The Unclaimed Duchess (20 page)

“I'm going to take back my fate, Simon,” he said softly. “One way or another, I won't let a blackguard like Xavier Warren own the keys to my future. For better or worse, I'll ruin myself before I let him do so.”

A
nne paced across the chamber floor one more time, her night shift flapping about her ankles as she snapped out each pivoting turn. Her gaze darted to the small clock on the mantel for what seemed like the tenth time or more. The hands had advanced only a few short moments since she last looked, but that gave her no solace. It was after two in the morning and Rhys had not yet returned from his meeting with whatever villain wished to blackmail him over his true parentage.

She lifted a hand to her trembling lips. She couldn't help but think of all the ways their meeting could have gone wrong. What if there had been a fight? Or all this was just a trap meant to bring Rhys and Simon to a man with questionable intentions?

What if Rhys was hurt and couldn't reach her?

The possibilities bombarded her from every side, making the tick of the clock ever louder, like a drum-
beat in her mind. She could have screamed down the house in frustration and fear, but at that very moment the door behind her opened. She pivoted and watched as Rhys stepped into the chamber, his face lined with emotion, but his body whole and unharmed.

Without thinking, Anne launched herself toward him, racing across the room. She clung to him, shaking with relief as his arms came around her and stole her breath with the force of the way he crushed her to his chest.

“I thought—I thought—” She hiccupped, burying her face in his shoulder.

“Shhh,” he soothed as he maneuvered to look down at her.

In that brief, utterly unguarded moment she saw the broken heart he wouldn't normally reveal to anyone, even her. She saw how badly the meeting must have gone. And she recognized, just from that one glance, how desperate their situation had become.

Then his mouth was on hers and all the thoughts melted away. She ached to comfort him in the only way he had ever allowed. She longed to feel his touch as her own comfort and forget, even just for a moment, all that stood between them.

He pushed her toward the bed and she fell across it with him half covering her. His weight was delicious against her body, his mouth so hot and wet
as he dragged it away from hers to trail down her throat. She arched beneath him, helplessly reaching for the pleasure his touch promised and the delicious escape these precious moments would provide for them both.

“God, Anne,” he groaned as he maneuvered one breast free from her shift. The cool air of the chamber tightened her nipple and made her suck in a breath. “I want you so much I can feel it in every vein, in every pore.”

“I'm yours,” she whispered, gasping as his mouth closed over her nipple and he sucked hard enough that pleasure merged with pain in a most delightful fashion. “I will
always
be yours.”

He lifted his head at the second statement and there was a deep and abiding sadness in his eyes as he stared at her. He moved forward to kiss her lips once more, but the passion he had first exhibited was now muted. There was something else about the kiss now. A gentleness, a deep caring…and a statement of farewell that she tried desperately to ignore.

She could hardly breathe, let alone speak, but it didn't seem as though Rhys required either of those reactions. Instead he moved his mouth down her body a second time, hesitating at her one naked breast and suckling there for a moment before he let his mouth press lower across her cotton-covered belly.

His warm hands caressed her legs through her night rail, massaging the sensitive flesh and making her arch against him with ever-increasing desire. Slowly he glided the fabric upward, sliding it along her tingling skin until she was unable to contain a moan of pure pleasure.

The fact that he could make her come undone so easily gave him all the power, but she didn't care. In this moment, she surrendered willingly, with no further thought to the future or the past.

When he had bared her from the waist down, he drew back. In the firelight, he stared at the slight parting of her legs, at the rise and fall of her breasts as she panted out breath. His eyes glazed with a desire that created such triumph in Anne.

For so long she had believed he didn't want her, she'd tormented herself with those fears and wondered constantly about her failings. But now she knew how wrong she'd been. The longing for her within him was clear in his every move and breath now. He had only hidden it before in some misguided attempt to protect her. To protect himself.

Rhys cupped the insides of both thighs gently and she sucked in a harsh breath. His fingers were so warm, so rough on the delicate skin there. He pushed and her legs parted, revealing her sex to him. No longer did she feel embarrassment or vulnerability when he
stared at her. She
wanted
him to see her, to touch her, to do everything he wanted to her. She needed that as she needed breath and food and water.

He positioned himself between her legs, and without preamble his mouth covered her. Anne cried out, hands fisting in the fabric of the coverlet. His tongue drilled into her aching sheath, his thumbs spreading her open as he licked and licked until her entire body shook with anticipation and rapidly mounting pleasure. Within moments she was trembling out of control, and then the orgasm hit her like one of the angry waves on the beach back at the country cottage.

Her hips arched wildly as the pleasure of release spiraled ever higher, with ever more intensity. Rhys gave her no quarter, tormenting her with the same passion even as her cries grew louder and her body thrashed beneath him. He never stopped, punishing and pleasuring her with his tongue, with his fingers until tears streamed down her face and she collapsed, weak against the pillows, her only remaining movements a few tremors as he gently lapped at her a few more times.

Utterly spent, Anne looked down her body at him. She wanted more, though she had nothing left to give. She waited for him to strip off his clothing and at least offer her the chance to pleasure him as she had done so many times before.

But he didn't.

Though she could see his raging erection pressing insistently along the front of his trousers, Rhys made no move to obtain his relief. Instead he slid up the bed to lie on his side next to her, brushing her hair away from her face as her breathing slowly returned to normal.

“You are beautiful,” he finally whispered, his voice cracking. “I never told you that enough.”

Anne squeezed her eyes shut as she attempted to control her wild emotions.

“Then why not make love to me?” she asked, though she knew the answer in her heart. She heard it in his voice, felt it in his touch.

But she needed to hear it out loud. From him.
Now
.

“I wanted to. God knows I want nothing more. But I can't. Because…” he said, touching her cheek gently. She opened her eyes with reluctance and met his even gaze. “Because the meeting tonight didn't go well, Anne.”

She nodded, though it felt jerky and strange. “I guessed as much from your expression when you entered the room. Please, won't you tell me about it? I've driven myself mad with worry and wondering since you left.”

Now Rhys's face was grim, all the desire and joy gone from it.

“We were correct in our guess that the blackmailer is my father's old minion Xavier Warren,” he began slowly. “It seems the two of them were involved in activities far deeper than mere political intrigue. What I saw and heard tonight, Anne…”

He trailed off, pain lining his face. She lifted her hand and stroked his cheek. How she wished she could help him. To take away the agony he now experienced.

He shook his head, as if banishing the ugly memories, and his gaze cleared. “What I learned in the time Simon and I spent with the man is that Warren will never stop. He's driven by forces that aren't in anyone's control, even his own. If we surrender to his ridiculous demands, he'll only reign over us for the rest of my life, and possibly for the lives of the next generation.”

Anne flinched. Rhys spoke of the children he said he would never give her in order to protect his precious title, and it tore her heart to shreds once more.

But Rhys continued, “I won't allow it. I won't live with an axe hanging over me, over you, over everyone I love for all time, not to protect a legacy I don't even
deserve. No, it's time to end this the only way I can. I'm going to reveal the truth myself, Anne.”

She stared at him. His words sank into her skin, into her soul, into her heart. They weren't unexpected. He had been saying this could be his course of action for some time, but still she could hardly believe him.

She waited for sadness, regret, for all the pain she'd been barely controlling over the past few terrible weeks to make its way to her surface and bubble free at last. If there was ever a time to let emotion loose, this was it. But those feelings never came.

No, it wasn't pain that bombarded her as she stared at her husband. And it wasn't regret, though she was certain she would experience a great deal of that feeling later.

What hit her now, in this charged moment, with the force of a slap…was
anger
. Anger at the situation, anger at the blackmailer who crushed all her precious hopes, but the deepest and darkest anger was directed at Rhys. And there would be no stifling it, no controlling it. Tonight she would finally say everything she had held inside as she fought to keep him. Tonight she would indulge her own feelings instead of thinking of him and his.

“After all the time we spent together, I was foolish enough to believe you had changed,” she whispered as
she pushed off the bed. She smoothed her nightgown to cover herself. “But you are the same selfish ass you have ever been!”

 

Rhys stared at his wife as she paced across his chamber. She was shaking with rage, and her pointed barb about his selfishness stung him like no other.

“I have tried so damned hard,” she continued, almost as if she couldn't stop now that she had begun her outburst. She stared at him with green-blue eyes filled with heated anger. “I gave you
everything
you wanted,
all
you asked of me and more. I offered you my sympathy and my hand and my heart because you needed them. Most of the time I offered them at my own detriment.”

“And I appreciate that—” he began, getting to his feet.

“No, you don't,” she snapped, stepping toward him and then coming to a halt as she fisted her hands at her sides.

He stared at her, her eyes on fire, her skin flushed with emotion. At one time he would have called this reaction a weakness. He would have judged her for her out-of-control release of emotion. But now he ached as he looked at her, for he knew his wife was anything but weak. She possessed a strength he envied. She would fight, even if the battle was one
she could never win.
They
could never win.

“You must see,” he whispered. “This is my most selfless act.”

She was silent for a long moment, staring at him with her eyes wide and hands shaking at her sides. Her lips parted and from them came a long laugh, but it wasn't like the beautiful one he had come to love. No, this sound held no humor and no warmth. Instead it was filled with both contempt and disbelief.

“No, my darling,” she finally said with a shake of her dark head. “What you are doing is
anything
but selfless. I call it cowardice, plain and simple.”

Rhys moved forward as his own anger bubbled to the surface. His nostrils flared and he barely reined in the urge to raise his voice when he responded.

“You cannot mean that, Anne, not knowing what you do. To reveal myself will destroy me. It will open me up to every barb and sling and arrow that have been held at bay by my family name and history. You call that cowardice?”

She nodded without even an ounce of hesitation. “I do indeed. If you were brave, you would
fight
, Rhys, not surrender. But you won't. You won't sacrifice your damned obsession with rank and your infatuation with what you call honor even for one moment.”

Rhys stared at her, silenced by the passion with which she spoke and the pointed words she hurled at
him like daggers. Even when he hadn't recognized it, she had always looked at him with love and respect. Now all he saw was fury, disappointment, perhaps even a fraction of disgust.

And each emotion shamed him.

Anne shook her head, clearly not even close to being finished. “You won't do it for your mother or for your sisters, certainly you won't do it for me.
Never
for me.”

She turned away as she bit back a loud, pained sob that cut through the room with the power of a gunshot. For a long time she remained with her back toward him, the chamber around them silent.

Rhys stared at her shaking shoulders, wishing with all his heart he could comfort her, but too shocked and pained to do so. And perhaps she would not accept that. Not from him. Not anymore.

“Oh Rhys,” she finally sighed, her voice shaking as she turned to face him.

Her eyes were dry, her face solemn, the fierceness of her anger now tempered by the one emotion he had prayed he would never see in her. Pity.

“You could do so much good with the life and the power you were given along with the name Waverly,” she said with a dismissive shrug. “But instead you choose to do
nothing
.”

Rhys took a step back, moving away from the
accusations that rocked him to his very core. They challenged everything he had been telling himself for his entire life, and certainly what he had believed over the past few weeks. They made him question his heart, his bravery, his very existence. And he wanted to make them stop. To make
her
stop.

“I'm sorry,” he finally said, his voice barely carrying in the chamber.

Her gaze slipped up and down his frame and she nodded.

“Yes. You are. I love you, Rhys. Nothing has ever changed my heart, perhaps nothing ever will, even this. But if you are so willing to throw away the life we could have together…if you are so willing to throw
me
away after all the times I've proven myself to you…then perhaps you don't deserve me after all. And that has
nothing
to do with the blood that pumps through your veins or the name you call yourself by.”