Page 96 of Duke with a Deception
CHAPTER 18
The ballroom was quiet, the servants all long since abed for the night, and the guests returned to their homes. The evening had been a resounding success. Thousands of pounds had been raised for the rebuilding of the Children’s Foundling Hospital. The thin strains of dawn were beginning to creep across the windowpanes and steal across the floor.
Verity was exhausted, but she couldn’t go to sleep.
Now that her memory had returned, her mind was churning with so many thoughts, just as her heart was storm-tossed by so many confusing emotions. And so, she sat on a chair at the periphery of the room that had been abounding with revelers.
Alone.
If anyone had taken note of the absence of her diamond parure upon her return to the ball, they had wisely kept the observation to themselves. Not even Sybil had asked why Verity had disappeared for so long, only to return wearing the golden locket at her throat, the sole gift she had ever received from Leo.
She hadn’t told her sister-in-law about the resurgence of her memory. Only she and King knew. Verity was still reeling with the effects herself; she hadn’t been ready to face anyone else,to answer questions. Especially not with her duty of playing hostess weighing so heavily upon her shoulders.
She hoped that she had played her role well. She had forced a smile and pretended as if her entire world as she had come to know it over the past few months hadn’t just fallen to pieces around her.
Likely, she ought to go to her bed. To get out of this blasted uncomfortable corset and these wretched slippers. But her bedroom was the last place she wanted to be just now. It was too near King, and she wasn’t sure she trusted herself enough to speak with him again just yet.
He had been the consummate gentleman, elegant perfection personified as they finished out the ball. He had escorted her to supper, and she had promptly ignored him. The dance she owed him had been forgotten. Being in his arms had been more than she could bear, especially before an audience. After the last of their guests departed, she had remained with the servants under the guise of overseeing their various clean-up tasks. King had lingered, sending her searching looks she had also avoided, until finally retiring alone.
And now, hours later, here she was in the shadows, every bit as bewildered and miserable as she had been on the floor of her bedroom, surrounded by Leo’s love letters.
“You’re still dressed.”
She started at the voice, so familiar and once beloved.
Still beloved?
Verity hardly knew what she felt for the man she had married. So many things.
She turned to find King hovering at the threshold, yet wearing his evening attire. “As are you.”
“I was waiting for you.”
“You should not have,” she said, her voice cool.
He had been lying to her, she reminded herself. All this time.
King sauntered forward. “I hoped we might speak.”
She rose from her chair, on edge. “What else do we have to say to one another?”
“A great deal, I should think. We are husband and wife after all. Unless you have forgotten?”
Her chin went up at his jab. “Of course I have not forgotten. I know all too well that you deceived me into marrying you.”
Nor could she forget all the intimacies they had known together. The unspeakable pleasures he had shown her. King stopped close enough to touch, so near that his intoxicating scent wrapped around her. Although her heart was bruised and battered, not daring to trust him, her body had other ideas. He still had the ability to make her want him more than she wanted her next breath.
He frowned at her. “If I asked you to marry me now, in this moment, what would your answer be?”
“No,” she bit out hastily, even though she wasn’t sure.
Their marriage had been a happy one, just as she had reassured her family, who had been tiptoeing about her memory loss and subsequent confusion.
He flinched as if she had struck him. “These last weeks we have spent together have meant nothing to you, then, angel?”
Now it was her turn to flinch. “Don’t call me that.”
It felt too painful, too personal.
