The priceless look on Belinda’s face when he’d told her that Walker had run off with Miss Marguerite Easton to Gretna Green would remain etched forever in his mind.
Her disbelief in those crystalline blue eyes.
Her outrage as two spots of color burned her alabaster cheeks.
And then the hard set of her red lips as she gritted her teeth in rage.
Oh yes, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
“So you said they left only a few hours ago,” Belinda said tersely.
“Yes.”
“And there is little chance of catching up with them before they reach Gretna Green.”
“It’s unlikely. They have a good start over anyone that might follow them…and my uncle’s gift to my cousin of so light and swift a carriage won’t help matters. Or his deep pockets, thanks as well to my uncle, that will buy him the fastest horses and most able drivers. Now that Walker has made his choice of a bride, I can only imagine that he’ll wish to have wedded and bedded her as quickly as his funds will achieve it.”
At Belinda’s sharp intake of breath, Russell knew his words had struck home. Her grip on the drapery had grown even tighter, her knuckles stark white.
But why not punish her for spurning his attentions time and again? Why not revel in her rage and distress? Why not toy with her for a few moments longer that he might have come here to offer some assistance in preventing this marriage? That Walker—still Alexander Scott to her—might yet make her the duchess she longed to be? That her spendthrift family so needed for her to be?
Russell couldn’t help smiling again, but stiffly…for he felt rage, too. Rage that this incredibly beautiful woman could see no further than Walker when Russell was standing right there, the very answer to her prayers.
Yet, to his surprise, Belinda turned slowly from the window to face him, an emotionless look in her eyes and upon her face that made his blood run cold.
“Of course they must die. Will you do this for me, Russell?”
He didn’t readily answer, stunned that it could have all been so easy, so simple.
No persuading her that eliminating Walker and his bride was the only way for her aspirations to come true. No reasoning with her or cajoling. No need, certainly, to reveal to her that his hired men were already riding north in hot pursuit of their quarry.
A rush of exultation swept over him and he nodded, knowing in that incredible unexpected moment that the dukedom—and Lady Belinda Cavendish!—were finally going to be his.
She came toward him then in a rustle of violet silk and took his hand, her fingers as cold as ice. “Good. Once it is done—”
“You will marry me,” he finished for her, noting the flicker in her eyes of an emotion he could not name. The vivid blue had grown dark and stormy, and he knew then that this was a woman he’d be wise never to cross.
His bride-to-be.Hisduchess. He bent over her hand to kiss her ice-cold fingers, her voice sounding brittle with still barely controlled rage.
“Yes, my lord, I will marry you.”
***
With the mantel clock chiming midnight, Belinda lay in bed staring blindly at the brocade canopy above her.
What a wretched difference a mere twenty-four hours could make in one’s life. Her life!
Last night she had felt certain after dancing the rest of the evening with Alexander and focusing all of her considerable feminine charm upon him, that she was destined to become his bride. And yet…he had chosen another. A parson’s daughter overher, the daughter of the Earl of Stratham! Could such an insult even be borne?
“Thankfully, not for long,” Belinda grated to herself, her rekindled rage leaving no doubt that sleep, tonight, would be impossible.
She doubted she would sleep much at all until Russell brought her the news that the deed was done. Slain by ruthless highwaymen, or so he’d said that’s how it would appear. Her future and that of her family would at last be assured once Walker Burke—how disagreeable and common a name!—and his ill-bred country mouse of a wife were dead.
She should have known a coarse American such as he would have done no better, a former pirate no less with his high-placed friends and royal pardon from Prince George. None of that would help him now, the bastard.Bastard!
To her dismay, tears bit her eyes but she furiously swiped them away.
She hated him, just as she’d hated Andrew for leaving her to go to war and then dying so needlessly in battle. He had been the son of a duke! Why couldn’t he have remained in England and enjoyed the wealth and privilege of his birth rather than hold to some misplaced sense of honor and duty?
Belinda closed her eyes tightly against the memory of his handsome face and Walker’s, too, twisting the silken sheet so viciously that her fingers hurt.
Men! Such pathetic but necessary vehicles for getting what one wanted and needed out of life.
She should be grateful that Sir Russell Scott still wished to wed her though she had scorned him when news had flown that Andrew’s twin brother had been found. What did it matterwhocame to the marriage bed as long as one day soon, she would bear the title of Her Grace, the Duchess of Summerlin?
She, too, had been born for such wealth and privilege and she would have it, by God, she would have it!
