The Heart of a Scoundrel (25 page)

“This changes nothing between us,” he said, pulling her from the precipice of her own misery.

Shock ran through her, and Phoebe cocked her head. “Are you mad?” The barely-there whisper echoed from the walls of her father’s office.

“There have been worse charges leveled at me than the one of madman.”

His bored, tired tone snapped the thin thread of Phoebe’s self-control. She shot out a hand. The slap of flesh meeting flesh thundered around them. Heart hammering wildly, she pulled her stinging palm back and clutched at the folds of her skirts.

Edmund flexed his jaw and touched his gloved fingertips to the crimson mark left by her blow. All the while his black stare remained fixed on her. This man. This
stranger
. This betrayer with his false words and broken, empty promises and fear shot through her. Phoebe took a stumbling step away from him. “D-don’t.” That tremulous order came out ineffectual and she hurried to put distance between them. As he continued his advance, she moved out of his reach.

“Do you think I would harm you?” he asked in clipped tones.

Phoebe backed into the leather button sofa and her knees knocked the edge. Path of escape effectively blocked, she came to a forced stop. Not wanting him to see the hell he’d wrought upon her world, she tipped her head back. “I don’t think you would harm me.” Some of the tension seeped from his tautly held frame. “I know you would. You already have.”

H
ow singularly odd. To go through life, knowing there was nothing but cold in your veins and black emptiness to your heart, and yet to feel…this, whatever this unpleasant, harsh tightening in his chest was. Edmund looked at Phoebe, the color drained from her cheeks as she stood, pressed against the sofa. With trembling fingers, she clutched at her throat. He studied that faint quaking and then lifted his gaze to hers. She dropped her hands to the back of the sofa. Then her lip peeled back in a sneer.

Inevitably, everyone was broken. Ruined by life. For some, it was those early moments of childhood when one’s father forced you, a boy of seven years, to observe the extent of your mother’s depravity and faithlessness. For others, it came later with the betrayal and deception from one that was once trusted. By the icy derision in Phoebe’s eyes and the cynical twist of her bow-shaped lips, she’d been broken. Yes, everyone was eventually ruined. But there was an empty, ugly ache in knowing he’d been the one to break her. The sight of her silent suffering squeezed the vise all the tighter about his chest. Apparently, he was human, after all. What an unfortunate moment to realize it.

Once again, she proved herself far stronger and more courageous than he’d ever been. She broke the silence. “I will not accept your offer of marriage. I’d rather sever my left hand than bind it to one such as you,” she spat.

“It was not an offer.”

She blinked several times in rapid succession.

Edmund stalked over to her. Her slender frame shook slightly and he abhorred the faint tremble that hinted at her fear of him. “I am marrying you.” For even with the icy loathing teeming from her blue-eyed gaze, he wanted her, as his, and only his.

“You are m—” He gave her a pointed look and the tired accusation died on her lips.

He palmed her cheek and at his touch, she went stiff. “I always get what I want.”

For a too-brief moment he believed she’d turn into his caress and angle her lips up toward his, begging for his kiss as she’d done. Then, she slapped his hand away and the foolish thought shriveled, leaving him cold. “I am not an object. I am not a material possession to be added to your collection. I am a person, my lord. You may want my body, but I will sooner bed the devil than take you as my husband and lie with you again.” She made to storm around him.

Edmund stole a hand around her wrist, staying her movement. A gasp escaped her lips and Phoebe alternated her gaze between his firm hold and his face. Horror, fear, and revulsion teamed together, warring for a place with ultimately her proving triumphant. Phoebe yanked her hand hard but he held firm. This gripping need for her no less than when she’d looked upon him with hope in her eyes.

Hope that I killed.
“I’ll have you as my wife, Phoebe.”

“Or what, my lord?”
Edmund. I am Edmund to you
. A physical hungering to hear his name upon her lips once more filled him. “You will ruin Honoria? Let Society know I’m no longer a virgin? Marry my s…” Her skin turned an ashen hue. “Marry my…” Then she widened her eyes and tugged free of him the same moment he relinquished his hold and she toppled into the seat. Phoebe flung her arms out and caught herself upon the cushions. She glowered up at him. “You would wed my sister.”

That is what she believed. How could she still not know that this consuming need to possess her blotted out all rational thought and blinded him to all others? And yet, she’d showed her weakness and, with that, he’d secure her as his wife.

Only…the words would not come. He could not force the words past his lips. Not this lie. Not this time.

Except, Phoebe took his silence for unspoken confirmation. “You bastard,” she hissed, shoving to her feet.

Her tangible hatred ran through him, staggering him with the extent of his own weakness in caring as he did. Edmund donned the indifferent mask he’d worn the better part of his life. “A bastard, now?” he drawled. “That is, at the very least, a deal better than a monster.”

She shot another hand out and this time he easily caught her wrist. He dragged her delicate flesh close to his mouth and touched his lips to the soft skin. “You might detest me, as you should, but you desire me.” Once, she’d been affected by him. The intake of her soft breath that had once stolen his sleep and entered his dreams, the tremble on her lips as she’d come undone in his arms. All gone. Regret churned in his gut.

“Do you think I should still desire you?” Incredibility underscored her question. “Do you think I’m so very weak that I would want the man who used me to exact revenge upon another? Who’d wed my sister if I reject his suit?” She scoffed. “I am not weak as the other women you’ve taken to your bed.”

She was nothing like the women he’d taken to his bed. Everyone before her had been grasping and bitter and just as jaded as he himself was. They’d not possessed her peculiarly cheerful outlook on life, despite the ugly she’d known. There was nothing cheerful about her now. Now, she bore a shocking cynicism better suited to the person he’d always been. And yet he wanted her as she’d been, wanted her as they had been. That truth ran ragged through him, terrifying for the power of regret churning through him.

“What? Nothing to say?” she jeered.

He let her wrist go once more and she stepped around him. People had never mocked him. They’d known there were consequences in their treatment of the Marquess of Rutland. Yet, this slip of a woman was as bold and brave as Joan of Arc and his appreciation of who she intrinsically was swelled, powerful inside him. There would be time enough to worry about his reaction to her later. Now, as she stalked over to the entrance of the room, all he knew was he wanted her, regardless, just as he’d said—in any way and every way. She’d represented the last hint of possible salvation where his black, vile soul was concerned. If in his actions he’d destroyed her, would anything remain of him?

Edmund closed the distance between them in four long strides. He wrapped a hand about her waist and she stiffened at his touch as he guided her around.

“Wh—what—?” Her words ended on a startled gasp as he dipped his mouth close to hers.

“You are now bitter and aware of the truth of the world, but you are not a liar.”
Not like me.
His breath came harsh and fast, a blend of desire and darkened regrets. It blended with her own. Mint and chocolate. “You still want me. And you will come to my bed, this time as my wife, my marchioness.” He killed the protest on her lips by claiming her mouth for a hard, powerful kiss.

For a moment she went taut and he expected her to pull back, but then she leaned into him and that slight softening fueled his desire. It was a thrill of exhilaration in knowing even with what had come to pass between them, she wanted him still, and he could use that part of her to reclaim what he needed of her. Edmund slipped his tongue into her mouth and plundered the hot depths. Their tongues met mimicking the most intimate act of bodies joining. It conjured all manner of erotic images that involved Phoebe with her back against the wall and her skirts up while he made love to her in all the ways he still ached to.

He folded one hand about her neck and angled her head, positioning her in such a way that he better availed himself to her mouth. A ragged moan escaped her and he swallowed the sound with his own groan of hunger. Phoebe melted into his frame and with his other hand he trailed a path down the small of her back, ever lower. He caressed her buttocks, cupping the delicate swell of her derriere. She cried out and he pulled his mouth from hers, instead shifting his ministrations to the long, graceful column of her throat. Her head fell back and he exulted in her surrender. She might abhor him, but she still wanted him. And as long as he had this piece of her, it would be enough. It would be a piece of her, one he was unworthy of, undeserving to claim as his own, but then he’d always been a selfish, self-serving bastard.

Edmund ran both hands down her slender frame, reveling in the gentle curve of her hip. He needed more of her. All of her. He grasped her skirts and tugged them up, exposing the lean, lithe limbs and took in the faintly muscled calves. All manner of delicious acts that involved her legs wrapped about him slipped into his sinful thoughts. A pained desire, more agony than pleasure shot through him. Then she put her palms to his chest. And he was lost.

She shoved hard, the movement so jarring, he tumbled backward and staggered, quickly righting himself. Phoebe took several faltering steps away, her skin flushed a delicious crimson red, her lips swollen from their kiss. Edmund took in every single, subtle, jerky movement. The haste she made to put distance between them, so very similar to Society’s response when he entered polite, and more often impolite, events. For years, he’d not only grown accustomed to those sentiments, he’d reveled in that fear wrapped in contempt wrapped in hatred. His gaze went to her long fingers, shaking, now clasped to her throat. Horror wreathed the delicate planes of her face.

A hollowness settled in his chest. Where was the triumph now?

*

When Phoebe had been a small girl, she’d searched the house for her sister Justina in a game of Hide and Seek. Hearing faint whispers, she’d hovered outside the Ivory Parlor with her hand poised on the handle—just as the sound of voices had reached through the door. She’d stood frozen while two young servants whispered about her father’s vile depravity. Heart hammering and stomach twisted with knots of sickness at the ugly truths heard, she’d run as fast and as far as her then little legs could carry her.

She’d raced down the corridors with her own breath, the servants’ words, and her heart’s erratic, loud rhythm pounding in her ears. She’d sought out an armoire in one of the guest chambers and shut herself away. The thick, blackness had enveloped her in the quiet and inky darkness. The silence had been deafening, until her harshly drawn breaths had robbed her of logical thought. That day, she’d climbed out of the armoire with no one the wiser of a young girl’s world having been torn asunder. She’d closed the door, exited the guest chambers, and then found her siblings. Resolved to never let another person’s ugliness—including her own sire’s—steal her happiness or in any way fundamentally chase away the hope inside.

This moment, with Edmund before her now, was remarkably alike in that regard. The same shock, confusion, horror. And worse…the betrayal of loving one, only to find that you never truly knew the person. That everything about them, everything to come before was nothing more than flimsy lies. And yet, staring at the harsh, angular planes of his face carved in an impenetrable mask, she’d violated that great vow she’d made long ago. Not after this. Not after Edmund. Unable to bear the sight of him, she slid her eyes closed. And for this, she could not be happy again. Not truly. For she’d trusted; Edmund, herself, and given herself over to love, only to have that innocence proven foolhardy—just as Honoria had warned. Yet, that her body should still crave his kiss and hunger for his touch, sickened her with the shame of her own weakness.

“I hate you,” she whispered, the words empty and meaningless. For she didn’t really. If she truly hated him, her heart would not be cracking into a million shards this very instant. Instead, he’d become a blackguard, whose words and stories had been a lie. And she hated herself far more for her own humiliating weakness for this man—a dream of a person she’d dared love.

There was the faintest stiffening, the slightest indication her profession might in some way matter. Then he inclined his head. “Hate is something I am accustomed to, Madam.”

In other words, he’d grown so used to those sentiments of disdain, that hers meant so very little. A chill stole through her and she folded her arms and rubbed in attempt to suffuse warmth back into the frozen limbs. “Then I daresay you’d not forever bind yourself to a woman who detests the mere sight of you,” she said in a bid to hurt him.