“If you want me to see you, then remove my blindfold at once!” she demanded, her voice creeping up. “Who are you?”
His answer did not come fast enough.
“Will you not say something?” she cried. “I am a lady, and I was on my way to meet my bridegroom at the altar. You have destroyed me and my future. Theleastyou can do is show your face!” This time the sobs broke free, ripped from a place ofsorrow as vast and bitterly cold as the winter storm that raged outside.
The heat of his savage physique reached her as he hovered over her like one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, arrived for the first of his conquests—destroying Meghan.
Her captor rested a strong, powerful palm along her back and drew her near.
Meghan unleashed her fury, fear, and sorrow; curling her fingers into fists, she beat at his chest with her bound hands, pounding at the place where a heart should be.
“Je ne t’aurais jamais cru capable de pleurer,” he murmured, almost soothingly.
Soothingly? Was she mad?
“In fact, Iama crier. A great big one, and if you do not release me…” Meghan stiffened.
Meghan’s pulse stopped a beat.
“You know who I am,” she charged breathless with a newfound hope. “Then you also realize I am to marry the Duke of Hartwell this morning. Anything you want, if it is money you seek, my betrothed will give you whatever you want.”
Hartwell held Meghan in contempt long before her capture. He wouldn’t marry her after this. But she had no doubt that if the code of gentlemanly honor ingrained into him didn’t drive him to pay for her release, then the fact their siblings were married would.
Some unknown, ominous undercurrent pulsed in the air.
His silence overwhelmed.
“The Duke of Hartwell will make you rue the day—”
“If you think I’m afraid of Hartwell or any man, you are a fool,” he whispered. “And I never took you for a goose.”
Meghan drew up.
Thisvoice she knew. Her heart thundered against her ribcage. She could place his silken, smooth tones in her sleep.They were the same ones she heard in every waking moment of her life and the ones that stole her sleep.
After the explosive, hurtful end to their exchange at Lord and Lady Rutland’s masquerade, Meghan had been certain August could never see anything beyond Meghan’s McQuoid name. He’d hurled hateful accusations.
“…Ah, Meghan with her bruised pride. You are so desperate, you crave scraps of some attention even from an Archdale…”
The sharp hiss of a blade cut through the air, and she gasped. The bindings fell away from her hands. Blood rushed with excruciating pain to those constricted limbs. He freed the tie about her ankles next.
The fight and fear left her.
In her misery, she had failed to see with any clarity, but now she heard what had been buried in his cruelty at the Rutland’s affair—August’s pain. His insecurity. First, Linnie chose Captain Tremaine over August, and then Meghan had been set to marry another Tremaine.
Needing to see him, Meghan’s fingers numb and stiff as blood worked through them. She struggled with her blindfold. Her fingers shook from a different sense of urgency.
The moment Meghan tossed the satin fabric to the floor, she blinked, adjusting to the change in lighting.
And with her vision clear, she had every desperate dream confirmed.
With Meghan in full kneel and August’s legs touching the edge of the bed, neither spoke. They stared at one another. Shadows played along the angular planes of his face, and she trailed her gaze over each beloved one. In the dim light, his ocean-blue eyes appeared preternatural.
“August?” she exhaled his name.
He curled his lips into that same wicked smile that had gotten the Dark Lord evicted from God’s graces. “Hullo, love,” he murmured. “Fancy meeting again.”
Her heart soared.
