Late the following morning, as the carriage neared Rutherford Park, Vander deliberately put aside all the passion of the night he and Mia shared.
That was over. His four nights were spent . . . used up.
As Mia’s husband, he could demand more nights; he could refuse to let her see Edward Reeve. Some ferocious part of him that cared nothing for right or wrong wanted to lock her in his bedchamber. She was his, damn it.
But another part couldn’t ignore that Mia had made it clear, repeatedly, that she loved Reeve and had been heartbroken when he’d left her at the altar. She had only requested a temporary marriage with him in a desperate bid to keep Charlie safe.
But Reeve hadn’t jilted her after all. The man Mia loved had returned.
And Vander wasn’t a man who could accept a woman who loved another.
By all rights, he should prepare Mia for the likelihood that her former fiancé would be waiting when they reached home. He should explain to her that Reeve had never left her at the altar, and, what’s more, had risked his life to return to her.
But the ungovernable side of him—the side that never had been a gentleman—rejected the idea. Hell, maybe the man wouldn’t arrive today. Maybe Vander would have another night with her.
They pulled up at the front entrance, footmen hurrying out to meet them. Leaving the carriage, he said merely, “I shall settle Jafeer and the other horses in the stable, Duchess, and I’ll be in the house directly.”
A smile teased the corners of Mia’s mouth, a reminder of their evening activities. Heat rushed through him, settling low. He nearly reached out and pulled her into his arms.
Instead, he turned and strode away with a muttered curse.
Vander reached the stables to find that Reeve had indeed arrived, several hours before. When the horses were once again safely in Mulberry’s hands, he headed back to the house. Despite everything he knew to be true, a faint hope was beating a rhythm in his chest.
But when Gaunt opened the drawing room door, Vander went cold at the sight of Mia sobbing in Edward Reeve’s arms.
His wife’s head was nestled against the man’s chest, hands clenching his coat. Reeve’s head was bent over Mia, and he was murmuring something, his arms tight, possessive, around her.
Every fiber in Vander rejected what he saw. Barely contained fury rode him hard; he scarcely controlled the impulse to kill the man touching his wife.
But there was the rub: she wasn’t really his wife. He was no more than a temporary husband. A means to an end.
If there had been any doubt as to how he should proceed, the scene made up his mind. He, more than any man, knew that it was impossible to keep a woman who loved another man. Mia had loved her fiancé. Still loved him, as was clear from their tender reunion.
Reeve had been haunting their marriage from the beginning. Now here he was, back from the dead, having fought his way out of prison to return to the woman he loved. It was a romantic twist worthy of Lucibella Delicosa.
Mia didn’t notice when Vander entered the room, but Reeve’s head came up and their eyes met. If Vander had bothered to imagine Mia’s fiancé, he would have pictured a weedy academic, a spectacle-wearing professor stooped from too much reading and too little physical activity. A coward who had run from the reality of raising a disabled child.
Instead, Reeve was as large as Vander. His nose had recently been broken, which gave him the air of a boxer. Yet Thorn had described him as brilliant, and Reeve had the indefinable self-assurance of an Oxford professor, suggesting Thorn was right.
Reeve clearly caught the murderous look in Vander’s eyes, and his own narrowed. They were the eyes of a man who had just broken out of a prison designed to hold the kingdom’s most violent prisoners. This was a man who would fight to the death for his woman.
Hell, that was no surprise. Any man would fight for Mia.
She raised her head, putting one of her hands on Reeve’s cheek. “I simply cannot bear to think how much torment you have suffered,” she said, her voice wavering. “I feel terrible that I ever introduced you to Sir Richard! If it weren’t for me, none of this would have happened.”
Reeve murmured something inaudible, and Mia turned out of his arms, her hands falling to her sides. “Vander, you will not believe what has happened!” she cried. “This is Edward Reeve, who didn’t jilt me after all. Charlie’s despicable uncle threw him in prison on false charges, and he nearly lost his life.” Another sob broke from her throat. “He almost died!”
Vander moved forward the last few paces and bowed. “Reeve,” he said flatly.
“Your Grace.” Reeve bowed after a calculated delay, just enough to turn his gesture into a challenge.
Mia seemed oblivious to the battle of wills vibrating in the air between the two men. Her face was anguished, eyes full of tears. “Vander, this is horrible: Edward escaped from prison just as he was about to be sent to Botany Bay.” She swallowed hard and tears spilled again. “And it was all my fault!”
It was Reeve who stated the obvious. “The fault is Sir Richard’s, not yours, Mia.”
Use of her first name was, to Vander’s mind, a naked declaration of war.
“You could have lost an eye!” Mia cried, reaching out to touch the black bruise that went down Reeve’s face. “To think you might have died in prison, and no one would ever have known where you were.” A sob escaped and she pressed a handkerchief to her mouth.
Watching her, Vander felt an icy calm move through his veins. He didn’t want a wife who sobbed over another man’s pain. She was his on paper, but her heart was Reeve’s.
“I feel so awful that I didn’t have faith in you!” Mia gave Reeve a watery smile. “Yet the whole story is unbelievable. You must admit that it sounds like something from one of my novels.”
“I fully expect to see my adventures in a bookstore one day,” Reeve said. He turned to Vander. “My parents’ Runners are still on their way to India, hoping to find me there. I gather you know that it was your Runner who learned the truth. He had tracked me to Scotland and was trying to decide how to proceed when I escaped from prison. I am indebted to both of you, as he was very helpful in dispersing the guards on my trail.”
Vander saw Mia’s brows draw together, and uttered a silent curse.
“Vander’s Runner?” she said, her handkerchief falling to the floor. “What on earth are you saying, Edward?”
“I hired a Bow Street Runner to find your fiancé,” Vander said. “I thought it unlikely that the man had voluntarily left you at the altar.”
“You did?” She gaped at him. He saw pink coming back into her cheeks. “And you didn’t tell me?” He could see horror dawning in her eyes. “Tell me you didn’t know before today that Edward had escaped from prison. That he hadn’t abandoned me at the altar!”
Judging from her brilliant eyes, her tension and grief had just transformed to a fury not unlike Vander’s own. But before he could respond, Reeve took her shoulders and gently turned her to face him.
“It doesn’t matter, darling,” he said. “I am here. I didn’t leave you stranded. I will do everything it takes to make this right.”
He looked over Mia’s head. “I knew, of course, about the provisions of John Carrington’s will, and Mia has told me of the extreme measures she employed to force you to marry her. I owe you my gratitude.” His jaw visibly clenched, and then he added, “I have strong doubts about how long Charlie would have survived in Sir Richard’s care.”
“I assume you intend to press charges against Sir Richard,” Vander stated.
Reeve smiled, and any remaining hint of a well-polished professor evaporated. His hands dropped from Mia’s shoulders, and his face took on the ferocious anticipation of a lion closing in on a kill. “Of course. I mean to pay him a visit. But Mia came first.” He took one of her hands in his.
It was a calculated gesture. The metaphorical gauntlet hit the pavement with a clatter.
Mia looked down at the fingers encircling he
r hand and then up at Reeve. Her lips parted.
Before she could speak, Reeve said, “We must expeditiously unravel the unfortunate circumstances that resulted from my abduction.”
Vander watched, his jaw tight. But it wasn’t his wife that he saw: it was his mother, gazing at Lord Carrington. That tableau put him in the position of his father, seething with impotent rage.
“I am confident it can be dealt with quickly,” Vander confirmed, not letting on by a flicker of an eyelash that the only thing on his mind was murder. He refused to become his father.
He felt Mia’s eyes on him. “But we’re married,” she whispered.
Vander looked at her and blessedly, felt nothing. He had closed off that part of himself. “As you yourself have told me time and again, Duchess, a divorce can be arranged within six months.” He kept his tone easy and reasonable.
“Especially in this situation, sweetheart,” Reeve added. “The king himself will dissolve the marriage, if my father requests it. The earl is quite close to His Majesty.”
Vander nodded. “In that case, I’ll trust your connections to take care of this.” He had had enough of the tender reunion. “I doubt that you are carrying a child,” he said to Mia. “Barring that, I will raise no barrier to a dissolution.”
Mia pushed away from Reeve, taking a step toward Vander. “That’s all you have to say?” Her voice was rising.
“Yes,” he said, his lips hardly moving. “The man you love has come back to you, Duchess. You were never jilted. You no longer have need of my protection or name.”
She leapt forward, one of those small fists raised, and hit him squarely in the chest. “We are married! I. Am. Your. Duchess!”
He had walked into the room to find his duchess in the arms of another man. The similarity to his parents’ marriage brought on another tidal wave of anger that threatened to pull him under. “By vows that you begged me to annul,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but after that—”
“For God’s sake, Duchess, you’re getting what you wanted,” he bit out. “I’m getting what I wanted. This was a mistake from the beginning, and you know it.”
She fell back a step. “It will be a scandal.”
If he had hoped there was any chance that she meant more by her declaration that she was his duchess, that sentence disabused him of that notion. No woman wanted a scandal, any more than his mother had, but his mother’s fears had come second to being with the man she loved. Still, his mother managed to remain a duchess and keep her lover.
He tightened his hand into a fist, forcing himself to speak calmly. “It may take a few years, but the scandal will settle down. You’ll have Reeve, and I’ll find another duchess. I’m in no hurry.”
She flinched. “I see,” she said, her eyes searching his face.
“You’ve been together for only a few days,” Reeve put in, “so it’s hardly a marriage. It isn’t as if you’ve shared much.”
Mia gasped. Reeve’s brow knitted at the sound, and Vander said nothing, just looked at him steadily. That’s right, you bastard, he thought in some deep, primitive part of his brain. I had her first. She sobbed my name. I took her up against the stable wall and she begged for more.
But Vander’s pulse of triumph evaporated like mist in the sun.
Reeve was taking everything that mattered. He had Mia’s love. He had all her laughter and tenderness. All the courage that meant Mia had never feared him, as a duke or as a man. All the intelligence and creativity and passion that she poured into her novels. All the kindness that had made Chuffy and Jafeer fall promptly in love with her.
Vander bowed and turned to summon Gaunt. He felt like a dead man as he walked across the room.
“One more thing,” Mia said, from behind him.
Vander stilled, halfway to the door.
“You already knew that Edward did not jilt me, but you said nothing.” Her words broke the silence like the sharp crack of a pistol. “Why didn’t you tell me as soon as you learned the truth?”
His mouth tightened before he forced himself to relax. He turned to face her. “I found out yesterday, but I wanted my fourth night, Duchess. I had paid for it.”
“You paid for it?” she repeated slowly. “I paid for those nights, or don’t you remember your accusation?”
“Four nights was the charm.”
“Four nights,” she whispered. “That’s all I was to you: four nights?”
“Don’t make me into a hero, Duchess. You can have only one of those in a story, remember?”
This time, when he walked to the door, no one called his name.
Chapter Thirty
Perhaps all the tears Mia had shed in her short marriage had dried up the supply. Or perhaps there is a kind of grief too bitter for tears. She had been shredded by the world, torn into scraps, and tossed onto the toll road.
Mere scraps of humanity can’t cry.
She departed Rutherford Park with her manuscript and a valise packed with Madame duBois’s creations. She even left Charlie behind, reassuring him that she would send for him as soon as she possibly could. It would be different if she was traveling to Carrington House directly, but Edward didn’t think it was advisable until Sir Richard was in custody. She couldn’t confuse and upset Charlie by dragging him off to an inn with Edward, especially when Sir Richard was still a threat. Instead, she left Susan behind to take care of him.
For the first several minutes as their carriage bowled down the road, Mia stared silently out the window, trying in vain to harden herself. Her treacherous heart was screaming, demanding that she stop the carriage and return to Vander. Plead with him to keep her, seduce him if she had to . . .
Had she no pride? The man had taken his four nights and turned his back. Grief and rage were battling, but misery was threatening to win and pull her under when Edward leaned forward and put a hand on her knee.
“I’ve been in prison, Mia, but there hasn’t been one hour as painful as that conversation with the duke. I’m sorry it happened.”
“Vander just handed me off.” Her voice caught and she took a deep breath. “He didn’t even argue. I was no more to him than a wrongly addressed parcel.”
“Some men do not give wedding vows the same weight as do women,” Edward said carefully.
Mia felt as if a hole had opened up inside her, a well of pain that went back to her father’s dismissive attitude and her brother’s refusal to even consider her as an appropriate guardian to Charlie.
At the same time, her whole body ached at the idea of never seeing or touching Vander again. It was inconceivable. Impossible. He couldn’t have really given her away.
But he had.
“He never asked what I thought,” she said, her voice strained with pain. She hated the pity in Edward’s eyes, so she added, “We only married a week or so ago, and he was beastly to me most of the time. I’ll recover.” It wasn’t true. She’d never recover.
“Yet he was the man for whom you wrote that poem. The poem you told me about.”
“Yes.”
“Were you glad when I didn’t appear at the altar?” His voice was as steady and calm as always.
Guilt ripped through her again. “No! Of course I wasn’t! I loved—I mean, I love you. It’s just that—”
“The result was that you married him.”
“I had no choice,” she cried, wrapping her arms around herself and choking back her tears. But wasn’t he right? Hadn’t she run straight to Vander, the first chance she got? Somehow, she could have found a gentleman to marry her. If worse came to worst, she could have married a total stranger, and bribed Sir Richard not to sue her. “I’m so sorry that I was the reason you almost died,” she added, shame tightening her throat. “I feel terrible about what Sir Richard did to you. And I feel even worse that I didn’t have more faith in you.”
Edward rose and moved across to sit next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “I find it surprising that the duke is willing to give you up
.”
His words made another tide of despair wash through her, but an errant part of her wanted to defend Vander. “Before I blackmailed him, he had never been forced to do anything against his will. He told me over and over that I didn’t have the qualities he would choose in a wife.”
Edward’s arm tightened. “He’s a fool. But you should know that the moment I make you mine, I will never give you up. I would never be so foolish as he.”
She closed her eyes and drew a breath, letting his words wash over her. They should have made her relieved. But all they gave her was greater despair.
Finally, she forced back more tears and looked up. “The truth is that I love him,” she said, choking out the words.
She felt Edward go rigid, but she hurried on. “So it’s more accurate to say that I’m the fool, because I knew what he thought about me. How he felt about me.”
The truth was that a woman like her should never have looked at a rich and handsome duke.
The truth of it reeled through her mind. She wasn’t violet-eyed and slender. She wasn’t even very sweet, and no one had left her a secret inheritance.
None of this was Vander’s fault. She had forced herself on him, and then she had made love to him—but he had merely had intercourse with her. Four nights’ worth.
And yet he had been so generous in bed. What other man would have pushed away his rage at being blackmailed, forgiven his wife for her criminal behavior, and consummated their marriage with such tenderness?
He was a good man, and he deserved far better than she. His next duchess might have violet eyes or not, but she should be as forgiving and generous as he was.
Mia drew in a shuddering breath. She would get through this pain. It felt as keen as when her brother died, but that was ridiculous.
There was one thing that she had to make clear, though. She would not continue to make mistakes, and Charlie was safe from Sir Richard now.
“I cannot marry you,” she said, turning to face Edward. “I’m so sorry. I’m just . . . I’m sorry for everything. I didn’t know that I still loved Vander when we were betrothed, but after living with him, and being his wife, it wouldn’t be right to marry you. Someday you’ll find a woman who is much better than I am.”