Lord Beast (25 page)

Her persistence in befriending
him, the solitary visits to the castle… it was all bitingly obvious now. She
was a brilliant actress, cruelly intelligent and selfish, and Rhys had believed
every second of her performance. He’d even gone so far as to
propose
…
what a fool he had been. He recalled the words of that night with sickening
anguish, hating the falseness of it all and how much he had actually believed,
or wanted to believe, that she actually cared for him.

“I’ve never been given something
so beautiful before.”

“Gabriel chose it,” Rhys told her
with a warm smile.

“No.” She shook her head. “I
wasn’t talking about the ring.”

“What were you talking about?”

A small, soft smile touched her
lips. “You.”

He shook his head angrily,
despising the lies and the hurt the memory caused. And there was more, all of
them replaying through his mind as aching, false memories that made him feel
betrayed and enraged all at once.

She threw him a wry grin.
“However would you live with yourself? Giving flowers to young country misses. Lord
knows you’d probably get a reputation and then all the young country misses
would expect it from you-”

 “Especially because all the
young misses trespass on my property on a nightly basis,” he said gruffly.

“I should like to think that all
of them were that innovative,” she said.

“No,” his voice soft now, “only
you.”

Surely this torment would drive
him mad? Their entire acquaintanceship was based on lies, on falsehoods and
deceit. Nothing she said had been truthful, all of her words uttered for the
sole goal of duping him into marriage.

But then, to his disbelief, she
frowned and pursed her lips, looking annoyed. “Really?” she asked, her eyes
rising to meet his again. “This is what all the fuss is about?”

She was telling him off?

Not waiting for a response, she
continued, “Honestly, Rhys, if I had known that a few scratches had been the
cause of all this nonsense, I would have pushed you into the fireplace long
ago.”

Rhys squeezed his eyes shut
against the myriad of thoughts jumbling through his mind as he stormed up the
steps of his castle. Even Grayson wisely decided to avoid his furious master as
Rhys raged through the castle and into his study, slamming the door shut with a
formidable crash, and sought out the first decanter of liquor he set his eyes upon.

Dani watched Rhys go, a terrible
feeling of longing and pain settling heavily in her gut. His actions confused
her, his accusations stunned and shocked her… but nothing could be as horrible
as the all-consuming pain that squeezed her heart until she thought it might
burst.

She held her waist protectively,
warding off the tears that threatened to fall as she stared at the man she
loved as he disappeared into Falmouth, willingly allowing him to break her
heart. Oh, the agony was an awful thing and the worst of it was that she
couldn’t understand
why
he suddenly despised her so. It was all she
could do to keep from crumbling to the grass, a broken woman, and pouring her
tears into the soil.

“Dani!” Vicky breathed, trotting
to a standstill beside her. “Is everything alright? Where is Rhys?”

“Oh, God,” Dani whispered
brokenly. “Take me home. I want to go home.”

“What happened?” Victoria
pressed, taking her friend by the shoulders and looking worriedly into her
anguished eyes. “Dani?”

“I don’t know.” She shook her
head, feeling desolate, humiliated and rejected. “
Please
, take me home.”

Vicky gave her husband a worried
glance over the top of Dani’s head but all Gabriel could do was shrug, at a
loss. “All right,” she said to Dani, “we’ll take you home.”

A missive was sent to Fiona and
George informing them of the cancellation of the luncheon before Dani was
bundled into the Hawthorne carriage and escorted back to the cottage. It was a
silent journey but thankfully a short one and the couple allowed Dani to wallow
in her misery until they reached her home. With a promise to visit soon,
Victoria gave her a tight hug and left, whereby Dani proceeded to climb the
stairs to her chamber and shut the bedroom door.

Only then did she allow herself
to succumb to her tears.

The woman staring back at her in
the mirror was a different woman than the one she had been two weeks ago. Hollow,
empty blue eyes returned her forlorn stare while inside, her body quivered with
the urge to flee, to run away, to escape the horror she now found herself in.

Danielle Carmichael was about to
marry a man who hated the very air she breathed.

There was no denying that now and
she had tried persistently hard to tell herself that Rhys would come round,
that he’d be the wonderfully sensuous man she had fallen in love with.

But he hadn’t. He’d grown even
more distant and colder with each passing day, spurning her attempts to
rekindle the spark that had existed between them with a chilling, emotionless
fury that made Dani fear him.

What should be one of the
happiest days in her life was turning out to be the worst. She couldn’t
understand her fate, why someone would want her to be utterly miserable, and as
she expressionlessly took in her appearance, the urge to scream out a
hysterical sob nearly overwhelmed her.

The gown was beautiful, lovingly
designed and moulded to her exact shape. White, with silver and gold threading,
it swept down to her feet in shining waves. Dani had never been privileged to
wear something so wondrously exquisite and she mourned the manner in which the
man she was wearing it for would appreciate it not at all.

Victoria smiled approvingly from
over her shoulder. “You look… breath-taking, Dani,” she said gently. “Truly
lovely.”

Her eyes filled with tears and
her throat constricted with agony. It was already raw from crying almost
consistently for two weeks straight. It was ridiculous that the human body
could produce so much liquid. Surely she should have dehydrated by now?
Anything,
anything
, to quell the flood of sobs that wracked her body on
an increasingly regular occasion.

“Oh, dear,” Victoria mumbled
sympathetically and reached for a handkerchief from the vanity inside Dani’s
chambers. Silently, she walked over to her and dabbed at the tears beginning to
squeeze out the corners of her eyes. “There now. You don’t want to look
splotchy on your wedding day, do you?”

More tears squeezed out at the
show of kindness from the person closest to her and Dani sobbed, “I don’t want
to have a wedding day!”

Vicky sighed and relented,
allowing the tears to slip down Dani’s cheeks. She was
not
a delicate
crier and for days her face was swollen and red. When she walked down the aisle
to meet Rhys, she would certainly
not
look the part of a happy bride.

“Things will turn out for the
best,” she told Dani tenderly.

“I wish people would stop saying
that to me,” Dani retorted bitterly, the flow of tears somewhat subsided now as
they were replaced by her frustration and anger. “I’m sick of it. Things are
not
alright now and I am marrying a man who clearly doesn’t want me.”

She glared at her reflection
heatedly, fervently wishing the dress would disintegrate into flames on her
very body.
He
did not deserve her to look so pretty for him on their
wedding day.
He
deserved to be as miserable as he had made her. Oh, it
was all so horrible and Dani vividly recalled, with humiliating clarity, her
many attempts at reconciliation, right up until last night.

Each time she had come away
feeling worse than before. But last night… last night had been the worst.

Having come to the conclusion
that Rhys might warm up to her again if she were to approach him alone at
Falmouth, she had done just that and had come across Grayson asleep against the
stairs.

“Grayson?” she asked in surprise,
removing her coat and setting it on a table nearby.

The butler lurched awake, his
eyes wide and startled as he sought for the source of the voice. “Oh,” he said,
hand over his heart as he located Dani, “it’s you, Miss Carmichael.”

“What are you doing on the
stairs?” she asked suspiciously.

“Lord Ashcroft requested I post
myself near the door
all
night in case you decided to, and I quote,
‘show your trespassing little face here again’,” he explained drolly.

“Oh.”

“He also informed me to escort
you out if you did.”

Dani studied the butler
carefully, unable to decipher his motives or his tone. “And are you going to?”
she asked tentatively.

Grayson shook his head slowly, a
dry smile sweeping over his lips. “Despite what his lordship may think, I’m
quite fond of the couple the two of you make,” he drawled. “I also believe that
you’re the only one who can fix whatever this little spat is about.”

Dani sighed dejectedly, feeling
all the weight of the past few days settle heavily over her shoulders. It had
not been a happy time for her, having to endure the rejection and hatred of the
man she was going to marry. “Is he in his study?” she asked softly, beginning
to ascend the steps of the grand staircase.

“The very place he has been holed
up in for two weeks,” Grayson said dryly.

Dani nodded, winding her way to
the chamber in question, a feeling of dread and anxiety settling over her.
Every encounter with Rhys since the day of the picnic had been disastrous. She
had been spurned at every attempt to appease him and she couldn’t be confident
that tonight would be any better. All she could hope for was that he would
soften towards her because it was the night before
their
wedding and he
would be spending the rest of his life with her. Maybe he would consider making
an auspicious start to their union rather than the bitter, hateful beginning he
was setting for them.

Dani didn’t bother knocking but
merely let herself in.

His head snapped up from his
desk, hawkish eyes glowering at her when he saw who had entered his study. His
dark hair lay in tousled abandon across his brows, curling against the collar
of his shirt.  “Get out,” he clipped coldly.

“No,” Dani told him quietly but
firmly. Dealing with Rhys’s fury was like standing ground against a hurricane
and expecting to come out of the disaster alive.

He ignored her and continued
reading the document he had been studying when she had first entered. It hurt,
that, but she remained resolute. He would hear her out whether he liked it or
not.

“I won’t go away until you hear
me out,” she began stoically, studying him proudly from where she stood across
the room.

“Oh, really?” he grated angrily,
straightening in his chair and forcing a look of utter coldness to shutter his
face. “How do you intend to make me listen, then?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I
can only hope that you do.”

“Go away, Danielle. I want
nothing to do with you.”

Each word was like a venomous
blade, piercing her heart and soul with the intention to see them slowly wither
and die. She swallowed back her fear, loudly, and squared her shoulders. “You
will listen to me, Rhys Ashcroft,” she told him bravely, “because despite what
you’re doing to us now, despite how you’ve hurt me, I love you.” He stiffened
and she ignored the blinding rage that burned in his eyes. “I love you.”

“Get out!”

Flinching at the violence in his
tone, his whole body quivering tautly with ill-concealed rage, Dani almost felt
compelled to obey him. “Do you hear me?” she retorted, hurt. “I love you.”

He stalked towards her furiously
and Dani refused to let her body flee despite the way her muscles tensed,
yearning to do just that. “Do you think I want your love?” he snarled
viciously. “Do you?”

Mustering all the love she felt
for him to the fore, Dani looked up into his eyes and answered as truthfully as
the heart beating furiously in her chest, “Yes.”

“You’re sorely mistaken,” he
growled icily, his fingers biting into the skin of her arms. “The only thing I
want from you is your body, which will be mine from tomorrow.” He yanked her
against him cruelly and Dani didn’t resist, but she couldn’t meet the hatred in
his eyes and looked away, finding his cravat a safe sanctuary on which to
settle her gaze. “Although, there is no reason to prolong the wedding night,”
he hissed savagely, shifting his merciless hands down her waist and digging his
fingers into the soft flesh of her hips. He ground her into his rigid thighs
forcefully, bringing her into searing contact with the hardness there. “I have
already agreed to marry you.”

“Please,” she whispered, hating
the way her body was warming up to his nearness despite the coldness of his
embrace, “not like this.”

“It’s too late for scruples, my
dear.”