Today should have been the culmination of every dream he’d carried. Dreams that had sustained him through darkness. Yet he stood here, with Justina eyeing him—a viselike pressure strangled off his airflow—the same way he’d looked upon the Marquess of Rutland.
Now the pity and regret in Lord Rutland’s eyes made sense. It had been the gaze of a man who’d known the implications of Nick’s actions far better than Nick himself.
Because that is what I allowed myself to become. Just as his sister had predicted and accused, he had taken on the other man’s form. In a bid to make himself stronger. Standing here, with Justina’s heart-shaped face pale as the parchment on his desk and tears streaming down her cheeks, he didn’t feel strong. He felt as if he’d been flayed open with a dull blade and left exposed and broken.
Nick drew in a ragged breath and let it out slowly. “It was initially my intention to…” trap. “…marry you.” The greatest crimes he’d once spoken freely about with Lady Carew slithered around his mind. Justina had always deserved more. Than him. Tennyson. Or any other bloody toff in London.
Her expressive eyes revealed nothing but a blank emptiness that slammed into him. “Marry me,” she repeated.
“I could not do it,” he confessed, his voice hoarsened.
His wife eyed him as though he’d descended into the depths of madness. Mayhap he had. Because when presented with Justina’s suffering, Rutland, the one man who’d occupied Nick’s sole thoughts and efforts for thirteen years, didn’t matter a jot. “But you did do it,” she whispered.
He briefly dusted a hand over his eyes. “Trap you,” he amended through gritted teeth. She recoiled, horror spilling from her eyes.
“Our meeting at Gipsy Hill?” Her arms hung loosely at her sides.
Heat scorched his neck. She’d force him to breathe that truth and she was deserving of it. “I intended to coordinate our meeting that day, but that loose horse bolted down the road, changing my plans.”
“Your plans.” Justina peeled her lip back in a cynical sneer that had the same effect as a dagger being put in his belly. “How was our first meeting to go, Your Grace?”
His chest spasmed. Your Grace. That formal title that stripped away all intimacy of their given names.
“How was it to go?” she demanded again. The high-pitched timbre of her voice hinted at her rapid loss of control.
“I had orchestrated a runaway phaeton,” he said quietly. Shame filled him. How had he intended those ruthless plans for her? “There was no need for it because of the wild horse.”
“My God,” she breathed and skittered her agonized gaze about.
His insides twisted in vicious knots. He could not allow her to believe it had all been a lie. Along the way, everything had changed. She’d reminded him what it was to enjoy anything outside of his plans for Rutland. She’d reawakened his love of poetry and taught him how to smile again. “After meeting you, Justina, I realized I could not embroil you in my plans for Rutland.”
His insistent profession brought her head swinging back straight, so their stares met. “That is why you stopped calling,” she said softly, the words spoken more to herself.
Nonetheless, Nick nodded. Make her see reason. Make her understand.
I’ve already lost her.
Battling back panic, he explained. “Your father was going to sell you to Tennyson without the benefit of marriage.” All the same fury, as potent and raw as when he’d learned it from the marquess’ mouth, burned hot in his veins.
She cocked her head. Those tears glittering in her eyes slipped down her cheeks, leaving silent marks of her despair that ravaged him. Encouraged by her silence, he continued.
“I secured your dowry and your family’s property, in your name. That is no lie.” So she could have some control of her future. Even as with this, she’d likely leave and take every happiness he’d known in these miserable thirteen years.
“Am I supposed to find honor in that, Your Grace?” she spat. Justina gave him a long, sad look. “Should I admire you for so graciously sparing me?” She jerked her chin up. “The moment you decided to hurt my family as a means to hurt Edmund, you embroiled me in your plan.” She gave her head a sad, pitying shake. “You are no different from Tennyson or any other gentleman my father kept company with. You are the same.”
Her stinging words struck in his chest. “Yes,” he said, his voice deadened to his own ears. That was who he was.
Justina firmed her mouth. “Do you care for me?”
Care for her? He loved her. Had loved her since she’d blurted out a challenge to a stodgy scholar in The Circulating Library on Lambeth Street. He could not give her those words now. They’d ring as hollow and false; a desperate maneuver to break past the wary guard that had gone up about her. Yet, he needed to say them anyway. Needed her to know those words were, in fact, true.
“If you have to think so long, then I have my answer,” she said tiredly and made to step around him.
Nick swiftly placed himself between her and the doorway, halting her retreat. He needed her to understand. “I love you,” he confessed in solemn tones, willing her to see that.
An empty laugh bubbled from her lips. “You love me?”
He drew in a steadying breath. She was entitled to her hatred. He’d known all along she would despise him once his plan came to light but he hadn’t expected it to hurt this much. “I do not expect you to forgive what I’ve done—”
“What business did you see to this morn?” she interrupted.
That abrupt shift knocked him off-kilter. Oh, God, she knows. For a brief moment, he considered lying, but he could not allow any more falsities between them. “Justina,” he entreated.
“Who. Did. You. See?” she clipped out in coolly emotionless tones. The icy steel so at odds with the carefree lady he’d sat beside in The Circulating Library and he slowly died inside at her transformation. “It was your lover, wasn’t i-it?”
“How—?”
She jerked as though he’d struck her.
“I did not lie to you before. She is my former lover,” he said around a tight throat. “I ended it before I even met you.”
“I see.” Those two words, which both said everything and nothing all at the same time, cleaved at his insides. He was losing her. With every question and every revelation, she slipped further and further away.
Nay, I already lost her. I lost her the minute I knocked into her on the streets of Lambeth. Nick gathered her hands and squeezed. “I was a miserable, rotted bounder before you. A rogue. Ruthless. Driven by evil. I am not that man. Not anymore. Because of you.”
She lifted her chin, a sad smile hanging on her lips. “When did you intend to tell me that we exist because of nothing more than your twisted plans for revenge?”
I waited too long. “The timing certainly seems damning,” he conceded gruffly. “But after I met with…” She recoiled. “…after my meeting,” he swiftly substituted. “I pledged to speak to you but found your brother at his club and in his cups and returned him home to your mother.”
A brittle laugh exploded from her lips. “My, how very gallant you are. Helping my brother who you beggared at the gaming tables.”
Nick flinched. “What would you have me do? Leave him there, heartbroken so the gossips could tear him down?”
“You already did that enough on your own.”
“Your brother and father wagered away their wealth,” he snapped. “I’m deserving of your resentment, but do not make either of the Barrett males out as paragons. Not when they’ve also wronged you and your kin.”
By the white lines at the corners of her mouth, she knew he was right on that score. Again, he attempted to make her see that she was all he wanted. “I am deserving of your anger.” And more. “But know,” he continued in somber tones, “you are all I ever wanted. All I ever needed that I believed myself—”
“Stop!” Justina cried out. She yanked free of him and hugged her arms close to her chest in a
sad, lonely embrace. “You told me everything I wished to hear. Praised my mind,” she cringed. “Because that is all I wanted. For a gentleman to see me for something other than the label of Diamond I’d been given.” Tears flooded her eyes and a lone crystalline drop streaked down her cheek. She angrily swiped at it. “But you didn’t even see that in me, Nick. You saw me as an object to exact your revenge.” The sight of her proud grief ravaged him.
Nick claimed her face between his hands and forced her gaze to his, willing her to see. “It all changed. From the moment you threw yourself into the street to save a poor child, my world was flipped upside down.” And it would never, ever be righted. “I wanted to tell you. In the library, I tried to.”
“Let me go, Your Grace,” she ordered. His arms fell useless to his sides.
Justina started around him and, this time, he proved a coward, yet again. For he let her go. His wife lingered at the front of the room, her fingers on the door handle. She angled her head around. “Was any of it real?”
From the moment he’d knocked her to the ground and stared into her expressive eyes, he’d been forever lost. “Would you believe me if I said from the moment I sat beside you in that lecture hall, all of it was?”
Her even, white teeth sank into her lower lip and tears welled afresh in her eyes. She gave her head a jerky shake. “No. I would not.” Justina glanced down at her hands, silently studying the creases on her palms. “When we met in Lady Wessex’s gardens, I saw something dark in your eyes. Something I couldn’t identify,” she whispered. She raised her gaze to his. “Now I know. It was hatred. And I didn’t see it before because I was blind to those sentiments. But now I know.” Her words hit him like a kick to the gut. His heart contracted, making words and thoughts impossible.
With that, she pressed the handle, opened the door, and closed it behind her with a quiet, damning click.
Nick stood there long after she’d gone, staring at the oak panel. At last, he conceded how wrong Rutland had been in the lessons he’d imparted. Revenge and hatred hadn’t made him stronger. For, with the room ringing with the memory of his wife’s quiet despair and her father’s thunderous charges, Nick had never felt weaker than he did in this moment.
For even as he loved her now, she’d begun as a pawn whose family he’d sought to destroy…and that could never be undone.
…You have an entire lifetime to show her who you are…
With a curse, Nick sprinted from his office and bounded through the halls. Chilton’s words echoed around his mind and, with his pulse pounding loudly in his ears, he took the stairs two at a time. “Justina,” he called out hoarsely as she reached her rooms.
She paused with her fingers on the handle, but did not look back.
He held his palms up in supplication. “I…” He glanced up and down the hallway. “I would speak to you,” his words emerged as an entreaty.
She faced him. “There is nothing more to say.”
Some dark, hardened emotion glinted in her blue eyes, freezing him in his spot. For it was a sentiment he knew. One he recognized.
Hatred.
Just as she’d said. Bile stung his throat and he swallowed it. “Please,” he panted, out of breath from his race to meet her. There was no pride where this woman was concerned. From the moment she’d risked her life to save a child in the street, she’d forever won his heart.
She shoved her door open and when she said nothing, he followed inside behind her. Nick braced for the stinging vitriol of her outrage. Instead, she stared back at him with tired eyes. “What do you want, Your Grace?”
Your Grace. Again, that barrier of propriety erected between them that shattered the intimacy they’d shared these past weeks. I want it back. I want us as we were for the brief time we shared. “I cannot atone for my crimes against you,” he began, taking a step toward her. For, ultimately, he’d wronged all the Barretts. She stiffened, but remained fixed to the floor. Encouraged when she did not retreat, he continued coming. “But I would explain myself.” Where he could do so better than he’d done in his office. Not so she would forgive him but, rather, so mayhap she’d at least understand.
Wordlessly, she tipped her chin up, urging him on.
His tongue felt heavy in his mouth and he waged war to keep this secret from her, still. He owed her every truth. “Long ago, my father owed a debt to Lord Rutland. A business debt.”
“You said as much,” she said, her voice so eerily emotionless, a chill ran along his spine. This was not who she was. This jaded, wary figure bore no resemblance to the vibrant, smiling woman who’d broken down his every defense.
He nodded jerkily. “Yes, I told you that much.” Still, he could not get the words out. For the whole of his life, he’d lived a lie. A secret shared with no one…and only suspicious servants the wiser. “Lord Rutland called that debt in early.” For no reason, other than to destroy. And ultimately, he’d proven successful in that endeavor. “My father killed himself,” he said quietly, for the second time giving those words life.
Justina gasped. She stared at him with round eyes. Yes, for in their Society, the ultimate crime would forever be a man’s suicide.
Unable to meet her gaze for fear of what he might see there, he looked beyond her shoulder. “Following his meeting with the marquess, I entered Papa’s office and found him.” All the oldest horrors and memories came rushing forward and he concentrated on his emotionless telling to keep from descending into madness. “A man never forgets the sight of a body, dangling, in death.” His voice grew hoarse. “It is silent. Morbid. It destroyed me,” he whispered, that part to himself.
The floorboards creaked, indicating she’d moved.
A soft, unexpected touch landed on his arm and, blinking slowly, he looked at her. She said nothing. Offered no words. Offered nothing, other than that silent, unspoken show of support. Support he didn’t deserve. The blade twisted all the deeper in his chest. “I allowed my hatred for your brother-in-law to sustain me,” he continued hoarsely. “I found purpose in that hatred. I didn’t believe I was capable of feeling anything beyond it.” His throat worked. “Until you.” She’d made him feel again. Forced him, too. Despite every vow he’d taken to be ruthless and unfeeling. She’d restored light when there had only been darkness.
Her fingers tensed on his sleeve. Then she lowered her hand slowly, falteringly to her side and he mourned the loss of that connection. “It was all pretend, Nick,” she said so softly, her words were nearly lost to him. “Everything from your actions to your words to me about poetry and literature—”
“It wasn’t,” he entreated, gathering her hands. Willing her to see. To know that it had only ever been her. “That is who I once was. I was a boy who found happiness in books and poems and I forgot all that.” After he’d discovered his father, his life had descended into such hell that all those words and verses had seemed like useless inanities. Justina had reminded him what it was to feel something other than hatred and to yearn for those pleasures he’d once known. “But for the handful of verses I wrote for my niece, I’ve not so much as thought of putting pen to paper or reading poetry again—until you. From the moment you threw yourself into the street to save a child, you captivated me. You made me forget my hate and made me…feel again.” He held her gaze, willing her to see. “I love you.”
His words were met with an endless silence, punctuated by the ticking clock. His heart constricted painfully. Did I truly believe I could so easily convince her of my love?
Justina hugged her arms close in a lonely embrace. “I don’t know what we do from here, Nick,” she confessed.
“I want to begin again with you.” He took another step closer. “And I want you to want to begin again with me,” he said and stopped. He wanted her to come to him, because she wished it, not because he forced his presence upon her.
“Do you intend to destroy my family?”
Her question brought him up short. How could he not? It was the goal that had sustained him th
rough the nightmares and the misery and the hell. It had given him purpose. What was he without vengeance on Rutland?
What am I without her?
“What choice do I have?” he pleaded, wanting her to show him how he could attain both—closure on his past and her love. Odd, in the beginning he’d viewed Justina as a pawn. Yet, his existence had morphed into a complicated chessboard and he was trapped in the corner. “There is no other move to make,” he finally said, accepting that truth.
Justina gave him a long, sad smile. “There is always another move to make, Nick. It is about making the right one.” She inhaled quietly; that wispy sound contradictory to the storm raging inside him. “You say you want to begin again. But you don’t. Not truly.” He opened his mouth to speak but she continued over him. “You see, you ask me to forgive you. You ask to begin again.” She slashed a hand between them. “And yet, you are so stuck in the past, hating Edmund. You are unable to forgive. I don’t know if I can forgive you,” she admitted with her usual forthrightness. Only this time, those words speared him. “But I know, as long as you intend to destroy those I love, we can’t even begin to try.” She smoothed her palms along her skirts. “If you’ll excuse me?”
“Of course,” he said hollowly, backing up. They were all polite formality, even as a pressure was weighting his chest, crushing his heart, and cracking an organ he’d believed incapable of further hurt. Just another thing he’d been wrong on. “I will allow you to your thoughts.” He sketched a bow and with each step that carried him to the door, he braced for words from her—
Words that did not come.
Chapter 20
After Nick had taken his leave, Justina remained in her chambers sitting on the edge of the bed with Wordsworth’s complete works on her lap.
As she’d been sitting for the better part of an hour. Numb, staring blankly at the empty hearth, she was afraid to move. Afraid to breathe. For if she did, she’d surely shatter into a million shards.
The weight of the volume resting on her legs brought her gaze, unbidden, downward to a specific verse, one that made a mockery of everything she’d believed—her lips twisted in a pained smile—everything she’d hoped for. Like one of those master poets they had bonded over, he’d fed her pretty little lies that had drawn her further and further down the path of ruin.
A Heart of a Duke Regency Collection : Volume 2--A Regency Bundle Page 139
