Page 6 of Duke with a Deception
King shrugged. “What is irregular? I waited a proper amount of time to allow my betrothed to recover from her injuries before calling. We would have told you about our plans. Eventually. The fire merely produced an unwanted impediment.”
Riverdale shook his head. “But none of this makes sense. Verity has been confused since she awoke. She’s not once spoken of Lord Leopold, the man she has been mourning for ten years.Instead, all she could speak of was you. It is as if he has been erased from her memory.”
King raised a brow. “I tend to have that effect upon the fairer sex. I blot out all memory of the unfortunate souls who have preceded me.”
“The physician said that her memory could have been affected by the blow,” Riverdale insisted.
“She seems to remember me quite well,” King pointed out cruelly.
His old friend glared at him. Riverdale was no doubt thinking of further arguments he might make. But there were none. No one was going to keep King from what he wanted. It didn’t matter how impossible, how perverse.
“Curse you, I don’t want you to marry my sister,” Riverdale bit out at last.
“Why not?”
“Need I elaborate?”
King held his friend’s glare. “I think you must.”
“You are a conscienceless rake,” Riverdale pointed out. “Perhaps the worst among us.”
“You are not wrong,” King allowed.
“Verity is kind and good.”
“Also true.”
“She deserves better,” Riverdale spat.
King smiled. “On that, my friend, we are in agreement. But tell me, what would you have her do, hmm? Would you prefer for your sister to remain unwed all her life? To never become a wife, a mother? To live in the past, forever tied to a dead man’s memory, with no future of her own?”
Riverdale paled again, and King knew he had laid his trap neatly. His friend was caught.
“You are saying you want to marry her, to begin a family?” Riverdale demanded.
Christ no. King didn’t want brats. He couldn’t bear the thought of children since Daphne. But King was no fool. He understood that this was the path to gaining what he wanted.
“Yes, I am,” he confirmed.
“I’m afraid I don’t believe a bloody word you’ve said.” Riverdale’s eyes narrowed. “If you do this, if you insist upon marrying my sister, I will never forgive you. Our friendship is dead. Do you understand me?”
King didn’t blink or hesitate. “If that must be the way of it, I understand completely.”
His mind had been made, and he wasn’t surrendering until he had his prize.
CHAPTER 1
TWO MONTHS LATER
The preparation for her wedding had taken far longer than Verity would have preferred. Indeed, if she’d had her way, she would have been the Duchess of Kingham weeks ago. ButMamanhad managed to involve herself. AndMamanadored fêtes of all sorts, playing hostess, and paying attention to every detail, regardless of how minute and obscure.
At last, the day Verity had waited for would arrive on the morrow.
And in what had become a long-standing, if unconventional, tradition between them, she joined her brother in the library after the rest of the house was abed. As usual, Riverdale had a glass of whisky poured and awaiting her. Sometimes, her sister-in-law, Sybil, joined them. On this evening, however, it was only Everett standing by the crackling fire, staring into the grate in contemplative silence as if it might surrender all the mysteries of the universe.
“You are somber,” Verity commented lightly as she closed the door behind her and started across the Axminster, unable to keep the happiness from her voice.
To say Verity was excited to wed the man she loved tomorrow morning would be a vast understatement.
