He stalked toward her, heat flushing through him. He didn’t choose his next words wildly; blind need pressed upon him to make her see. Mad was his.His.
“You want me. I will show you.”
She lifted her chin, her cheeks stained with tears and her eyes flashing mutiny. “I amquitedone with other people telling me what I want. I will choose for myself, thank you very much.”
She curled her hands into fists and stared at him. Candlelight flickered in her eyes, revealing the anguish there. “I might want you all I like. But I can’thaveyou. I doubt any woman can.”
She flung open the door and glided through it like Aphrodite abandoning a lover, a cloud of silk and cream and sensual woman. The scent of her lingered in the room.
Garrick looked about the room, where the empty air vibrated with a sense of loss. Then he took the only route available to him.
He left, too.
Chapter Five
Day 12: Twelfth Night
Garrick was gone. He simply walked out of Number 4 Grafton Street and disappeared.
So much for vowing he was a man she could trust.
Madelina told herself it was for the best. She’d known he would leave again. He was always leaving; it was the pattern of their lives. And she was through waiting.
She’d been foolish enough to lie with him and learn the pleasure that could be had between them. Now that memory would haunt her forever.
At least she hadn’t been foolish enough to reveal she loved him. She retained some tiny shred of dignity.
“But he will return to marry you,” Maman said, frowning, after Agnes left their parlor on New Year’s Day reporting that Garrick had left the night before, taking only a valise and his horse. “Won’t he?”
“I doubt it, Maman. He made that offer in jest. He thought he had to, because you found us together. But we wouldn’t suit, and he knows that.”
“He’s a baron,” Aunt Hermione barked. “The estate is unencumbered, as far as I knew. Barty was the thriftiest soul alive. There’s the house here in Grafton Street, and the Manor in Woughton on the Green, and all that property around Milton Keynes. Of course he would suit you, child.”
Her mother’s gaze turned soft as she set down her embroidery hoop and watched Madelina, who was untangling and smoothing the coils of embroidery silks in their basket.
“You have loved him since you were a girl, Madelina. What do you fear,louloutte?”
The endearment from her mother was so uncharacteristic that Madelina nearly dropped and unspooled a skein of crimson thread.
“He is a rake, Maman. How can I believe he would ever be true to me?”
Her mother raised her elegant, chiseled brows. “And you would turn down a chance at true happiness on the risk of future heartbreak?”
“Well, yes. I must be sensible.”
“Oh, my darling girl,” Maman said softly. “There is no sense in denying your heart.”
“But if I love and bind myself to him, and he makes me miserable—”
“Are you so certain he would?”
Madelina twisted the blue silk around her fingers. She was certain of nothing.
“When I met your father, he was the most unsuitable of men,” Maman said. “Our countries were at war. He was a second son who had bought his colors in the military and might very well be fighting against my own friends. And he was the center of every drawing room he set foot in that Season. Every woman wanted him. He was the worst roué I’d ever met.”
“Too true, sadly.” Tante Victoire shook her head. “He had cut his swath through Paris already and was in London for fresh blood. And an heiress to support his racketing ways.”
Madelina put down her basket, staring. She’d been told, as a child, a much different story of how her parents met. “How did he win you?”
