The Lure of a Rake (34 page)

She stepped inside and allowed her father-in-law to step around her. Without so much as another glance for her or his son, he swept out and left Genevieve with a rather uncertain fate looming before her. Is this what her husband would one day become? A hard, unfeeling man who looked through her and not at her? And for the first time since she’d bound herself to Cedric and this family, the ramifications of that hasty decision rocked her unsteady world.

“I am sorry you heard that.” Once again, words he’d uttered in truth that he only regretted her hearing for the implications it would have. “I should have instructed you to stay away,” her husband said at last, through tight lips. He shoved himself from the edge of the desk and made his way over to the sideboard.

Annoyance stirred. “Do you mean like a dog, Cedric? Or a dull, biddable wife who stays at home while you bed your whores?” She spoke in clipped tones that caused a momentary falter in his steps. If he thought he’d acquired an acquiescent, biddable bride, he was to be disappointed. She found strength in her fury, for it prevented her from thinking of how, in the span of an evening, he had torn apart her every happiness.

She stared at his retreating back. By God, he meant to carry on as though she’d not been listening at his door and heard all manner of confounding and agonizing words. Entering the room, Genevieve drew the door closed behind her and rested her back against it for support. “Why would you say that?” she asked quietly.

“Why did I say what?” he asked, not picking his gaze up from the drink he now poured. As though that singular task of pouring and consuming spirits was so much more important than her…or, more importantly, their future. All of it. Any of it.

“About never having children,” she clarified, quietly.

Cedric settled the decanter down with a firm thunk. “Because there will not be,” he said with a damning matter-of-factness as he carried his glass around the opposite side of his desk and claimed a seat. He took a sip and then settled his snifter down. Then in a dismissive manner, he opened the middle drawer, withdrew a sheet, and reached for a quill.

He would simply move on to other matters as though he’d not neatly stated the remainder of their existence together. “What?” she repeated, trying to muddle through the madness of this exchange.

He paused and glanced up. In his eyes was reflected back her own confusion. “We’ve already discussed the matter of children,” he said the way an instructor might tire of doling out the same lesson to a recalcitrant student.

Her mind moved from a stall to a run. They had spoken of children and he’d promised he’d see them cared for. Genevieve pushed away from the door and the wood panel rattled noisily. “Yes, we did.” She stopped before his desk and planted her hands upon her hips. “You promised…”

His sound of annoyance cut across her words. “I promised you’d never have to care for children and you won’t.” Cedric sighed. Who was this cold stranger she did not recognize? Where were his charming grin and his teasing words?

“I do not under…”
…Nor will you have to worry after children…
“Do you believe yourself unable to sire children?” she ventured.

He cocked his head. “Unable to…?” A hard grin formed on his lips. “Oh, I’ve no doubt the potency of my seed. The number of bastards my father has littering England is testament of that.”

Genevieve pressed her fingertips against her temples and rubbed. “I don’t understand,” she said once more, knowing she must sound like the veriest lackwit. “We’ve made love.”

Cedric carried his drink over to his desk and perched his hip on the edge. “I’ve not taken precautions before. I promise to…rectify that in the future.”

Bile burned at her throat and she choked. “Precautions?”

He gave a tight nod. “There are…
ways
to ensure you do not become with child.”

Now
he’d have this discussion? A hysterical laugh bubbled up past her lips and she stymied it with her fingers. The irony of his timing not at all lost on her. Cedric spoke with such a cool remoteness. She sought glimpses of the gentleman who’d been tending the gardening beside her. “When you said I’d never have to care for child—”

He cut in to her words with a sound of impatience. “I meant because we’ll never have to worry after offspring.”

Worry after offspring? Is that how he viewed children? Then, should it surprise her when a man who seeks out his own pleasures each night and attends torrid affairs like Montfort’s? The earth dipped and she gripped the edge of the nearby sofa. The gentle assurance he’d made before they’d married, a promise given, she’d so horribly misunderstood. “I did not know,” she whispered. “I misunderstood.” And what a monumental misunderstanding with which to build a union on. Except…none of it made sense. “But, you did not take care.” Many times. Many, many times. Her cheeks exploded with heat and her tongue could not move for the scandalous words to speak of what they’d done.

Glass between his hands, her husband shifted his weight. “Mistakes on my part.” With every admission, his words confirming the ugliest murmurings she’d heard from the opposite side of the door, ripped a wound inside her heart that could never heal. He looked down into the contents of his drink. “Surely, given what you…witnessed tonight.” Montfort’s. “You see why it is best that we do not bring a child into this world.”

She folded her arms close to where his babe even now rested. Her stomach pitched. Given her failed betrothal with Aumere, she’d abandoned the hope carried by all young ladies—of a loving, doting husband and a passel of babes. In one short night and in one stunningly practical, but beautiful, offer of marriage, Cedric had allowed her to open her heart to all those long-buried dreams. Unable to meet his coolly blank gaze, she dropped her eyes to that untouched page on his desk. “But there…” Is a babe. “Has to be a child. For the succession of your line,” she said quickly, lifting her gaze.
Needing
him to want this child.

“I do not give a jot about the Falcot line,” he said, drumming his fingertips on his glass in a staccato rhythm that set her jaw on edge. “Long ago I resolved to never have children.”

“But why?” She hated the faintly pleading edge to the question there. He was a stranger. In every way.

Her husband shifted. “Children are so important to you?” he asked with a discomfort she’d never before seen from him and one she doubted he ever showed the world, in any way, for anything.

It did not escape her notice that he’d failed to ignore her question. “They are.” How little they truly knew one another. He knew she enjoyed art and she knew he was a skilled artist, albeit a silent one. But on the things that mattered in a marriage, what did she truly know of him? Nothing.

“If they are so important, then after this evening you surely see how you are far better off without children from me.” Cedric grimaced and took another drink of his brandy. “I am sorry for the confusion on that score,” he said as he settled his glass down.

Genevieve shoved away from the chair and swept over in a rustle of noisy skirts. “You are
sorry
for the confusion?” she parroted back, planting her palms on the high-backed leather chair opposite him and leaning across the surface. “You did not purchase me the wrong ice at Gunther’s, Cedric. You did not lose the place in my book.” Her voice climbed with an increasing urgency. He flexed his jaw, but said nothing for so long that her fingers twitched with the urge to slap him, or shake him, or to rouse some kind of emotion in him. When he remained silent, she pressed him for every last truth. “Did you marry me on a matter of revenge against your father?”

Because even as entering into a union on a matter of convenience had slashed at her still-hopeful, romantic heart, this truth threatened to shatter all those moments she’d built up between them.

Cedric held his palms up.

“Did you?” she rasped.

“I care for you,” he said softly. Care not love. Then…she skimmed a bitter gaze over him. Given what she’d seen and heard this evening, the Marquess of St. Albans was incapable of that sentiment. No, he hadn’t ever given her reason to believe there would be love or children. Which made this all the worse. It made her folly her own and it was a mistake that could never be undone.

She recoiled. In ignoring her query, he’d answered it with more affirmation than any words. “My God.” The words escaped her as a prayer and she again dug her fingers into her temple. She swayed.

“Genevieve,” he said, concern lacing that hoarse utterance as he came to his feet.

“Do not,” she cried out, stumbling away from him. “Do not come near me.”

And a man who chafed at being given any direction from anyone, including his own sire, remained at his desk.

Genevieve began to pace as truth settled in and drove back the girlish whimsy she’d not even realized herself guilty of until this moment. And with each furious step, and her new husband staring on, she accepted with a staggering clarity—this was her fault. Cedric had never made her promises of more. He’d never pledged affection. He’d never spoken of a future with them joined as a loving couple. Those were castles she’d built of sand within her mind and heart…ones she’d not even realized she’d constructed—until this moment. But now, there was a babe and a father who did not want that precious life. Genevieve jerked to a sudden halt. She raised her gaze to his. “I have so desperately wanted to be part of your life and I wanted you in my life.”

“Genevieve?” There was a gruff quality to that word, which spoke of a man as uncertain as she herself was; two strangers trying to work through a delicate, uneven balance between them.

She motioned to her gown. “I donned this dress and thought to be the bold, proud woman asserting her presence in her husband’s life. Tonight,” bile burned her throat and she swallowed it back, “witnessing that party you so enjoy attending and listening to you with your father, I realized something.” She lifted her eyes to his. “I do not want to be part of your life, Cedric. I do not wish to be part of any of your world.”

His expression grew shuttered but, otherwise, he gave no indication he’d even heard her. Of course, did she truly expect her admission should matter to him? Genevieve gave her head a sad shake. “If you’ll excuse me.” She walked with steady, even footsteps. But as she stepped out in the hall and found freedom from his stony gaze, she sprinted down the hall. Her breath came hard and fast as she raced away from every vile word her husband had uttered. A shuddery sob tore from her lungs as she reached the shelter of her room. She shoved the door open and slammed it hard behind her.

“My lady?” Delores called, rushing over. “Are you all right?”

She would never be all right again, because she’d done something the height of all foolishness—she’d fallen in love with her husband.

Her maid folded Genevieve in her arms. “Come, my lady, ’tis not good for the baby.” Which only caused Genevieve to cry all the harder.

Now what?

T
he soft scratch of Genevieve’s charcoal filled the quiet. Sitting so very still for so long as she had, her back ached and through that pain, she shifted but continued working. She found a healing in each line drawn, in each brush of the charcoal over the page.

It prevented her from thinking of him. Faithless rake. Regret and despair twisted her insides in a vicious pain. Her husband had never invited her along last evening, or any evening, because he’d had plans to see another woman. Unable to gaze at the small face upon the page, she looked up and found her friend, Francesca, and sister, Gillian, staring at her.

For their benefit, she gave them a smile. If her smile grew any tauter, she feared her face might shatter. “Forgive me. I’m woolgathering today.” She made for miserable company.

“Oh, Genevieve, your smile is really more of a grimace,” Francesca whispered.

“I am so happy you’re here,” she said softly. If it weren’t for the other young ladies’ company, Genevieve would be alone in her chambers weeping tears that would never end. God, how she despised all of this. The folly in coming here, entering this world she no longer belonged to, resonated all the more.

“Well, I’m happy
you
are here,” Francesca beamed. “London had been so very dreadful until you arrived.”

“It is a dreadful place, isn’t it?” she said more to herself. How could Cedric wish to live here? There was nothing sincere or real in this place. Then, mayhap that is what he preferred—the artifice and veneer of falsity painted by soulless lords and ladies.

“I heard Mother and Father speaking of what happened last night,” Gillian said softly, snapping her attention back to the moment.

Of course they had. She cringed, just imagining what her always disappointed mother and father thought of their daughter attending one of those shameful affairs. Then, it was hard to give a jot about angry parents who’d never truly approved of her.

“I am sorry you are hurting, Genny.”

Gillian and Francesca sat side by side on the opposite leather button sofa, shoulders pressed together in a wonderful display of supportive friendship.

Genevieve mustered her first smile since her life had fallen apart last evening. “It is not your fault, Gillian. Who could have known…?” She let those words trail off. For even with these two young women, loyal friends she trusted implicitly, she could not bring herself to utter the shameful, wicked things she’d observed last evening. Her throat worked. Though, the copy of
The Times
had quite delighted in enumerating every last scandalous detail.

About the Marquess of St. Albans…and the woman he’d bestowed his attentions on last evening.

About the poor, pathetic marchioness who’d appeared at the center of that shameful event.

Fury melded with the agony of Cedric’s betrayal and with a growl, she picked up her book and resumed her sketching. She embraced the silence of the room as she concluded the sketch. Once done, she eyed the completed figure. Setting the charcoal aside, she blew on the page. The tiny little likeness with cherubic cheeks, with his almond-shaped eyes and crop of slightly curled locks was very much the image of a certain other. A man who didn’t even want him. Or her. He never had. Their cold arrangement had been colder than she’d even known. Pain, like a thousand jagged needles, stuck in her chest.