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Yes, a bullet would be welcome right now.
Antonia Hilliard was the most magnificent creature he’d ever beheld. There was nobody to match her.
And he, sodding useless fool he was, let her slip through his fingers like a handful of sand on a windy beach.
He’d had glimpses of her quality. She’d fascinated him as no other woman. She’d infuriated and challenged and enticed him until he couldn’t think straight. Hell, she’d made him forget the revenge that had occupied his last twenty years.
How stupid he was not to treat her with appropriate caution from the first. How stupid he was not to realize that the plain woman in the ugly dress was his destiny.
He’d never believed in love. He’d never seen much evidence of it. But as he stood, beaten and humiliated for all his jaunty confidence to Antonia’s face, he recognized that love did indeed exist.
He’d been madly, hopelessly, inescapably in love with Antonia Hilliard for weeks. Probably from the first moment he’d seen her, when she’d snarled like an angry sheepdog at a wolf. He’d only tumbled more deeply in love since.
She was his beloved, his soul mate, his other half, his fate. All those mawkish, sentimental words people chose to describe that one person who lent the world meaning, who set the heart beating, who gave the sun a reason to shine.
He wasn’t a poet, even an inept one like Benton. But he couldn’t doubt what he felt.
He loved her.
And she loathed him.
Through a radiant night, she’d offered herself to him with an open joy that made him feel like a god. That in itself should have been clue that this liaison was a universe removed from his usual flirtations.
Now she never wanted to see him again.
That knowledge was a knife twisting in his guts. He closed his eyes and sucked in a shuddering breath as grim truth seeped into his bones.
Never, never, never.
He’d never see Antonia again. She would never cry out as he took her. She would never rest replete in his arms. She would never kiss him. She would never talk to him.
How tragic that the great rake, the Marquess of Ranelaw, found himself mourning the absence of a woman’s conversation. She’d taken the rough, unpromising substance of his soul and molded it into something new.
The agony was she wanted nothing to do with her creation.
She was strong and she was adamant, his darling. He’d spent his life coaxing women into doing what they shouldn’t. He’d treated those women like children, easily placated with toys like jewels or flattery. He didn’t fool himself he’d worm his way back into Antonia’s good graces with gifts or charm. Her soul was granite, not wet straw like most of the people he knew.
Of course that was one reason he loved her. Would always love her.
He opened his eyes. The scene was ordinary. That it seemed the image of hell was purely a reflection of the desert in his heart.
The gig was out of sight. They’d reach London before dark and Antonia would ensure Cassie’s reputation suffered no damage.
His revenge was in ruins, as it should be.
His love was lost to him. He didn’t deserve her.
He supposed he’d survive this. Right now, he didn’t much care.
Because he had little option other than to walk or huddle in the ditch and wait for blessed nothingness to descend, he put one foot in front of another.
He had a long hike ahead. As his wise beloved said, it provided opportunity to contemplate his numerous sins.
And what he did next.
That was clear enough. Abject failure made his choice ridiculously simple. A single course of action still lay open. He could perform only one more service for Antonia.
After that, he didn’t give a tinker’s damn what happened to him.
