Page 20 of Between a Duke and a Hard Place (The Honeywells #1)

Chapter Nineteen

N igel Cavender was not having a good morning.

He sat in the dimly lit parlor, his usual air of self-importance thoroughly absent, his hands gripping the arms of his chair with a white-knuckled fervor.

Because the news that had just reached him was not merely unpleasant.

It was catastrophic.

Ethella, standing poised and composed by the window, exhaled sharply as she skimmed the letter their informant had sent from Alstead Manor.

“They consummated the marriage,” she murmured, the words dripping with venom.

Nigel swallowed hard.

“Well,” he muttered, forcing a weak chuckle, “I suppose that’s the end of it, then.”

Ethella turned, slowly.

Her cold, piercing gaze locked onto his, and Nigel felt his spine stiffen.

“Oh, my dear boy,” she said, her voice silk over steel, “this is only the beginning.”

Before Nigel could question her, there was another knock at the door.

A servant appeared, looking thoroughly unnerved.

“My lady,” the man said hesitantly. “Lord Eddington has arrived.”

The words sent an icy spike of dread through Nigel’s chest.

Ethella merely smiled.

“Show him in.”

Nigel cursed silently.

Because he already knew?—

This was about to become so much worse.

The morning sun had never been crueler.

It spilled through the heavy brocade curtains, casting a golden glow over the vast expanse of the ducal bedchamber, illuminating rumpled sheets, discarded garments, and the unmistakable truth of what had transpired between them.

Violet lay very still, staring at the ceiling with the sort of fixed determination one might adopt when facing the gallows.

It was done.

And yet, the world had not ended. The manor had not collapsed into ruin, the ground had not swallowed her whole. Nothing had changed. Except, of course, everything had changed. They had confessed things to one another in the night—things they yearned for both past and present, things they had thought were beyond their reach.

Could they truly set aside their years of acrimony and build a happy life together? Violet couldn’t answer that. Primarily because it wasn’t only up to her. There was another person involved, a person—not unlike herself—who had grown used to the pointed barbs and verbal sparring that had marked the last seven years.

Beside her, Max stirred.

The movement was subtle—a shift of warm skin against silk, the brush of a heavy limb against her own. She felt rather than saw the moment he woke, his breath deepening, his body tensing as awareness returned to him. His hair roughened leg brushed against her thigh and a frisson of awareness snaked through her. With a simple touch, a mere brush of his limb against her, he had reignited the need for him that ought to have been fully assuaged. A terrifying thought came to her then. What if having him in her bed even one time was too much?

“I can hear you thinking,” Max muttered, his voice a low rasp from sleep.

Glancing over at him, she knew immediately that she had made a terrible error in strategy. Max looked like sin incarnate. Disheveled. Hair mussed from sleep. The morning light carving sharp angles across his handsome, infuriating face, highlighting the shadow of stubble along his jaw.

And worst of all, he was smirking. That wretched, lazy smirk that suggested he was entirely too pleased with himself.

Violet stiffened, instantly annoyed at his smug, self-satisfied expression. “Perhaps if you found my thoughts so disruptive, you should not have woken up.”

A lazy huff of amusement ghosted over her bare shoulder, but then he opened his eyes and what she saw in his gaze was not at all what she’d expected. Yes, his lips had twisted in a wry and slightly sardonic smile, yes. Yes, he looked very much like the cat who had gotten the proverbial canary. But there was a warmth as he looked at her, a softness she saw in him that he had kept well concealed from her in the past.

“Why are you looking at me that way?” She asked.

“In what way?”

“That way!”

He grinned. “You mean as if I’d very much like to make love to you again this morning?” That was not the answer Violet had expected. Well, it was to a degree. She simply hadn’t expected him to state it so plainly. Her face flamed with embarrassment, not simply because he’d said it but because she was so very tempted to let him. “In daylight?”

He laughed then, throwing his head back as he did so.

Immediately, it infuriated her. But she couldn’t get out of bed because she was still entirely naked. Glancing about her, she saw the familiar embroidery peeking out from beneath his one bare leg that was so casually displayed atop the covers. Holding the coverlet to her breasts, she reached down and snatched the garment from beneath him. It was no mean feat to get the blasted thing on without actually revealing herself, but somehow she managed.

By that point, he had sobered somewhat, his mirth having abated. She didn’t care. Shoving the covers back, she eased from the bed. But her caution was pointless. The moment her feet touched the floor, her knees very nearly buckled and she had to cling to the bedpost to keep herself upright.

A sharp, startled gasp left her lips as her legs refused to cooperate, and before she could right herself, Max was there—grabbing her waist, steadying her.

“Careful,” he murmured, his voice far too amused for her liking.

Violet snapped her head up, mortified. “I am perfectly fine.”

Max arched a brow. “Are you?”

She scowled. “Yes.”

A beat of silence passed. Then his gaze flickered downward, and when he looked back up at her his expression was still smug but also hungry. Hungry in a way that both excited and frightened her.

“Interesting,” he mused.

Violet narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“There is no greater compliment to a man’s prowess than to no he has quite literally robbed a woman of her ability to even stand,” he mused.

“I can?—”

He tilted his head. “You just nearly collapsed, Violet.”

“That was?—”

“—the direct result,” he continued, clearly enjoying himself, “of last night’s rather remarkable exertions.”

Violet practically growled.

“You—” She jabbed a finger at his broad, unrepentant chest. “Are insufferable.”

Max merely grinned. “And yet, you married me.”

She inhaled deeply, summoning every ounce of patience she had ever possessed.

“Last night,” she said slowly, deliberately, “was about securing our marriage beyond any dispute. Nothing more.”

Max studied her, his blue gaze impossible to read. “If you say so.”

Violet’s stomach clenched.

He was not arguing. He was not agreeing. He was simply letting her lie to herself. And that was infinitely worse.

Before she could respond, a sharp knock sounded at the door, followed by the butler’s stiff, precise voice. “Your Grace? The morning meal has been prepared.”

Max leaned back, stretching as if he had not a care in the world. “Shall we?”

Violet hated him. She truly, deeply hated him. And yet?—

When he climbed from the bed and held his hand out to her, she took it. But he didn’t merely aid her in standing. Instead, he pulled her into his arms, her chemise-clad body pressed fully against his very, very nude one.

“Violet—”

“What?”

“Last night, I told you that my feelings for you had changed when I was still married to Katherine… and that I had developed an attraction for you. But it’s much more than that. I’ve had feelings for you of one sort or other, Violet, for as long as I can recall. Initially, you were far too young. You were not even out yet. I was twenty to your sixteen. You hadn’t been courted by anyone, you hadn’t even attended your first ball or danced your first waltz. And you were James’ sister. And then when those things were no longer barriers, you never gave any indication that you would be receptive to altering our relationship.”

Violet’s heart was in her throat. It had been one thing to share such things in the dark of night, half hidden in the dim candlelight. But to be so open and so vulnerable in the bright light of a clear morning, was utterly terrifying. Still, he’d taken that step. He’d given her the power to hurt him if she chose. And for the first time in a very long time, that was the last thing she wished to do. “I worshipped you as a girl,” she began. “Then, as a very young woman—too young, I know—those feelings altered. It was no longer just hero worship but attraction. I dreamed of being your wife. I dreamed that one day you would look at me and see… more. But then you married Katherine. And those hopes were dashed. So I put on masks of either indifference or outright hostility to salvage my pride and not allow you to see how much it had broken my heart to have those girlish dreams dashed.”

Stricken, Max simply stared at her. “I didn’t know.”

“I wasn’t ready,” she said. “I was sixteen then… young, foolish, impetuous, and still very much a spoiled child. You were too honorable a man to take advantage of me at such a tender age. But you were going away to war…. Even though it broke my heart, and even though I thought she was entirely wrong for you, I understood why you married Katherine when you did. You needed a wife and an heir.”

“And ultimately I had neither,” he said. But it wasn’t some terrible grief, more of a resigned sadness. “Though she died attempting to give birth to the babe that would have been my heir, it was not my child. I had not gone to her bed in more than a year because she reviled me so… Everything about me displeased her because I was not the man she wanted. She had wanted Eddington all along, but he’d been married to his second wife then, before that poor woman suffered a horrible fate.”

Violet shuddered in distaste. “How anyone could prefer him… I cannot fathom it. Any more than I can fathom that he’s had three wives and all of them have died under terribly mysterious circumstances. Even then there were whispers about him, speculation that perhaps he’d had a hand in their deaths.”

Max nodded. “There was something self-destructive in her, something that caused her to be drawn to those who would treat her poorly, use and abuse her. At the end, our marriage was so bitter we hardly spoke to one another.”

“I didn’t know,” she said. “You must have been so miserably unhappy, but you gave no indication of it.”

“How could I? She was my wife. I made my vows in good faith… one of those was to protect her. So I kept my own counsel on the matter. And Katherine was long practiced at both pretense and secrets.”

“So are we,” she said. “We’ve been lying to one another, to ourselves, to anyone who bore witness to our sniping and verbal sparring.”

His eyebrows lifted in surprise as he considered it. “Indeed, we have. But we need not… Not now nor ever again. I have no wish to go backward, Violet. Only forward with you… Assuming that is what you want?”

“What I want?” She asked incredulously.

A sigh escaped him, “While the idea of never touching you again, never knowing your passion and fire again, terrifies me, the idea that you might share that with me and then grow to resent me, to loathe my presence or my touch as Katherine once did… that would be a fate worse than death and hellfire.”

“I think you have no worries on that score. Resentment only builds when one stays silent in the face of offense… We both know I will not. We will still argue. We will still clash and I’m sure at times we will still indulge in that verbal sparring. It’s part of who we are. It simply isn’t the whole of us, neither individually nor together. I’m very happy to go forward with you, your grace. Very happy indeed.”