Page 54 of Miss Hawthorne’s Unlikely Husband (The Troublemakers Trilogy #3)

“Get the fuck off me.” He snarled.

“Don’t you remember how it was before?”

“Rachel, I swear to Christ if you put your hands on me one more time, I will rip them off.”

She smirked, reached for him and the door swung open. Richard turned to see Elodia standing there, her eyes wide with confusion. “What is happening?” she asked. Behind her stood Leo, Regina and Lord Melbroke.

Richard couldn’t speak. It was like a nightmare. Mouth agape, Elodia’s eyes slid from Richard to Rachel, half undressed and widened in outrage.

“You—” she stalked forward, nostrils flaring and slapped Rachel to the ground. It was incredible to see the power she housed in that petite body. He’d heard about it from Ada, but he’d never witnessed what she was truly like in a rage.

“You impudent little slut, what the hell are you doing here with my husband?” she growled.

Rachel looked up, wide eyed with shock, before turning to her fiancé. “Melbroke, are you going to do something about this?”

“Not yet,” he replied coolly. “What do you mean, Lady Tremaine, by getting locked in this room half undressed with my son-in-law?”

Her eyes widened. “Aren’t you going to ask why he’s in here with me?”

Richard looked at her in shock. Was she really going to try and turn this around on him and play the victim?

“No,” Lord Melbroke replied, “because I sent him here with a message he received in front of all of us. I know why he’s here, but why are you?”

“And why are you undressed, ma’am?” Ada asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” she shrieked, scrambling to her feet and turning to Elodia. “Your husband attacked—”

“Before you slide further into your web of lies,” Basil began, “I feel that it’s important to point out that the door was locked. The likelihood that you entered a room already occupied by someone and they managed to lock you in with them as well, is low at best.”

“He attacked me!” She insisted.

“Did he attack you because you were trying to molest him?” Elodia asked.

Rachel gasped again, her eyes flooding with tears. Her theatrics were impressive, if ineffective. “Why on earth would I even bother—”

“Why was the door locked?” Lord Melbroke asked.

Rachel blinked rapidly. “How would I know? Perhaps he arranged for it to happen, just as his repulsive uncle.”

Melbroke’s eyes narrowed as though he was about to lose his temper. “For that to be true, he would have needed to ask you to meet him in this room and close the door. If he was here first, then you would have seen the room was occupied, entered it regardless and you closed it.”

“Are you accusing me of something, my lord?”

“ Accuse? It is clear as day what you did and how shameless you are,” Elodia railed.

Rachel’s mouth hung open, her flushed face now bearing a visible handprint. “I am shameless? You were parading yourself in front of the ton with your—”

Something silvery fell onto the carpet from her chest and she fell silent. Richard took one step forward, bent over and picked up the key before showing it to his father-in-law and dropping it into his open palm.

Melbroke stared at her. “I don’t suppose you have an explanation for this, do you?”

She burst into tears, garbling on about her innocence and her hurt dignity. Richard looked away, unable to watch any longer. He wasn’t in danger of being deemed a rapist, but he was tired. So fucking tired of all of it.

“That is quite enough.” Lord Melbroke said, his voice low and resonant, his face implacable. “Mr. Thornfield, will you take my daughter home, please?”

“Yes, my lord,”

“I believe it’s time we all left,” Basil replied.

Elodia finally took her furious gaze from Rachel, only to grab Richard’s wrist and drag him out the door behind her.

Once they were in the carriage, he finally brought himself to look at her.

She was curled up in a furious ball, her eyes fixed on the window of the carriage seat.

He couldn’t speak. He felt nauseous, a sickly sweat covering his body at the idea of Elodia knowing the full truth.

He would have to tell her, there was no way around it, but he still hated it.

“What was that?” she said finally, still refusing to look at him.

“Ellie,”

“I knew she was far too forward with you. I knew something was wrong with her. Who is she to you?”

“Can we discuss this at home?” he pleaded.

“No.” She turned her head to face him and tears glinted in her eyes.

“For a time she was… my lover,” he replied, as he grew sicker with shame.

She stared at him for a long moment, so long he wondered if she had heard him over the horses. “Your what?”

“My lover. We had a sort of arrangement for some years.”

She blinked again. “How many years?”

“Does it matter?” He needed fresh air.

“Yes, it bloody well does,” she snapped.

He’d always wanted her to treat him as a mere mortal. Had wanted her to know that she could be angry with him without consequence. Now he was about to experience the feeling for the first time and he was not enjoying it. “I was around nineteen when I first met her.” He couldn’t look at her anymore.

“And when did this arrangement end?”

“Earlier this year.”

Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “How much earlier?”

“A few months ago.” He nearly left it there, but with every half answer, he could feel her ire increasing. Her ire and her distrust. She deserved his honesty. “At the beginning of the season. When I decided to marry, I broke it off. It was before you confessed to me before any of that.”

“Is she aware of the fact that your arrangement is broken off?”

“Yes. But she refused to accept it no matter what I said or did.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” she asked, turning her body to face him.

“Because it’s not exactly the sort of thing one mentions to a fiancée, let alone a wife. It’s not the sort of information a gentleman spreads around at all.”

“But when my father began to court her. How could you stand by and allow my father to court and marry your former lover, knowing that she refused to accept the end of your relationship?”

“Because I didn’t know how to. There are rules of engagement for this sort of thing and frankly, I never truly imagined she would take it so far. It was going to hurt her more than me in any event.”

“That remains to be seen,” she grumbled.

The carriage came to a stop and he bolted out, pausing to help her down before they entered their home.

She marched ahead of him, a furious little thing, holding herself tightly.

He didn’t know if it was to comfort herself or to keep herself from slapping him as well.

He followed her to her room where Béa was waiting.

“Béa, can we have the room for a moment?” he asked, and she nodded before leaving, closing the door behind her.

The minute it clicked shut, she whirled on him. “You had to be aware that she was trying to do something with you.”

“I was. You have to believe me, Ellie, I kept turning her down. I didn’t want to be with her. Especially after I knew my feelings for you.”

“She even had the audacity to lock herself in a room with you, undress as if preparing for a dalliance and attempt to pin her actions on you.”

“I know,” he said, closing his eyes to block out her angry, disappointed face.

“Did she think that would be enough encouragement or did she know it would be?”

His eyes opened again, as disbelief flooded his mind. Tears were streaming down her cheeks now. He hated to see her cry. “What are you saying?”

“After nearly a decade, she must know you very well indeed. Far better than I do.”

He shook his head in denial. “That is not true.”

“It must be. Because I cannot fathom how the man I love and admire could be entangled with such a woman. A crude, selfish, common bigot.”

“It wasn’t exactly my preference to be with her.” He started towards her but she held up a hand to stop him.

“I find it hard to believe that you would stay in a relationship with a person for over a decade because of what, convenience?”

He didn’t have an answer. The fact of the matter was it had been exactly that, but she wouldn’t understand it.

“Did you love her?” she asked.

“No.”

“Did you like her?”

“No.”

She scoffed. “You must have felt something for her. Was it attraction?”

“In part.”

Her face grew more incredulous by the second. “ In part? It had to be significant for you to overlook so much. For you to allow her access to your person so intimately and for so long.”

He didn’t know what to say. She was too romantic, too sheltered to believe the truth without it affecting the way she viewed him in the worst way. “Are you expecting me to answer that?”

“Do you expect me to believe that there is truly nothing between the two of you when you only ended a decade long relationship a few months ago?”

“There was no relationship between her and I,” he insisted.

“She clearly feels something for you.”

He scraped his hands through his hair. “All she feels, if you can call it that, is a sense of ownership. She sees me as a plaything she owns and cannot fathom the idea that I can make choices of my own volition. There is no feeling on either of our parts.”

“Then how could you give yourself to someone like that? How could you bear to have her touch you? Was it so easy to ignore that because of the way she looks?”

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s beautiful and has the sort of body men like. Clearly you were not an exception to that.”

Was this jealousy? Did she think that he was in some way still attracted to her? “Elodia,”

“And it is so disappointing because I thought you were a person who would see past those things. I never imagined that you would debase yourself with such a person for the sake of something so immaterial.”

“Immaterial?” Did she think it was easy to go through life being undesired and unwanted? Being seen as an oddity?

“Yes.”

“Elodia.” His throat tightened uncomfortably. “You couldn’t understand.”

“I understand well enough. But there is nothing that could induce me to give what I’ve given to you to someone like that.” With that, she turned her back and began angrily removing her jewelry and the flowers in her hair.

He’d known she would see him like this, that she would be repulsed by him, but he hadn’t been prepared for how much it would hurt.

His mouth was dry and the room was spinning.

All over. He couldn’t bear it. He needed her to understand.

“I was young and lonely. My parents had just passed away. I had spent my entire life at that point as a curiosity.”

“I know what that’s like.” She snapped.

He shook his head. “No, you don’t. Your status is the curiosity, not your entire being.

There are places in this country where you can blend in even if it isn’t within your natural sphere.

There is nowhere for me here. I might as well be from another planet.

In the eyes of others, I am either an effeminate clown or an unnatural deviant. ”

“That is not true.”

“Yes, it is. If you go back to Trinidad, you have a culture you recognize, a place to belong. I do not have that anywhere, not here or in my mother’s country. My existence is alien. Do you know what that is like?”

She stared at him in silence, her eyes wide.

“Why was I with Lady Tremaine? Because I felt half dead and I wanted to be touched and she was the only one who would do so without being paid. Not everyone has the luxury of options. When you are hungry enough, you eat what’s in front of you.”

The words were ugly and crude, but they had been the truth at last. And now the one person who had loved him enough to touch him the way he’d ached for was looking at him as if he was some kind of filthy mongrel.

He ran his hand over his face, a bitter taste in his mouth and turned to go to his room.

He didn’t need her to tell him she didn’t want him in her bed tonight, or any other night.

Not after this. He paused in the doorway.

“I’m sorry if that makes me disgusting in your eyes.

And I’m sorry to have disappointed you. I never wanted to hurt you or embarrass your father. ”