He could not grasp, however, that a woman who could attack a lion with a pink parasol could be as vulnerable to him as she’d suggested. Nor did he suspect her of having any secret more complex than the affair she’d revealed.
And so, when he began to form an answer to the question of how he should react to the revelations of the prior evening, the answer was not one Hera would have approved. A less arrogant man would have questioned himself further. But he knew his worth. He realized his honor. He intimately understood all that was expected of him and attended to his duty without complaint.
Those robes had not fit for a good long while, but now, they were snug and intact with never a stitch out of place.
The prior night, he’d already decided her suggestion of a farce hadn’t had anything to do withhim, but Karl. Now, he went a step further. He convinced himself she’d only refused to wed him because Karl held something over her that left her frightened. And since she was, quite literally, under his protection, who better, he thought, to address the matter?
So, secure in that knowledge his anger had a proper course, and his resources a direction to apply, he’d undertaken his final task of the day and franked a letter to his godfather via the Home Office. Soon, he’d know everything possible to know about Prince Karl since he’d left Vienna—and anything knowable about the man’s hold over Hera.
She would come to understand, as everyone did, he was a person on which she could rely, the one to apply to in any time of need. He would prove this by meting out just retribution to the man responsible for her distress.
Meanwhile, he intended to keep their sordid agreement.
Nights of indulgence would soften her heart. She’d seehimagain, by God—not the swine of a man her past had inspired her to create. He’d take care of Karl. And then, they’d wed.
Simple, really.
By the time he’d returned to the castle, the sun had disappeared beneath the horizon. Mrs. Whitby informed him that the children—and those who had charge of them—had taken an early dinner and had already been sent to bed.
Strange, he thought, but just as well. He had, weather permitting, a fine treat planned for them on the morrow.
He trudged up the stairs to his rooms. And, as he washed off the day’s exertions, the recriminations of the wee hours of morning and the day’s concerns fully transformed into anticipation of the coming night.
He prepared to bed Hera with the full and unquestioned assurance he was just the man meant to safeguard her person.
* * *
Hera waited, perched on the edge of her bed, listening for the midnight bell.
She’d hidden in her room most of the evening, staring at the same page ofThe Castle of Wolfenbachwhile alternatively reliving the times she’d either sparred with or connected to Hurtheven in their short, tumultuous acquaintance, or wishing she could console him for the boyhood he’d abruptly lost.
She hadn’t seen the duke since the prior night, or, more accurately, the wee hours of morning, which had been her intention.
Her charges were wily but not at all competent deceivers. So, she’d convinced the children to take an early supper—thereby avoiding the duke—and then left them with Mrs. Small for the evening.
Ifthey’d all dined with Hurtheven, she was certain something would’ve slipped out, alerting him to their clandestine carriage house visit. But she hoped, by the time he’d gone up to tuck them in, they had exhausted themselves too much to unintentionally reveal the whole.
As much as her heart wished to comfort him, she knew he’d had a lifetime to build his internal walls. And, since she could not promise to protect what was behind them, she did not want him to know what she’d seen.
Or what she now understood.
The long clock on the landing peeled, loud as a cymbal at the apex of a symphony’s fourth. The pulsating echo barely receded before a second, careening knell sounded.
Then again, perhaps the volume was only in her mind. A sound so offensively deafening as the one she perceived would have awoken the whole house.
No.
Only her awareness had changed. Anticipation had heightened her senses until every floorboard creak sang like a diva, and every clock strike landed with the resonant thump of a death march drum.
Midnight had come. Midnight—the delicate pinpoint on which the calendar day turned, the moment she must meet the consequences of her choice.
Choice,in fact, was the crux. The truth she must hold close.
She might tell herself she altered her position on a liaison with the duke because she’d seen the advantage of a shrewd negotiation. She had a child to protect and no one who’d been in her circumstance could have blamed her for seizing on security.
Shemighttell herself that, and it would be true. But not the whole truth.
She had enjoyed Karl’s intimate visits, but she had yielded tohisdesire, rather than her own affinity. But, last night,shehad chosen the duke.
