The Matter of a Marquess - Jess Michaels Page 0,64
the next day. He produced a letter, Nicholas, in what looked to be your hand. Written to him, telling him to let me down easily. That you’d never intended to wed me.”
“I never wrote such a thing.”
She shook her head, back and forth. As if that movement could erase what had been done. “Then who did?” A sob hiccupped from her throat. “He forged it?”
“He must have.” His throat ached from gripping his jaw so tight, from the frustrated emotion that boiled up in him. “That was two days before I came to the house and saw you with Lovell. I’d written you during that time.”
“I never got another letter,” she whispered.
“I thought it odd you didn’t write me back, but I knew I’d see you when I made the offer for your hand. What else did the earl say about my leaving? How did he know I was intending to go to the army?”
“He said something about your father helping to arrange it.”
“My father…” he repeated, needing clarity. “You mean, Gillingham?”
But he already knew the answer. He knew it before she shook her head. He knew it before she spoke.
“No. The last Duke of Roseford,” she whispered.
That hung in the air like a cloud. A question. Was the late Roseford indeed involved in the events of that horrible night? Had he inserted himself? And why? Except Nicholas had his suspicions.
He shook his head. Aurora would have none of those answers, but he wanted different ones from her at present. “How did Lovell come into the picture?”
“My father gave me all of two days after he ripped my heart to shreds to invite Lovell to the house. It was evident he wanted me to marry the viscount. That the match was in his favor politically and, after seeing the mess he left for my brother since his death a few years ago, I would assume financially.”
“So the night I saw you…”
“Was the first night I met Lovell,” she whispered. “And if I seemed to be smiling, Nicholas, I was grimacing. Trying not to cry every moment. Lovell was…he could be cold, and he embarrassed me regularly during our marriage, but he could also be kind when it suited him. He was kind that night, and I knew my father would force my hand. What did it matter? If I couldn’t have you, I might as well not fight him. I didn’t have the strength anymore.”
She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her head there, the sobs shaking her now as what had happened in the past washed over them both. She wept while he sat, numb and empty.
At last she lifted her head. “My father was so many things, but I cannot wrap my head around the idea that he would be so cruel as to part us in that way.”
He stared at her, hating himself as much as he hated the late earl. “I-I believed him. I believed him, Aurora.”
Her tears slowed and she wiped them away. “That—that’s it, isn’t it? We were both so young. Too young to believe in ourselves or in each other. So I, like you, believed that you would leave me. That…that you couldn’t truly want me or the difficulties we’d face together.”
He pushed from the bed and walked to the fire. It warmed his bare skin, but inside he still felt cold. “And I believed that you didn’t really want me. That you would choose a title over a less exalted life with me.” He gripped his hands at his sides. “We failed each other. He played a hand you and I dealt him in our uncertainty and our youth.”
To his surprise, she pulled a pillow up and screamed into it. He pivoted toward her, but she held up a hand as she lifted her face to him. Her cheeks were red, expression lit with anger and pain and heartbreak that hit him in the stomach like a punch to the gut.
“All that misery, all that pain, your injuries, my empty marriage…it was all for nothing!” she cried out.
“No!” He lunged for her and caught her arms, dragging her against his chest and holding her there. He felt her shake, he knew she felt his heart pound. “It wasn’t for nothing, Aurora.”
“But it wouldn’t have happened without his lies,” she sobbed.
He smoothed her hair. “No, it wouldn’t have. But we don’t know what our future would have looked like if he hadn’t. I learned in the past two years, as