“At that time, Mr. Dautry was in the dower house with Miss Rose.” Fleming hesitated, and added, “I fear that His Grace may have underestimated Mr. Dautry’s feelings with regard to Miss Rainsford.”
“I see,” India said, her voice faint.
“When Mr. Dautry returned to the house, I was below stairs. But I understand that on learning of the elopement, he made off with all speed in an attempt to catch the pair before the wedding took place.”
India’s heart stopped for a moment. Thorn had gone after Lala. He had desperately tried to stop her marriage to another. He must truly love Lala.
She herself had been nothing more than an available body.
If she was going to become a fallen woman, at the very least she could have kept her heart whole.
But no . . . she never stopped loving her parents, even when they forgot to feed her, and she probably wouldn’t stop loving Thorn either. Right now, she felt like a wounded animal. It hurt to love someone like this.
Despite herself, her eyes filled with tears and her lip trembled. Fleming discarded his butler’s code of conduct and put a hand on her shoulder, his eyes deeply sympathetic.
“I’m all right,” she said, swallowing hard and not even trying to hide the pain. “I’ll be fine. I think . . . I think I shall return to London immediately, if you would be so good as to summon my carriage, Fleming. My maid can follow with my godmother whenever Lady Adelaide wishes to make the journey.”
It was only by a miracle that she managed to avoid bursting into tears before she climbed into her carriage. And the fact that Fleming pressed four fresh handkerchiefs into her hand showed that he knew precisely when those tears would escape.
As it turned out, India cried from the moment the carriage entered the post road, all the way to London. “It’s all right, Peters,” she told Adelaide’s alarmed butler, upon her arrival back home. “It’s been a-a-a very trying day.”
What woman wouldn’t have fallen in love with Thorn? He was seductive and yet tender and sweet. He had genuinely listened to her, and created the India rubber band on her design. He was bawdy and rough and real, in a way that true gentlemen never were.
Even though he wasn’t a gentleman by birth, he had always been scrupulously honest. He hadn’t meant to sweep her off her feet. He had looked her in the eyes, more than once, and told her that their relationship was temporary, and that he planned to marry Lala.
A sob wrenched her chest. The stupid thing was that men had tried to tumble her for years. They’d assumed that since they were hiring a woman and paying a woman, bedding that woman came as part of the package.
She had failed herself. She had forgotten the safeguards she put in place years ago, the lessons she learned from her father and mother about life. About love.
Now she felt as if a vital organ had been gouged out of her. Who would have imagined that love could hurt like this?
She had to build a new life, one that wasn’t agonizingly painful.
One that didn’t have Thorn in it.
Chapter Thirty-five
Thorn kept poking at his feelings for India, the way one might poke a sore tooth. This raw possessiveness wasn’t something he ever thought to experience. Planned to experience.
He drove straight back from Piggleston, consumed the entire way by relief, and arrived at Starberry Court just before the noon hour. He needed answers.
“Where is my father?” he asked, cutting Fleming off before his butler could utter a word.
“His Grace is in the library. But, sir—”
“Not now, Fleming.” Thorn found the duke alone, sitting before a chessboard, no doubt studying some arcane stratagem. Villiers looked up as Thorn entered. Damn it, he looked completely unrepentant. In fact, he looked amused.
“What in the hell was that about?” Thorn said, keeping his voice controlled. There was no point in howling at the Duke of Villiers, as he knew from childhood experience. “You knew damn well that I didn’t care for Laetitia Rainsford. You sent me on a wild-goose chase.”
“You didn’t enjoy your trip to Piggleston?”
Thorn had learned—if not inherited—his deadly glare from Villiers; after a moment, the corners of the duke’s mouth curled up and he said, “As your father, I thought you could use a lesson in that most perplexing of emotions: love.”
“I already knew that I wanted to marry India before you drove me halfway to the next county,” Thorn retorted.
“Did you?”
The words hung in the air. It was true that Thorn had decided to ask for India’s hand in marriage. But he hadn’t understood just how much he felt for her until the darkest hour of the morning, when he’d realized what life would be like without her at his side.
It wasn’t a question of bedding her. She was his true north, his other half.
“You are my son,” the duke continued, his eyes softening. “I thought there was a good chance you’d inherited my idiocy. By the way, she turned down Lord Brody’s proposal of marriage last night.”
“How do you know that?” Thorn felt that muscle jumping in his jaw again.
“I kept him company while he drowned himself in a bottle of Cognac,” the duke said. “I don’t expect he’ll be down until well into the afternoon.”
“That doesn’t mean she’ll turn to me. Why would she accept my offer?” Thorn said savagely. “I’ve nothing to offer her that he hasn’t, and in truth, a great deal less.”
“She loves you,” his father said calmly. “Though the emotion won’t be enough on its own. Eleanor fell in love with me, but I had made so damn many mistakes by then that she wanted nothing to do with me.”
“I’m no duke,” Thorn said bleakly.
“It’s my distinct impression that you treated her like the bastard you are. Do you remember how I courted your stepmother?”
“You bought her a ring the size of a swallow’s egg, you put on a black coat, and you pretended to be your own cousin.”
The duke grinned. “I pretended to be a gentleman, which I am not, duke or no. You’ll have to do the same.”
“I don’t have a black coat.”
“Pretend to be a gentleman,” his father advised. “Tell her that she resembles a rose; make a formal proposal. But first go to Rundell & Bridge to buy a diamond, and tell them I sent you. She has returned to London, so you can (so to speak) kill two birds with one stone.”
“I don’t know if India is interested in diamonds.”
“What gemstone would she prefer?”
Thorn thought of India’s mother’s jewels, lost in the Thames. “Nothing I could buy for her. More to the point, like Eleanor, she can marry the highest in the land. You are the highest, which means your proposal and mine are hardly parallel.”
“She just turned down a duke’s heir,” Villiers observed. His eyes turned fierce and he said, “You are the highest in the land, Tobias. You have more brains and balls than any man in the peerage, and that woman knows it.”
Thorn smiled faintly. “You forgot to add that I’m your son.”
“All of which were inherited from me, naturally,” his father said with satisfaction.
Chapter Thirty-six
129 Maddox Street
London residence of Lady Adelaide Swift
and Lady Xenobia India St. Clair
By late afternoon India had her tears more or less under control. She would find a husband who didn’t constantly remind her about the “perfect” woman he planned to marry, but made it clear that she was that woman.
The only time she’d seen that sort of look in Thorn’s eyes was after Vander joined them in the country. Then she caught him watching her with a possessiveness that had thrilled her. But it hadn’t really had anything to do with her. It was about his rivalry with Vander.
Before she met Thorn, she had decided to find a man who would permit her to take charge of the household accounts. The idea of Thorn allowing her to run their life was enough to push a hollow laugh from her throat. S
he needed to marry a reasonable, measured man.
Thorn had identified the perfect trait for his spouse, and he hadn’t wavered from his opinion. He had chosen Lala because she was sweet and always would be.
Just because life hadn’t made her sweet didn’t mean that a man couldn’t love her. She would find a man who would love her just as she was. Neither of her most ardent suitors—Fitzroy and Nugent—would suit; they would be horrified if she lost her temper. Perhaps she should travel to the Continent. Weren’t Spanish women famous for having fiery tempers?
India was thinking about black-eyed Spanish men when the door opened and the butler ushered Thorn into her drawing room. She jumped to her feet as her heart threw itself into double time.
He bowed. “Good afternoon, Lady Xenobia.”
India took one look at his tousled dark hair and bruised eye and—absurdly—longing ignited in her very blood. There was no other man like him, one whose strength and intelligence swirled around him like a cloak, a complement to his bone-deep confidence. Though perhaps a better word was arrogance.
Belying his battered face, he was wearing a coat as extraordinary as any his father had ever donned: he looked ready to dance attendance on a queen.
“What on earth are you doing here, Thorn?” she asked, affecting a casual tone with effort. “Are you . . . did you catch up with Dr. Hatfield?”
“Not in time.”
“Ah.” It was no wonder he looked tired. He had lost his ideal spouse. “I’m sorry. You’ll find someone else,” she offered, feeling the words chip away at her heart.
“I already have.”
“Oh.”
“I came to ask you to marry me, India. To pay me the very great honor of becoming my bride.”
India knew why this was happening. The moment Vander had stepped forward and told Lady Rainsford that they were married, she’d seen the look in Thorn’s eyes.
Men like Thorn were ferociously competitive. They didn’t give up, and failure was just a temporary inconvenience. In fact, it was likely the competition had escalated once Lala had removed herself from the equation by eloping with Dr. Hatfield. It left India as the bone of contention.
“Why is your eye bruised?” she asked sharply, unable to respond to the question she had longed for—not when it was simply offered, like a business proposition to be accepted or rejected.
“Vander,” he said, confirming her guess.
Her heart sank. She stood between two snarling wolfhounds. The story never ended very well for the bone.
“You fought over me,” she stated.
“That is irrelevant,” Thorn said. “You are the epitome of beauty and grace, India. I cannot imagine spending my life with anyone other than you, and I beg for nothing more than the honor of your hand in marriage.”
The words rolled out of his mouth with all the passion of a vicar reciting his third service of the day. He was obviously exhausted, his eyes shaded with some emotion that she couldn’t interpret. He took a step closer and held out his hand. “This is for you.”
A diamond ring lay in his palm, a lavish, costly ring. India looked at it, and back at his face.
He hadn’t come to say that he was in love with her, as she had secretly dreamed. He was asking her to marry him because Vander had claimed her, and Lala had got away.
He was here because he wanted to win. She swallowed hard. Her heart was breaking. Lala was the golden fleece and India was apparently the consolation prize.
It was as if the world was presenting her with everything she wanted . . . in all the wrong ways.
Her throat tightened painfully, but she refused to cry in front of him. She was the daughter of a marquess, even if her papa was the oddest nobleman who’d ever held the title. She was Lady Xenobia St. Clair.
Somehow she found her Lady Xenobia voice, the cool, businesslike voice that expected—and received—complete obedience. “I’m afraid that I must refuse your very moving offer of marriage.”
His eyes burned into hers, so intense in their focus that she felt a bit dizzy. “Why? Did I say it incorrectly?”
“Not at all. It was one of the more eloquent I have received.”
A movement caught her eyes, and she saw his right fist clench. The skin was broken over his knuckles, presumably from pummeling Vander.
“Yours is not my first marriage proposal, but it is nonetheless appreciated.” Her heart wanted to give in and say yes. Who cared why he was proposing? Maybe he would fall in love with her later. . . .
But every ounce of practicality in her screamed no. He wouldn’t. Men who slept with an available woman didn’t later declare their love. If she hadn’t succumbed to him like a trollop, she could have pretended to herself that he would love her someday. She could have lied to herself.
Perhaps.
Frustration burned through Thorn as he stood before India. She was so damned beautiful. Even though she looked pale and was far too quiet.
Abruptly, he decided to discard his father’s advice. At this point he should kneel and slip the ring on India’s finger, but he had the feeling that she’d back away and he’d be left on his knees like a fool.
He dropped the monstrous ring on a table, and hundreds of pounds’ worth of diamond clinked against a teacup.
“I want to marry you, India.”
Her eyes met his, steady and grave. “Why? Only yesterday you were courting Lala. You threw yourself into a carriage, by all accounts, trying to stop her marriage. Why are you proposing to me?”
Vander’s question resounded in his head. Why would she want to marry you? India was a jewel of a woman in a jewel-like setting that he presumed she’d designed herself. She was surrounded by exquisite objects, the patina of age and wealth on every wall.
He might have been dressed like a bloody peacock to come to her, but it was all just show, covering up who he really was: more beast than man. They were beauty and the beast, the lady and the bastard. . . . It was stupid. Impossible.
But the warrior in him reared up. She was everything to him. All that he had thought mattered—his factories, Vander, that damned house—none of it mattered compared to her.
“I want you,” he stated, the raw note in his voice telling its own truth.
The air burned as India drew it into her lungs. At least Thorn was honest. He desired her. He didn’t pretend to love her, or even declare that she was perfect, the way Lala had been. Her reaction must have shown on her face.
“I’m not talking about intimacies,” he added. “In other ways.”
Fury engulfed her and there was no stopping it, no telling herself to be adult and compose herself the way a lady should. “The hell you’re not talking about intimacies,” she cried. “You bedded me while you courted Lala. Now she’s no longer free and, as you say, you want me. That’s not good enough. I deserve better.”
Finally, it was all clear in her head. Painful, but clear. “I earned my own dowry,” she told him. “I told you why. Do you remember?”
He didn’t say a word, and she just kept going.
“Adelaide wanted me to debut. Some man would undoubtedly have desired me enough to take me without a dowry: after all, he’d get the daughter of a marquess, wouldn’t he? Blue blood sells at a high premium. You know that, since you furnished Starberry Court for Lala.”
“India—”
She cut him off, feeling her fingernails digging into her palms. “I earned my own dowry so I could buy freedom to choose the man myself rather than taking the first gentleman who held out his hand.”
“Take my hand,” he said. His face could have been carved from stone. “I don’t care whether you have a dowry or not.”
“You don’t love me,” she said flatly. “Even though you’re in the throes of this ridiculous competition with Vander, you haven’t lied about that. You don’t love me and you don’t trust me, which is why you believed that I would give away my own child.”
She felt as if her heart were breaking even saying the words a
loud.
Thorn’s brows drew together. “You are not thinking rationally, India. In fact, I think you are blaming me for the sins of your parents.”
“This has nothing to do with my parents!” she cried. “Nothing! If you loved me, you would have come to me after Lady Rainsford made all those accusations, and you didn’t.”
“I was chasing my own carriage, believing you and Vander were eloping in it.”
His voice was so scathing that it took a moment to absorb his words—and to understood why he’d set out after the carriage. “It doesn’t matter!” she cried wildly. “Don’t you see, Thorn? Don’t you see that? That’s just more competition with Vander. You’re offering this big diamond . . . but that’s not what I want. I deserve better!”
Thorn was listening, groping through the emotion boiling in India’s voice, when he heard words he understood all too clearly: “I deserve better.”
Vander was right. Hell, she was right.
“I was good enough to bed,” he snarled, “but not good enough to marry. Do I have you right, Lady Xenobia?”
Her mouth fell open.
“You’re right, India. I didn’t want to marry someone like you. I wanted a pleasant relationship. I didn’t want a woman who argues with me, who makes me so crazed with lust that I tumble her under the noses of the servants. Do you know what I felt when I thought you’d run away with Vander?” He was shouting now. “Do you have any idea how I felt?”
India would never be cowed, no matter how he shouted. She raised her chin defiantly. “I know exactly what you felt: You felt that you were losing to Vander,” she retorted. “That’s not enough for me.”
A great coldness swept down over Thorn. She wanted better: who the hell was he to argue? “The fact is, India, the last thing I need is marriage to a daughter of a marquess who thinks she’s above me, who wants better.” The words came from some dark part of his soul, and they came with the force that only a bastard could give them.
She stared at him, those beautiful eyes wide and strained. Her beauty hurt his gut, and his voice shifted from cold to lethal. “It would be rank stupidity to marry a woman who lied to me, told me she wasn’t a virgin, told me she’d give away her own child. You demonstrated precisely how much you respect me. Would you have lied to a gentleman?”