Page 53 of Unseen

HONOUR

“ I s it true?”

Azriel glanced over at me with a frustrated sigh. “You finally speak, and ask me that?”

“What else am I meant to ask you?” I tugged the shawl around my shoulders, the fire having finally warmed me enough that I could once again function. “I beg your pardon, husband, but you were just challenged to a duel, and I would like to know if there was any reason in it.”

Azriel stretched his legs from him with a strained breath.

He was still in his trousers, but his shirt lay open, baring his chest and stomach.

“Then I shall tell you what I told him, and that is, it is not possible for that child to be mine. Any child I may have fathered before my departure for Greece would be well on its way by now.”

“So there are others?”

Azriel slammed a fist into the table, sending a vase toppling to the floor and making me jump. “God dammit, Evie, but you are stupid sometimes.”

I snatched my slipper from my foot and hurled it at his head, cursing as it sailed straight past him. “You dare call me stupid when you are the one who just entered into a fight to the death over something that isn’t even true? That isn’t even possible? You are stupid, Azriel, not I!”

“You women wouldn’t understand,” he muttered as he got to his feet, pouring himself a glass of brandy.

“We women understand plenty, you pig.” I got to my feet, fists balled at my sides, and resisted the urge to storm across the room and slap him. “We women understand that you men have no honour, no sense, and certainly no thought for what your actions mean for the rest of us!”

Azriel pointed a finger in my direction. “Watch yourself now.”

“Or what?” I planted my hands on my hips. “Or what, Azriel? Are you going to beat me? Put me in my place?”

He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Oh, you are a thorn in my side.”

“One you put there, may I remind you?”

“Evie, enough.” He gulped down the brandy, sucking on his teeth. “I do not need this behaviour right now.”

“No, you need to explain to me what in heaven’s name just happened, and why you agreed to a damned duel?”

“I do not need to explain anything to you!” He bellowed, and now I could not restrain myself any longer, rushing at him and showering open slaps against his head.

“You utter bastard!” I screamed. “You tell me now what happened! Tell me!”

Azriel grabbed my wrists, eyes blazing as he leered down at me. “Nothing happened! Nothing! Lucy de la Croix looks like a horse and has a cunt wide enough to ride a carriage through.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because every man in London has had her!” Azriel hurled back at me .

“Even you?” I wrinkled my nose in disgust. “I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose.”

“No, not even me!” Azriel took my shoulders, shaking me with barely contained restraint. “I wouldn’t go near her, and she hated me for it!”

“So she blamed a child that isn’t her husband’s on you? When it isn’t even possible?”

“It would seem so.” Azriel sighed heavily, his grip on my shoulders easing, stroking me gently. “It is ridiculous, Evie. All of it. It cannot be mine.”

“Then why did you agree to the duel?”

He exhaled heavily, his hands dropping my shoulders. “Damn it, Evie.” He turned away from me, running a hand through his hair.

“Why, Azriel?”

He spun back to me, his eyes like beacons in his tanned face. “Because of honour!”

“What do you care for honour? You, who has told me again and again that the opinion of others means nothing, that there is no good society, now you worry about honour?”

“Honour is all I have left!” Azriel jabbed his fingers against his bare chest. “What do you think they all see when they look at me? Hmm? What do you think my father said about me? What he made them all believe about me? What do you think they would all say if Azriel Caine, the gambler, the philanderer, the man who married his own stepmother, what do you think they would say about me if I refused to stand for my honour in the face of such accusations?”

“Do you think this will prove anything to them?” I scoffed, shaking my head. “Do you think that if you hold up a pistol under the rising sun that they will suddenly believe that you are an honourable, worthy man?”

“It is not that simple,” he muttered, and poured himself another brandy .

“De la Croix, he said something to you. Something I could not hear.” I took a few steps closer to Azriel, who refused to look at me. “What did he say to you? What hold does he have over you that made you agree to this duel?”

“Nothing.” He took another sip. “Nothing at all.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He threw the glass across the room, sending it shattering against the fireplace. “Then do not believe me, Evie, but I do not know what else you wish for me to say!”

“The truth, damn you!”

“Then here it is!” Azriel snatched me close, pressing his body against me.

“De la Croix stank of whiskey, and he’s enraged, and consumed by emotion.

He is a bad shot at the best of times, but under those circumstances, he will be pathetic.

He dies at dawn. I make his wife a widow in a few short hours, and she shall be wealthy and shall raise that bastard in all happiness, with no doubt a new man to take her on in time.

So stop worrying your little head about it all. ”

I shoved my hands against his chest. “Don’t you dare belittle me like this. Don’t you dare make light of all of this, of what it could mean for me. Not now, not when you have made me fall-” My eyes snapped up to his, and I writhed out of his grasp.

“What were you going to say, Evie?”

I pushed the hair from my face. “Nothing at all.”

“You’re lying.” He grabbed my arm, forcing me to turn back to him. “What were you going to say?”

I glared at him. “Do not make me say it now. I shall say it if you come back to me tomorrow.”

Azriel lifted an eyebrow. “An enticement for my survival.”

“I should damned well hope so.” I swallowed hard, holding his gaze. “But if you do not, then what becomes of me? I have not forgotten what should occur in the case of your death, I hope you haven’t either.”

Azriel’s eyes dropped from mine, and he reached into the pocket of his trousers. “The letter?” He raised up an envelope, and my heart leapt into my throat as I saw my handwriting on it. “This letter?”

“You have had it this whole time?”

He shook his head. “No. I only recently retrieved it.”

“You fool, it could have fallen from your pocket and anyone could have seen it,” I snapped, cursing my voice for wavering.

Azriel smiled weakly, crossing the room to the fire, and tossing the envelope into the flames. “Well, now no one shall see it ever again, shall they?”

I watched as my death warrant turned to ash, smouldering away slowly. “No, I suppose they shall not.”

Azriel braced a hand against the mantlepiece, brow furrowed as he stared at the flames. “You are free now, Evie. You may do precisely as you like. In the event of my death, everything goes to you.” He gazed over his shoulder at me. “Perhaps all your dreams may yet come true.”

I flew at him, scratching and clawing at his face. “Stop that! Don’t you dare… Don’t you dare…”

He took my face in his hands and kissed me, and instantly my arms were around his neck. A sob broke from me, mingling between our heated lips, and suddenly the worst thing in the world was the thought that I would lose him.

I loved him. I knew it. I loved him so much, my soul felt it would shatter and crumble without him.

“I should have killed him,” Azriel murmured against my lips, and I knew he wasn’t talking about de la Croix. “I should have killed him, the moment he brought you home.” He tore open the buttons of my nightgown, sending it falling to the floor.

“Yes,” I breathed, fumbling with his trousers, desperate to feel his skin against mine. “I wish I’d woken one night, when you were in my room.” My head fell back as his mouth explored my neck. “I wish you’d taken me then.”

“I should have.” Azriel shuffled off his clothes, and I wrapped my naked body around his. “I should have fucked you, every single night, whether you wanted me or not.”

I moaned at his words, and he lifted me up, carrying me to the wall. I gasped as my skin connected with the cold wood, a gasp that was quickly snatched away from me as Azriel’s length sank into me.

“I wanted you,” I cried. “I always wanted you. Even when I did not know it.” I whimpered, feeling as though he would break me open. “Even when I hated you, I wanted you.”

“It was always you, Evie,” he groaned against my neck. “You were always mine.”

“Yes.” My fingers clawed into his back, and I hissed in a breath. “Oh god, slow down, please.”

“You want this to last, do you?”

I bit my lip and nodded, and Azriel carried me back to the fire, kneeling before the flames, keeping himself inside me. I eased myself all the way down his length, steadying myself on his shoulders, and looked down between us.

“Do you see, wife?” He asked, and groaned as I rolled my hips. “Do you see who you belong to?”

I raised my eyes back to his, and rolled my hips again. “And who do you belong to?”

He hissed, his hands digging into my hips. “You, beloved.”

“Only me?” I rammed myself down on him, and we both moaned loudly.

“Yes, beloved. Only you. Only ever you.”

I fucked him slowly, delighting in the pinch of his brow, the way his mouth fell open as he panted, the way he looked down to where we were joined and back again at my face. My husband. My lover. The one who had set me free.

He skated a hand down my body, pressing his thumb against my sensitive nub, and heat coiled in my belly. I bit my lip, shaking my head, my hands shaking as I held on to him.

“Oh god,” I gasped. “Gently. Not yet. I don’t want to… Oh .”

“Do not fight it, Evie. We have time.”

The words made my eyes sting, and a solitary tear rolled down the side of my face. We had hours, only a few until dawn. Until the carriage would come and take Azriel away. It could not be that now I loved him, that he would be taken from me.

I could not believe the world was so cruel.

But perhaps this would be my punishment.

As I came undone on top of him, I moaned and sobbed, wrapping my arms around his neck and holding him close.

“I won’t let you go,” I whispered, trembling. “We will run away. We will run away from here.”

Azriel clasped his arms around my waist, laying me out on the ground. He ground himself into me, groaning loudly. “I will come back to you, beloved. I swear it.” With one last, hard thrust, he came inside me, breathing heavily against my neck. “I will come back, just to hear you say you love me.”

I clasped a hand to my face, willing the tears to go away. “If something happens to you-”

“Nothing will happen to me.” He took my face in his hands, gazing down at me. “Nothing. Do you understand?”

“I do not want to live without you.” I blinked away my tears, reaching up to stroke his cheek. “I cannot. Not now.”

“And you shall not. I am not dying, not now, not when I have everything I ever desired right here in front of me.”