Page 23 of The Dark Duke’s Cinderella (The Untamed Ladies #1)

CHAPTER 23

P hilip staggered backward, almost knocking his glass from the mantelpiece. He looked at George, intent on discovering whether this was some sort of prank—something Alicia had faked to drive a final wedge between him and Anna.

He knew George too well to know that this was real.

George shrugged as Philip gathered his thoughts, sitting on the coffee table in the center of the room. Philip could see this sincerity in his eyes—the defeated slump of his shoulders. George had every right to be cross with him after what had happened to Anna, and yet he still trusted him enough to betray Alicia.

“She has lost her mind,” Philip murmured, staring aimlessly into space. “Launching a campaign to ruin my life—no, not just my life. Anna’s life… Tell me this isn’t true.”

“I wish I were lying. Things would be much simpler.” George clasped his hands penitently. “Alicia visited me this morning with the news—says that she plans to confront you and Anna within days, and that if you do not accept the child as your own, she will tell the ton of your misdeed. I knew I had to come and warn you. For what it’s worth, I’m so sorry.”

“Setting aside the cruelty of such an accusation,” Philip said, “why does Alicia think anyone would believe her? I am recently married. I have been in England for less than six weeks.”

“The timeline is delicate, yes, but unfortunately credible…” George let out a long sigh, leaning forward on his arms. He looked like he might be sick. “She returned to England a few weeks before you, didn’t she? Well, she claims that the two of you reconnected before any of us knew, and that conception happened shortly after.”

“But you don’t believe her.”

“Not a whit. She revealed her pregnancy to me a few days before your wedding, and at that point, she made no mention of you being the father. I suspect she concocted this plan as a final attempt to separate you and Anna.”

“But if you knew…” Philip tensed. “Were you trying to set Alicia and me up to conceal her condition? To trick me into thinking?—”

George shot to his feet. “Never. I swear my life on it. Had I known about things sooner, I would never have suggested that the two of you try and reconnect. I wouldn’t do that to you. I feel like such a fool. She latched onto the idea of being courted by you immediately—was so forward.

I should have seen the signs. She must have thought you would be quickest to marry, given your previous acquaintance, or that you would easily succumb to your vices, and then claiming you fathered her child would have been an easy trick.”

“Easy, except for when the child is born and undoubtedly has the air of an Italian actor,” Philip scoffed, not wanting to hear any more about Alicia’s perverse plans. “She has tried to come between me and Anna on our wedding day. What does she possibly stand to gain by accusing me of this now? I am married and not likely to abandon my new wife for her.”

“The state of your marriage is not unknown to us.” George choked on his words, and Philip dreaded what would come next. “I foolishly told Alicia that you and Anna were entering into a marriage of convenience. She hopes that your already fragile marriage will be annulled if she comes forward—by Magnus retracting his consent upon discovering your bastard. And since she assumes you have no regard for Anna…”

“She believes I will agree to the annulment to protect my reputation. Claim her bastard as my own and finance whatever lifestyle she pleases. Assuming, of course, that there would even be grounds for the annulment. Magnus could not think lower of Alicia and might refrain from intervening out of spite.”

“Evidently, she has not thought that far ahead. I have no real idea what is going through her mind. These are the actions of a desperate woman. And it’s not like the truth matters anyway.”

“The accusation alone would be enough to ruin us all.” Philip looked out the windows overlooking the garden, a dark cloud forming on the horizon. His head was spinning. “I am grateful but surprised that you chose not to believe her.”

“I don’t know what she expected.” George threw his hands up in defeat, storming over to the side table for a glass of punch. “She made no mention of you fathering this child until you and Anna were married. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that, despite my very real anger toward you, I know you would never stoop so low as to conduct an affair with my cousin behind my back. Not of this nature anyway. It is an obvious lie.”

They were silent for a moment. Philip’s mind whirred, trying to conceive a decent plan to thwart Alicia. What could be done against a woman who had nothing more to lose? She would take everyone down with her and watch them burn.

“Anna is my priority,” he said, not realizing he had spoken aloud. He yielded when George looked up at him. “Neither of us asked to be on the receiving end of Alicia’s wickedness, but my actions were the catalyst for this marriage. I will not allow Anna to suffer. Whatever must be done to stop Alicia, I will do it so long as time is on our side.”

A hopeful expression swept over George’s freckled face. “Those aren’t the words of a begrudging husband. You genuinely care for her, don’t you?”

More than she can ever know .

At that moment, Philip felt more than heard someone appear in the doorway. He turned and found Anna standing there, a hand pressed to her chest. Her face was pale, and she looked as drained as he felt.

His blood turned to ice in his veins as he realized what she must have heard.

“Anna,” George gasped, frozen in shock. “What did you?—”

“I heard everything,” she confessed, blanching further. The little quiver in her lip almost undid Philip. “About Alicia and the baby, about what she plans to do…”

“Why are you not in the dining room?” he asked, wishing she had been anywhere but there.

“I wanted to speak with you in private.” She flinched as though in pain. “But that can wait now, can’t it? It’s hard to believe any of this is true. I loved Alicia, and I thought she loved me.”

“Love is not the all-powerful force we hope it to be,” George said, crossing the room to take her hands in his own. “Alicia’s fear and panic have changed her, Anna. But I still have hope she can be redeemed.”

“You are welcome to try, but you will be acting alone.” Anna detached herself from her cousin and walked toward Philip. “Clearing your name is all that matters to me now.”

A strange warm feeling swept over Philip.

Anna was his light in the dark. She was stronger than he had known, more devoted than she had led him to believe. It wasn’t just their marriage binding them, but something more.

“For now,” she continued through a shaky breath, “we must attend the dinner party, or else the guests will grow suspicious. I take it neither of you has a plan? Then I’ll start thinking about what we can do, and we’ll discuss things in the morning. Time is on our side. Alicia is a singer. She loves dramatic suspense. She is waiting for the right moment to lift the curtain. And we must stop her before she can…”

* * *

Rain fell in rivulets down the windows of the room Philip occupied. Anna stood at the door as lightning illuminated the darkened space in bursts. The sounds of the storm had concealed her movements that night—leaving her chambers, slipping past the rooms of sleeping guests, and navigating her way through the manor until she came upon her husband.

She had known he would be awake. He spent as little time as possible in his father’s old bed chamber, and what George had revealed that evening had guaranteed a sleepless night for them both.

She rapped gently on the door.

Philip gasped softly and glanced over his shoulder. He relaxed as he squinted in the dark and saw that it was Anna. A candle flickered beside him in its holder, illuminating his face and tugging at her anxious heart.

“Sleep wouldn’t find me either,” Anna admitted, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. “I thought you would be in your study. When I didn’t find you there, I roamed the halls for a while. What is this room for?”

“Only God knows,” Philip replied after a moment, turning back to the view of the rain falling in sheets over Cotoneaster. “Mother must have had some use for it before her death, but as you can see, all the furniture has been covered. Too great a task for Elinor to do before her party.”

Anna nodded as she looked around, weaving through the mounds of furniture covered with sheets. A larger object stood in the middle of the room, hidden beneath a sheet of fabric that was different from the others. Philip leaned on something sturdy in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, and she joined him there without protest on his part, her nightgown ghosting across the floor.

“Do you wish to be left alone?” she asked.

“I haven’t enough fight in me to send you away tonight. After what was revealed, I am surprised it is not you who is hiding from me.” He looked over at her, and in the proceeding flash of lightning, she could swear she saw tenderness and fear in his eyes. “If you are willing to accept it, I would like to extend you an apology.”

“But only if I am willing to accept it?”

“It seems pointless to offer an apology otherwise.” He looked down at his feet. He was still dressed in his clothes from the party, except his jacket and vest. She traced the shape of his shoulder through his shirt. “All of this is my fault.”

“You have done nothing to make Alicia act the way she has.”

“Yes, but if I had been in better possession of myself, I would never have kissed you and forced you to marry me. You would have been free to lead an altogether different, more peaceful life. And Alicia would have left you alone.”

He gripped the object behind him, his hands flexing against the fabric. It warmed her to be close to him, despite everything, on that cold and stormy night. Elinor’s advice rang in her ears. She had delayed telling him the truth once—not again.

“I don’t regret what happened for a second,” she whispered, too scared to look at him. “Not one bit. Our chance meeting, the kiss, the marriage… Even if I could go back and change things, I would not. Even if I had a hundred lives to live, I would find my way back to you every time.”

Philip was silent for a moment, his brow furrowed in thought. His lips parted softly, breaking her heart.

“Am I the one who should apologize now?” she asked, trying not to cry.

“No.” His voice was soft, almost broken. “But that you would say this now… If we cannot stop Alicia?—”

“We will. I’m not a soldier like you, but I understand a few things about war. They say it is easiest to conquer an enemy you know intimately. And while you may not know the first thing about her, I do. More than she thinks.”

“You have something in mind?”

Anna thought back to the weeks prior, a small thing Sophia had said when she was feeding them their usual gossip.

“Yes. It’s like you and George were saying… the ton won’t care what the truth is when Alicia spreads her lies. Our only chance is to stop her before that happens. We must find the real father and force him to come forward… and I think I know where to start.” She turned to Philip. “Some time ago, a friend of mine mentioned seeing Alicia with a gentleman arguing in public. There’s no guarantee he and Alicia’s paramour are one and the same, but it’s worth trying to track him down.”

Philip frowned. “You think that’s possible?”

“I don’t see why not. I am better connected than you think.”

It was partly a lie. She knew Lady Jane, and that connected her by proxy to just about every person who mattered in society.

“And if this man is not the father?” Philip asked. “Or if he is but refuses to take accountability for his actions?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. And if it crumbles beneath us, then we will exile ourselves to France on that mission of yours.”

There it was again, the implication that she loved him and would follow him anywhere. If that made her sound pathetic, so be it. She couldn’t have been the only wife in the world who wanted her husband to remain at her side, especially when danger lurked around every corner.

Most marriages would have folded under the weight of an accusation like Alicia’s, but they were stronger together.

She hoped that this time he wouldn’t ignore her. If he didn’t feel the same and told her, maybe she could move on.

Philip bumped into her as he moved, coming to stand in front of her. Lightning sliced silently through the sky outdoors, and the rumble of thunder followed as he eclipsed the light before her.

“You would stand by me even if the entire ton reviled me?” He didn’t give Anna time to answer, even though it would have been an instantaneous yes. “I don’t deserve that.”

“It’s not about what you deserve. It’s about what I want to do.” She scoffed at her words. “Which more or less sums up our entire marriage so far, don’t you think? You always thinking you know what’s best for me. Well, I know what’s best for me… and it’s you.”

The air between them was charged with more than electricity.

“Knowing what you do now…” she trailed off, fearing his answer. “What are you going to tell the Duke of Wellington?”

“Before tonight, I hadn’t made up my mind. It should have been easy to accept the position abroad. The colonel in me longs to go, but the husband…” He gritted his teeth, closing the space between them. “Curse him! The husband cannot stand the thought of being apart from you.”

Philip reached for her hand in the darkness and found it, his body pressing against hers. Anna’s skin burned where he touched her.

“It goes against my every vow to you to want to remain here. I have seen the way women wilt in their marriages. The thought that you could become another victim at the hands of a Wilmington tyrant has made it possible—not easy—to keep my distance from you.”

“I won’t be a victim, because you will not allow it.” Anna cupped his face in her free hand. He pressed his cheek into her palm, and she was so happy she could have burst into tears. “You do not have to repeat the mistakes of your forebearers. I am not a sadist like my father. And I do not turn a blind eye to wickedness like my mother. If I can choose to be better than them, so can you. I believe that with all my heart.”

She started as Philip leaned forward, pulling her into his arms and holding her close. He stroked the back of her hair—but he was the one who needed soothing. Her hands tentatively searched his back, holding him tightly against her.

“I would be a fool not to trust such a pure and valiant heart as yours,” Philip said.

He cradled her face, and she melted under his touch. Lightning flashed across the sky beyond the glass as he walked her backward, his lips finding hers. She came alive with his kiss, her face warming as they backed into something solid.

A discordant series of notes rang out in the silence. Philip broke the kiss and looked down at her, laughing softly. Anna turned to inspect the object behind them, pulling away the cloth that had been covering it.

“A piano,” she whispered, playing a note once the keyboard was revealed and finding it in tune. “Has this been here the whole time?”

“It’s yours,” Philip revealed, placing his hands on her shoulders. “I ordered it the day after we arrived, hoping it would occupy you. I was waiting for the right moment to show it to you.”

“Now is the right moment,” she whispered, pulling him in for another kiss.