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Chapter Twenty-Four
Antony spent the entire day out of the house, sitting on Lyme Regis beach with Hermione’s guidelines in his hands. He nearly ripped them up at one point and threw them in the sea, but he decided to hold onto them, thinking it was best to have them to confront Hermione with at some point. The question was, when would be the right time to confront her?
The longer he was staring at the guidelines, the more they bothered him. For one thing, they did not look like Hermione’s handwriting– he’d seen her handwriting on the notes she’d made with his mother for the ball– which was why he wished to deny her being capable of purposefully trapping him into marriage, yet he couldn’t find a convincing argument in her defense.
As the sea came up closer with the tide trickling nearer and nearer to him, he thought of everything she had ever done with him and the conversation that he’d overheard between her and Cordelia. There was no mistaking it. Hermione was pleading as to how it was not her fault that he hadn’t visited her the night before, and Cordelia was insisting that Hermione had to make the consummation happen.
I can never consummate it now.He might not be able to annul their marriage without bringing scandal on his family, but he could hurt Hermione as much as she had hurt him.
With this thought, he hung his head forward, aware that the first waves of the ocean and the incoming tide were coming up so near to him that the white foam was nearly touching his toes.
She has hurt me.Despite all his declarations that he could no longer care for Hermione, and his determination that he could somehow switch off his affection for her, it was still there. That’s why it hurt so much to hear what she had done.
The one woman he had thought was honest with him, falling for him and not his title or his fortune, in actual fact had conned him. He had to hand it to her that she was incredibly skilled. She had charmed him so much that he had never even realized he was being conned. He had mistaken Hermione’s bickering and strong spirit as a natural connection between them, not a front she was wearing in order to bewitch him.
I will not be hurt again by you, Hermione,he thought as he stood and walked away from the beach.And you will pay for hurting me so.
* * *
Hermione hadn’t been able to find Antony for the whole day. Even at dinner, he avoided eating with them. When Hermione asked the Dowager Duchess after his whereabouts, the woman had just shrugged and said he was busy with work although her lie was not convincing. Hermione had even gone to the library after dinner in search of him. She had neither found Antony nor the book they were both reading.
She waited up for half the night to see if he would visit her, but he didn’t come. She paced up and down her chamber until the pads of her bare feet were sore, then she climbed into bed, giving up hope.
She didn’t care about what her aunt or her father had said. She wanted to see Antony to tell him the truth now, to confess all to him and see what happened. She doubted he would make love to her after that, no matter how much she dreamed of it and wanted it, but maybe once he knew he could trust her again, it was a dream they could live someday together.
Eventually, she fell asleep, her body realizing what her mind couldn’t accept: he wasn’t coming. When she woke in the early hours of the morning, her body was heated, and she flung off the sheets, her mind consumed with the dreams that had found her in her sleep. She had been making love to Antony, telling him that she loved him, with him above her in the very bed she was now in.
“Why do I have to wait for him to come to me?” she muttered into the air. The idea suddenly seemed so simple, so perfect.
She checked the clock nearby, finding it was the early hours of the morning, so Antony was likely still in bed. She took her opportunity. She clambered out of the bed and found a nearby dressing gown, pulling the open-bodied white material on over her shoulders and tying it loosely around her waist then going toward the door.
She peered up and down the corridor a few times, making sure that no one else was around before she breathed deeply, built up her courage, and stepped out into the hallway. She tiptoed slowly in her bare feet, creeping toward the chamber at the far end of the corridor where she knew Antony slept.
When she reached the door, she knocked quietly, amazed by the sheer power of the fluttering sensation in her stomach, all from the hope of seeing him again.
“Come in,” Antony called to her. Smiling a little, she opened the door. “You are early today, Trevor– ah…” he broke off, realizing who she was.
She closed the door behind her, turning her eyes on his position. He had just sat up in his bed, completely shirtless, with his hair mussed from sleep. The desire in Hermione’s body ricocheted, growing stronger from the sight of him.
“What are you doing here, Hermione?” he asked coldly. She was stunned by the tone; it possessed more chill than he had ever used before to her. “I thought you were my valet.”
“I wanted to speak with you,” she said, hurrying across the room toward his bed. “And as you will not come to me, I decided that I would come to you.”
He shuffled away on the bed, putting a little distance between them. She clambered past the large mahogany bed frame, ornate with swirls and knelt on the bed beside him.
“I do not think you understand the idea of a marriage for convenience,” he said, holding her gaze. She was finding it rather difficult to just stare at his eyes, instead of letting her gaze wander to the chest that was exposed and where the bed sheet rested across his waist, hiding his lower body from view. She bit her lip, wondering whether he was wearing anything at all.
“I could argue that you do not understand, ‘please come see me tonight so that we may talk,’” she quipped back, earning an arching of his eyebrows in response.
“My decision not to come should have spoken volumes,” he said bitterly.
“Convenience doesn’t mean ignore each other altogether,” she pleaded, inching toward him on her knees. He didn’t retreat from her this time, though he held up a hand, issuing silently for her to stop. She pushed the hand away, earning a darker glare from him. “What? You don’t expect me to start obeying your orders now, do you? That was one of our first arguments.”
“So it was, but you did make a vow to obey me the other day,” he said bearing the first smirk she had seen on his face in days.
“Well, you made a vow to love me, and we both know you have no intention of keeping that one, so what difference does it make if I break a vow too?” she said, lifting her chin a little higher. His smirk vanished completely.
“What do you want, Hermione?” he asked, moving as though he would get out of the bed.
