The Lure of a Rake (33 page)

“You must think about what you desire in our union. Do you wish to be a family?” With a father and sister still living, Cedric still didn’t even know what that meant. “Or do you wish to live our separate lives?” And yet, the idea of a life without her in it ravaged him. “It cannot be both.” Which is what it had been. “But I cannot dwell in this suspended world where I’m always wondering what we are or hoping we are more. And you owe it to me to tell me what we, in fact, are.” She held his gaze. “And you owe it to yourself.”

He curled his fingers into fists. She was…correct. He’d crafted this alternate existence for them, where he was the rake he’d been and the…husband…which he did not know how to be. He’d inevitably muck it up. This evening was proof of it.

Genevieve stared at him as though seeing the battle he waged within himself.

A knock sounded at the door and Cedric cursed. “Get the hell away,” he shouted.

Silence fell and then an incessant rapping resumed. “My lord?” Avis called from the other side.

By hell, this bloody townhouse had better be ablaze and death imminent to merit this interruption. “What the hell is it, Avis?” he thundered.

Which apparently constituted an enter. The fearless servant shoved the door open. “The duke is demanding to see you, my lord.”

“Tell him to go to the devil,” he snapped. His father and his late night visit could go hang, so very irrelevant they were when compared with the stoically silent woman before him.

Except, his butler remained. He cleared his throat. “His Grace indicated you’d no doubt say as much and said he’d tear down every door until he found you if you weren’t in your office posthaste.”

Posthaste. Like he was a bloody servant. However, the duke had also proven his threats were no idle ones and he was not above following through on those threats. Nonetheless—“I said—”

“Go,” Genevieve urged. “It is late. I am tired and there is nothing left for us to say.”

She was wrong. There was everything to be said. “This is not finished,” he said curtly and then turning on his heel, he marched off. His butler stepped out of the way and Cedric continued his forward march, rage growing inside him with every step. And he clung to that safe emotion. Found strength in it. Let it fuel him. For the building fury with the man who’d sired him was safer than the tumult of emotions his slip of a wife had unleashed inside him. Eager for the impending fight, Cedric reached the room and paused outside. His father stood at the window. Hands clasped behind his back, he stared into the grounds below. To those long neglected gardens, his wife had toiled over. By all intents and purposes, the duke may as well have owned this very townhouse. He curled his fingers into tight balls, as not for the first time in the recent years that he resented not his father, but rather himself, for being the wastrel who’d lost so much and had developed a need for his father’s assistance. Yes, it was the way of their extravagant world, but he’d come to hate every part of it.

“What the hell do you want,” he said without preamble as he entered, bypassing his father and made for the sideboard.

The duke didn’t draw his attention away from moon-filled sky and Cedric clenched his jaw. Of course, his father would not give him the fight he was spoiling for. “Do you know,” his sire said at last as he turned slowly around, tapping the ornamental cane at his side. “I’ve long known you were cut in my image.” A hard smile lined the man’s cold lips. “In nearly every way,” he added, waggling his eyebrows meaningfully.

Cedric tightened his grip on the snifter in his hands. Yes, they were the same manner of lecherous reprobates. Their presence at Montfort’s this evening was proof of that. “Is that why you’ve come, to wax proudly as a father?” he asked, carrying a decanter of whiskey and a crystal snifter over to his desk. Perching a hip on the edge, he proceeded to pour himself a tall drink.

His father snorted. “I said we’re alike in nearly every way. Not every way. Not in the ways that matter, Cedric.”

The ways that matter. What were those?

Then all false humor faded from the duke’s eyes. “Wives always are kept separate from your whores,” he snapped. “For the integrity of the line, you do not bring her to those events or share her with others, until you at least beget a few mewling, legitimate brats on her.”

Of course. The way that mattered. Cedric’s own mother had lived a solitary existence, shut away in the country while her husband lived
his
separate life in London, carousing and whoring. He stilled… “What she said about living separate lives…” He’d cut out his own tongue before he ever admitted to this man that he’d kill a man with his bare hands before willingly sharing Genevieve with another.

“Is that what this is? A late evening ducal lecture on my responsibilities?” he swirled his drink in a slow circle.

With a bemused look, the duke took in his lazy movements. He swung his cane in a slow, deliberate circle. “Do you know, Cedric, I never believed you would marry.”

He stilled, his glass halfway to his lips and said nothing. What game did the man play now? Time had taught him every word on the duke’s lips, every action, decision, was with purpose. “Your Grace?”

His father strode over to the leather button sofa. Laying his ornamental cane on the edge, he settled into the folds of the seat. “Married,” his father repeated, spreading his arms wide. “Until you, I never thought I’d see a man less eager to wed than myself. For all my threats regarding if you did not hurry and beget an heir for the Ravenscourt lineage, you have been inordinately stubborn. I told you I did not approve of Lady Genevieve Farendale.”

Cedric tossed back his drink. He well knew. It was what had made the prospect of wedding palatable. He made to reach for his bottle, when his father’s words froze him.

“That sweetened your decision to marry, eh? Especially when the seed was planted by your
friend
…a man you trust.”

He narrowed his eyes, that ugly niggling of suspicion grew, and then the true weight of those words slammed into him. Surely not. Surely the one person he’d called friend had not…

His father flicked a cold stare over Cedric’s person. “You were clear that you’d no intention to wed. Yours was nothing more than a petty, irrational decision bent on revenge.” He flicked an imagined piece of lint from his immaculate coat sleeve. “Alas, I knew you’d never dare wed one of those proper misses whom I approved of. One of those spiritless ladies like your mother who would be the biddable, subservient creature all wives should be.” The niggling grew, and with it, a slow dawning horror. “But when presented with the carrot of wealth I dangled and presented that with my disapproval of the whorish Farendale girl…?”

He was going to be ill. The mastery this man had and continued to exercise over his life was unrelenting.

“You see, Montfort is not unlike us, either, Cedric. Only in that one’s case, his vice of wagering has made him weak in ways this family will never be.” He winged a ducal eyebrow up. “But it has proven useful to obtain information from the man and to enlist his help.”

The air left him on a whoosh. Every conversation about Genevieve, every suggestion that Cedric wed her, all the inquiries he’d put to Cedric after he’d wed had been well-placed questions, not of a friend, but rather, just another coldhearted bastard manipulated and used by his father.

“Never going to marry, were you?” his father taunted, twisting his maniacal triumph all the deeper, so that fury rose up potent inside him, cutting off all words and logic. “Did you believe I didn’t know of your interest in that lady? The same one who kept you closed away in my library.” The duke arced his cane in a slow circle. Back and forth. Back and forth. Until Cedric wanted to grab it, break it, and beat the ruthless bastard with it. “How do I know that, you wonder?” his father looped his ankle across his opposite knee. “Surely you’ve gleaned by now, I know everything. Including your library visitor in the middle of my ball.” Cedric’s mind stalled. “You see, my servants are very loyal to me, Cedric. Very loyal.” He gave him a meaningful and, more, triumphant look that sent fury skittering along Cedric’s inside. “I know you’ve begun,” he said as he peeled his lip back in a sneer, “sketching again, since you met a certain scandalous lady.”

By God, how did he know that? Fury melded with embarrassment; it lanced through him. Were there any secrets from this man?

“And now you are gardening?” The duke threw his head back and erupted into a humorless, if exultant, laugh, until Cedric’s fingers twitched and he was besieged with the urge to bury his fist into his father’s smug face.

Oh, God. How neatly he’d been maneuvered. In Genevieve, he’d believed she was the one choice that he’d had, a decision to wed her that went against the lifelong vow he’d had to never marry. And he’d merely been led into that union by a seed planted by Montfort and fed to him by his father. And through that, Genevieve had been a pawn in his father’s machinations; ultimately finding herself with Cedric for her husband when she’d deserved so much more. This emotionally deadened bastard was, once more, proof of the ugly flowing in his veins. This night, from Montfort’s party to his exchange with Genevieve in the schoolroom to this farcical drama, was just proof why he’d no right to her or getting any child on her. His tightly held control snapped. Cedric slammed his glass down hard enough to send liquid drops spiraling over the rim of the glass. “Say whatever it is that brought you here,” he seethed. “And get out.”

“Surely you must see the humor in it from my end?” his father went on as though he’d not spoken. He spread his arms out, that cane dangling from his fingers. “You, who’ve been so adamant to shirk your responsibilities, now married…and…by accounts, besotted by your wife.” His neck heated and he resisted the urge to yank at his cravat. “And the way you ran after her this evening.” He chuckled. “Well, she must mean something to you.” Those words were spoken as though he could not puzzle through that very real truth.

“What game do you play?” he managed to bite out through the rage consuming him. The air left Cedric on a swift exhale. The bastard…

“How have you, of all people, not yet gleaned that I will not be thwarted?” Another slow, ugly smile split his father’s lips. “Besotted by your wife. No doubt, bedding her every night, hmm?” A dull flush heated Cedric’s neck. “It is only a matter of time before you get me my next heir.” He abruptly stopped swinging his cane. “Checkmate, Cedric.”

He started. He’d not taken care the way he had to ensure Genevieve remained childless. Cedric flattened his lips into a hard line. He’d not be so unwise in the future.

For once again, his father, the master manipulator who’d orchestrated his life, had maneuvered him in the most final of ways, into a state he’d pledged to never take part in. Cedric gripped his snifter so hard, the fragile glass cracked under the weight of his palm. But there was one area in which his father was wrong. By God, he thought he’d have the ultimate victory over Cedric? He’d see the old bastard in hell first. Setting aside the glass with a trembling palm, he folded his arms at his chest and gave him an equally cold smile. “Ah, yes, it would seem that way. You’re so determined to have a future heir. But there will never be a child.”

His father snapped his eyebrows into a single line. “What are you saying?” he barked.

Reveling in the sudden reversal, Cedric widened his smile. “I may be married, but as you know, there are ways to ensure there will never be children, Your Grace.” He delighted in the ever-narrowing of his sire’s eyes. “Or, given the number of bastards you’ve littered about England, perhaps you do not know that. But, I repeat, there will never be children.” The duke dropped his brow. “Checkmate.”

C
heckmate…

She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. Genevieve had long known no good could come from listening at keyholes and, yet, she’d done it anyway. The only reason she’d been in this very corridor was because she’d had to pass her husband’s office on her way to her chambers.

And now, coward that she was, she wished she’d never appeared at the doorway, uninvited.

…revenge…

Her stomach turned.

…there will never be a child…

Touching a hand to her belly, a panicky laugh bubbled past Genevieve’s lips sounding like cannon fire and she froze, praying they’d not heard her. Praying that she’d not heard what she’d heard. For an instant, she entertained the possibility of running. Running away from this frigid meeting between ruthless father and angry son, and continue running until she forgot all about the ugly that existed on the other side of those walls. Except, for all that had come, she’d never been a coward.

With silence reigning, she schooled her features and stepped into the entrance of the room. Shock marked the harsh, angular planes of her husband’s face. Unable to meet his gaze, she slid her stare beyond his shoulder…and collided with the cynical eyes of his sire. The man eyed her with cold, emotionless eyes. Is this what her husband would become? A chill stole through her. Unnerved by the piercing emptiness of that stare, she looked to her husband.

Cedric met her gaze and there was a remarkable crack in his composure that he easily concealed, replaced by an unflappable calm that sent fury roiling through her. How could he be so calm, after being discovered with his whore and now uttering such cold words about their marriage?
Because those words were true… He never promised me anything more than his name.
She’d simply allowed herself to believe from a handful of endearing acts, carried out by a stranger, that there was or, at the very least, could be something there.

Again, sliding her gaze away, she found her father-in-law. “Your Grace,” she greeted, again, priding herself on the steadiness of those words. From the corner of her eye, she detected the flash of annoyance in her husband’s stare.

“He is leaving,” Cedric replied before the duke could respond.

The slightly bored looking gentleman stared at her with an emptiness in his gaze. “I was just leaving,” he said, climbing to his feet. Collecting his cane, he strode over to the door.