The Dangerous Love of a Rogue (27 page)

Damn it, his anger would not achieve it. “But if I am nothing to you, then I want nothing from you…”

He turned away, refusing to shout anymore, or be judged ill anymore, and caught up his hat and gloves. “I’m going out.” he stated on a growl, walking from the room before slamming the door behind him.

Chapter 19

When the clock on the mantel chimed eight times, Mary rose from the armchair she’d occupied for hours. Andrew obviously had no intention of returning to dine with her. She may as well retire.

Her stomach growled in complaint. She had not eaten. She could have asked the doorman to send out for something, but she was too nauseous to eat.

In the bedchamber she searched through her trunks for a nightgown and then undressed, struggling to reach behind her back to loosen the laces of her corset.

There was nowhere to store her clothes beyond the trunks, the one chest of drawers was full of his clothes. So she put the clothes she removed in the trunks. Her clothes would have to stay in them.

“You said you loved me. I love you,” he had yelled before he left her. Was that true then? That he loved her. It was the first time he’d said he loved her since her father had found them.

How was she to know now?

When she climbed into his bed she was not sure which side to sleep.

This was nothing like the marriage she’d imagined, everything felt wrong, it was a nightmare.

The sheets were cold, and she lay there weeping into the pillow.

When she heard the front door open, she threw back the covers to get up and greet him, but then she heard voices echoing about the sitting room – his friends, who’d danced with her.

She lay back down and pulled the covers up over her shoulder.

They were laughing. While she’d been crying.

Her heart hammered hard as she heard Lord Brooke say, “So where is your hard won bride hiding, I’ve only come back with you for the pleasure of seeing our trophy. After all, we all played a part in your victory. Her dowry will be the making of you Drew.”

“Wait a moment, I’ll fetch her,” Drew answered. She heard the sound of his boots on the floorboards. “She must be here…” His voice didn’t sound certain though.

It would have served him right if she’d left.

She shut her eyes as the door-handle turned and candlelight spilled into the room. She held her breath, pretending to be asleep.

He stopped still.

Drew’s heart had skipped a beat when he entered the sitting room and Mary was not there. As he walked towards the bedchamber it hammered cold fear through his veins.

She would not have left, surely…

Apprehension tingled in his nerves.

He opened the door and in the shaft of golden candlelight saw her dark hair splayed across the pillow he usually slept on. He could not breathe, he felt like weeping, and as if he’d been kicked in the chest. His bedchamber smelt of her.

He lifted the brace of candles, casting more light into the room.

Her arm half covered her face, but he could see her closed eyes were puffy. She’d been crying again, then, because of him, and she’d not eaten, there were no remnants of her dinner in the sitting room. She’d ordered nothing in.

He could have at least ordered it before he left, and not have stayed away so long, but once he was with his friends it was hard to get away.

He should not have gone out at all.

Yet at the time it had seemed the best thing to do. He did not want her to know how deeply she’d hurt him, how much it cut when she rejected him, and he also did not wish his anger to hurt her.

It had…

He’d decided to say sorry before he’d even reached his club. But that had not turned him back, because he’d needed normality, the sanity of his friends, to get over a day of Pembroke’s and Marlow’s ill-judgement.

He’d planned his apology while his friends talked. But cowardice still haunted him. He should have come home, instead he’d eaten at the club and played a hand of cards. He was not used to thinking of anyone beyond himself.

Even when he’d finally decided to return, when his friends had proposed returning with him, he’d agreed when he should not have done.

He’d left her alone, in an unfamiliar place, on the back of an argument. She would not welcome him bringing back his friends. He’d brought them as a shield for her wrath. His new found cowardice running deeper.

Yet this was Mary. Good, kind, Mary. There was no wrath in her, only hurt, hurt which he bore the guilt for.

Devil take it!
His conscience no longer whispered, it yelled. Nausea stirred as guilt smote him with a double edged sword.

“My, my,” Peter said looking over Drew’s shoulder.

Drew shut the door. He did not want his friends ogling her.

Turning to Peter, Drew set a devil-may-care grin on his face, he did not wish them knowing how important she was to him.

“She’s a prize.” Peter laughed. “I like to think it was my prose which won her for you.”

“You’re not the only who contributed to those words,” Harry called from across the room helping himself to a glass of Drew’s brandy, which Peter had bought. “You cannot claim all of Drew’s success for yourself.”

“Ah, but it is the prose that women love, and the prose was all mine,” Peter answered.

Drew said nothing, crossing the room to poor himself a drink too as the conversation carried on and they all fought over whose words had been the best, quoting their various contributions.

“Well if you helped Drew win the fair Miss Marlow,” Peter said eventually. “Then you can help me with Miss Smithfield. I am not getting very far, since Drew stole her pretty friend away, her parents will not consent to her driving with me.”

The others laughed.

Drew turned and watched them, as they began developing a plan of attack, as they’d done with Mary. He sipped his brandy, wishing to be drunk, but for some reason the alcohol failed him tonight. He could not reach uncaring oblivion.

It was about two after midnight when his friends took their leave. He bid them goodnight, extinguished the candles and slipped into the bedchamber as quietly as he could, his heart thumping.

He stripped off in the darkness, leaving only his shirt on, before climbing into the bed beside her.

She did not move, or make any sound beyond that of her slow shallow breathing.

Sighing he rolled to his side and let sleep claim him too.

* * *

Mary woke the next morning, having finally fallen asleep at some point after he’d slipped into the bed beside her, to find Andrew looking down at her, his light brown gaze soft and intense; his eyes were honey today.

He lay on his side next to her, his head cradled on his palm, supported by his bent arm, while the fingers of his free hand played with a lock of her hair. The linen shirt he wore hung open at the chest.

She said nothing. Her heart breaking.

“I’m sorry.” He said the words as though they could stitch her heart back together.

She’d heard his friends speaking about the letters and she’d heard them plotting to seduce Emily as they must have planned to seduce her.

It was as John had said. Drew was false and everything he’d said was false.

“I should not have left you alone last night,” he continued. “It was wrong of me. I was angry at your brother and your father and I took it out on you. I’m sorry. Do you forgive me?”

She said nothing.

He smiled, it looked genuinely apologetic. Yet she’d thought him genuine that day in the summerhouse, when she’d read the heartfelt words in his last letter. It had all been lies.

She closed her eyes. His breath caressed her neck, then his lips brushed her skin. A stir of desire clasped at the juncture of her thighs.

A sound left her lips, it was grief, yet he must have heard it as pleasure as his fingers began to draw up her nightgown.

The memory of his touch whispered in ripples across her skin, and despite her broken heart and the knowledge that he was false, she still wanted him physically. She still loved him.

His kisses brushed the skin of her neck and she ached for him inside turning her head away as his fingers touched her inner thigh.

Her arms lifted above her head as he touched her gently, as he’d touched her the first night.

When her lips parted on a sigh, which was pleasure, his fingers stroked more deeply, more intently, and then his lips touched the corner of her mouth, calling her to turn and kiss him back. She felt like weeping as she did, so physically happy, and yet so heart sore. She was his, no matter that he would never wholly be hers.

He moved over her and his flesh became her flesh as they joined. His palms pressed into the bed beside her.

The cloth of her night gown caressed her breasts as he moved, while the tails of his shirt, brushed against her stomach and her thighs.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I swear that I do. With all my heart, I love you.”

Lies. She clasped his shoulders and prayed for it to end – or begin – to reach the escape of ecstasy.

The way he moved and touched her felt like love.

It was just another lie.

Just physical.

Guilt pressed its little knife into her heart because she still enjoyed it, and she fought her pleasure at first, but it was too hard. He was all to her.

He’d accused her of wanting nothing of him now. He was wrong. She wanted everything from him.

She opened her eyes.

He watched her. It looked like tenderness and devotion in his eyes.

She wanted to believe in it, she desperately wanted to believe.

But he had lied.

His hand cupped her breast over her night gown. “I adore you, Mary. You’re so beautiful, I will forever worship you.”

Lies.

Her fingers gripped his hips, and the lean muscle that played beneath his skin. He enchanted her, entering and withdrawing. She broke in half, body and soul separating, as her senses soared and burst, trembling in release.

Her wet heat surrounded Drew, and her inner muscle contracted, grasping for his seed. He broke straight after her. It was becoming a pattern of their encounters, and his muscle locked as he shut his eyes and let pleasure sweep over him, its intensity burned like lit brandy in his blood the flame flickering through his nerves. It even stole the pain away from his broken rib, which had clawed at his side while he’d moved

They were made for one another. Sex had never been like this with any other woman.

He opened his eyes, only to see that a tear had slipped from hers.

Her lower lip quivered before she caught it between her teeth.

He could not breathe. She was crying. The mist of sexual lust left him, and cold emptiness replaced it, as the emotion evaporated.

She’d been enjoying it, hadn’t she? She’d reached the little death.

He withdrew from her, turning away, not knowing what to say. He said the only thing he knew, glancing back at her, as he moved to get up. “I love you, Mary.” But he heard uncertainty in his voice.

She sat up, gripping the sheet to her chest, her pale blue eyes starkly cold, like ice. “Liar.”

They’d just shared something blissful…What?

“You do not love me. I doubt you love anyone bar yourself.”

My God.
“I do love you. I know your family told you otherwise, but they are wrong.”

She let the sheet fall, slipping off the bed, going to one of her trunks. “You cannot lie anymore, I heard you last night.”

She’d been asleep.

She lifted the lid of a trunk. “I heard your friends joking about how they helped seduce me with their words in those letters.”

Damn it all to hell!
He turned and crossed the room.

The lid of her trunk banged down as it slipped from her hand and she nearly fell in an attempt to avoid him.

She had feared he would hit her. He would never do that, but it cut him hard to know she’d believe he could.

He lifted his hands, palm outward, as the pain in his side roared from his rib being jarred. “Mary…” Her eyes flashed fire at him again. “You were pretending to sleep…” God he was an ass.

“You never wrote those letters. Your friends did. They were laughing at me. I’m glad I amuse you all—”

“Mary—”

“I shall not let them do the same to Emily, I am going to call on her and tell her not trust Lord Brooke.”

“Mary, darling, come on, they were jesting…”

Tears suddenly sparkled in her eyes, and then one tumbled over. She sniffed and wiped it away. “It was unkind of you. You should have left me alone.”

They were not words of accusation, but those of a desperately unhappy young woman. A wave of love rolled in on top of him, crashing over him, a sensation he was becoming used to now. He stepped forward, he wished to comfort her. “Mary… Honestly, darling.”

She pushed his hands away.

Devil take it.
“Mary?”

She turned her back and bent to open her trunk again, her voice weighted by tears. “What is done cannot be undone. Will you help me dress?”

“Of course I shall. But I only asked them to help with the letters because you would not meet me again, I am not good with words, it does not make the sentiment within them and my feelings untrue.” He turned to dress himself. “I would have done anything to win you.”

“Anything?”

He turned back. She stood with a dress clasped to her chest.

“So you would tell me lies for my dowry. Words are easily said, Andrew, and I foolishly believed them.”

“They are true. I love you.” Anger and frustration had begun to sizzle inside him. Why must she make him so angry?

“I don’t believe you.”

Damn her
. He turned away. He was tired, still half asleep and a little drugged by the aftermath of sex.

He picked out his clothes and tossed them on the bed then looked back at her. “I do not know how to convince you, Mary.”

“You cannot, it would be better if you simply did not lie.”

“I am not lying but clearly you value your family’s word more than mine. I suppose you do not love me now?” It was a childish question. But Drew was out of his depth.