She shook her head. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” Another step brought their bodies together. His hands found her waist, anchoring her to him. “Don’t tell you that I love you? How can I not? I love you, Daisy, Duchess of Trent. You sealed my fate from the moment you dared me to take my turn at the Beresford ball. You had such fire, such daring, the likes of which I’ve never seen in a woman. You humble me. You inspire me. You make me want to be better so that I’m worthy of being your husband.”
“No,” she cried out, shaking against him. Her palms flattened to his chest. “Stop it, Sebastian.”
He couldn’t. He held her to him, made her listen, because he couldn’t shake the feeling that if he allowed her to walk away now, he’d lose her forever. And he couldn’t bear that. Even with the accusations in the report running through his mind, fury and jealousy wreaking havoc on him for the entire trip from Liverpool to London, he had been thinking of ways he could reform her, convince her to see reason. Keep her safe and at his side.
“I’ve been living a lie for years. I’ve devoted my entire life to duty and protecting Crown and country. I don’t know how to be different than who I am, but I do know that I love you. I love you, and I will change for you. I’ll do anything for you, buttercup.”
“Don’t you see?” She exhaled, her tone steeped in sadness as she touched his face for a fleeting moment. “I don’t want you to change. All I ever wanted from you was your love and your honesty. But you came to me in lies. Everything we shared emerged from your deceit. Do you think you can tell me the truth and everything else will fall into place, that I’ll swoon into your arms in gratitude? Because I can assure you it won’t.Iwon’t. I’m stronger than that.”
Of course she was strong. She was the strongest woman he’d ever known. He was in awe of her. “I’m telling you all this because I owe you the truth, Daisy.”
“The truth or your version of it?” Her eyes flashed as she faced him, vibrant in her ire. More beautiful than he’d ever seen her as she stood up to him. “Because as I see it, the truth is that you returned for me tonight believing the gossip and lies and whatever information you’ve received. You believed I had betrayed our vows. I cannot fathom what changed your mind, but I haven’t forgotten your words earlier this evening. You are a hypocrite, sir, to charge me with deceiving you when you are the greatest dissembler of them all. A hypocrite and a liar, and I want nothing more to do with you! Grant me the annulment I was meant to have.”
With that final, parting shot, she spun on her heel and quit the chamber. The door slammed closed, humming on its frame. He remained where he was, in the center of the chamber. He may as well have been in the middle of a bloody wilderness for all that he could find the answers for what to do next.
Because she was right. He was a hypocrite and a liar. And he didn’t deserve a woman as good as Daisy. He didn’t deserve her at all.
Unfortunately, that realization didn’t make him want or love her any less.
“Fuck me,” he growled into the night.
s the sun began to rise over London,Daisy reached a painful conclusion.
She’d spent the night pacing her chamber, struggling to make sense of the tumult within her. Shock had rendered it impossible to sleep. Her feet hurt. Her back ached. She was tired and emotionally drained and more confused than she’d ever been in her life. But she knew what she needed to do.
She was leaving Sebastian.
Her hands skimmed over her burgeoning belly. She needed time and space to decide whether or not she was leaving him forever. There was the babe to consider. He had deceived her, manipulated her, abandoned her.
What a fool she was, falling in love with a man who had merely been carrying out his duty. A man who had suspected her guilty of heinous crimes. A man who had believed the worst of her until it was too late. How naïve of her to have imagined he was the only person in her life who hadn’t used her for his own gain.
He had used her more thoroughly than anyone ever had.
His betrayal ran so deep she wasn’t sure if she could ever recover from it.
She was so caught up in her tortured thoughts that she didn’t realize she was no longer alone in her chamber until the distinctive sound of a gun being cocked rang into the silence. Heart in her throat, she spun about to find the last person in the world she could have ever imagined pointing a pistol at her.
Her lady’s maid.
A gasp tore from her as a fresh onslaught of shock barreled through her. Abigail, who had always been pleasant and polite and smiling, who had been her steadfast attendant, first as a nurse and later as her lady’s maid, was coolly training a gun upon her. She took an instinctive step forward, palms raised in supplication.
“Don’t take another step or you’ll regret it,” Abigail warned, her voice as cold and hard as the frozen ground on a January morning.
Daisy froze, her mouth going dry. “Abigail, what are you doing?”
“Returning you to your father. He’s waiting in a carriage below,” Abigail said with an eerie calm that belied the heaviness of the moment. As though Daisy wasn’t staring down the barrel of a gun. “Come along quietly, and you won’t get hurt.”
She shook her head, dread icing a path down her spine. “I don’t wish to go anywhere with him. I never want to see him again.”
“Ungrateful bitch.” Her lip curled. “Just like your mother.”
“How dare you disparage my mother?” The words rushed from Daisy’s lips before she could think better of them. But she was fiercely defensive of her precious mama’s memory—the only part of her that remained.
“I dare quite a bit seeing as how I’ve a pistol.” Abigail stalked forward. “You’re not worth much to me any longer, so you’d serve yourself best by shutting your mouth and doing as I say.”
Abigail’s tone as she had spoken of Daisy’s mother struck her then. Bitter, laced with rancor and hatred. Suddenly queasy, she flattened her palm over her belly where even now, her babe innocently grew. She would do anything to protect her child. Her instincts told her that obeying the other woman would be a grave mistake.
