AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Would you be very kind and wait for me in my office, Lady Maude?’ he asked with awful politeness. ‘I doubt that we will want to edify the stage hands with this discussion.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Maude walked stiffly past him. He was furious, she could understand why. But it wouldn’t last, once he understood…
Eden stood outside his own office, hand on the door. He had made himself stay and organise things until his stage manager could take over and then he had walked back here, still not allowing himself to think about what Maude’s knowledge meant.
Gritting his teeth, he walked in, closing the door behind himself and turning the key in the lock. Maude was sitting in an upright chair, her hands clasped in her lap, her chin up.
‘You know who owns the Unicorn?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ She swallowed. ‘I do.’
‘What?’ Maude met his eyes defiantly. ‘You bought it?’ The sense of betrayal was like a blow.
‘No, I inherited it from a friend of my mother. She was an actress. I did not know until last week she was the owner.’ But she had known last week, had known it and had not told him, even though she knew he was waiting anxiously for that very piece of news.
‘Why did you not tell me? You know I want to buy it. You know how much it means to me.’
‘I did not think I wanted to sell it,’ she said. ‘I thought I might keep it, as an investment. Then it would be safe for you.’
‘You could have invested the money,’ Eden said, furious, something very like fear gripping his heart. ‘If you keep it, when you marry it goes to your husband. You know that, it is the law. God knows what he will do with it.’
‘I wouldn’t…’ She swallowed. ‘I would not marry someone who would do that.’
‘Indeed?’ Eden demanded, his voice sceptical in an effort to hide the hurt of thinking of Maude as another man’s wife. ‘You’d put that in the marriage settlements, would you?’
‘No,’ she snapped, on her feet in a swirl of silks. ‘No, because I only want to marry you.’
‘You—’ Eden knew he was staring, couldn’t find the words. He tried again. ‘You want to marry me? Impossible.’ She couldn’t be doing this to him, not on top of that speech this evening, not when he had screwed himself up to renounce anything to do with her.
‘Why is it impossible? Are you married already?’
‘No, of course not. You know why you cannot marry me. Look at me.’ He took a stride forward, seized her arms and pulled her back against him, forcing her to look at their images in the long glass. ‘And look at yourself.’ The contrast of her simple, lovely pearls, the elegant, understated lines of her gown and the glitter and tawdry tricks of his own appearance. ‘You are a lady, of the ton, a virgin, for God’s sake. I am a bastard, a theatre manager, a rake with a notorious reputation. Just because you desire me—’
‘I love you.’ Maude spoke the words to his image in the glass, her voice steady. ‘I love you, Eden. I was going to tell you that tonight. That is what those words I spoke tonight were for.’ Then her voice began to shake and she twisted in his grip. ‘How much closer could I get to telling you I loved you in front of the whole damned ton?’
She loved him? Eden’s heart seemed to turn to water in his chest, something—joy?—was struggling to surface against the fear for what this could mean, the impossibility of it. And there was a little nagging voice that would not be silenced. ‘When, exactly, were you going to tell me about the theatre?’ he asked.
Maude was so still in his arms, her face pale and very lovely as she looked up at him. ‘After I told you how I felt,’ she whispered. ‘Eden, tell me how you feel about me—I can’t bear it, not knowing. I have loved you for so long, ever since I first saw you. My love—’
Her words made no sense, he shook his head, grasping the one thing that was clear. ‘Why wait to tell me you own the theatre?’
‘Because…because I wanted you to be thinking just about us, not to be influenced by the Unicorn.’
‘Influenced?’ A coldness gripped him. ‘You were not sure whether I would tell you the truth about my feelings for you if I knew? You thought I would pretend to love you to gain the Unicorn?’
‘I was not certain. You are so passionate about it.’
‘And if I said I did not love you? You would punish me by keeping the ownership secret?’
‘No!’ Maude gave a little push against his chest as though to push away the very thought. ‘I would have told the agents to sell it to you and not reveal the owner.’
‘I see.’ Eden was not sure he believed her—a woman scorned would have to be a saint to do such a thing when she could hold such a weapon against him. ‘So, you love me, you say, but you do not trust me.’
‘Eden, I have loved you for a year and known you for a few weeks. I trust you, of course I do, with my life, but this is so important to you.’
‘If I loved you, Maude,’ Eden said slowly, ‘and burning down the Unicorn was what it took to have you, then I would light the match myself. If you do not know that about me, you know nothing.’
Her eyes were huge and shimmering with tears she was too proud to shed, her mouth, soft and vulnerable. She was everything he wanted and he had told her the truth: he would destroy the Unicorn if that was the only way to have her, if that was all it would take to make him eligible for her.
