Jordan, Nicole - Notorious 1 (36 page)

The earl frowned. “It’s because of her, isn’t it? Lady Wyndham. I was right. Youare smitten.”

“Yes, you were right.”

Clune shook his head. “I confess not much astonishes me these days, but you’ve managed to floor me. You vowed you would never be trapped into love. What the devil happened?”

“I met Vanessa,” Damien said simply.

“Love will not guarantee you happiness. Quite the contrary, in fact.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“You will be opening yourself up to all manner of misery.”

“Perhaps.”

“Well,” Clune commented, still marveling, “better you than I, my friend. Love can turn a man into a fool.”

“The worst sort of fool,” Damien agreed pleasantly. “Otherwise I would never have challenged you to pistols at dawn.”

Clune studied him a long moment, amusement and pity warring in his expression. “This humility is not like you, Sin.”

“I know.” He was not ashamed to admit he’d fallen. He’d lost his heart beyond all pride or reason. “But I’ll thank you to cease calling me “Sin.” I’m doing my best to divest myself of that appellation.“

“As you wish,” Clune said skeptically. “When may I offer felicitations?”

Damien frowned. “That I can’t say. She refused my offer of marriage.”

“Sherefused ?”

“She didn’t wish to wed a man of my ilk.”

“Ah. Thus the resignation from the League. You’d best beware, my friend, or she will turn you into a milksop.”

His gaze grew distant. “She may turn me into anything she wishes, if she will only forgive me.”

His sister was more skeptical about his desire to reform. As soon as he regained enough strength, he summoned Olivia to his rooms. She obeyed reluctantly, her jaw locked in a stubborn set as she was wheeled in by an attendant footman.

“I have nothing to say to you,” she began even before the servant was dismissed.

Grimacing in pain, Damien sat up in bed. His left arm was immobilized in a sling to prevent movement and protect his injured shoulder, but the flesh wound was still quite raw.

He waited until they were alone before taking the wind out of her sails. “I am withdrawing my objection to your wedding Rutherford.”

Olivia stared. “Is this some sort of cruel trick?”

“No,” Damien replied. “I still question his sincerity, but I’m willing to give him the chance to prove himself. I want you to be happy, Livy. If Rutherford can make you so, then I won’t stand in his way.”

Hope flickered across her face. “You really mean it?”

“I really mean it.”

Joy dawned in her smile and in her sparkling eyes. “Oh, Damien

you don’t know how happy that makes me.”

“I have some idea,” he said mildly.

“I must tell Aubrey—” She stopped suddenly and gave her brother a questioning glance. “MayI tell him? You won’t shoot him if he calls here at Rosewood?”

His mouth curved wryly. “No, Livy,” he said with the teasing charm that once characterized their relationship. “I promise to be on my best behavior. I’m through dueling.”

Her blue eyes grew serious. “I’m so glad you’ve given up your revenge, Damien. Vanessa was right; vengeance is never as sweet as it is cut out to be. I thought that was what I wanted with Aubrey, to punish him for his cruelty, but what I really wanted was for him to love me.”

Damien allowed himself a bleak smile. “You are wiser than your tender years, puss,” he observed quietly.

He called out to the footman in the hall and winced at a sudden, painful twinge in his shoulder. “Now go and celebrate your victory with your betrothed.”

The servant responded at once. Before she could be wheeled out of the room, though, Olivia said over her shoulder, “I’ve received a letter from Vanessa. It seems she arrived home safely.”

“Oh?” Damien tried to keep his tone casual.

“She wanted to explain why she left so abruptly.”

“And what did she say?”

“That you and she had strong differences of opinion, but that she would always be my friend.”

Damien felt his chest tighten. “You are fortunate then,” he said softly.

He felt her gaze search his face, before she said tentatively, “Damien, I do miss Vanessa terribly. Would you mind if I begged her to return?”

He gave his sister a quiet look. She was no expert at subtlety; her expression nearly radiated earnest manipulation.

“She won’t return,” he answered. “But thank you.”

Her sad smile wrenched his heart.

When Olivia was gone, he lay back, thinking bleakly about what she’d said about the sweetness of vengeance. To his sorrow he’d discovered how bitter its taste could be.

It was ironic, perhaps. He’d been fiercely set on revenge, but Vanessa had had her own revenge by making him love her. Against his will he had been caught up in a dance as old as time.

Love. He had lain awake nights wanting it, hungering for it, never naming it. Irresistible desire had grown into undeniable love.

The poets were right, Damien reflected. The power of love could shake even a world-weary rake to his jaded core.

His longing was a fever that never left him. Vanessa always held the greater part of his conscious moments. She was the last thought he took to bed and the first thought he awakened to. She filled his dreams. His heart. In Vanessa he bad met his match. Only she could ease the restlessness, the emptiness inside him

He would never be content with anyone but her. Never be free of her. He didn’t want to be free.

Damien squeezed his eyes shut. Dear God, was he too late? Was there any possible way to win her love after what he’d done to her?

He was willing to change, to try to become a better man. How he should change was the question. The example his cold, selfish parents had sent him was no model. Ignored as a child, he’d been raised in unbridled self-indulgence and scandal. As an adult, he’d had too little purpose in life, too little meaning.

But he could try to reform. He could prove to her that all rakes weren’t alike, that even the most hardened libertines could be redeemed by love.

His heart contracted with desperate hope. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to win her, to earn the love he so terribly needed from her.

He had nearly been her ruin, but he prayed she would be his salvation.

Vanessa sat in the morning room with her mother and sisters, paying little attention to their desultory conversation as the younger ladies worked their tambour frames. She felt nothing but a frightening, deathlike dullness.

She had returned home to Rutherford Hall over a week ago, and shortly afterward received the letter from Aubrey that she could now recite by heart.

My dearest sister,

I’m certain you would not wish to learn the outcome of Sinclair’s duel from a stranger, so I will take it upon myself to report. Pray, do not be overly alarmed, but he was wounded rather seriously in the shoulder and surgery performed to remove the bullet. His opponent, Lord Clune, remained unscathed. It seems that Sinclair deloped, to the shock of his many friends.

I understand he is expected to recover fully, but as lam not allowed communication with that household, I must rely on hearsay to fathom events about the latest scandal. My own situation remains unchanged, regrettably.

Faithfully yours,

Aubrey

Vanessa closed her eyes, trying to shut out the unsettling image of Damien lying wounded. She’d endured nightmares over it, even after receiving Aubrey’s second note saying that Sinclair was indeed convalescing better than anticipated.

She couldn’t recover so easily from her own hidden wounds. Her love for Damien was a pain she couldn’t seem to conquer. Leaving him was the hardest step she had ever taken.

She would never again look at a rose without thinking of him, without her heart aching from a haunting sense of loss—

“The post has come,” her sister Charlotte said, interrupting her misery.

A maidservant entered the morning room a moment later and curtsied before Vanessa. “A letter for you, milady.”

“Thank you.”

Her heart twisted when she saw the Sinclair frank, but she recognized Olivia’s hand. With trepidation Vanessa broke the seal. The message was hastily written, with ink blotches and exclamation points and crossed lines that were difficult to decipher.

Dear, dear Vanessa,

You will never credit it! Damien has relented! He has given his permission for us to wed!! He says he only wants my happiness, and oh, I am the happiest of creatures!!! I will now be able to call you sister. Perhaps you can guess at my state of agitation and exhilaration. I can scarcely hold the pen, my hand is shaking so. It was you, my dearest Vanessa, who brought about my brother’s remarkable change of mind, I have no doubt. Damien has always put great store in whatever you say.

The details are still to be settled upon—where and when the wedding will be held, and where we are to reside—but I hope it will be before winter, and that I might be welcome at Rutherford Hall. Will your mother be put out by becoming the Dowager Viscountess, do you think? I cannot wait!! I cannot begin to express my joy at the prospect of becoming Aubrey’s wife!! I must thank you, dearest Vanessa, for helping to bring it all about—

“What is it, Vanessa?” Charlotte asked with a perceptiveness that was lacking in their younger sister or mother. “Not bad news, I hope.”

Still a little stunned, Vanessa looked up. She had never expected Damien to relent, certainly not so quickly

“No

not bad, indeed it is excellent news. Aubrey is to marry Olivia Sinclair.”

“Oh, famous!” Fanny exclaimed.

Their mother, Grace, sat up from her reclining position on the couch. “Aubrey to be married? I was not aware he even knew the girl. Why was I not told he was courting her?”

“I’m certain he didn’t wish to worry you, Mama,” Charlotte answered soothingly, “or raise our hopes unnecessarily. But it would be a most splendid match for him. You remember Miss Sinclair. Vanessa told us all about her in her letters

”

Vanessa was grateful to her sister for taking responsibility for the conversation and putting their mother’s mind at ease. At the moment, she could not have managed it.

It was some time before she could escape her family for the privacy of her own bedchamber, and even then her emotions were in a state of turmoil. She couldn’t help but feel Olivia’s joy. Nor could she help but wonder what had caused Damien’s radical about-face. Had she truly been instrumental in persuading him to allow the marriage? Had he actually taken any of her admonitions to heart?

No, it was foolish to read too much into his singular actions. Fiercely Vanessa steeled herself against the surge of hope welling inside her. Simply because Damien had relented over the issue of his sister’s marriage to Aubrey didn’t mean anything had changed betweenthem . He didn’t love her; that was the bitter truth.

Leaving him had been her only course. Even a life without him was preferable to the anguish she would have endured had she agreed to a loveless union.

Her throat constricted as despair returned to deaden her heart.

For the next several weeks Vanessa managed to go through the motions of living, but she showed so little enthusiasm, even her mother wondered if she was coming down with an ailment.

In the interval she had regular reports from Olivia regarding plans for the wedding. The banns had been read for the first time in church. The ceremony would take place in Alcester in early November. Meanwhile, in September Damien planned to take her to London to choose wedding clothes. And Olivia was ecstatically happy.

It was Aubrey’s next letter that startled and astonished Vanessa as much as Olivia’s first missive had.

My dearest sister, you will never credit what Sinclair has done. You will not be surprised, of course, that he restored the vowels I lost to him at cards. Relinquishing his claim to our family estates was only fitting, since you earned them fairly with your services to his sister.

And naturally he would not wish Olivia to live as a pauper.

But he has gone far beyond the dictates of a brother-in-law’s duties. He asked for an accounting of my outstanding gambling debts and tradesmen’s bills and paid them in total. I intend to reimburse every penny out of my secretary’s salary, but I don’t see how I can repay his further generosity. Incredibly, he has dowered our sisters! And with no small sum, either.

You cannot know how greatly that relieves my mind, to have Charlotte and Fanny well provided for. As I’m certain it relieves yours. Imagine, Vanessa, with ten thousand pounds each they can now marry whomever they choose.

I take back every ill word I ever spoke about Lord Sinclair. He has given me a second chance to prove myself, and I vow to do my utmost to live up to his expectations.

Frankly, his behavior is a marvel I cannot explain. Not even by a word did he threaten me regarding Olivia’s welfare this time (although he would doubtless put a bullet through me if I harmed another single hair on her head). Pride makes me reluctant to accept his charity, but I feel I cannot refuse for our sisters’ sake, and for Olivia’s as well. I love her so much, Vanessa

Vanessa could only stare at the letter in wonder and amazement. Ten thousand pounds each for her sisters? Aubrey’s debts wiped clean? Whatever was Damien thinking? He had settled her brother’s gambling debts and provided for her family’s financial security—and eased the burden that had weighed so heavily on her shoulders ever since her father’s passing.

Once more the fledgling spark of hope kindled in Vanessa’s heart, but this time it was harder to repress.

In the following days there was more happy news coming from Warwickshire. Olivia had begun to make breakthrough progress in her recovery, regaining a great deal of sensation in her lower limbs. And while she could not yet walk, the doctor believed that with continued treatments of therapeutic massages and baths, she might be able to stand on her own two feet for her wedding.

Each day I grow a little stronger, and I may accept your invitation to visit sooner than you think. If I suffer no ill effects from the journey to London next week, Aubrey has promised to bring me to Rutherford Hall the following month, so that I may meet your mother and sisters before the wedding. I cannot wait, dearest Vanessa