The Secret Wallflower Society - Jillian Eaton Page 0,48

he said hoarsely, and the raw torment she saw in his gaze tugged at her own wounded heart. “I would have waited seven lifetimes for you.”

She swallowed hard. “We’re both here now.”

For a moment, he softened. For a moment, she thought he finally saw the truth.

Then his eyes flashed with contempt, and his mouth curled in a sneer, and she knew she’d lost him.

If she’d ever really had him to begin with.

“Feeling regret, are we? Good.” He reached out and grabbed her arms, his hands closing like steel manacles just above her elbows. “You should be. But never forget this is what you chose. This is who you chose.”

Her breasts threatened to spill free of her bodice as she struggled to break his grip. Head thrashing from side to side, she gasped when he caught her chin. Freezing beneath the intensity of his icy gaze, she inadvertently glanced down at his mouth, and they both stiffened as a new potent emotion entered the fray.

“No,” she whispered as his other hand began to slowly glide up her arm. Like a bow string drawn taut, she quivered when he pressed his thumb just beneath her ear. “No. This – this isn’t what either of us want.”

“Isn’t it?” he said silkily.

Yes. Oh, yes.

She’d waited months to kiss him again. Months that now felt like years. Years that felt like small eternities. Being this close to him again, touching him, breathing in his scent…it should have been heaven after so much hell. Instead, it was only a cruel reminder of everything she was giving up.

Because Stephen was who she would have chosen if she’d been given a choice.

And if she kissed him now, it was going to kill her.

“Let me go,” she said, closing her eyes. “I – I don’t want you.”

The lie tasted bitter on her tongue. She didn’t know if Stephen would believe it, but then he released her and stepped back.

“But of course,” he said, his voice lightly mocking. “Countess.”

As he walked away into the mist, Helena realized two important facts. The first was that Stephen was far more dangerous than the man she was being forced to marry. And the second…she was still helplessly, hopelessly in love with him.

On a long, heavy sigh, Helena opened her eyes. Her mood pensive, she carried the vase filled with yellow flowers up the stairs and into her room. Ives was gone, and even though she hadn’t expected him to linger, the pang of loneliness she felt as she was confronted with her empty chamber came as a surprise.

This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? To be by herself. To direct her own destiny. To control her own future. Although a point could be made it was her benefactor who really controlled her future. Money might not have bought happiness, but it had bought food and clothes and charming little townhouses in the middle of Berkley Square.

She placed the vase beside her bed, then sat down on the edge of the mattress, chin cupped in the palm of her hand as her fingers drummed along her cheekbone. She supposed she should be grateful she didn’t know the identity of the benefactor, for surely, it would only breed complications. But there was another part of her – a far more hardened part – that was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because if there was one thing she had learned about men, it was that they never gave anything away for free.

There would be a price to be paid.

She just didn’t know what it was yet.

Chapter Three

Stephen Darby, Earl of Cambridge and Viscount Ware, knew all about prices to be paid.

And debts to be collected.

He kept track of everything he was owed in a slim leather-bound ledger that never left the inside pocket of his favorite tailcoat. The majority of the arrears noted within were for small, inconsequential things. A five-pound note Lord Gately owed him from a wager he’d lost. A particularly old bottle of brandy Mr. Harrison had broken in one of his drunken stupors. A ten-acre parcel of land abutting a neighboring duke’s property that had been in dispute for decades.

But there was one debt of greater significance than all the others. One that had been circled, and then circled again. One that wasn’t money, or alcohol, or land.

It was a person.

A woman, to be precise.

Lady Helena Darby, Countess of Cambridge.

Side-stepping around a wagon loaded with fish barrels bound for market, Stephen navigated the chaotic London docks with ease. The