Just a Little Heartache (The Brotherhood #5) - Merry Farmer Page 0,83
but where she was.
“Why did you leave him if not because you don’t want anything to do with the life he gave you anymore?” Niall asked, moving closer to her. Instinct told him that the key to getting Blake everything he wanted was to appeal to Annamarie directly.
He worried in an instant that his instincts were wrong when Annamarie tensed and made a disgusted face at him. “Stay away from me, you…you abomination. It’s your fault he never loved me.”
Niall froze in the middle of walking to her, blinking at the odd way she phrased things. “I wasn’t aware you cared whether he loved you or not.”
“I want to be adored,” Annamarie shouted with a sudden vehemence that Niall would have found comical under any other circumstance. “He was supposed to worship me and give me everything I wanted.”
Niall’s esteem for the woman dropped lower than it already was.
“I gave you a home, a title, a position in society,” Blake said, more hurt than angry, though Niall thought he had every right to be furious. “I gave you beautiful children. They’re all I want, Annamarie. You can have everything else, all of it.”
“Do you see?” Annamarie flung one arm at Blake but glared at Niall as she did. “He doesn’t even care enough to try to win me back. And it’s because you’ve turned him into a perverted beast who would rather commit sodomy than love me.”
Niall pressed his lips tightly shut and clenched his jaw. There was no point whatsoever in arguing matters of the heart and of nature with a woman like Annamarie. Instead, he put his mind to work searching for the right thing to say to convince her to give up the children.
“Isn’t it as I told you?” Ian stepped away from Blake—who continued to stare beyond the corner of the house where his children had been taken away—to Annamarie’s side. He rested a hand on Annamarie’s back. “I told you they were beyond redemption.”
“The children want to come home,” Blake said, striding forward as if he would go after them.
Niall leapt toward him, grabbing his arm to hold him back. “We’ll get them,” he assured Blake. “But we need to deal with this first.”
Annamarie snorted. “Do you think I would even consider handing innocent children over to evil men like the two of you now?”
“They are my children.” Blake’s expression darkened as he stared at Annamarie. “You never loved them.”
Niall was convinced the bluntness of Blake’s statement would only enrage Annamarie more, but instead, she lowered her head guiltily and twisted her hands together. “I will admit that I am not the most maternal of women,” she said, face flushing.
“Precisely,” Blake said. He drew in a steadying breath and rolled his shoulders before going on. “I know you, Annamarie. I might not love you the way you want me to. I’m not capable of loving you that way. But I have always done my best to care for you and respect you. Even you must admit to that.”
Annamarie lowered her head farther, her face flushing deeper as she winced. Niall’s heart sped up. Blake had the truth of things and knew the right way to tackle the situation after all. He could see that Annamarie would break in a matter of minutes.
“She will admit to nothing,” Ian spat, ruining the groundwork Blake had laid. “It’s bad enough that you’re a perversion of what God intended a man to be, but to disappoint a woman as beautiful and charming as Annamarie is a crime.” He simpered over Annamarie with an affection that was blatantly false to Niall’s eyes.
Unfortunately, Annamarie seemed to lap up the sycophantic praise. “Oh, Ian. You always did care for me.”
“Yes,” Blake said suddenly. “He always did care for you. And you should have been allowed to marry him from the start.”
“He wasn’t a duke,” Annamarie said in an undertone.
Niall scowled in disgust, but Blake seemed to ignore the comment and went on with, “Don’t you want the chance to right that wrong? Allow me to grant you a divorce—one in which I will claim that you are the wronged party, even—and to bestow a generous settlement on you. You’ll be free to marry Ian at last. I’ll even support that life with a generous annual stipend. Just give me the children back.”
Annamarie glanced up at him as though considering the offer. To Niall’s mind, her eyes flashed with avarice.
But Ian railroaded the offer with, “That is nowhere good enough.”