Now, he had broken. He was crying. Loud, anguished sobs rose into the air; Lawrence hopped to the corner, slipping into the shadows behind an armoire that his father had flung open. Expensive porcelain and glass dishware lay scattered across the floor, but it seemed his father had not finished; with another primal and fearsome roar the old, drunk man grasped at the shelf atop his desk and ripped it from the wall in an ear-shattering clatter that forced a pained wince from terrified young Lawrence. He recognized that shelf - his father’s memories; small drawings, paintings, stories his father had written; his father’s diaries. Lawrence gulped as he watched his father grasp each volume, one by one, and begin to tear from leather bindings page upon page; pages of writings, of letters, of memories. His father tore each from its tome and threw them, crumpled into balls, into the raging flame lain before them both. Still wailing, his body tensing with anger, Lawrence watched as years of work, years of thoughts, years of dreams laid bare and feelings splayed out, fell into the flames, to be lost forever. And when his father finished he pulled the bindings of the books apart, tore them to bits, and threw them in behind the burning paper. Ashes danced and fell to the floor in front of him, as his father fell to his knees and watched the flames continue.
Mother eventually returned, and life eventually returned to as normal as it could be; his father never changed, though, and the arguments that had colored Lawrence’s childhood continued. As he grew, he hardened himself against the memories; he ignored them, lived on in spite of them. He spent his time among the hills and trees, or learning with his sister out on the grasses; he spent less time inside the mansion, though he had never then wondered just why he no longer felt safe within those walls.
He had never forgotten. He had simply ignored and moved on. But he had never forgotten.
Now his eyes flashed open and he felt his heart pulsing hard in his chest; his stomach did not feel right, and he could not shake the visions from lingering in his brain. He had thought those memories long ago vanquished, but in truth they had simply been subdued; quieted, so that he might not ever have to hear them again.
But having taken Anne’s body, he saw himself just as he had seen his father. He had taken from her something sacred, without even taking her hand in marriage - he had, just like his father, robbed a woman of her sanctity. How could he promise himself he would not fall to the lure of brandy and of loose women? How did he know he would not become a man, not unlike the Earl of Carteret? And how did he know that, having taken a woman’s innocence, he had not hurt her irreparably - ruined yet another life? She would find difficulty in courting and in finding love, now that he had claimed her. Each time he blinked, for that brief second of darkness, he saw Anne’s beautiful face, creased with anxiety and with age, bearing the weight of his sins; he could hear her screaming those same things his mother had, damning him for another night spent in the embrace of a woman not his own.
How could he know he would not wind up as that man in the study, his body quaking from alcohol and from love and from pain?
“M’lord,” the words of the carriage driver startled Lawrence, who nearly leapt from his seat at the sudden start of sound intruding into his memories of a laborious downfall. He turned and nodded to the driver, though he could feel his hands shake and his breath rattle hard in his throat from the anxiety still plucking at his nerves like so many out-of-tune harp strings. “Are you ready to depart? The horses are harnessed and ready. The road will be dark, and the rain has left some of it muddy, so I apologize deeply m’lord, but it may take some time to get back to the Amhurst estate,” the chauffeur warned.
“Yes, I understand, thank you,” Lawrence’s voice trembled. “Before we depart, let me stretch my legs,” he said. He could feel that if he did not stand and pace, he would spend the entirety of the trip wrestling with the painful and irritating need to bounce and bob and stretch and kick his anxious feet about the carriage cabin.
“We shall depart whenever you’re prepared, m’lord,” the man said with a nod. Lawrence swung his legs from the opened carriage door and stood upon them on the soggy cobblestone path; they felt weak beneath his weight, and the lightness in his head stung him suddenly, and he felt nearly ready to collapse. He closed his eyes again and saw her face - so full of pain, and took a few blind paces away from the vehicle set behind him. He swallowed hard, as shrieks of memories like wraiths excoriating him for his sins, echoed muffled through his mind. He could not make out the words, only the anger with which they sounded, and he always saw her face - Anne’s face, torn with the same pain he knew he would have inflicted upon her.
“Lawrence!” he heard, shouted; he thought it only to be a figment of his imagination, but when he heard her so clearly scream his name a second time, his eyelids opened quick and he saw her before him, standing with fervor in her eyes and blushes upon her cheeks.
“M’lady,” he said, startled. “It’s quite cold, do you think it proper to stand here beneath a rising moon wearing so light a garment?” he added, trying to still the emotions hot in his veins. He could see she clutched the contract he had penned in her white-knuckled grasp, and he gulped hard, readying himself for whatever protest she had come to bear down upon him.
“Lord Strauss, I don’t understand— we need to speak about this... contract,” she said, the word slithering with venom. She tried to address him with some measure of affectionate professionalism, but she could do little to mask the vitriol rising up hot in her chest.
“What’s not to understand?” he said, brooding, wrestling back that terrified screaming and shouting that nagged at his mind. He saw her face, and it so resembled his mother’s that he nearly fell upon his back, fearful that her specter had come to haunt him for his transgressions. Instead, he tried to address her with that same sense of flawed dignity that she had offered him. “I thought this was... well, precisely what you and your father have been looking for. Isn’t it? It is what you had hoped for from the moment you probed at my predilections at that dinner, m’lady,” he stated flatly. “You desire your own freedom... the freedom you deserve as a grown woman. A freedom from the cage you were unfortunately born in to. Your father agreed, and I hoped you would, too. It’d be for the best.”
“My father agreed? My father agreed because he’s an ailing old man! He wants me to be happy, and this isn’t happiness!” Anne protested. “How could you - after the time we’ve... had together?”
“This,” the lord announced coldly, “...is precisely everything you wanted - and you won’t have to deal with me at all. No men to control you - not even I can do that, with the terms I’ve written here. And I don’t want to cage you. I don’t expect that of you, or any woman. I’m not worth that. My father wasn’t worth that,” Lawrence scoffed dismissively.
“You’re not worth... I love you! What has your father had in determining whether you are worth my love, or any other woman’s? I love you, and I think that you love me, too,” Anne exclaimed angrily. The lord’s chauffeur sat at the head of the carriage, trying to mind his own business, but Lawrence could catch momentary glances from the skinny young man, and the duke felt an embarrassment knotting his gut. “Have you in your stubborn, stupid mind forgotten the things we said together? The feelings that we felt? Was it a lie? Did you seek me only to use me?”
“I...” Lawrence hesitated; he saw the pain he’d wrought, and began to reconsider... if only for a second. He realized that in his callousness, he had done precisely what he had hoped never to do - brought to Anne’s face that tear-stained gaze of wide-eyed anguish his father had forced upon his mother. He waited. He took a breath, his throat shaking. His expression vexed, brow furrowed, Lord Strauss turned away. He may have caused that pain in her face, but he would cause it a dozen more times, should he acknowledge his feelings. He did not deserve them. “I can’t do that,” he declared.
“All I am is a convenient excuse for you, then? A way to ease your guilty conscience?” Nadia asked accusingly. “Is that what matters to y
ou, more than my love? To ease the painful memory of your sister, estranged from you over this sordid mess of an estate? To ease the pain you feel about your past? An excuse for you to feel the touch of a woman so long denied you by your own emotional stupor? Your father - what did he do to you?”
“You are not an excuse,” Lawrence boomed, resenting at the accusations. “I’ve done this for you. For your own good. For everything you want. I’m not what you think I am; I’m not what you want,” he roared. “My father is not an excuse, but he is a lesson. A lesson learned the hard way, by women who shouldn’t have been forced into their role as playthings in his destructive game. It is not a story I wish to tell, suffice to say I have indeed learned its lesson, and I shall not unlearn it for anyone.”
“You’ve spent so much time convincing yourself of your failure, of your father’s failure, that even real love can’t break you from this cycle of hate!” Anne shouted, closing the gap between them. He could feel her, smell her, and he wanted so badly to touch her again; to feel her hair, to press his lips against hers. He could not. “I’ll not let it happen. This contract - here! I’ll not be a party to your self-loathing, or the foolishness that your father instilled in you, Lawrence,” her voice raised higher and hotter. She grasped the document and forced it into his face, before she threw it to the cobblestones and stomped it beneath her heeled slipper. “You used me! Was this your intention, since the night we met at that dinner?”
“I did not use you!” he retorted, turning to face her, his expression torn, shredded by hatred. She could see pain beneath, tears forming at the corners of his eyes.
“You took my virginity! Is that all I was meant to do for you? That’s all you needed, was it?” she sneered.
“That had nothing to do with... with any of this, though I... I regret taking you, in that manner,” he admitted painfully. “It was a mistake. It shouldn’t have happened, and I shouldn’t have let it happen. I’ll never be good enough for—”
“For what? For me? I said I love you! Am I not the person to make the determination of who is good enough, and who is not?!” Anne retorted, stamping her slippered heel against the contract again, grinding it into the space between the cobblestones. “I can choose whomever I wish to be good enough for me! Or perhaps you’re just like the other men, thinking yourself above a woman? Thinking yourself better equipped to make her decisions for her?”
“And with every word you speak you only prove to me that I made the right decision with that contract - that I’ve failed you, just as my father failed my mother, just as I failed my sister, and the other women I’ve loved and lost - and just as I will always fail,” he rumbled.
“Why can you not see your own worth? Why? Have I not laid before you how much I treasure that worth, how much I treasure you?” Anne pleaded, tears flowing freely along her cheeks now. “You feel it inevitable that you will fail. That you will fall to whatever demons consumed your family. But you are not your family, Lawrence. You are you. You’ve dedicated yourself so completely to this lie that you’d break my heart for it,” she sobbed.
“It’s not my choice, Anne. It’s my destiny to fail the ones I love, and I can’t put you through that,” he lamented, seeing in her face the tears of his mother. “Please. Let me at least do some good, for you. Some small amount of good. Let me save your father’s heart; let me give to you what he wants for you.”
“My father wanted me to be happy. Did he not tell you that? The estate — all of it. He cared more for my heart, for love - than he did for title or peerage,” Anne exclaimed.
“He’s a good man... and he will understand me in making this decision,” the duke said, turning his shoulder to the woman as she cried.
“...That’s it, then?” she asked, quivering. “I loved you.”
“This is how it has to be, Anne. I’m deeply sorry,” Lawrence insisted, stepping back into his carriage. “Please... go back to your estate. Make your father happy. He’s a good man. He would like to spend what time he has left with you, I’m certain. We will resolve matters of title, and then you shan’t need to see me in your life ever again. You’ll be happier for it, Anne.”
“You’re mistaken,” she hissed. But he had already made up his mind. He glimpsed to her once more - and as he predicted, he had done to her just what father had done to mother. He closed his eyes as the carriage began to gallop away from the sobbing woman, and he felt his own heart breaking. Sometimes, he reasoned, we must endure great pain in this life.
It would be for the best.
Chapter Fifteen
That he could so utterly and completely dismiss her struck to her very core. As the moon began to rise over the moors Anne’s tears only worsened; the soft silvery glow, embellished by the burn of candles and lanterns along the roadway leading to the Roxborough estate, caressed the red and tear-stained face of Anne Hatley, who stared at the contract beneath her foot, its surface scored with mud and the violent marks of her foot having driven it against the stone. A teardrop fell from her jawline, splashing upon the inked pages, splotching against the crumpled line where he had inscribed his name. All she had left of him, splayed in fading black across that paper.
“Lawrence Strauss, Duke of Amhurst.”
She felt cold. She had stormed out of the mansion in her gown, and she had not even noticed the cool breeze along the hills; she hadn’t noticed the absence of the sun, for her heart burned too hot with rage and want for the duke that it had kept her warm and safe. Not only that, but hope - hope that he would embrace her, and the warmth she remembered of their time together in the manse, had kept her skin hot.
Now, without him, she felt only cold.
The wind howled through trees, their branches and leaves whistling and swaying overhead, the moon peering as it rose higher; she could see only the lightest tone of orange at the edge of an endless dark blue, stars beginning to glimmer and twinkle as night rose into view. Cold, lonely night; she had spent thousands of nights alone, laying upon her bed, and had never thought of how empty it would feel one night, when she had only the memory of a man she longed to spend every night left in her life with to entertain her. She dreaded that thought; she dreaded trudging up the stairs alone, with no one to hold her; with only her tears to warm her cheeks, and only memories of that afternoon to haunt her.
She took a deep breath and heard a rather disconcerting noise - horse hooves and creaking wagon wheels upon the cobblestone road leading to the manor’s entrance. Her heart skipped in hope, and she wanted it so dearly and so tragically to be him, coming back to her; instead she saw another carriage, one she only vaguely recognized, its colors ostentatious and its broad, strong horses even more so. Suspicion filled her eyes when the driver pulled the vehicle around so that its grandiose doors swung open to her, and its occupant triumphantly descended the stairs leading to the cabin - and with scorn in her gaze she beheld a sight unfortunately familiar, one she had not ever wanted to see again.
“Ah, m’lady! I’m so pleased to see you’re here, and not held up in some manner of monkeyshines,” the loud and boisterous and utterly intolerable Earl of Carteret, a slime of a man, exclaimed as he spread his arms broadly and approached her heedlessly. “Our meeting this afternoon did not sit right in my stomach, you see, m’lady. And I had hoped to meet with you, and your father, over dinner - to discuss matters of your estate. As I don’t see the Lord Strauss here,” he said with a smug smirk spreading on his lips, “I can presume you’ve properly disposed of that odious little wretch,” the earl laughed. “He’d be positively no good for you, that I can assure you. Your father and I had a lovely meeting days past, and it was quite clear he favored me, and I hope that I shall convince you to feel the same. It should be quite easy, after all, shouldn’t it?” he certainly enjoyed hearing himself speak, and he clearly assumed all others did as well, as he advanced upon Anne and quite shamelessly grasped at her wrist with his grasping fingers, pulling her close to his side. Anne felt cold - even colder, against him, in
his flamboyant baby-blue suit jacket, and with his showy and incorrigible demeanor. She tried to pull away from his side, but he growled in response.
“I wish only to see the sheets of my bed after the day I’ve had, and most certainly, no matter what sort of dinner my father may have had prepared, I shan’t ever want to share it with as intolerable a presence as you, Martin of Carteret,” Anne spat, struggling as the earl nonetheless threw his arm across her shoulder as if they shared some manner of kinship. She had seen the slug do the same to the giggling and chattering femmes at the party that night, and she had hated when she saw it then and there, but now that she had become a victim of his demeanor, she rued every breath of air he took. “Un-unhand me!” she struggled.
“M’lady, I believe it’s rather customary for women like you to invite men like myself to see you to dinner, particularly when we’ve already arrived on your doorstep and have important business to discuss, don’t you think so?” the earl refused to take no for an answer, his probing grasp rolling along her back, until he quite contemptuously squeezed on her rear. Her eyes opened wide and she yelped at his utterly prurient gesture.
“H-how dare—” she could scarcely summon a sound before he had latched his grasp at her waist. “Come, now. Let’s see what your father has had the kitchen work at,” the earl insisted.
“You are clearly not hearing what I say, Martin of Carteret,” Anne hissed. “I have no interest in accompanying you to a funeral, much less to a proper dinner, and whatever business matters you may have to discuss with my father concern him and not me,” she explained, struggling at his grasp. He squeezed tight at her waist, and suddenly he threw off that rakish mask he wore so proudly; now, she saw what lay beneath his boastful and womanizing exterior, and what she saw utterly terrified her. His voice grew to a hoarse and dangerous whisper as his eyes skewered her with a threatening glare.
Regency Romance Omnibus 2018: Dominate Dukes & Tenacious Women Page 42
