Page 95 of Duke with a Deception
“Not if it meant hurting you,” he snapped. “Damn it, Verity. You know me. You knowus. You know how good we are together.”
She shook her head again. “I don’t think I know anything about you. Not really.”
That hurt, cutting through him with as much precision as a blade. Because he had shown himself to her. He had lowered his guard. He had told her about his own past, had revealed parts of himself to her he had never shared with another soul.
“You do know me,” he countered. “I am still the man you married, the man you professed to love.”
“But you aren’t the man I love,” she cried. “Because he is dead and buried.”
The words hit him like a slap.
He nodded, feeling numb. “Right. Perhaps this is a discussion we should have later, when we aren’t hosting a charity ball with hundreds of guests invading our home.”
She sniffed, wiping at her tears with her hand.
He extended his handkerchief, but she eyed it dubiously.
“Take it,” he urged.
“I don’t want it,” she said.
“Because it is mine?”
“Yes.”
“Fine.” He stuffed the bloody linen square back into his coat pocket and stood. “Shall I ring for your lady’s maid to help you refresh yourtoilette?”
“I’m not wearing the diamonds if that is what concerns you,” she said bitterly.
“No, Verity. The fucking diamonds are the least of what concerns me,” he snarled, feeling raw and vicious and angry. Soblasted angry. “Throw them out the goddamned window to the street below for all I care.”
Her lips trembled as she clutched the gold locket from her dead beau. “Now I understand why you never wanted me to wear this. It must have been a reminder of your lies and the fact that I am still in love with Leo.”
He had feared she would act as if the love they had for each other had ceased to exist the moment she regained her memory. And that was worse than her anger and resentment.
It was worse than a death.
“Yes,” he admitted hoarsely. “It was a reminder. I didn’t know what was in it, and I didn’t want to make love to my wife if she was wearing a lock of her dead lover’s hair.”
Her lips tightened. “His hair isn’t in the locket. It’s the first flower he ever gave me, a forget-me-not that I pressed in a book and slipped inside so I would never forget the day he told me he loved me. We were walking by the stream together at Riverdale Abbey, and he recited his favorite poem to me. After the fire, I thought it was you. You knew that, but you never corrected me.”
King stared down at her, surrounded by the evidence of her everlasting love for another man, tears on her cheeks, and knew he would never love anyone the way he loved her.
“If I had corrected you, then I never would have married you, and if I had never married you, I never would have had the chance to love you,” he managed. “Forgive me for thinking the risk worth the reward.”
She stared at him, her face unreadable, save for the sadness. Even in her fury, skirts pooled around her in a heap, tears on her cheeks, her nose and eyes red from sobbing, she was breathtaking. She was the other half of him, and he was going to do everything he could to win her back.
But first, they had a ball to host.
“I’ll send for your lady’s maid,” he repeated when she didn’t speak. “Wear the locket if it pleases you. Be angry with me all you like, but you owe it to yourself to come back to the ballroom and finish your duties as hostess. The orphans are depending upon you.”
She took a deep, hitched breath, nodding. “I will collect myself and return forthwith.”
He offered her a formal bow, feeling so much like a stranger to her, although he had touched and kissed and tasted every inch of her body. “I’ll await you below.”
With that, he turned and walked away from the only woman he had ever loved, leaving her surrounded by the memories of the man she had never stopped loving.
The ghost had won.
