The Duke of Hearts

by Jess Michaels

  She didn’t want to look at him and so she stood, eyes squeezed shut, hands fisted at her sides, her back to him. That moment stretched into an eternity before he barked out, “Turn around.”

  She was shaking from head to toe and tears stung her eyes as she slowly did as he ordered. He was still standing at the door, staring at her with his arms folded across that broad chest.

  Gone was the lover who had so thoroughly tended to her needs over and over again. Gone was the man who confessed he was just as confused by the physical connection between them as she had been. Gone was all the softness and gentleness that made her believe he wasn’t capable of hurting her cousin.

  Left in the wake was rage, bubbling just below the surface. And contempt that turned his gorgeous gray eyes into stormy seas.

  “Was it all a trap?” he snapped, his voice clipped. “A plot?”

  She caught her breath at the accusation. At the emotion that echoed behind it. For a wild moment, she thought of lying, of denying she knew anything about what he asked. Of pretending she’d never been his stranger, his swan.

  Only she couldn’t. He arched a brow and it was clear that lie wouldn’t save her any more than all the others had. The time had come for truth, and to let go of the brief foolishness that had placed her into his arms.

  “No,” she gasped, her voice sounding so rough and foreign. “I didn’t know, not at first. I swear to you.”

  He laughed, but it was an ugly sound. “You swear, Isabel? Mrs. Hayes. Is that supposed to have meaning to me?”

  She dropped her head. She deserved his censure, she knew. It still stung far more than it should have considering the fact she barely knew him. Couldn’t have him. Despite the fact that everything between them was now over.

  “I didn’t know when I first met you,” she repeated.

  “But you did after,” he growled, and paced past her farther into the room. “When? Was it before my mask came off? Was it before you bedded me?”

  The hardness of the accusation slashed at her, and she struggled to maintain composure as she watched him walk to the fire. He pivoted and faced her, all darkness and anger now. And yet still utterly irresistible.

  “No,” she said. “Not before. It truly was when you were dressing after that…after that first time we were together and your mask came off that I knew. You remember my reaction, how I ran away. If I were already aware, why would I have done such a thing?”

  For a fraction of a moment, the anger on his face faded. He nodded slowly. “I suppose that is a fair point.”

  She stepped toward him, her cheeks heating when he flinched. “Yes,” she said. “I was horrified when I saw your face. Of all the men in the world that I could have just…just…”

  “Fucked,” he filled in.

  She recoiled from that harsh word, one a lady was not meant to hear. Perhaps that was why he used it, to tell her he did not consider her a lady anymore. And why should he?

  “Y-yes,” she said, her voice shaking. “You were my cousin’s—”

  She stopped, for she couldn’t say it. There was too much power to it.

  He didn’t seem to have those same reservations. “Your cousin’s fiancé?” he asked, sneered. “Her killer.”

  She sucked in a breath at those words. “What?”

  He moved forward now and she clenched her fists so that she would remain in place. “That is what your uncle thinks, isn’t it? What he’s fed to you over the years? Don’t think I’m such a fool that I don’t guess that is the reason you came back, sought me out, after you knew my name.”

  She bent her head. “I-I cannot deny it. I did come back, seek you out again, in part to…to…”

  “Say it, Isabel,” he growled. “Don’t stop now.”

  “To investigate you,” she finished on a sob.

  His face twisted in disgust at that word. “You whored yourself to me in order to find out if I killed Angelica. On your uncle’s orders?”

  “No!” she said. “He doesn’t know. He could never, ever know what I did.”

  His eyes narrowed, filled with disbelief. She’d earned that, of course. Earned all of his ill regard of her. His hate. But she didn’t want it. Being this close to him, that wasn’t what she wanted at all from the man who had awoken the desires she’d hidden. The man who had given her such pleasure.

  “So you did it for your own interest,” he said slowly. “And did you come to a decision about my guilt or innocence?”

  “We did not meet often.” Her voice shook and she couldn’t control it. “But I could not believe that a man who—who—”

  “Pleasured you,” he said, his voice still hard even as his gaze flitted over her.

  She nodded, her cheeks aflame once more at his bluntness. “Yes. But did it so…sweetly. With such attentiveness and care when he did not have to give either…I couldn’t believe a man whose first act was to protect me could have hurt Angelica.”

  His jaw set, rippled. She wished she could touch that hard cheek, trace it with her fingers as she had once done and now would never do again.

  “You said investigation was part of why you returned, sought me out at the masquerade,” he said at last. “What was the other?”

  Her lips parted at the question. She hadn’t expected him to pursue it. She hadn’t even been fully cognizant of saying it. But now that she had and he was…

  “Because I didn’t want to walk away from what we shared those two nights,” she whispered, her voice barely carrying in the quiet room. “I-I couldn’t, even though I knew what I was doing was wrong.”

  He didn’t respond, just stared at her. His face was unreadable now. Not angry, not contemptuous, just…blank. Cool.

  “My uncle is going to arrange a new marriage,” she explained, somehow unable to keep the words from cascading from her lips. “I’m certain it will be like my last.”

  “What was your last?” he bit out.

  Heat flooded her cheeks. “With an older man, a union for position, not passion. It was the lack of the latter that took me to the masquerade in the first place. Just to…see that passion. Just a little. And then you touched me, and suddenly it was a flood of passion. A wave that swept me away.”

  “And so you stole my ability to chose what I would do in order to fulfill your own desires,” he said.

  When he said it that way, she saw it for the violation that it was. And she hated herself for it. “Yes. I-I did. And it was very wrong of me. I wish I could take it back.”

  “Do you,” he said, and he stepped forward.

  The space between them closed in that long stride. He was almost touching her now, invading her space, his warmth curling around her like it had when he’d taken her to his bed. His breath steaming over her. His eyes boring into her.

  She held those eyes, remembering what they’d looked like when he wanted her. Seeing a shadow of that same expression even now in this heated, emotional moment. And words fell from her lips without her ordering then to do so, “What would you have chosen if you had known?”

  His cheek twitched again, but this time his expression was not of anger. It was something else. Something she had seen before, just the moment before he touched her, took her, in that hidden room at a forbidden masquerade.

  She saw it and she knew what he would do even before he pressed his lips to hers. There was nothing gentle to the kiss. She still felt his anger in the way he demanded with his tongue and his hands that closed over her forearms and tugged her even closer.

  But she felt his desire, too. She tasted it on his tongue as he drove it hard into her mouth. There was no denying that passion she had come to crave. No denying the man who inspired it so deeply inside of her. She made a soft sound in her throat and lifted on her tiptoes to get closer to him. Her tongue met his and the kiss deepened, widened, crashed like waves on the shore. Destructive and beautiful all at once. She wanted to be swept away.

  He swore and broke away from her
, setting her aside as he lifted his hand to his mouth like he’d been burned. He stared at her for a beat, two, until it felt like forever. Then he turned on his heel and walked away, leaving her alone in the chamber.

  Alone and breathless and utterly confused.

  Chapter Eleven

  Matthew entered his study and closed the door behind himself. How he had gotten here, he didn’t know. Everything had been a blur from the moment he stepped away from the heated temptation of Isabel’s kiss to the moment he was currently in.

  He’d left the Callis home, found his carriage, come back here…but the details of those actions? Indistinct at best.

  Details of the kiss? Crisp and sharp and playing on a repeating cycle in his dizzy mind. Their background was a drum beat of guilt and shame.

  He’d always been able to measure his emotions. He’d had good role models for that in his beloved parents. He didn’t let passions rise, he held them in check. Even when Angelica died, he’d turned his feelings inward, keeping them to himself because the world was bound to go on without him. Without her.

  But now all that ability to control himself felt lost. All the feelings, the desires, the betrayals bubbled up, and with a curse, he swiped his hands across the top of his desk and sent papers and quills and ink bottles scattering on the floor around him. It wasn’t enough.

  He thought of Isabel, looking up into his eyes. In a mask, then unmasked, with her uncle, then only with himself. He thought of how he wanted to run from her as far and as fast as he could, but also how he wanted to pin her against a wall and fuck her like a wild animal. His head throbbed with all the overwhelming and discordant desires and he strode to the sideboard. He poured himself a drink and lifted the glass to his trembling lips.

  He downed it all in one gasping gulp and then pivoted to throw the glass against the wall. It shattered with a very satisfying sound, one that almost seemed to lessen the riotous emotion in his chest. He threw the next, then the next, and was about to throw a fourth when the door to his study flew open and revealed his butler, Portman, and behind him, Baldwin.

  Matthew slowly lowered the glass to his side and looked around the room as they did the same. The destruction was clear and he was certain his own emotions were, too.

  Baldwin stepped inside, but held up a hand to stay Portman. “That will be all for tonight.”

  Portman looked past him, his face lined with concern. Matthew turned away from it, from the trouble he had created both in this room and in his life. He heard the butler murmur something to Baldwin and then the door shut.

  “You left the party,” Baldwin said, his tone very careful. “It was obvious you were in a great upset. And I was the one sent to ensure you were well.”

  Matthew laughed, though he felt no pleasure. “Is it not obvious? I’m right as goddamn rain.”

  Baldwin sucked in a long breath. “Once upon a time, I might have expected this kind of reactionary behavior from say…Graham, or maybe Lucas? Perhaps I’d still look for it in Hugh given his mood of late. But in my friend Matthew? Never. So something very bad must have happened at that party, and I’m demanding you tell me what it is right this moment.”

  Matthew faced him at last. Baldwin’s face was tight with worry. An expression he had not seen on his friend’s countenance since before he married Helena the previous year.

  “You didn’t abandon your bride to come seek me out, did you?”

  Baldwin arched a brow. “Don’t try to distract me, it isn’t going to work. Helena was just as worried about you as the rest. She stayed behind and will be escorted home by James and Emma. She does not expect me back until morning, so you have plenty of time to stop dancing around it and tell me just what the hell is wrong with you.”

  Matthew sagged and leaned heavily against the sideboard. “I have this one glass left. Drink?”

  “Certainly, we can share it. Pour, sit and talk.” Baldwin marched across the room and sat down in a chair before the fire. He kept his dark gaze focused on Matthew, who poured the drink, and settled in place across from him, handing over the glass.

  “I don’t know where to start,” he said softly.

  Baldwin tilted his head. “I know you saw Fenton Winter at the ball tonight. Did he speak to you? Make the same old accusations as he’s been repeating for three years?”

  “No,” Matthew whispered. “I did see Winter and it did upset me, as it always does. But it’s not him. It’s…her.”

  “Angelica?” Baldwin said.

  Matthew tensed. Her had always been Angelica, from the moment he’d carried her limp body from the lake and his life had been blown to bits. She was the her he brought with him to every corner of his life.

  He’d assumed she always would be. But tonight, now, the her was very different.

  “No,” he ground out. “I’m talking about my swan. My stranger.”

  Baldwin’s eyes widened, and he looked around the room at the destruction once more. “A woman you hardly know inspired…this?”

  “I saw her tonight,” he admitted, tilting his head back against the chair and closing his eyes. “I know who she is.”

  Baldwin caught his breath. “Who?”

  Saying it out loud was not going to be easy. It forced him to relive every bloody moment of that night all over again. “She is…Isabel Hayes.”

  “Who?” Baldwin asked again. “I don’t know that name, nor why it would inspire all this in you.”

  “She’s Angelica’s cousin. Fenton Winter’s niece and his fucking houseguest.”

  Baldwin was utterly silent and Matthew waited a moment before he looked at him again. When he did, his friend’s face was pale, his mouth dropped open in shock, his eyes wide as saucers.

  “Yes, that was my reaction, as well,” Matthew drawled, and reached out to snatch the glass from Baldwin’s hand. He downed half of it before he handed it back. Baldwin drank the rest, his hands shaking as he did so.

  “I-I don’t even know what to say, what to do with that information,” Baldwin said at last. “It cannot be a coincidence, can it?”

  Matthew got up and went back to the sideboard. This time he returned with the bottle. He filled the glass and then took a swig from the bottle itself before he set it on the floor next to his chair.

  “I dragged her off to a parlor to confront her about just that. And I was…cruel.”

  Baldwin drew back. “You? Not that I don’t think she deserved a little cruelty after she deceived you, but I have a hard time imagining it.”

  “Just like you have a hard time imagining me destroying my study in a fit of rage and…well, other things?” Matthew asked, flicking his head toward the damage behind him. “Of course I wasn’t physically hurtful. Though I’m sure she must have felt threatened. I was…coarse. I’m never coarse. But I was overwhelmed.”

  “I’m sure you were,” Baldwin reassured him. “After all, she knew your identity, did she not?”

  Matthew nodded. “Though she insists it wasn’t until after my mask slipped off the first night we…” He shivered. “I would say made love, but that isn’t exactly accurate, is it? I didn’t make love to a stranger in a mask. I took her. Claimed her. Burned something into her, just as she burned something in to me. And now I know that the person I did that with is my fiancée’s cousin. A woman who lives with a man who would shoot me through my heart if he had a chance.”

  “Are they in league?” Baldwin asked.

  Matthew drew a long, ragged breath. “That was my guess. He despises me, blames me, though he’s been quieter about it in the last year or so.”

  “Doesn’t mean he isn’t still nursing his hate,” Baldwin said.

  Matthew sighed. “And what better way to get to me than through Isabel? But she said not.”

  “Of course she would,” Baldwin scoffed. “To protect herself.”

  Matthew found his fists tightening in his lap. There was a flare of protectiveness that he didn’t want rising in
his chest. Something Isabel surely hadn’t earned.

  And yet…

  “She seemed sincere in her terror on the subject. She said he couldn’t ever know what she did. That she came to me at first because she wanted…it doesn’t matter what she wanted. Once she knew the truth of my identity, she came the second time to investigate me. Of her own volition.”

  Baldwin pursed his lips. “And you believe her?”

  Matthew shut his eyes. He could see Isabel so clearly now, those big, dark eyes holding his. Those full lips trembling as she begged him to believe her despite the fact that she had lied. And then the feeling of those lush lips when he claimed them once more. Despite what she had done. Despite what and who she was.

  He shook away the thoughts and got to his feet.

  “I don’t know what I believe,” he admitted.

  Baldwin nodded slowly. “I think that’s fair. To not know, I mean. After all, it’s a complicated situation. Perhaps you don’t have to know what you believe all at once, when you are overwhelmed by all the aspects of this unexpected development. I think a better question might be, what do you plan to do?”

  Matthew moved to the fire and stared at the flames. Everything had happened such a short time ago. His world had been suddenly flipped, both by the realization of what and who Isabel was and by the fact that it didn’t change the pulsing desire he somehow felt for her.

  And he hated himself for that. Deeply.

  “I don’t know that either,” he whispered. “My gut tells me that I must stay far away.”

  He heard those words come from his lips, and immediately they sounded wrong. Staying away wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to dive further into this. To understand her motives more. To try to discover why he was so drawn to her when he had not allowed himself to be drawn to anyone in such a long time.

  Baldwin pushed to his feet, oblivious to the thoughts in Matthew’s mind. “I understand that,” he said slowly. “I even agree it would be for the best.”

  “Yes, for the best.” His voice sounded hollow and far away.