“Are we?” Vivian asked before she could stop herself.
His eyes widened, but his smile did not slip. “I like to think so. Besides, when one receives a sign such as this, one must act.”
Vivian frowned at him, too bewildered to attempt being polite.Is he mad?
“A sign? What are you talking about?”
“Your husband’s illness, of course. You are returning to London. Clearly, it is the Lord above saying that we are meant to be together. That we should be with one another.” His eyes roved across her body, making Vivian feel as though she were coveredin a viscous slime. “Just look at you; you have never looked so well.”
“I am married, Lord Brixten.” She took a step away from him, sure she had misheard him.
This cannot be happening.
He reached for her hand, but she jerked it out of his grip. “That hardly matters now; we can run away together. Finally, have the happiness we both crave.”
“Are you mad? What about your wife? You know, the one you claim to be so in love with that you broke off our own engagement?” Fury boiled within her chest.The nerve.
“It was not love. Not real love. Simply lust.” He made a dismissive motion, as though swatting a gnat.
“Does she know this? After all, if rumors are to be believed, she is with child.” Vivian prayed that the rumors were false; surely they must be false. The man could not be that spineless.
His following words shattered that feeble hope.
“She is, and it has made her terribly moody. When she is not vomiting, she is complaining. When she is not complaining, she is melancholic. Not to mention what it has done to her appearance.” He shuddered, apparently unaware of the disgust Vivian was sure was etched on her face. “While you havebloomed into a true beauty, she seems to have shriveled. Well, no, it is more like she has ballooned. Truth be told, I can barely stand to look at her. She is so needy, constantly wanting this thing or that. No, I need a real woman. Someone like you. Run away with me, Vivia—ah!”
Vivian slapped him harder than she had ever slapped anyone in her life. “How dare you speak like that! That is yourwife! You have a duty to her, to your child!”
Her hand stung with the force of it, but she did not care. She drew it back again, watching as he cringed away from her. His lip trembled; his eyes were wild.
“But you do not understand how hard it is. You are not a man, so how could you? There is so much pressure on me. It is so difficult to sit in a seat of power when everything is changing. It is more than I can bear. At least not without some comfort. We are meant to be together. We could elope, leave all of this behind us, and escape the tyranny of duty and responsibility.”
“You disgust me.” Vivian’s lip curled, and she jerked away as the man tried to reach for her. “You are a coward, Lord Brixten. No, you are worse than that. You are weak. A pathetic little man who would not know decency if it spat in his face. I feel sorry for your wife, married to a cretin like you.”
“Keep your voice down,” Lord Brixten hissed. “You are making a scene.”
Vivian drew herself up to her full height, her entire body shaking with barely suppressed fury. “I do not care that I am causing a scene. You have just asked me to be your mistress, told me that you find your pregnant wife repulsive, and that you find your duty too much to bear.”
“I think you have got the wrong end of the stick.” Lord Brixten smiled at her, looking nervously around. “It is a compliment, do you not see? I want to be with you so badly that I would risk it all.”
“Do not insult my intelligence,” Vivian spat. “You should be at home with your wife, supporting her, caring for her. She is carrying your child, perhaps even your heir, and where are you? Trying to bed another woman. You are risking nothing, simply running from your obligations. You do not want me; you want an escape, and I will not give it to you.”
“But she is so large, she is practically an elepha—AH!” He grasped his face as Vivian slapped him again, so hard that it forced him to stumble several steps backward.
“She is pregnant, and even if she were the size of a house, she would still be fairer than you deserve. That girl is beautiful; it is you, sir, who are hideous on the inside and the out!” Vivian clenched her fists and turned away from the man and the red hand mark on his cheek.
“Think of what you are throwing away, and for what? To go back to a dying man? And when he is dead and gone, you will comecrawling back to me. But it will be too late. Do you understand? Too late!” He grabbed her wrist, and all reason left Vivian.
“I would not come crawling to you if you were the last man on Earth.” She rounded on him, towering over him as she peered down her nose at him as though he was little more than dirt beneath her feet.
“There is no future with him, I am your only hope. Have you not heard the rumors? The papers are full of the details of it. And when they report on the copious tonics he consumes, what then?” Lord Brixten’s lips curled, his eyes flashing with triumph.
Understanding hit Vivian like a bullet. “You! You are the reason for these rumors.”
“I may have let slip to a few fellows at the gentleman’s club that your husband had a bout of ill health recently. That I feared what it might mean for you – my servant overheard the dowager duchess’s man placing an order at the apothecary. It hardly takes a genius to know what that means.” Lord Brixten shrugged. “It is not rumor, Vivian, but the truth. The man is a dead man. He is cursed.”
Vivian drew herself up to her full height, towering over Lord Brixten. “My husband is not cursed. And even if he were, I would rather spend one minute with him than a lifetime with you. He is three times the man you could ever hope to be. He is a man who understands honor and duty.”
He would never do this to me.Thomas would never court a married woman, let alone abandon his own pregnant wife.
