The fury that filled her vibrated in her voice. “Do you know what is so incomprehensible? Why you insist on wasting your life, living this meaningless existence. Your Hellfire League is bent on self-gratification and carnal indulgence, but has your profligacy ever brought you any real joy?”
Damien simply looked at her and smiled a slow, cynical smile. “And if I were to swear off debauchery? Would I then meet your standards of eligibility? Would I become worthy of being your husband?”
There was a terrible sense of raw tension vibrating in the air around him.
“You want a bloody saint,” Damien said grimly when she made no reply.
She stared into his eyes, but she could read nothing of his feelings for her; he had locked his heart away.
“No, I don’t want a saint. I want a man who loves me. Only me. I want a husband who will hold his marriage vows sacred, who won’t betray me with other women. Someone I can trust not to plunge himself into the next scandal-or be killed in a senseless duel!”
For the first time he showed a response. His jaw clenched. “I am nothing like your late husband.”
“No? There is little difference between you that I can see.”
Their locked gazes warred. Vanessa could hear the sharp sound of her own breathing in the intense quiet of the room.
Her throat constricted when she realized she was getting nowhere. “Damien…” Her voice softened to a plea. “You could do so much with your talents, your wealth. I’ve seen your devotion to your sister, and at times even your indulgent friendship toward me. You have a vast potential to live a life of significance and meaning, and you insist on throwing it away in empty pursuits.”
His smile was oddly, chillingly sweet. “You had better leave then, before I shatter any more of your illusions.”
“Yes,” she agreed, her voice low, desolate.
“Take my traveling carriage. It’s safer than the stage.”
She nodded, her throat burning. She turned to go, but when she reached the door, she faltered.
“How could I have deluded myself so?” she asked bleakly. “Fool that I am, I thought I loved you. I was wrong. You aren’t the kind of man I could ever love.”
She could feel his shocked stillness in the hush that followed.
“Vanessa…”
She heard Damien rise, heard his footsteps behind her. She tensed as his strong arms reached out to draw her back against him.
He murmured her name again hoarsely. “Vanessa, stay.”
She could feel the seductive power of his plea, his warmth, shaking her resolve, shredding her will.
She drew a shattered breath. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t bear it.”
Gently she freed herself from his embrace and fled.
Standing in the darkness of the secret passageway, Damien pushed open the panel to Vanessa’s bedchamber. The room was empty-as empty as the hollow ache inside him. She was gone.
As if sleepwalking, he moved over to the window to gaze down at the gardens. Her scent remained to haunt him, while her parting words were branded upon his memory with a sharpness and clarity that was painful. Fool that I am, I thought I loved you.
Her admission of love had struck him like a physical blow, as had the look in her luminous eyes-despair, fear, disillusionment. Disillusionment with him.
A terrifying sense of loss gripped him. Only now, in her absence, did he understand the enormity of what he’d done.
You aren’t the kind of man I could ever love…
No, he was the kind of man who ruined innocent women for revenge, a selfish bastard who sought empty, meaningless pleasures of the flesh without thought for anyone or anything but his own gratification.
Vanessa was right. His endless pursuits of debauchery had never brought him joy. He had prowled restlessly from woman to woman because none of them had been able to satisfy his hunger. His emptiness. No one until Vanessa. She filled the empty places inside him. Filled his heart. With love.
He loved her.
The realization staggered him anew. He had never known love. He’d lived a licentious existence too long to recognize that enigmatic emotion easily. He’d called it desire and fought it fiercely. Yet his obsession had burgeoned into something far more profound than desire.
I love her.
There was such sweetness in those simple words, Damien thought. A sweetness he hadn’t known existed. Yet they couldn’t heal the bleakness of his soul.
He had driven her away. And it was too late to make amends.
Moments ago the arrangements had been concluded. The duel was set for tomorrow at dawn.
Dawn’s rosy fingers curled over the eastern horizon, illuminating the small party of gentlemen in the misty clearing: the two principals, their seconds, and a solemn-faced physician.
They stood somberly as Lord Thornhill reviewed the rules that had been agreed upon. The duelists would walk off twenty paces, then turn and fire.
“My lords, do you accept these terms?” Thornhill asked quietly.
Clune’s mouth twisted with grim humor as he contemplated his foe. “Yes, yes, let’s get this unpleasant business over with. Penny, you are to inherit my team of grays should I not survive.”
His face set like flint, Damien made no acknowledgment of the misplaced levity.
The two men moved to the center of the clearing and stood back to back, while the other participants took up positions at the perimeter. The silence in the clearing was total, vibrating with raw tension.
In the hush Damien was surprised to hear Clune’s low murmur.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry to have impugned your lady. I regret causing her reputation any further damage.”
Damien tightened his jaw grimly. “We both have regrets. You don’t bear all the blame.”
“My lords, you may begin,” Thornhill called out. “One…”
Damien took a steadying breath and began to walk.
Slowly they paced off the distance: ten, fifteen, nineteen steps… Damien’s hand curled around the smooth handle of the pistol.
“Twenty…”
Both men turned and took aim.
Damien saw Clune’s finger tighten on the trigger, but the image in his mind’s eye was stronger: Vanessa’s beautiful face as she pleaded with him not to kill another man.
Vanessa…
His hand jerked upward the instant that he fired. In the same fleeting moment, he heard the explosion from his opponent’s pistol, felt the ball burn through his flesh like a shaft of fire…
The blow of the gunshot felled him. Damien lay motionless on the ground, struggling for breath against the surprising pain. Through his daze came shouts from the sidelines. The next thing he knew, Clune was bending over him.
“Bloody hell, man, do you have a death wish? Why the devil did you delope?”
Damien frowned. In some twisted way perhaps he did have a death wish. At the last second he’d raised the muzzle of his weapon skyward and fired in the air, leaving himself vulnerable to a bullet. But he couldn’t go through with killing Clune. For Vanessa’s sake, he’d had to stop. He couldn’t add murder to the crimes he had already committed in her eyes. He couldn’t put her through that pain.
“Keep still, Sin, you’re wounded.”
He felt his jacket being ripped open and winced as Clune probed his left shoulder.
“My lord, if I may examine him.”
Vaguely Damien was aware of someone else kneeling beside him. The doctor perhaps…
“Looks as if the ball is lodged there. I shall have to dig it out.”
“Is it serious?”
“Quite, but not fatal, I think.”
Damien closed his eyes, savoring the pain. He should be grateful Clune hadn’t killed him, perhaps, but a fatal wound would have been fitting punishment for his sins.
His recuperation was slow and painful. Damien was laid up for four days at his friend Lambton’s hunting box before the doctor even declared him well enough
to move.
When he returned home to Rosewood, Olivia refused to speak to him once she’d satisfied herself that he wasn’t in danger of dying. She was furious with him, and not only for risking his life in a duel. She wouldn’t forgive him for driving Vanessa away.
Nor could he forgive himself.
Lying in bed day after day, Damien had had ample time to confront his wickedness. He had nearly destroyed the woman he loved-sullying her innocence and dragging her down to his debauched level. He’d done far worse to her than Clune ever had. He had prepared her for whoredom; that was the ugly truth.
He wondered how many years would pass before he could face the memory without being sick at heart from it. Even when he’d offered to make her his wife, he’d shown her none of the respect or consideration she deserved. Instead, he acted as if he were conferring an honor, never saying a word about how much she had come to mean to him.
It was little wonder she had refused him.
You aren’t the kind of man I could ever love.
Damien shut his eyes, blocking out the cheerful morning sunlight. He could take no pride in the life he had chosen, or the man he had become.
Bloodlines often bred true. He had inherited an ingrained tendency toward vice and dissipation, and never questioned those proclivities. He’d placed no limits on his wildness and thrill seeking, ignoring the warning signs, even when he’d begun to feel ravaged by the excesses in his life.
Damien murmured a low oath. It seemed he had degenerated into as thorough a libertine as his detested father. The thought left him filled with self-loathing.
Perhaps it wasn’t too late to change, though. Perhaps he could still redeem himself in Vanessa’s eyes.
He took the first step when Clune came to visit his sickroom seven days after the duel.
“I would like,” Clune began in a contrite voice, “to offer my apologies once again-and to thank you for not putting a period to my existence. It was unforgivable of me to have compromised Lady Wyndham as I did, and I am truly sorry.”
Damien’s mouth curled in the grimace of a smile. “And I’m thankful your aim wasn’t an inch further to the left.”
“It was still closer than I intended.”
“You never were a proficient marksman.”
Assured of a genial welcome, Clune settled into a chair beside the bed.
Damien contemplated his guest with curious sadness. He and Clune had been friends for a long, long while, sharing wicked pursuits together since their university days. But the time had come to part ways. He wouldn’t miss that jaded, shallow life, although he would miss his friend.
“The hunting party is over, I take it?” Damien asked.
“Indeed. Your brush with death put quite a damper on things. Most of us are off for London. I wanted to speak to you alone, but you’ll be getting more visitors shortly.”
“Good. It will allow me to say farewell.”
Clune raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“I intend to resign my membership in the Hellfire League.”
“Sin… surely you are overreacting. You needn’t give up your friends over this unfortunate episode.”
“I don’t mean to end my friendships, but my days of playing the rakehell are over.”
The earl frowned. “It’s because of her, isn’t it? Lady Wyndham. I was right. You are smitten.”
“Yes, you were right.”
Clune shook his head. “I confess not much astonishes me these days, but you’ve managed to floor me. You vowed you would never be trapped into love. What the devil happened?”
“I met Vanessa,” Damien said simply.
“Love will not guarantee you happiness. Quite the contrary, in fact.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“You will be opening yourself up to all manner of misery.”
“Perhaps.”
“Well,” Clune commented, still marveling, “better you than I, my friend. Love can turn a man into a fool.”
“The worst sort of fool,” Damien agreed pleasantly. “Otherwise I would never have challenged you to pistols at dawn.”
Clune studied him a long moment, amusement and pity warring in his expression. “This humility is not like you, Sin.”
“I know.” He was not ashamed to admit he’d fallen. He’d lost his heart beyond all pride or reason. “But I’ll thank you to cease calling me “Sin.” I’m doing my best to divest myself of that appellation.“
“As you wish,” Clune said skeptically. “When may I offer felicitations?”
Damien frowned. “That I can’t say. She refused my offer of marriage.”
“She refused?”
“She didn’t wish to wed a man of my ilk.”
“Ah. Thus the resignation from the League. You’d best beware, my friend, or she will turn you into a milksop.”
His gaze grew distant. “She may turn me into anything she wishes, if she will only forgive me.”
His sister was more skeptical about his desire to reform. As soon as he regained enough strength, he summoned Olivia to his rooms. She obeyed reluctantly, her jaw locked in a stubborn set as she was wheeled in by an attendant footman.
“I have nothing to say to you,” she began even before the servant was dismissed.
Grimacing in pain, Damien sat up in bed. His left arm was immobilized in a sling to prevent movement and protect his injured shoulder, but the flesh wound was still quite raw.
He waited until they were alone before taking the wind out of her sails. “I am withdrawing my objection to your wedding Rutherford.”
Olivia stared. “Is this some sort of cruel trick?”
“No,” Damien replied. “I still question his sincerity, but I’m willing to give him the chance to prove himself. I want you to be happy, Livy. If Rutherford can make you so, then I won’t stand in his way.”
Hope flickered across her face. “You really mean it?”
“I really mean it.”
Joy dawned in her smile and in her sparkling eyes. “Oh, Damien… you don’t know how happy that makes me.”
“I have some idea,” he said mildly.
“I must tell Aubrey-” She stopped suddenly and gave her brother a questioning glance. “May I tell him? You won’t shoot him if he calls here at Rosewood?”
His mouth curved wryly. “No, Livy,” he said with the teasing charm that once characterized their relationship. “I promise to be on my best behavior. I’m through dueling.”
Her blue eyes grew serious. “I’m so glad you’ve given up your revenge, Damien. Vanessa was right; vengeance is never as sweet as it is cut out to be. I thought that was what I wanted with Aubrey, to punish him for his cruelty, but what I really wanted was for him to love me.”
Damien allowed himself a bleak smile. “You are wiser than your tender years, puss,” he observed quietly.
He called out to the footman in the hall and winced at a sudden, painful twinge in his shoulder. “Now go and celebrate your victory with your betrothed.”
The servant responded at once. Before she could be wheeled out of the room, though, Olivia said over her shoulder, “I’ve received a letter from Vanessa. It seems she arrived home safely.”
“Oh?” Damien tried to keep his tone casual.
“She wanted to explain why she left so abruptly.”
“And what did she say?”
“That you and she had strong differences of opinion, but that she would always be my friend.”
Damien felt his chest tighten. “You are fortunate then,” he said softly.
He felt her gaze search his face, before she said tentatively, “Damien, I do miss Vanessa terribly. Would you mind if I begged her to return?”
He gave his sister a quiet look. She was no expert at subtlety; her expression nearly radiated earnest manipulation.
“She won’t return,” he answered. “But thank you.”
Her sad smile wrenched his heart.
When Olivia was gone, he lay back, thinking bleakly about
what she’d said about the sweetness of vengeance. To his sorrow he’d discovered how bitter its taste could be.
It was ironic, perhaps. He’d been fiercely set on revenge, but Vanessa had had her own revenge by making him love her. Against his will he had been caught up in a dance as old as time.
Love. He had lain awake nights wanting it, hungering for it, never naming it. Irresistible desire had grown into undeniable love.
The poets were right, Damien reflected. The power of love could shake even a world-weary rake to his jaded core.
His longing was a fever that never left him. Vanessa always held the greater part of his conscious moments. She was the last thought he took to bed and the first thought he awakened to. She filled his dreams. His heart. In Vanessa he bad met his match. Only she could ease the restlessness, the emptiness inside him…
He would never be content with anyone but her. Never be free of her. He didn’t want to be free.
Damien squeezed his eyes shut. Dear God, was he too late? Was there any possible way to win her love after what he’d done to her?
He was willing to change, to try to become a better man. How he should change was the question. The example his cold, selfish parents had sent him was no model. Ignored as a child, he’d been raised in unbridled self-indulgence and scandal. As an adult, he’d had too little purpose in life, too little meaning.
But he could try to reform. He could prove to her that all rakes weren’t alike, that even the most hardened libertines could be redeemed by love.
His heart contracted with desperate hope. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to win her, to earn the love he so terribly needed from her.
He had nearly been her ruin, but he prayed she would be his salvation.
Chapter Twenty
Vanessa sat in the morning room with her mother and sisters, paying little attention to their desultory conversation as the younger ladies worked their tambour frames. She felt nothing but a frightening, deathlike dullness.
She had returned home to Rutherford Hall over a week ago, and shortly afterward received the letter from Aubrey that she could now recite by heart.
My dearest sister,
I’m certain you would not wish to learn the outcome of Sinclair’s duel from a stranger, so I will take it upon myself to report. Pray, do not be overly alarmed, but he was wounded rather seriously in the shoulder and surgery performed to remove the bullet. His opponent, Lord Clune, remained unscathed. It seems that Sinclair deloped, to the shock of his many friends.
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