Page 49

R hys stared at the crumpled missive on his desk, the words standing in stark relief to mock him, still scarcely able to believe what he was reading two hours after it had been delivered that morning before he’d even broken his fast.

As our time together has reached its inevitable conclusion, I must look to the safeguarding of my reputation…

I will never forget the weeks we had together…

I cannot help but to think that, in the best interest of my school, our association must conclude now before it is too late…

“A fucking note,” he growled at the offending letter, which he had crushed in a fit of rage upon his first reading.

He had nearly thrown it into the fire just to watch the hateful thing catch flame and burn to ash. But at the last moment, he had changed his mind, opening the missive once more and flattening it on the desk in his study.

All they had shared.

Five weeks of unparalleled ecstasy.

And Miranda had ended it between them with a bloody letter, as if he were a stranger who had requested an audience with her and she was politely denying him. As if what had been between them had meant nothing to her.

With every woman in his past, Rhys had always been the first to sever their ties.

He was first to grow weary of their arrangement.

First to offer jewels as a conciliatory gesture for a woman who inevitably was distressed by the completion of their affair.

He was the one who walked away. Who took a new lover. Who sought pleasure in another’s arms.

But now, Miranda— his Miranda , who knew how to bring him to his knees with a mere laugh or smile—had thrown him over. There was no doubt in his mind as to the reason either. Her lover, the insufferably smug Marquess of Waring, had returned from America.

And she had gone straight back into that bastard’s arms. He should have known yesterday when he had arrived at her house and found them together and then later, when she had sent round a note crying off their customary tryst for the night.

At the time, Rhys had put it down to her ire with him, which had been evident when she had dismissed him at tea after he had traded barbs with Waring.

He had expected it would fade by today. How wrong he had been.

Such a cozy vignette Miranda and Waring had made, he thought bitterly now, enjoying tea together.

He had known, of course, that Waring was the lover who had enabled her to achieve her divorce from Ammondale.

But what he hadn’t expected was that the bastard would return unannounced from America and lay claim to Rhys’s woman.

The realization was akin to a knife to the gut, the betrayal so bitter and vicious that he could taste it on his tongue along with the whisky he’d been pouring down his throat.

He wanted to tear the Marquess of bloody Waring limb from limb.

To pull down the walls of this blasted study.

To smash everything in his sight that was glass.

To go directly to Miranda’s tiny rooms and demand that she look him in the eye and tell him she truly wanted to end their affair instead of sending him some cowardly goddamned note.

With a roar, he picked up a crystal inkwell and hurled it into the fireplace, the resulting crash failing to feed the blood lust raging within him.

A knock sounded at his study door.

“Rhys?”

His sister’s voice.

With a heavy sigh, he passed a hand over his face. “Come.”

The door opened, and Rhiannon peered around the edge. “Is it safe?”

“I suppose you heard that.”

She nodded, somber. “What did you break?”

He gestured to the silver writing set on his desk, now bereft of half its contents. “An inkwell.”

Cautiously, she stepped inside, closing the door behind her. “Something has you overset?”

An understatement of vast proportions, that.

He grimaced. “One could say so.”

Belatedly, he realized he ought to stand in deference and shot to his feet, prowling around his desk with the energy of a caged lion as he began to pace the Axminster. His sister watched him in the manner he imagined she might observe a poisonous snake, wondering if it would strike.

“What do you want, Rhiannon?” he asked curtly, his mood hardly improved by her presence.

It still nettled that he had yet to ferret out what had happened during her supposed trip to Great-Aunt Bitsy. Thus far, that august woman had yet to respond to his letter of inquiry. And short of venturing to her himself, he wasn’t likely to have his answer.

“I intended to speak with you about something,” Rhiannon said hesitantly, “but perhaps it can wait for a more opportune time.”

He sighed again. “Has it anything to do with your visit to Great-Aunt Bitsy?”

She looked hastily away, but he didn’t miss the guilt in her countenance. “No, of course not. Why would you ask?”

“Because I know you’re lying about your supposed stay with her.”

Whisky and frayed emotions had loosened his tongue.

Rhiannon’s head swiveled back in his direction, her look startled. “I’m not lying. We have been over this before.”

“Yes, we have. And I’m not any more inclined to believe you now than I was nearly a month ago.

” He raked a hand through his hair, frustrated and furious and all but crawling out of his bloody skin.

“Just so you are aware, when I find out who he is, I’m going to take great pleasure in killing him. Slowly.”

Rhiannon blanched. “Rhys.”

Rhys was being beastly and he knew it, but damn it, Miranda had thrown him over. He was furious with himself. With her. With Waring. He wanted to burn the world to the ground. To claw the sun from the sky. To blot out the stars and the fucking moon.

“Sister,” he countered grimly. “I warn you, I’m in no mood to speak gently. But my response remains the same. If I should discover some scurrilous rogue had the temerity to ruin you, I’ll flay him alive.”

He meant those words to his soul. By God, he was meant to protect his sister. He hated that he had failed her. Hated that Mater had been so absorbed in her own diversions that she had failed to notice Rhiannon was missing until it had been far too late.

He also hated the Marquess of Waring.

But that was a matter that would need to be settled later. With his fists.

“No one ruined me,” Rhiannon said, frowning at him. “I am a woman grown, and I make my own choices.”

He didn’t like the sound of that.

“Apparently, poor ones.”

She jolted as if he had slapped her, and he regretted the harshness of his words, though not the emotion behind them.

“You are being cruel.”

“I am being pragmatic. The world is a vile swamp rife with betrayals and disappointments, and there is nothing polite society loves better than the downfall of one of its own.” He thought of Miranda again, and something inside him seized.

Was it fear that had made her turn away from him? Did she fret over her reputation? Was there something Waring could offer her that Rhys had not? Worse—his gut clenched—did she love Waring?

“Speaking of such matters,” Rhiannon interrupted gently, moving toward him and holding out what appeared to be a copy of a gossip rag. “There is something that I thought perhaps you would wish to see.”

He had eschewed the morning’s paper and breakfast after receiving Miranda’s note.

Instead, he had retreated to the haven of his study, where, curtains tightly closed from the outside world, he had drowned himself in the paltry comfort of a bottle of spirits.

The last thing he wanted was to sit and read the goddamned scandal broth in the mood he was in.

“I can assure you that there is presently nothing I would like to see at all,” he snarled. “If you’ve naught to offer other than mawkish nonsense, you may as well go. I’m not fit company for anyone at the moment.”

His bloody stubborn sister would not be deterred. She followed him across the room to the mantel over the fireplace, which currently possessed several items that seemed to call for a fate similar to the inkwell. Smashing things didn’t solve any problems, but ye gods, it felt satisfying.

Not nearly as satisfying as smashing the Marquess of Waring’s self-righteous face. But that would be remedied soon enough.

“I do think you may wish to read a certain article, brother,” Rhiannon told him gently, thrusting the newspaper toward him. “It appears to concern you and someone referred to as the Fallen Countess.”

The blood felt as if it leached from him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I do believe you are the Duke of W. in question,” his sister said, giving him a look of tender sympathy.

He snatched the paper from her. “Where?”

“Page three,” Rhiannon told him.

Rhys practically tore the newspaper in half as he turned to the page, his eyes instantly falling upon the article in question. He read hastily, stopping before he had even finished, having seen quite enough.

“Bloody hell,” he swore viciously, tossing the filth into the fireplace where it belonged.

“Just so.” Rhiannon patted him on the back. “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

He stiffened in shock. “In love?”

Rhys wasn’t in love.

He didn’t fall in love.

He was the Duke of Whitby, conscienceless rakehell, careless rogue, unrepentant voluptuary.

He damn well didn’t have a fucking heart.

Such maudlin tripe was for females. It only existed in fanciful books that were written for wide-eyed virgins who weren’t yet jaded enough to realize that love was naught but a fiction.

“Yes.” His sister was solemn as she looked up at him, her blue eyes so like his, far too knowing for a young woman of her tender years. “You’ve fallen in love with her, haven’t you?”

He stared at Rhiannon, aghast, unable to speak.

Because she was right, curse her. He had fallen in love with Miranda Lenox. That was this feeling, this weight in his chest, this deep and abiding rightness he felt whenever she was in his arms.

Love was real, and he was an idiot.

“What are you going to do about it?” Rhiannon asked.