He didn’t want to marry you whispered the creaking conveyance.
He never loved you, said her broken heart.
She was a fool, and all the love sonnets were wrong.
Chapter Eighteen
I love thee with the passion put to use / In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
For some reason, the words of an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem returned to Clay in the aftermath of his wild, foolish, impassioned lovemaking with Ara. He had read the book she had given him all those years ago. Of course he had. Had kept it with him, the last part of Ara he had left. Perhaps the only true part of her she’d had to give.
The book had traveled alongside him through the Continent. It had spent many nights beneath his pillow. The spine had cracked, lines underlined by his pen, corners carefully folded down to mark his favorites. He had railed over some, revisited others. He had run his finger over the careful dedication she had inscribed more times than he cared to admit or count.
To Clay from Your Ara. When you are ready for Volume II, you know where to find it.
But she had never been his, had she? And though he had known where the second volume was, he had never searched for it. Absurd, but he wondered as she rose from his bed now if she still had it tucked away somewhere. If she had ever looked upon her matching volume and thought of him.
If she had ever thought of him at all.
But why the bloody hell should he give a damn either way? Why should it matter? She had betrayed him. Hurt him. Broken him. Had withheld his son from him. He did not owe her a bloody thing. The lust between them had always existed, and it had not changed.
If anything, their circumstances served to heighten the tension disproportionally, and it was surely that which fogged his brain now, which made him remember the sonnets and the poems and the way he and Ara had once been together. They had been a fiction. She had manipulated and used him, betraying his trust and changing him forever in the process.
He had already shown her more kindness and leniency than she deserved.
And yet, the sharp knife of guilt stabbed him in his gut.
Why did he feel like such a cad?
Why did the way she held her shoulders, curled inward as if to protect herself, the sheen he thought he’d seen in her blue-violet eyes before she rolled away from him, the almost violent way she had fled the bed, affect him? Why did he find himself weakening for her, wanting her, needing her the same way he once had when he had been too innocent to know better?
There was something about the sight of her pale back and thin arms and legs, the indentation of her spine, the curtain of her copper curls, the way she scrambled to her nightdress—my God, she was as small as a bird, every bit as dainty—something that hit him simultaneously in the gut and the heart. She seemed so alone. So helpless.
He couldn’t shake the notion he had somehow hurt her with his words. And he hated hurting her. Could not bear the thought. Every instinct in him cried out to protect her. To keep her at his side. In his bed. To hold her to him and never let her go.
He had learned nothing in eight goddamn years.
Still as bloody stupid as ever. But he could not seem to save himself. She would always be his ruin. His temptation. His Achilles heel.
“Ara,” he found himself saying. “Do not go.”
She ignored him, threw her nightrail over her head, stabbing her arms into the sleeves.
“Ara,” he said again, rising from the bed, stalking to her without a stitch.
Wordlessly, she spun on her heel, retreating from him, her small feet softly padding across the carpet, back to her chamber. His legs were longer, his strides easily eating up the advantage she had on him.
But then she stopped suddenly, her back still to him, her entire body going still, her gaze settling upon the battered volume he had placed, unthinkingly, upon a side table. He realized the moment she recognized the book. Shame replaced the myriad other emotions whirling through him.
“That is the book I gave you.” Her statement emerged as half question, as though she could not believe he would have kept the thing all these years.
He did not blame her, for he could scarcely believe it himself. But he had carried the book—Volume One—about with him, unwilling to part from it. It had been a reminder of the man he had once been, the man who had believed in love and second chances and good hearts. The man who had believed in the heart of a slip of a thing, a small flame-haired goddess who had appeared in the forest one day and had made him believe he could be worthy of her love.
Until she had stripped him of his beliefs and his hopes.
Until she had taken his love and crushed it beneath her dainty heel.
“Aye,” he bit out reluctantly.
She spun about, facing him, then averting her gaze when she realized he was indecent and unrepentant, his entire body on wanton display. Her cheeks turned a shade of scarlet to match her hair. “You kept it?”
His cock was beginning to stir, and he could not face her or this dire conversation whilst sporting a prick that was hard enough to hang a bucket of coal from it. “I…found it recently, and I thought perhaps you would like it returned to you. It is yours, after all. The volumes go together.”
Why did he feel as if he was talking about the two of them rather than the bloody poetry volumes? And why had he offered to return the book? His book? He had read it so many times that he could recite any number of the poems verbatim. She had gifted it to him.
“It would seem the years were not kind to this little volume.” She offered him a slight, tentative smile. “Why did you keep it?”
Because he was a fool.
Because he was bloody stupid.
Because it had been hers.
Initially, he had hated the thing. He’d thrown it against walls, had tossed it into a puddle—the corners of pages eighty-three through ninety-one remained slightly rippled despite his efforts to dry and flatten them afterward. He had left it in a hotel, only to retrieve it some two hours later, unable to part with it. He had carried it across seas, across borders, had read it frontispiece to back cover again and again. Once, during a mad bout of drinking champagne in Paris, he had decided to burn the thing at last.
And so, he had tossed it into the fire, only to have second thoughts and retrieve it—drunkenly—from the flame. It had survived far more unscathed than his hand, which still bore several faint scars from the burns. The book had suffered some slight scorching on the red leather cover. It was fitting, he thought—the book wound up as bruised and battered as his heart.
“Clay,” she prodded, and she had the journal in her hands now, stroking it, this relic from their past. This unwanted part of them that would not seem to go away. “Why did you keep it?”
“I…” He could not think of a damned thing he wished to say in his defense. “You may have it back. Take it, Duchess. I have no need of the volume any longer.”
Nor did he have a need of her.
She could take back the bloody poetry. She could disappear through the doors connecting their chambers. He had no need of her beyond slaking his hungers inside her willing body.
I loved her once.
God, how I loved her.
Until she had betrayed him, he reminded himself, adding an inward sod off to the weakness inside him for good measure.
“I do not want it back,” she said. “You may keep it, Clay. By now, it is far more yours than it was ever mine.”
If only my heart could be the same bloody way, more mine than yours.
If only I had stopped loving you.
No, damn it. He did not love her. Not any longer. He tamped down the maudlin sentiments. They were not only unwanted, but they made a man weak.
“I don’t want it,” he bit out. Not the book, not the way he felt for her, nor all the old, long-buried, long bitter emotions she unleashed in him. Not the memories. Not her.
She smiled sadly. “Someone told me that when a warrior gives a gift to another warrior, it i
s bad luck to take it back. You must keep it forever now.”
His chest hurt. “This is not a blade but a book.”
He could say she was not a warrior, but that would be wrong, for she was. She had been through so much upheaval in the last few months—Burghly’s murder, the threats and danger surrounding her, nearly being attacked by a would-be assassin—and her resilience had shown through it all. He admired her strength, even if he could not forgive what she had done.
“Words are every bit as powerful, every bit as dangerous, as weapons,” she said then, her voice quiet. Steeped in regret.
He thought of the words she had written him. He had long ago shredded the letter, tossed its pieces into the grate. But he had not forgotten them.
“Perhaps you are right, Duchess.”
They stared at each other, tension heavy and thick in the silent stillness of the chamber, the rumpled bed at their backs a reminder of their folly. A reminder of his inability to resist her.
“I must return to my chamber,” she said then, her gaze flitting from him, to the book, and then back again. They were wide and bright. Curious and questioning. But also dark with something indefinable.
Melancholy? Longing? The invisible fist holding his heart squeezed tighter.
“Don’t,” he said, the word torn from him, a plea. It was not what he had intended to say. Not what he should say. Not what he should want.
“I must.” She caught the fullness of her lower lip in her teeth, hesitating. Damn it, tears glistened in her eyes. A knot rose in his throat and he could not speak past it. Could not do anything but gently take her in his arms and hold her.
“No,” was all he said.
He buried his face in her wild curls, drinking in her scent. Roses in bloom. Ara. Young love. Recklessness. Stolen kisses beneath a thousand leaf-covered branches. How the hell had they ended up so far from where they had begun?
“Release me, Clay,” she whispered against his chest, her breath warm. “You said yourself I should not have come here, and you were right. It was wrong. You and I are all wrong.”
Of course they were. Chasing after her, holding her, wanting her still, it was as wrong as a snow squall in the summer. He was not meant for her, nor was she meant for him. He should release her. Let her go—not just for tonight but forever.
And yet, his arms only held her tighter. His foolish mouth opened. “We were not always wrong.”
Her arms slid slowly around his waist, as if she was at war with herself over whether or not she ought to, as if she could not resist. “No,” she surprised him by softly agreeing. “We were not.”
Bloody hell.
A sudden rush of longing splintered inside him. He felt bloody and raw, like his innards were comprised of nothing but jagged shards. How was it possible for this tiny slip of a woman to tear him apart?
“Stay with me,” he breathed into her hair. It was his turn to beg, and he didn’t know where the inclination had emerged from or why. But something in him said he could not allow her to walk back through the door. Some part of him, long buried, had been resurrected, and it could not bear to watch her go, to close the door, to give this madness between them the finality it deserved.
“Why?” she asked quietly, her hands moving on his back, caressing him in an echo of the way his traveled up and down hers. “You detest me, Clay. Why would you want me here when you just told me to go?”
“I never told you to go.” He pressed another kiss to her hair before rubbing his bristly cheek against its silkiness. “I told you that you should not have come here, and I was right.”
She stiffened in his embrace.
“Because I cannot be near you, Ara, without wanting more,” he continued. “Because you make me weak.”
“Nothing could make you weak.” Her fine-boned hands continued their exploration of his bare skin, trailing over his muscles. “You are so strong.”
Not when it came to her, he wasn’t.
“There are different kinds of strengths, different kinds of weaknesses.” He swept his hand up her spine, sinking beneath the heavy, soft waves of her tresses to find her bare nape. Here, his fingers gently worked her flesh. The cords beneath her skin were taut and strained. “My body is no match for you. You could bring me to my knees with the ease of an avenging army.”
A quiet sound came from her then. Not an exhalation, nor a sigh, but…he listened closer. His ears were not mistaken. She was laughing.
It occurred to him that he had not heard Ara laugh since the carefree days of their youth. Hell, she scarcely even smiled unless it was for the lad’s benefit. Was her sadness all the result of Burghly’s murder? He did not want to think of her dead husband now, not in this moment of uneasy truce. Not when she was a warm and soft blessing in his arms. Not when he could hold her and touch her, kiss her and soothe her as he pleased.
Not when he could hear the sweet, tinkling strains of her levity cutting into the heaviness that seemed to forever follow them. He did not know what to do with a laughing Ara. Was she delirious? Was she laughing at him? Had she imbibed too much wine at dinner?
Hell. Even if she was laughing at him, he didn’t give a proper goddamn. Her laughter was beautiful. Always had been, and his cock twitched to life in answer. He was still naked, after all, and Ara wore a thin scrap of a gown.
He looked down at her, tilting her chin up with a gentle touch so he could see her face. So he could bask in the undeniable brilliance of her smile. The ever-elusive dimple in her left cheek was a charming divot in her smooth, creamy skin. He wanted to kiss it.
Instead, he raised his brows. “What is so bloody amusing, Duchess?”
“The notion of me bringing you to your knees,” she said, her laughter subsiding as quickly as it had burst forth. The shadows in her eyes returned, dimming their sparkle. “You are so big and strong, and I am weak and slight. You do not even like me.”
He liked her, damn it all to hell. He liked her far, far too much. Always had. Always would. Time, distance, betrayals—nothing had squelched the burning need inside him to claim her. To make her his. To keep her.
Clay stared down into her upturned face. “You are stronger than you think, Ara, and I…I do not dislike you.”
Her delicate brows furrowed into a frown. “Such a heartwarming confession, Mr. Ludlow.”
“It was not meant to be one, Duchess.” It was all he dared reveal to her. All he dared admit to himself, for if he were to hold a candle to the darkness inside, bathe it in light, he was afraid of what he would see. Terrified he would discover his love for her had never fled him at all, but that it had simply been buried beneath the twin weights of grief and hurt.
“Thank you for bringing me to your home,” she said suddenly. “I did not feel safe at Burghly House. Not after…” A tremor shook her. She swallowed.
Rage burned inside him still for the man who had chased her through the garden with a knife after savaging Beauchamps. If he could slay him again, he would. Her scream had filled him with an inhuman surge of strength, and he had torn down the path, determined to find her and keep her safe. The day still haunted him, for he hated knowing he had been the one to fail her.
“I am sorry, Ara,” he said, caressing her smooth cheek once, twice. “If I had not left that day, none of it would have happened.”
Her lips quirked into another ghost of a smile, but this time it was sad. “It would have happened regardless of where you were. You are not at fault. The men who murdered my husband are. It is as you said, they will do anything, commit any sin, to further their cause.”
My husband.
He hated those words in her voice, on her tongue. Hated that another man had known her as intimately as he had. Hated that she had loved him. He was bloody jealous of a dead man, and how foolish. How ridiculous. But there it was, a knife in his chest.
“Did you love him?” he asked, and he did not know why. The question had no bearing upon him. Her answer would not change anything. He had no right—
no reason—to know. Except for the envy eating him alive.
Her expression shifted, shuttering. “Of course I loved Freddie.”
Fuck. Why had he asked? Why had he wished to know?
Those five words dug the blade so deep he could feel it in his skull. Yes, of course she loved goddamn Freddie, whose locks of hair she carried about on her person morning, day, and evening. Why, it was a mercy she did not have the bloody brooch pinned to her nightrail. Freddie the duke. Freddie the heir born on the right side of the blanket. Freddie who had likely never had a modicum of hardship in his life until the day he’d been stabbed to death by a Fenian assassin.
And yet, while she wore her mourning weeds and sported her brooch and proclaimed she loved her husband, she had allowed Clay to make love to her. Twice. Why?
Bile rose in his throat. “Was it him you thought of when I was inside you, Ara?”
He did not want to know, but at the same time, he had to know. Perhaps this was the answer, the way he could finally free himself of the hold she had upon him. Perhaps this was how he could let her go, regardless of how much he wanted to hold on forever.
Her lush, pink lips parted, as if she struggled to form an answer. He could kiss her now, punish her with the bruising of his mouth and the claiming of his tongue. Or he could wait, listen to what she would say. His heart thundered in his chest.
“No.” She closed her eyes for a moment, as if suffering an inner anguish she wished to keep hidden from him. When her long lashes swept upward, her frank, unwavering gaze took his breath. “It was you. It has always been you, Clay. Only ever you.”
What the bloody hell?
“Ara,” he rasped, not certain if he should kiss her or shake her. Or both. “You married him, for Christ’s sake. You loved him.”
“Yes,” she said, pushing at his chest suddenly, and he released her, watching as she slipped from his arms. “I married Freddie. I loved him too, and he loved me. Most importantly, he loved Edward. He saved us when you were long gone. If it had not been for Freddie, I would have been forced to go abroad and give Edward away.”
Nobody's Duke (League of Dukes Book 1) Page 21
