Eternally Seduced (85 page)

“Are you sure you’ll be all right from here?” Teddy asked, his gaze worried as he closed the door of the Rolls Royce after her. It had been a week since she had moved to her new home, a week since Rathe had left her feeling like a cheap and unwanted whore, a week of crying as she silently waited for him to call and give her a sign that they were still…okay.

But there was none. She hadn’t seen or heard from him for a week. All she had gotten was a curt text message about Teddy being her bodyguard and that he was to be with her at all times.

A week…

She had a sudden urge to cry again, but she couldn’t. She shouldn’t. She was back in school now, and she had to work hard to make her life normal again.

Forcing a smile for Teddy’s sake, she said, “I’m good.” And she was. The bandages were gone, but she still had to be careful with her every movement. Thankfully, her ankle was completely healed now, allowing her to walk freely.

“I’ll be outside your room later. Remember, you’re not to talk anyone and if you find anyone or anything suspicious, you go to the first safe place you can reach and you call me.”

She nodded, rolling her eyes. “We’ve been over that so many times already.”

“Yes, well, we can’t be too careful. The arsehole who hurt you is still out there.”

“I really don’t think he’s going to come back for me. There’s a warrant out for him---”

Teddy shook his head. The duke was right. Mary was painfully innocent in many ways, terrifyingly so even. Of course her stepfather would come back for her. She was an obsession, and worse, he had a reason to hanker for revenge. It was only a matter of time before he made his move. Men like him always did, and when they were smarter than usual – which unfortunately all evidence suggested he was so – it would be a lightning-fast move, full of deceit and poison. If they were not careful, they may not be able to rescue Mary the second time around.

As she walked to her class, which was Professor Byron’s, she felt her phone beep inside her bag. Taking it out, Mary saw that it was an email from Saffi.

Hey! Sorry I’ve been out of touch – I’m in the Maldives right now and OMG you won’t believe the kind of marine life they have here.

Below the words were a series of underwater photographs that had Mary smiling since most of it featured either a resigned-looking Staffan or a blissful Saffi.

Hope you’re doing well there! Let me know if there’s anything you need from me, k?

I miss you lots!

Tears struck her eyes as she returned the phone to her bag. Saffi would expect a reply and she intended to give the older girl one – but later, much, much later. She had to figure out how to lie about her life first.

****

“Staffan.” Rathe was warily surprised at seeing his friend’s name flash on the screen of his phone.

They exchanged pleasantries, the rock star no doubt in his hotel suite with his bride while Rathe sat alone inside one of his more nondescript-looking cars, a black Chevy that would not draw any kind of attention and hint at the presence of a duke inside it.

“Did you call me for a specific reason?” He was impatient, wanting to concentrate on Mary.

Staffan raised a brow at his friend’s curt tone.

The silent response got to him and Rathe flushed. It was not like him to be without courtesy. “I’m sorry. I just have a lot of things on my mind.” He kept his brooding gaze on Mary, who was now crossing the field to take a shortcut to the building where her first class was. According to the copy of her class schedule – something he paid the registrar to print for him – her first class was Literature, which meant she would be under…

Professor Byron.

And speaking of the devil, the ugly bugger appeared in his line of vision, wearing his customary tweed jacket. Rathe stiffened when he saw the man hurrying after Mary upon seeing her.

Bloody hell.

“---listening to me?”

Rathe said between clenched teeth, “I have to go. I need to---”

“---go after Mary Ashton like a stalker?”

He stilled.

The silence at the other end of the line was difficult to gauge and Staffan, after taking a look at Saffi, who was still thankfully asleep in their bed, left the bedroom and went to the veranda. It was a good distance away from Saffi, enough to ensure that she would not overhear what he and Rathe would talk about.

“You better have a reason for what you’re doing, Rathe,” he said grimly when he was out of earshot. “You didn’t really think I would just let a friend of Saffi alone without protection?”

No. Unconsciously, he had known that it was unlikely that Staffan, who was paranoid about his privacy and excessively protective over Saffi, would just let anyone near his wife without going through the person’s background thoroughly. If he approved of that person, and Rathe knew that was a given where Mary was concerned, Staffan would go to extraordinary lengths to keep the people Saffi cared for safe as well.

Rathe had known all of this from the start or at least he had considered it possible, but like so many things that had to do with Saffi, he had deliberately avoided the facts that he did not like and focused on what was convenient for him to accept.

“She’s under my protection now,” he said in a hard tone.

“I know you’re doing the best you can to protect her from her stepfather, but that’s not really what I’m asking.”

Rathe said coldly, “Then what you’re asking is none of your bloody business.”

“She is my wife’s friend---”

“And now she’s my mistress.”

One, two, three seconds passed before Staffan cursed him in Swedish.

He didn’t flinch, didn’t say a bloody thing to explain or defend himself.

“What the hell, Rathe? She’s
Saffi’s friend,
goddammit!”

He still did not say a thing.

“Don’t pull that ducal shit on me, Rathe. It’s not going to fucking work. Why? Why her, dammit?”

Rathe bit out, “
I don’t know.”

Whatever he wanted to say died after that, Staffan never expecting to hear such an admission from his proud friend.

“I can’t explain it. It was as if I only had to see her once and that was it. I wanted her.”

“Do you understand what you’re saying?” Staffan asked quietly. “You speak as if---”

He laughed harshly. “I know what you’re about to say and it’s not that.”

“That you love her?”

Rathe did not hesitate. “No. I don’t bloody love her.” Knowing his friend would not want to hear the rest he had to say, Rathe still continued anyway, not wanting any lies between them. “I only want to own her.”

He expected Staffan to be furious, but all his friend said was, “Bullshit.”

Staffan knew how Rathe’s childhood had been and he knew that what happened to his friend in the past was now the driving force behind every stupid decision he made when it came to Mary. “Rathe, I’ve been your friend for years. I know what happened. And I’m fucking telling you the truth, man – there is no reason why you can’t be with Mary.”

His fists clenched. “You may know what I’ve been through but you weren’t the one who suffered.”

“Your parents suffered, too, dammit, but they didn’t give up! So why are you going to give up on her?”

“Because it’s not fucking normal!” he snapped. “I’m sixteen fucking years older than Mary – old enough to be her goddamn father and that is NOT fucking normal the same way it’s not fucking normal for my father to marry my mother.”

“But they did. And they were in love.”

“And they put all of us through hell,” Rathe ended coldly. “So forgive me if I do not want to repeat the same thing. She will be well cared for while under my protection---”

“I don’t care if you can buy her the fucking moon, Rathe. She’s a nice girl and she’s not the type to give a shit about money and you know that. Just fucking tell me – is she happy with you?”

He did not answer.

“If you think you won’t ever stop being stubbornly blind about what you feel for her, then just let her go. Don’t keep her by your side if you know you’re going to hurt her more in the end.”

Professor Byron was in the middle of his lecture when Mary felt someone taking a seat next to her at the back row. This startled her since as far as she knew, all the students of her class were accounted for.

“Mary.”

She froze, unable to believe that she was hearing what she was hearing.

When she kept ignoring him, Rathe took her notebook and pen from her hands and scrawled a message on it.

Knowing she shouldn’t but unable to resist, she looked down, her eyes prickling with tears when she saw what he had written.

I was an arsehole. I’m sorry.

When she did not speak, he pushed the pen towards her, hoping she would say something – anything – to let him know that he hadn’t been too much of an arsehole that there was no way for him to get her back.

She shook her head faintly, not looking at him, keeping her gaze on Professor Byron.

A few students had finally noticed him, and they all recognized him as the man who had gatecrashed their poetry reading night. The whispers began and she shifted in her seat nervously. “Please go away,” she told him without looking at Rathe.

“Then tell me we’ll talk.”

She said bitterly, “I live in your house. You could have talked to me anytime you wanted this week.” Her voice choked. “But you didn’t.”

The pain that she wasn’t speaking of but couldn’t prevent from coloring her tone stung Rathe, and he couldn’t stop himself from reaching out to her. “I’m sorry,” he gritted out. “It was not you – it was---”

She looked at him with incredulous hurt on her face. “A cliché, Rathe?”

He swore. “It’s not---”

“Just leave,” she said wearily. “We’ll talk after.
Please.
”

After a while, she felt him standing and leaving. The tears fell. God, he made her feel so confused! One moment he was being sweet and gentle, the next moment he was being abrupt and hurtful. Was that what a mistress was about? To be a man’s emotional punching bag?

The class ended soon enough but her eyes were thankfully dry by then. As she got up, she heard Professor Byron calling her name. She looked at him cautiously, wondering if he would take this opportunity to humiliate her, the same way she had unintentionally caused him embarrassment in the past.

Professor Byron was smiling at her, his gentle countenance the same as before and she slowly relaxed when his expression did not change as he reached her side. “I am sorry to hear about your accident,” he said.

Ah.
An accident. So that was the alibi Rathe had used to conceal the fact that she had almost been raped by her stepfather. Mary was thankful for it, knowing the rumors would be vicious if the truth about her attack was known.

“It was unfortunate,” she said carefully. “B-but I’m okay now.”

“I’m glad. I have another poetry reading scheduled next week. Would you like to come? Bonus points are offered, something you definitely need to pass this course.” He gave her a regretful look. “You’ve missed a lot of classes.”

She blinked at him. She had missed a lot of classes, but she had also aced all her exams in his class. Shouldn’t that have made a difference?

The professor ignored Mary’s confused look. He needed to get her alone so he could remind her that he was the man meant for her and not the aristocratic prick she had left him for a week ago. “Shall I see you then?” He kept his tone brisk this time, wanting to make her feel at ease and think that he was not coming on to her in any way.

It took Mary a while to answer, but she said quietly in the end, “All right.”

She was still pondering his unusual invitation as she stepped out of class and she was so deep in her thoughts that she completely missed seeing the huge crowd that had gathered around outside the room, instead looking for Teddy, who had a curious smirk on his face.

“What are you smirking at?” she asked when she reached his side.

Teddy was astonished to see her. “Where did you come from?”

“Class, of course. Didn’t you hear the bell ring?”

No, he hadn’t, Teddy realized guiltily, mainly because the shrieks from the girls had been too loud. Apparently, a bunch of sorority girls had recognized Rathe’s face and before the duke had realized what was happening, he was surrounded by hundreds of sorority chicks, all competing for his attention.

She followed his gaze, her eyes widening at the crowd of girls that had formed outside Professor Byron’s lecture room. It was like a battle scene, with women clawing at each other in their haste to get to the front because…

She looked at Teddy. “Don’t tell me it’s---”

He nodded. “But don’t worry. I can get him out of there and meet you---” He stopped when she shook her head.

“No, it’s all right. I’ll just go home on my own.”

Teddy said unhappily, “He came here to meet you.”

“Yes, but he can’t when there are so many people around.” She said tonelessly, “I’m not his girlfriend, Teddy. You know that. I’m his mistress. It’s not my place to stand next to him.”

****

It had been a fucking nightmare to get away from the crowd of girls that had gathered around him. They wouldn’t even have known he was someone famous from England if not for the damn photo Saffi posted before that had him, Constantijin, and Staffan together.

Rathe called Teddy the moment he realized that the lecture room was already occupied by another class. “Where the hell are you?”

“Driving Mary home, boss.”

Bloody hell. She had come out and he hadn’t known?

“Did she see---”

“Yeah, boss.” Teddy sounded glum.

Bloody, bloody, bloody hell. It was as if everything was conspiring against him, urging him to do the right thing and just leave her alone. He could afford to give away a house, could afford to buy her a fucking kingdom if it came down to that. But he knew it wouldn’t because what he could give she didn’t need and what she needed he could never give.

And yet –

He would never be able to stay away from her.

It was too late.

She was his eternal obsession.

He called her. When she answered, all the words he wanted to say became stuck in his throat. All he could say was, “Let’s have that talk now.”

“Fine.” She ended the call just like that.

Bloody, bloody, bloody hell. To think everyone back in England said he was such an eloquent speaker, someone who could probably rule the House of Lords if he had a mind to. He had wanted to woo her, and yet he ended up acting like an arsehole once more.

Bloody, bloody, bloody hell.

Maybe he should stick to writing notes instead.