she wouldn’t go willingly.