by Gill, Tamara
“Willow, you know that I’m on your side, but I also have watched you these past weeks, and you’re not yourself.”
Willow exhaled, her lips set into a thin line. “What does that mean? I have been myself and I’m perfectly happy with my choice.” Even though she was not. Evie was right, of course, but she’d given her word to Lord Herbert. To cry off from the betrothal now would be a scandal she’d never recover from. Her wedding attire was being made as they sat in the carriage on their way to the York’s ball. Lord Herbert’s mother had hundreds of guests attending their church wedding before hosting them an opulent wedding breakfast at their London estate.
Not to mention Lord Ryley had been noticeably absent from any social events the last month. Was what Evie said true, and somewhere in that dark soul of his he cared for her? One would think that if that were the case, he would try to win her back. Try to see her again and ask for forgiveness.
Not that she would give him any such thing. Fiend.
“No you have not, and as your friend, I’m going to tell you the truth, even if you do not wish to hear it. You’re in love with Lord Ryley, and he is in love with you. Perhaps you both have not admitted as much to yourselves, but when we were at Hampton it was obvious to us all.”
Willow scoffed, adjusting her seat as the carriage started to slow before Lord and Lady York’s townhouse.
“Scoff all you like, Willow, but he made a mistake, a dreadful one, but is that error worth a life of misery, of half truths with a man you do not care for. A life half-lived because deep down, you’ll know you married the wrong man.”
The carriage rocked to a halt, and without waiting for the footman, Willow threw the door open and jumped from the equipage. Evie followed at a more sedate pace, but Willow needed time to think, to clear her head. Panic clutched at her skin. Her hands clammy and hot within the confines of her gloves. Damn her friend for being so honest. She didn’t want to know what others thought. What others believed Lord Ryley thought of her.
None of it mattered. She was engaged to be married to Lord Herbert. Lord Ryley had stolen from her. He didn’t deserve anything from her other than her disgust forever and a day.
By the time they arrived at the ballroom doors, and they had greeted their hosts, Willow forgave Evie enough to walk into the multitude of guests to make their way across the room to where they could see Ava and the Duke of Whitstone.
Ava stood beside the duke, her arm entwined with him and a knowing, loving smile on her friend’s face as she spoke up to her husband, who had an equally adoring visage toward his wife. Something inside Willow snapped, and tears pricked her eyes.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t marry Lord Herbert and only be half the wife she longed to be. He deserved a marriage of affection, of adoration, not a marriage made up of half truths.
Willow deserved the same.
She kissed the duchess as they joined their friends, greeting the duke warmly, but her smile slipped as she caught sight of Lord Ryley across the room, a woman on his arm she’d not seen before. They were in deep conversation with a group of friends about them, ignorant of her presence.
“Never mind Lord Ryley,” Ava said, looking at her with concern. A characteristic that all her friends were adopting toward her these past weeks. One that had started to irritate Willow. No matter that their intention was good. “He’ll not disturb you tonight. He wouldn’t dare.”
“He may do whatever he likes. It’s no concern of mine,” she said, raising her chin and taking in who else was present. Lady Herbert was here she could see, along with Hallie and Lord Duncannon, who were talking to some of their friends farther along the room.
Evie held out a glass of champagne to Willow, and she took it, her mouth parched and in desperate need of fortitude.
As much as she tried, her attention kept snapping back to the one spot in the room it should not. Lord Ryley was busy with his friends, laughing and discussing something that interested him, which most certainly was not her.
His lack of awareness of her was telling. Evie was wrong. He’d never cared and never would. She was missing a man who never really existed. While she’d always known he was a rake, he’d been sweet, intense, and patient with her. But it was all a front—a lie. The whole time he’d been plotting her downfall, loathing her for her relatives and their actions toward his mother.
Lord Herbert may not be the man she would marry, but nor would Lord Ryley. In time her heart would heal, and it would bloom once again, ready to love, to give over to someone else.
Her skin prickled in awareness, and she looked up and caught the eye of Lord Ryley, his dark, heated gaze pinning her to her spot. Her heart gave a lurch, and no matter how much she knew she should look away, ignore him, she could not. All that they shared, the many kisses, his seductive words as he took her on the daybed bombarded her mind, and she bit her lip, hating that he could make her want him as much as he ever did. He’d tried to ruin her. Had made her lose a third of her fortune.
Still, she wanted him. Wanted him with a need that overshadowed everything she knew of the man and knowledge of what he did.
His gaze didn’t leave her, not even when Lord Herbert bowed before her, kissing her hand and pulling her onto the floor for a waltz. And damn herself, for the simpleton she was, she didn’t want Lord Ryley to look at anyone, unless that anyone, that someone, was her.
Abe watched Willow glide onto the floor with Lord Perfect, anger thrumming through his veins at the sight of it. It had taken him several weeks to accept the fact that she was to marry another. The whole of London was abuzz with the news and details of the forthcoming nuptials between the two.
He’d only attended tonight to see for himself that it was true. That they were a couple and he had lost her. It would seem so if her adoring gaze up at Lord Perfect and his, in turn, was anything to go by.
“Is that her?” Marigold said at his side. She clasped his arm, pulling his gaze away from Willow.
“Yes, it is her,” he said, meeting his cousin’s eye. She was his father’s younger brother’s daughter, an heiress like so many here this evening, but Marigold was sweet, pure and kind. The opposite to Abe. Perhaps that is why they had always been close. He’d spent many weeks at his uncle’s estate when he wasn’t in school after his father died and his mother was in Spain. She had heard the rumors that he’d been slighted by Miss Perry and had come to check on him immediately.
Abe was still trying to find out how that rumor had started. The Spanish Scoundrel did not get slighted by the opposite sex, and he’d not let the rumor stand.
“She’s very beautiful.”
He nodded once, clamping his jaw. “Well, we have arrived and seen for ourselves that she is indeed happy with her choice. Shall we leave?”
“What? No,” Marigold said, patting his arm. “You need to speak to her. Just to be sure this is what she wants, for it’s as plain as day to me that it’s not what you want.”
He scowled down at his insightful relative. “I’ve never wanted to marry anyone. You know that.” His mother’s words to win Willow back reverberated in his mind, and he cast a glance in her direction. She was so lovely tonight. Her red, silk gown accentuating her unblemished skin and slight frame. So tall and luscious. Kind to a fault. Should she want him, he knew he didn’t deserve her. Only a great man should have such an honor. He was not a great man.
“You’re in love with her. The Spanish Scoundrel does not attend balls and parties just to look in on a woman to ensure she was indeed betrothed. You never cared for all this fanfare in any case. Since I’ve known you, you have turned your back on society, loathed and ridiculed its fickle ways. You promised your mother you’d try to repair this wrong. Here is your chance. Tonight.”
Abe noted Lord Perfect’s hand dipped low on Willow’s back. He knew how that skin felt beneath his fingers. The warmth, the softness. Anger spiked through his veins and he fisted his hands at his sides. “I need a drink,” he said, leaving his cousin a
nd striding off in search of a good, hard whiskey or scotch, anything would do if it blinded him to the sight of Willow waltzing with a man, any man, if that man was not him.
Chapter 17
Willow excused herself after supper and went in search of the retiring room. After completing her tribulations, she sat for a time in the empty, opulent room and calmed her heart. Not because she had been dancing and laughing all evening with her betrothed, who really was a very sweet man, but because another was present. The very person that she’d sworn to forget, to curse forever.
But she could not. No sooner could she do those things than she could push away her friends. She cared for him. More than he deserved, but that didn’t mean that she had to forgive him. How could she forgive him for his actions toward her? An innocent in all things relating to his mother, and he’d punished her for other people’s sins.
It wasn’t fair in the least.
Willow sighed and stood, starting back toward the ballroom. The house was large, and she turned down a passage, stopping halfway when the location didn’t appear familiar to the one she walked through to get to the retiring room.
“Lost, Miss Perry?” a deep, husky voice said from a shadowed doorway farther along.
She lifted her chin, facing down Lord Ryley. “As a matter of fact, I am. Not that it is any of your business.”
“I forgot to tell you the last time I saw you congratulations. You must forgive me my forgetting my manners at the time. I was confounded, to say the least.”
She scoffed, not believing that for a moment. “You? Confounded?” She strolled up to where he stood, noting his cravat was untied and hanging loosely about his neck. Had he just finished a clandestine meeting with the woman he’d brought to the ball? Had he just taken her in the darkened room behind him? Her stomach rolled at the thought, and she took a calming breath to stop herself casting up her accounts all over his shining Hessians.
“How are the wedding preparations coming along? Your grand match is all that London is talking about.”
Willow knew that as well as anyone, and the pressure now to go through with the marriage was immense. Even though, deep down, she knew she could not. Lord Herbert was not whom she wanted. The blasted fiend before her was.
“Very well, thank you. Thomas has been very involved.”
A muscle worked in his jaw and not for anything could she tear her eyes from him. Her gaze slid to his lips, lips that she’d dreamed about, longed to feel against hers, and she cursed herself a fool. What woman lusted after a man who had set out to ruin her? To bring her low financially and perhaps socially as well. Not that he’d made it known to anyone that they had lain together.
“Thomas?” He cleared his throat. “I suppose it is only expected that you would call him by his given name.”
Willow met Abe’s gaze, wondering why such a thing would aggravate him if his caustic tone were any indication. “He’s to be my husband,” she lied, knowing she’d flee London—England—even before she went through with such a future. Not that Lord Ryley needed to know that. The scoundrel.
“Hmm,” he said noncommittedly. “I suppose you would.” He turned and went into the room behind him and left her standing in the passage.
For a second, she debated turning about and fleeing his presence, but the need to see him more, to hear his voice, if only to disagree with him forced her hand, and she stepped into the room.
He stood beside an unlit fire, leaning on the mantel and staring at the fire that had been set, ready for tomorrow. “Where is your lady friend?” Willow asked, having expected to see her dressing or fixing her hair at the very least.
He glanced at her curiously, a small frown between his brows before he chuckled. “Are you suggesting I was in here having a tryst with the woman that I brought to the ball?” He strode over to a decanter of whiskey and poured himself a glass, downing it in one go. “Sorry to disappoint you, my dear, but that is my cousin recently returned to town. I simply accompanied her as she wished.”
Willow refused to allow the relief pouring through her to amend her features. She held fast to her face of impassivity.
“Why do you ask about my affairs in any case, Miss Perry? You’re to be married, am I not allowed to court whomever I please, like you? Move on from our little incident in Hampton such as it was and the one again in London.”
“You may do whatever you want, just as you always have,” she said, reminding him of his scheme all along to ruin her. And he had ruined her in a way. Certainly, no one else lived up to him now or made her feel an ounce of the emotion that she always felt when around Abe. The urge to stomp her foot at having to have fallen for a man who was so wrong for her in so many ways. He’d wanted to make her pay, damn it.
Which he succeeded in doing, a little voice mocked in her head.
Willow ground her teeth, coming farther into the room. “I was surprised to see you here, that is all. Even accompanying your cousin as you say, you’ve not been in society the past month. I thought you would’ve scuttled back to your hell hole you love so much.” Irritation tore through her at his treatment of her. Of his plan to bring her down. How dare he? How dare he make her care for him while all the while wanting nothing more than to make her pay?
“Oh, I’ve been in my hell hole as you state, my dear. Still,” he shrugged, “I have been part of this society longer than you, and whether I like the lifestyle or not, the people in this ballroom are my friends and keep Hell’s Gate profitable. It never hurts to show interest, even when I do not have any. It is the same for women who warm my bed. They’re all the same. After a tumble…before they fuck you over.”
Willow gasped. Did he mean her? “Are you implying that I used you, my lord? That I gave myself to you only to marry another?” She could not have heard what he’d just said. Surely he was simply baiting her.
“Isn’t that what you have done, Miss Perry? Or have I been mistaken this past month?”
Willow stormed over to him, standing nose to nose with the vexing, impossible man. “You sought revenge and used me while working toward your goal. If anyone pushed me into the arms of another it was you. Why don’t you just admit it, Lord Ryley? You’re jealous. You’re so jealous that someone other than yourself can call me their own. Maybe what everyone is saying about you is true.”
“And what truth is that,” he said, his voice low with a dangerous edge to it that made her shiver. She was walking a delicate line with Lord Ryley. He wasn’t tamed, and certainly wasn’t a gentleman most of the time. There was no telling what would happen if she kept poking his temper.
“That you love me. That you regret pushing me into an investment that took a third of my money. That you want me still.” Just as she wanted him. After all that he’d done to her, still her body yearned for his touch. If only he’d admit his wrong. Admit that he was sorry. To beg for forgiveness.
His lordship on his knees, begging for mercy, would be a lovely sight.
“You want me to admit to wanting you?” he said, stepping toward her and pushing her back against the small table that ran behind the settee.
“And everything else,” she whispered, the backs of her thighs hitting the table. His intoxicating scent of spirits, of sandalwood and something else altogether, lewdness perhaps, consumed her and heat pooled at her core.
“Oh, I want you. I want you on your back right here and now.” He scooped up her gown, pushing it up her legs so the cool night air kissed her skin. “I want you to break off your engagement to Lord Perfect. I want you to be mine.”
She should stop him. Shove him away. But she did not. Silly, silly woman that she was. His nearness consumed her, and then what he’d said, his words, flittered through her mind. He wanted her for himself? She was engaged, and this was wrong. For all that Lord Ryley thought of Lord Herbert, he did not deserve for his fiancée to be kissing another man.
And that is exactly where this interlude with Lord Ryley would end if she did not leave right now.
> With all the self-will she possessed, Willow pushed Abe away, stepping out of his reach. “I should not be here, and you should not be trying to seduce me.”
“Why ever not? I want you as much as I ever did. You cannot marry Lord Perfect. You do not care for him, Willow. I can see that you do not, and all of London knows it as well.”
All of London knew that she did not care for her betrothed? Heat bloomed on her cheeks, and she took a calming breath, reminding herself Lord Ryley wasn’t always correct about things. “What do you know of feelings, Lord Ryley when you care for nothing but yourself?”
“That isn’t true. I care for you. More than I ever wanted to or thought I could, but I do.”
“What?” she asked, turning to face him. Never had she thought to ever hear such words from the Spanish Scoundrel. The way he looked at her, sincere and as if his future hung on her response, made something in her chest twist.
He cared for her?
Dare she hope that his feelings ran deeper still, to love? For as true as she was standing before him, she loved him. Loved that he vexed and teased her. Loved him enough to overlook his stubbornness and foolhardy schemes. She could understand the reasoning behind it. Had she known her mother at all, she would never have wanted her run out of London simply because of her ethnicity.
She would have fought back as well and sought to make those who had hurt her family pay.
Her aunt had been one of those people, and although Lord Ryley’s revenge was misplaced, there was honor pushing him forward to seek it.
“I owe you an apology, Willow. I owe Lord Herbert one as well. There are things that I was not aware of that have come to light and have consequently changed my opinion on things.”
Willow took a step toward him, needing to know what had changed. “How so?”
