Page 97 of The Dangerous Lord

Then he was gone. Feeling bereft, she rose and went to the desk. Her article still lay where Ian had tossed it. She sat down at the desk and read it over again. But the lines now seemed silly, like a child sticking its tongue out at her tormentors.

For the first time in years Felicity’s bitterness toward Pelham was gone. In its place was the most profound pity. For Pelham, because he could never have a woman care for him without browbeating her into it. And for his wife, because she must live with the wretch. Nothing Lord X could say would alter that situation one whit.

She deliberated a moment longer. Then she took up her pen and crossed through the lines about Pelham and his wife.

Chapter Twenty-Two

When words will not suffice, deeds alone will.

Lord X, The Evening Gazette, December 30, 1820

As Ian left Felicity’s bedchamber, her parting words echoed sweetly in his mind. I’m done fighting you ... I mean to be your wife in every way from now on. At last he’d won her, and without relinquishing his secrets.

But later, as he lay in his cold bed alone, he examined her words more closely, and they struck him with foreboding. She hadn’t said, I’m done fighting you because I want you, though he knew she desired him. She hadn’t spoken of wanting to be his wife in every way. She’d spoken of her will—I mean to be ... As if acknowledging her duty. Or her weariness of fighting him.

That wasn’t what he wanted—a wife by default. He wanted her to care for him freely, to be his wife because she desired it, not because she felt trapped into it. He’d gained her acquiescence at a great price to his own conscience.

The following morning, he sent a servant with his excuses for canceling their visit with his tenants. He could no longer bear to face her. She’d said too much last night, revealed just enough of her past to make him see his behavior in a new light.

And examine his own behavior—or rather, contemplate his many sins—was all he did for the next three days. He certainly didn’t go anywhere near his longsuffering wife. For God’s sake, what could he say to her that would excuse his earlier arrogance? The very thought of her tortured his conscience. So what would the sight of her do to it?

Now it was late afternoon on the day before New Year’s Eve, and he was in a quandary. Day after tomorrow, they’d return to London. What was he to do about Felicity?

Pacing his study restlessly, he paused to glance out the window, then started when he saw the object of his thoughts standing in the garden below and jotting down notes in a tablet. What was she planning? To improve the garden? Or level it and put in a pond? Hard to know with his darling wife.

Regardless, it was such a domestic action it briefly salved his conscience. Too briefly.

He turned from the window to stare blindly about the impressive study, a veritable bastion of masculinity, thanks to Father’s decorating preferences and Ian’s own lack of time to oversee its redecoration. Mahogany furniture and velvet hangings and ancient bronze lent it a dark, almost gloomy air. He hated it.

But not only for its appearance. My God, that massive, ugly desk—how often he’d hunched over it while Father laid into his backside with a cane. Not that the canings had hurt his ass any more than those he’d routinely suffered at Eton. But they’d tortured his pride. He’d hated having them administered by the man he wanted most to please. He’d despised being forced to submit against his will. Most of all, he’d been humiliated the few times Father had wrung tears from him.

Ian had always regarded it a matter of pride not to cry, and Father had always regarded it a matter of pride to make him do so. No one understood their private duel. His mother had wanted Ian to shed fake tears to end the caning. Jordan had said he was insane to hold back the real ones. But every time Ian had outlasted his father’s whipping arm without crying, he’d considered it a triumph over the whole degrading process.

From that he’d learned that physical force didn’t work, that manipulation and strategy were the keys to getting what you want, because his father’s canings had never done anything but stiffen his resistance.

Now Felicity had taught him something else—there were more kinds of force than physical, and they were just as destructive. Unwittingly, she’d taught him that in countless ways. Her tears in front of Sara, which had apparently been genuine. Her horror at his threats to make her marry him. Most of all, the way she’d refused him her bed after the wedding. If you force this upon me, you’ll have to force the other upon me as well, she’d said, and he’d been so arrogant he’d ignored her legitimate complaint.

Instead, he’d acted exactly like the long string of so-called gentlemen before him, the Pelhams and the Faringdons and all the other bastards. He had browbeat her. Taken advantage of her. Seduced her. The list of his offenses was so long, he choked on them.

He’d still succeeded in making her willing, or as willing as a woman can be whose pride has been trampled on, whose energies have been exhausted by the fight. He’d won without giving in one whit to her simple request for the truth about his past.

How hollow was his triumph.

Because eventually she would learn the truth, if not from him, then from another. Someone would make a random comment or Uncle Edgar would tell her just to spite him. Then she’d have reason enough to leave him, since the truth would surely break any bonds of duty he’d managed to make her feel for him.

He gazed out the window again. She looked so fetching in that gown, so perfectly at home in his garden. He could grow used to having her always in his sight. Which made the thought of her leaving him all the more terrifying. What good was winning the fight against his uncle if she weren’t here? Or worse yet, if she stayed, despising him with every breath? The very thought made him ill.

No, he must heed the call of his conscience. He’d made a mistake by forcing her into this marriage—he saw that now. But Fate had kept her from bearing his child just yet, thus handing him the chance to undo his mistake.

So he must seize that chance and offer her back what he’d taken from her—her pride, her independence, and yes, her freedom. After all the indignities she’d suffered at the hands of men of his kind, she deserved that much from him.

Even if he had to cut out his heart to do so.

“Good evening, milady,” Ian’s butler, Spencer, greeted Felicity as she entered the dining room and took her usual place.

Milady. She always wanted to look around for the stately and elegant personage to whom they surely referred.

Spencer bent over her place to pour her a glass of burgundy. “His lordship sent word that he will not be dining this evening, milady.”