by Eva Devon
Jack remained silent. Not wishing to hear the words let alone say them.
But Aston leveled him with a hard stare. “If you’re not willing to come up to snuff, if you’re not ready to be her husband properly, you can’t ask her to stay. In fact, you bloody well need to make her go.”
And there it was.
With every day that slipped by, Jack felt himself longing to ask Cordelia to take a chance on him. But he couldn’t do that to her. Because he’d fail. As he had always failed. And breaking Cordelia’s heart and dreams was something he could never allow himself to do. Not for anything. Not for anyone. Most certainly, not for himself.
Aston held out the bottle. “You better have a bloody drink. “You’re going to need it.”
Jack lifted the half empty container to his lips and took a long hard swallow. The burning liquid barely made it past the slight lump in his throat. He was going to do the right thing. He had too. And one day, even Cordelia would thank him for it.
Chapter 22
Cordelia clomped into the house, the light fading behind her and let out a sigh of contentment. Granted, the air was damp and her fingers had gone numb, even in summer, but she was delighted with the progress of the dig.
She ran a hand through her tangled hair, caught sight of herself in the hall mirror and let out a squeak of astonishment. A banshee stared back at her, hair a riot and earth smudges streaked her cheeks. Now, in Africa she’d never given two shakes about her appearance. One did not grow alarmed at burned skin, peeling fingers, or wild hair when one was uncovering the greatest antiquities the world had ever known.
One did grow alarmed however when one was supposed to be having a romantic tryst with a rake. Whatever would he think? No doubt he would be horrified. The women of his acquaintance could not move ten feet without ensuring their ensemble was still perfect or that each rebellious strand of hair had been tamed into their elaborate coifs.
Much to her dismay, she realized she cared. She shouldn’t of course. Sensible, intelligent women, capable of taking care of themselves, which she more than excelled at thank you very much, did not rely upon the approval of a male to feel good about themselves.
But an undeniable little twist of concern snaked its way into her stomach. What would he think? Would he be amused as he seemed to be by all her unusual quirks or would this be too much even for a man such as he? Perhaps, she could sneak upstairs and have a quick bath before he—
“You’ve come back?”
That dark voice, delicious to its core, rumbled from the landing and she paused for a moment, determined that he should not see how intensely he effected her. “Did you fear I would not?”
He raised a dark brow. “With you, bandying about as you do, one can never tell.”
Cordelia blinked. An abrupt image of her father speaking to her mother in a cold voice, castigating her for spending too much time discussing painting with a fashionable young artist that summer they spent in Paris resonated within her. “Is that an insult?”
He placed one hand on the banister, that masterful hand gripping the wood carelessly. “Now why would you say that?”
She swallowed. She was nothing like her mother. Nothing. “The tone of your voice, perhaps.”
“I think you are imagining things.”
She bit down on the inside of her lip, her insides building into a slow churn. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. “I am not inclined to flights of fancy,” she said tightly.
“I have no wish to argue with you, Cordelia. It hardly seems necessary.”
Oh god. It was like being tossed back in time. Her mother growing impassioned, her father cold, logical, making her mother feel the fool. And the identification she felt with her mother was suddenly hellish. All her life, she’d agreed with her father. Her mother had been an emotional creature who simply needed to learn to control herself, but right now. . . Standing here, discussing simple turns of phrases with Jack she saw how quickly one could twist a person by simply appearing superior, in control.
Is that what her father had done? And she had supported him, disdaining her mother and her emotional nature. And why in god’s name was this happening now? Everything had been going so well.
“I do not wish to fight either,” she said, tempering her tone. “But you seem out of sorts.”
There was a long silence, but in that silence a brittle tension filled the space between them. “You don’t know me very well. Consider that this is my true nature.”
“Of course.” She smiled tightly suddenly wishing she was anywhere but here. She had no idea how to converse like this or how to relate to the emotional tumult of an affair. “I do not presume to know you thoroughly, but—”
“Come upstairs.”
She blinked, shocked he’d cut her off, and shocked that his answer to their situation was for herself to no doubt join him the boudoir. “Pardon?”
He shrugged lightly. “You’re a delightful mess.”
“A mess?”
“Yes.” His voice had taken on that deep, purr like quality which indicated imminent seduction. “It would give me great pleasure to, assist you in setting yourself to rights.”
But she didn’t feel not right. Aside from the mysteries of the present conversation, she felt rather glorious, what with her find and the accomplishments of the day. However, said gloriousness was quickly diminishing as she began to see herself as he must. “What if I like my mess?”
A strange smile tilted his lips. “You enjoy being coated in soil?”
“Sometimes,” she defended.
“Truly?”
“It means I’ve done a good days work,” she said firmly.
“I see.”
There it was again, that cool superiority. She narrowed her eyes. “What is it exactly that you see?”
He drew in a slow breath, one which stretched the linen draped over his broad shoulders. “I see that you are becoming angry with me.”
“No. I. . .Well, yes.” There was no point in lying. “Yes I am.”
“Why is that?” he asked, his voice still velvety soft as he descended the stairs, taking each step, deliberately, his powerful legs tightening the fabric of his perfectly pressed cream colored breeches.
“Because I think you wish I was different.” She swallowed. Hard. Stunned to find that her limbs were shaking slightly. “That I was not who I am.”
He stopped on the stairs, his gaze narrowing slightly until his dark eyes alit with a banked passion. “Why in God’s name would you assume such a thing?”
“Because all the women you’ve know—” the words caught in her throat and to her horror, she couldn’t finish.
“The women I’ve known,” he prompted, clearly unwilling to second guess what she was about to say.
Which she was glad of, but she didn’t wish to say the thoughts running amok, a state of thoughts completely foreign to her, through her head.
He commenced coming down the stairs and when he stepped onto the hard wood floor and closed the distance between them, she could no more sort out what she was about to say than she could sit for an hour and forty five minutes through a musicale. But none the less he was waiting, gazing down at her from his intimidating, she’d never found intimidating before, height.
“Come on then, Cordelia,” he urged. “What about the women of my acquaintance.”
“They’re not worthy of you,” she whispered.
Much to her horror he laughed. It was not a jovial sound, but a rumbling sort of mockery. “And you are?” he drawled.
Her shoulders drew back. “That was not what I said.”
“But it was what you implied,” he pointed out, an edge to his voice. “Perhaps, you, like so many before, are hoping to reform my condemned ways.”
“Why are you behaving like such an ass?”
His laughter dimmed. “Make no mistake, you’ve fallen under some girlish delusion.”
That bridled. “I am hardly girlish or delusional.”
“
You are both right now,” he said softly, but without mercy.
She squared her shoulders, determined not to appear shaken by this conversation. “Indeed?”
“You are girlish, half in love in your first affair, something I never thought would befall you, and you’re delusional in your ridiculous belief that there is something deeper to me that you have seen.”
“That’s not true,” she insisted. She wasn’t delusional about him. She couldn’t be. “The way you speak. The way you’ve helped Harris—”
He scoffed. “I help men like Harris to soften up women like you.”
“I don’t believe that.” And she didn’t. He just was determined to paint himself in a bad light. “You are good, despite all your protestations.”
“And my previous actions?” He cocked his head to the side as if mocking her. “Do they speak nothing? I thought you were a woman of logic.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, an unwelcome plaintive note to her own voice.
He swung his gaze away from hers. “Because you’re delusions are—”
“Stop.” How she longed to reach out to him but she couldn’t. She couldn’t risk such an emotional response. “That’s not why and—
“Are boring.”
“Boring?” she repeated.
“Yes,” he said coldly. “This prim, proper, bluestocking act in which you are going to swoop in and save the rake from himself is boring.”
“I have hardly tried to save you.”
“But its started. Oh Jack, you’re a good man,” he mocked openly. “Next thing you know, you’ll be spouting how I never meant to hurt anyone, that it is I who was hurt.”
She pulled back. Stunned. “I think you’ve just said it yourself.”
He blanched. “Don’t be a fool.”
“You’ve accused me of acting thus. I might as well assume my part. And let me add that if you were as you said, you wouldn’t be warning me right now, or trying to brush me off. You’d have continued to use me until you were bored.”
He raised one brow, his lips firming a firm line. And as he cocked his head to the right, a look of supreme, cold arrogance altered his features into a man she didn’t know.
She gasped. Unable to believe what his silence was inferring. “You are bored with me?”
“What do you surmise?” he said flatly.
“I—I—” But she couldn’t form the next words to cut him dead as she so longed to do. “I see.”
“I am not an archeological site, my lady. No matter how deep you dig, there is no hidden treasure to be found.”
Tears, horrible tears, tears which were an abhorrence to her, stung her eyes. “But I thought—”
“Were you falling in love with me?”
Her throat closed so tight she could make no reply. Good god, the hideous answer was a resounding yes. Somewhere along the way, her logical heart had fallen for his droll wit, his sense of adventure, and the way he had indeed made her feel as if she were the most beautiful woman in the world.
He gave her a tight smile, one which was only slightly apologetic. “It does happen. So, best we end this now I think.”
Cordelia forced herself to draw in a slow breath. There was something at play here much larger than he was letting on. Everything had been more than she could ever have imagined between herself and a man. Not only had he given her his body, he had given her something even more important. A piece of himself. She was sure of it. Now, she refused to let him take it away. “I don’t know why you’re doing this.”
A muscle clenched in his jaw and he looked away, staring off into the distance before he squared his shoulder and pinned her with an unyielding stare. “I told you. This. . . This experiment has grown dull.”
“I see.”
“I’m glad.”
The lack of emotion on his part was all too familiar. She’d used such a tool time and time again to protect her heart from anyone who dared to peer within. “I see that you are afraid. You are a coward afraid of his own heart.”
His gaze narrowed, his entire body bridling with tempered anger. “My lady, I have no heart to be a coward with.”
Cordelia was very tempted to haul back her fist and hit him. If only she could shake some sense into his thick skull but she knew the futility of such fights. Always, her parents’ fights had descended into screaming and the throwing of objects. She wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t give Jack the satisfaction. She would drive him into the ground if need be. She would have the strength her mother never had.
Chapter 23
Jack had never cared when a woman’s lip had trembled with emotion in the past. He cared now. But it was not with the tragic sort of childish petulance that set his Cordy’s lip trembling.
Oh no. Her entire body trembled. . . with fury. Her passionate eyes sparked like lighting bolts in the middle of a sea storm and the energy about her had pooled into something, deep and dangerous. She lifted her chin and a lock of her blond hair tumbled across her forehead. Dashing it back, she said, “You have a heart as much as I.”
His gut twisted with horror at what he knew he must do. At what he must say to end the doomed path he had set upon with her. He’d been such a fool to engage in such an affair with her, his wife, and now he had to play the thing out to the bloody end. And he hated himself. He would never be worthy of Cordelia. Never. And he had to give her the freedom she’d been so determined to have if he was to keep her safe from him. Its what an honorable man would have done form the beginning. “That isn’t saying much is it?”
Her cheeks flooded with crimson. “I am not heartless.”
“Aren’t you?” The words were poison in his mouth, ripping up his tongue, contaminating his flesh. He longed to stop. To take her in his arms and explain that he could never be the man she needed. That he was incapable of living up to her expectations. His family knew. His father and even his grandmother on occasion had made that clear. If that weren’t enough the history of his own behavior had made that more than plain.
And he couldn’t bear disappointing her.
He knew all to well, the horrors of disappointing the ones one loved. Hadn’t his father been ashamed of him his whole life? His entire life, the duke had looked upon him with disgust. Every time he’d been in his father’s presence he’d felt the disgrace of being the failed son and heard the piercing words meant to teach him his lowly place. And he would now not perform the part of failed husband. Nor could he let her attach herself to someone who would just drain her happiness as he disappointed her.
So, he cast out any hesitance he felt at hurting her. If he did not hurt her now, he would make her life a living hell, living in the shadow of his inferior character. “You’ve lived your entire adult life as a virgin, unwilling to be touched, to be loved. I think you are exactly like me. Heartless. Without feeling. One who thinks of themselves at all costs.”
For a blessed moment, her gaze softened. “That’s not who you are.”
The small, barely living part of him that was good demanded that he assure her that she was the sun, the stars, that no one could ever touch her for her strength, beauty, and intelligence. But he couldn’t do that. Not if for once, for her, he was going to do the right thing. “That is exactly who I am.”
She propped her hands upon her hips, a defiant gesture. “You’re insistent upon this course?”
He’d set himself upon it the moment he had stood upon the landing gazing down. “Yes.”
“Fine then.” She squared her shoulders, her chin lifting in that resolute way she had. “I will tell you what you so clearly long to hear.”
A gaping well of dread formed in Jack’s stomach. This was exactly what he desired, but for the first time in his adult life, having charged head long into battles, faced angry husbands in duels, and drank until he couldn’t stand, he felt a tinge of fear because he actually admired the woman standing across from him. And she was about to point out everything that was not admirable in him.
She r
an her eyes over him, critical, assessing, once again as if he were an object in a glass case to be categorized and catalogued. “Jack Eversleigh, you have misused a great deal of your life.”
He inhaled, relieved. Thank God. She was going to do exactly what he needed her to. Now, if she could just commit, she’d point out all the reasons why she needed to leave him and he wouldn’t have to leave her.
Cocking her head to the side, she said without any seeming mercy, “At every turn, you have chosen the path that others do not.”
He stood still, stoic under her words, allowing them to hit him, breaking familiar wounds open.
“You have turned your back on society as best you may and you have not lived up to your potential.”
His breath caught in his throat. That last part. That last part didn’t sounds quite right. He didn’t have potential. He never had. And he was never going to. That fact had been clear all his life, damn it. He opened his mouth ready to correct her but she would have none of it.
Cordelia rushed on before he could speak, “I don’t know when it occurred but at some point you decided to be the one who took all the blame in your family.” Her face grew hard, angry, almost brittle the words falling out of her mouth like rough stones. “I assume it has to do with your eldest brother’s death.” Here for one fleeting moment, those riotous eyes softened. “You took the blame, did you not?”
The sympathy in her gaze and the absurdity of her claims set his insides afire. What she was trying to do. . . Trying to lift him out of the mire, it was disgusting and futile. “It was my fault,” he gritted.
She threw back her head, an impatient breath huffing out of her. Dropping her hands to her sides, she leaned forward and leveled a determined state at him. “You took the blame because it was the easy thing to do.”
The easy thing to do?
Easy?
A bark of dry laughter forced its way past his tight throat. But that laughter, hollow and slightly broken to his own ears ignited a rage within that grabbed hold his guts so fast he nearly lashed out its full force upon her. His spine snapped straight and he grabbed her arms. In slow degrees, he pulled her forward, until she rested on nothing but the tips of her toes and her face was just a breath away from his. “You speak utter shite.”
