Sean halted. “He has blackmailed you into this?” He was incredulous.
Virginia hesitated. “Not exactly. But the suggestion was clear—Sweet Briar is to be a wedding gift. If he wanted me to freely have it, he could simply sign the deed over now.”
Sean stared and finally said, “Virginia, I heard you were living openly with him. I heard you were his mistress, and so it seemed to me that his finally marrying you was the right thing for him to do.”
She hesitated. Because she had willingly enjoyed his bed after the terrible Carew ball, she could not tell Sean that they had played a deadly charade. Did Sean still love her? She knew he remained fond of her. Now she worried that he was more than fond of her and that she should not have involved him in her crisis. She finally said, “I don’t want to marry him—but I also have no choice.”
He tilted up her chin. “You loved him once. Can you genuinely claim that you do not love him now?”
She opened her mouth to deny it. No words came out.
And his reaction, a terrible darkening of his eyes, followed by the shadow of anguish, told her everything that she had to know.His feelings had not changed.
“My feelings do not matter,” she finally said, hoarsely. “What matters is that he has hurt me time and again, and if we marry, he will somehow find a way to hurt me another time. I can no longer bear it, Sean, I can no longer bear his terrible indifference!”
Sean swallowed. Tightly, he said, “Virginia, I do not think he is indifferent. I know my brother. No one knows him as well as I. If he did not wish to marry you, nothing on earth could persuade him to do so, nothing and no one.”
TOMORROW WAS HERwedding day.
It would soon be dawn. Virginia sat in a window seat, the sky outside a dusky blue-black. Sometime in the evening it had begun to rain, and the gentle rainfall silvered the curtain of night.
She stared at the falling rain. Virginia was trying to imagine the kind of woman she would be like if she had seen her father beheaded as a small child. There was no possible way to do so. She thought she might react like Sean, forgetting every detail.
But Devlin remembered everything. Unlike his brother, he had spent the past fourteen years plotting revenge against his father’s murderer. She shivered, and not from the cold morning. That would make anyone heartless, she thought, but the man who had lain with her after the Carew ball had not been heartless, she was certain.
She had refused to reconsider that night again, but now, it was all she could think of.
She closed her eyes in turmoil. Tomorrow was her wedding. She could run away or she could stay; she could accept marriage to a cold, vengeful man who insisted he was heartless or she could have faith. Running away would probably fail, but having faith only promised a future of heartache, if the past were any consideration.
Virginia stood grimly. Her logic indicated that she had little choice but to stay and accept marriage to a heartless man, expecting nothing in return except Sweet Briar. How could she endure such a matrimonial state?
Virginia shivered again, chilled in her soul, watching the falling rain. Images of her parents, laughing, teasing, stealing a kiss or a touch when they thought no one was looking, assailed her then.
God, she and Devlin had hardly exchanged words since that awful day when he had almost blackmailed her into accepting their union. One thing was so clear. She could not endure a mechanical marriage to a man universally acclaimed as heartless; therefore, she must continue on, foolishly daring to hope she could somehow save his soul. Virginia realized the amount of courage she now needed to go forward to the altar.
And it was time for a civil conversation. It was time for a truce. They certainly could not live this way after their marriage—or, at least, she could not—and more images of her parents came, full-force, bittersweet.
Her decision was made. She walked barefoot across the bedroom, Arthur happily following, filled with trepidation. She already knew Devlin had not come up to his bed in the adjacent room, so she went downstairs, certain she would find him at his desk in the library.
Virginia let the puppy out on the terrace before approaching the single room that was Devlin’s sanctuary. The library door was open and she had been right. A huge fire blazed in the hearth and Devlin sat at his desk, a quill in hand, parchment before him. He looked up, startled.
She smiled and it felt very grim.She was not giving up. She would try to be a real wife to him, no matter the courage it took.
His gaze took in her white cotton and lace nightgown and her bare feet. “Virginia?”
“I thought we could speak—if you have the time,” she added in a nervous rush.
“You will catch cold,” he said, standing and laying the quill aside.
He had a night’s growth of beard upon his jaw, his ruffled shirt was open at the throat and lower, and it was also rumpled. Virginia’s heart skipped a beat or two. He looked dangerous, disreputable and terribly seductive.
She came into the room and went to stand before the fire, her back now to him. She felt his gaze upon her, dared not look back, and then heard him walk over to her. She finally glanced up at him; he glanced down at her. She saw that he held a throw in his hands. “May I?”
She nodded, her throat now constricted, and he settled the dark red wool rug over her shoulders. The fire was hot and she was considerably warmed.
“What is it you wish to speak about at five-thirty in the morning?” There was some dry amusement in his tone.
“Our marriage,” she managed.
