“He?” Uncle Fenton encouraged.
She shook her head. “Do you want me to say he’s miserable? That he’s broken?”
“Is he?”
“He isn’t exactly dancing in the streets over our union,” she said, thinking of Matthew’s offer that he could want her despite.Despite. Fenton’s lip curled up in a sneer, and she shook her head. “Youarehappy about this.”
“Why shouldn’t I be? He’s created enough misery, why should he not feel even a fraction of the same?”
“Good, then you’ve succeeded,” she said, moving forward to catch his hands. “Celebrate as you’ve always wanted to do. It’s time to let this go.”
His face twisted. In that moment she saw all his grief, all his deep and abiding pain, all the loss that had piled up on his shoulders and weighed him down. Changed and warped him into the person who stood before her today. And though she feared that person…she also pitied him. And longed to help him see that revenge and rage were not the answer.
“You never lost a child,” he spit, his voice shaking as he yanked his hands from hers. “You have no idea what it feels like. So you have no quarter to talk to me about what I should let go or not let go.”
He pivoted and walked away, back down the hall. She heard the door to his study slam, loud enough that the pictures hanging in the hallway shook with the force.
She bent her head as tears gathered in her eyes. And this was how she would marry. As a tool for one man’s revenge. A tool for another’s desire.
And there was nothing she could do to stop either of them.
Chapter Sixteen
Matthew looked down the long table filled with friends and family. The servants were just drawing away the last of the dishes for a lavish wedding supper and the group talked softly together.
Only it wasn’t his friends who drew his eye. It was Isabel, down at the end of the table. The position of honor. The place that had been his mother’s up until that very afternoon.
The place of the duchess. Because that’s what Isabel was now, thanks to a few murmured promises in the garden hours before. She was his wife. And that fact jolted him every time it was mentioned.
She was seated with his mother on one side and her friend Sarah on the other. Occasionally he saw Sarah take her hand, speak softly to her. Comfort her, it looked like. And Isabel seemed to need the comfort. She was nervous and agitated, her gaze a bit too wide, her hands shaky when she sipped her wine or ate a bite of food.
He wished he could be the one beside her in that moment. That he could rest a hand on her knee beneath the table and meet her eyes as he whispered that all would be well. Even if that was a lie.
His gaze slid farther down the table to where her uncle sat. Fenton Winter had been remarkably quiet during the day. He had given away his niece with only the slightest of snide comments and had been calm for the rest of the afternoon. But now the man downed what had to be his fourth glass of wine in the last hour. His gaze was becoming dazed and narrowed every time he looked at Matthew.
At last Winter rose, that same glass still in hand. He speared Matthew with a look, pointed and ugly. Slowly, Matthew pushed back from his place at the head of the table. He needed to be on his feet for the barrage clearly to come. At least it was being done in front of only friends, rather than the public displays of vitriol Winter usually displayed.
“Killer,” he hissed, wine sloshing from his glass.
James threw his napkin on the table and moved to rise, but Matthew held out a hand, motioning for him to stay put. The last thing he needed at present was for anyone in his large group of friends to call this man out. Deserved or not.
“Oh, you aren’t going to say anything, are you?” Winter continued, looking around the table at the outraged faces of dukes and duchesses alike. “Mark that, Your Graces. Would an innocent man not come to his own defense? Ask yourselves why he doesn’t do so.”
“You’ve had enough, Winter,” Matthew said softly. “Perhaps it’s time to go. Go home and sleep this off.”
Winter pushed his chair back with a screech that made every single person in the room flinch. He staggered as he came away from the table. “Sleep off what? The truth? You’d like that, wouldn’t you? If I would go away and stop reminding you of your guilt.”
Matthew shook his head. “Trust that I am perfectly capable of remembering my guilt without your help, Winter.”
“Well, now you have a new bride,” Winter said. “Perhaps you can find some new guilt there. You’ll take my niece like you did my daughter.”
“That’s enough!”
Matthew jolted as Isabel threw her chair back. It flipped and skidded away. She crashed toward her uncle, an avenging angel with her eyes lit up with emotion.
“Stay out of this, girl,” Winter muttered, not looking at her. “It doesn’t concern you.”
She laughed, but it was a harsh, cold sound. “You made it my concern when you involved me in your vendetta. We are here, uncle, because ofyourmanipulations. You were so blinded by your own rage that you were willing to sacrifice anything to create even a tiny bit of pain in this man’s life. Even me.” She caught her breath and Matthew saw that she was struggling with tears. “So if you think he is a killer, then what does that make you, that you would hand over your own flesh and blood to him so that you could make him squirm?”
