When a Rogue Meets His Match - Elizabeth Hoyt Page 0,162
“does not make one weak. It makes one stronger.”
King scoffed derisively.
“I understand that you were betrayed in the most heinous manner. But this facade you maintain, this reputation of being merciless and ruthless and unfeeling, is not all that you are. You’re so much more than a facade.”
“That facade keeps the blades out of my back when I least expect them,” he snarled. “So have a care.”
“No, I don’t think I will, because that makes you no better than the Duke of Buckingham, demanding Rubens to portray him as something he’s not.”
He straightened. “I beg your pardon?”
“That might have been your past. But what about your present?”
“What about it?”
“The ruthless, merciless lord of the underworld would tell me that he feels nothing for me. He would tell me that what just happened was you simply fucking away your regrets.”
He flinched.
“I don’t want you to change,” she said softly. “I want you to take a chance.”
“On what?”
“On yourself. On me. On the possibility of us.”
“There will never be an us.”
She had thought herself prepared for those words, but hearing them sent pain lancing through her heart.
“I want to know what the man standing in front of me has to say. King, Joshua, I don’t really care what it is you wish to call yourself. Tell me what you need. What you feel.”
“Don’t make me do this.” His arms were rigid at his sides.
“I will never make you do anything. This is your choice.”
He cursed and turned away from her, bracing his hands on the edge of the piano. “Then I want you to do no less than what you do for all your clients.”
“Which is?” she asked in some confusion.
“Disappear, so as not to remain a reminder of what was likely the worst moment of their lives.”
She was clenching her jaw so hard she thought her teeth might shatter.
“Your words. Not mine,” he finished. “You have to go, Adrestia.”
“It’s better to send me away before I have the opportunity to betray you, is that it?” She forced the words through her lips.
“In the end, everyone betrays you.” His head dropped, and the muscles across his back flexed.
Adeline swallowed hard against the ache that had risen in her throat and the gaping emptiness that had once again opened in the center of her chest. She could not force her love on a man who did not want to be loved. She could not give her heart to a man who would never take it. She could not make him love himself enough to accept love from another.
Adeline walked to the door, pausing with her hand on the latch.
“Goodbye, Joshua,” she said before pushing through the door. She did not look back.
Chapter 15
King stood in the frigid churchyard, the moonlight that flooded down bright enough to cast long shadows across the ground. The snow had long since melted, and Evan’s headstone glowed an ethereal white, save for the new blooms that sat on top of the stone. They were the same flowers that King had always brought on the same day of the week during the same small hours of the morning. Except nothing was the same, really.
Adeline Archambault had left a void in his life—in his entire existence—that he didn’t know what to do with. King had thought that he would simply move on after Adeline left. That in her absence he would go back to the life he’d known before she’d broken into his study, seized a sapphire, and made him question everything he thought he knew about himself.
He hadn’t moved on at all. He hadn’t even played his damn pianoforte in a sennight because all he could think about was—
“You look terrible.”
King started. He had completely lost his edge. He hadn’t heard Ashland approach.
“And it’s a pleasure to see you as well,” King replied irritably, most of his ire directed at himself. “What are you doing here? It’s freezing and long past midnight.”
“I was looking for you. I stopped by Helmsdale earlier but you weren’t there. Your young footman told me where to find you.” The duke gazed down at the headstone. “In hindsight, I should have looked here first.”
King grunted. He would speak to Elliot about discretion later. “Why were you looking for me?”
“Marstowe is gone.”
“Yes. I heard he left England,” King said with complete honesty.
“I heard the same.” The duke paused. “Your assassin is also gone.”
“For the last time, she’s not a bloody assassin. And she certainly is not mine.” Though she had been, once, for a tiny