Three Weeks With Lady X (29 page)

“I asked her to marry me last night,” Thorn snarled. “She refused me, so I could hardly claim to be married to her. I planned to ask her again.”

“You asked her to be your wife
after
you slept with her? You thought that Lady Xenobia India St. Clair would marry you because you were gracious enough to offer your hand after bedding her? Why would she want to marry you?”

“She might have been carrying my child,” Thorn said tightly. But a bitter chill was sweeping through him. Vander was right. Why the hell would India want to marry him?

Vander made a guttural sound of disgust and spat his words. “You didn’t use a sheath? What in the hell were you thinking?” His eyes glittered at Thorn in the darkening room.

“I don’t think around her,” Thorn said, telling him the truth. “When I asked her to marry me, she refused. She said that she’d give me the child if we had one.” Vander—more than anyone else in the world—would know what that meant to him. The agony that her comment roused.

But Vander just snorted. “You believed her? Damn it, Thorn, you don’t really want her. You don’t even know her!”

“I didn’t realize she was lying to me until later,” Thorn said tightly.

“She baited a trap and you fell into it. You might have had a chance with her—after all, she took you into her bed—but that’s gone.”

Images tumbled through Thorn’s mind: Rose looking up at India as she read her a book, and India telling him about her parents’ desertion. Vander was right. She had tested him, and he had failed.

He stood up, slowly, knowing that he would be covered with bruises in a few hours. They had gone at each other like rabid animals.

Vander still sat against the wall, his arms on his knees. Without raising his head, he said, “She’s mine, Thorn, and the sooner you get used to it, the better. You treated her like a doxy, and you didn’t protect her when she needed it.”

Every word struck Thorn’s gut like another blow from a balled-up fist.

Then Vander looked up, pushing back hair soaked with sweat and brandy. “You had your shot, and you lost. I’m going to marry her. I’ll leave it to you whether we remain friends.” He got up, lurching slightly, one hand pressed against his side, and left without a backward glance.

T
horn walked into his own room reeking of spirits, with vision only in his left eye.

The hell with it. That dream was over. He’d had it for, what, half a day? The dream that India was his, that he could marry a woman like her: brilliant, glowing, beautiful . . . funny. As wild in bed as she was elsewhere, the kind of woman who lunged at life, fear be damned, and embraced it.

But Lady Xenobia India was a lady. And he was a bastard, who had behaved like a bastard. Of course she didn’t want him. She’d let him down kindly, in fact.

He sank into a steaming bath and forced himself to face the truth. He would offer his hand in marriage one more time, if only to prove to India that his proposal was motivated by far more than the possibility of a baby.

But it was a useless gesture. Daughters of marquesses didn’t marry bastards, not in any part of England that he’d heard of. India would marry Vander. She was meant to be a duchess. They would be happy together, shining, beautiful examples of England’s peerage.

He got out of the bath and dressed swiftly. If he was going to ask a future duchess to marry him, he would do it like the gentleman he wasn’t. Not by dragging her into an alcove and treating her like a whore. No, he would go on one knee, he decided, tying his cravat in a Gordian knot.

And once she rejected him, that would be that. He would lose his oldest and truest friend and the woman he loved in one blow. Suffocating darkness welled inside him at the thought.

By now it was nearly time for the evening meal; presumably India would be downstairs, sipping a sherry with the others. He briefly wondered if Lady Rainsford had departed for London or was still cowering in her room, then he discarded the thought. He didn’t give a damn what happened to the lady or, frankly, to her daughter.

He descended the stairs, planning to draw India to his study—respectfully—in order to request her hand in marriage. His father was waiting in the entry.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t speak now,” Thorn said, heading for the drawing room.

“
Son
.”

Something in Villiers’s voice made Thorn pause and turn back.

“You are looking somewhat the worse for wear.”

Thorn gestured impatiently. “Surely you heard the uproar.”

“Fleming did a fine job of keeping everyone on the ground floor.” The duke’s face was expressionless, but his eyes weren’t. “They took the special license, Tobias. If you leave now, you can catch them; they won’t be able to marry until morning. They went to Piggleston, where the parish church has a resident vicar.”

Thorn felt as if a hammer smashed into the back of his neck. The feelings that coursed through him had nothing to do with civilization and everything to do with carnage.

He was going to
kill
Vander. Murder him. Tear him limb from limb.

Blood began pounding through his limbs, and suddenly he knew, with absolute certainty, that he could murder his closest friend without turning a hair. The hell with being respectful to India. She was
his,
and no damn duke was going to have her, not if he had to rip her away from Vander at the altar and throw her into his carriage.

“Right,” he said, turning to the door, his mind churning. He had to get on the road, find them, kill Vander, and marry India.

Of course she left with Vander. What else could she do? Thorn had never claimed her, not really.

“My carriage is waiting,” his father said.

Indeed, the duke’s traveling coach stood in the drive, horses stamping their hooves and grooms standing at the ready.

Thorn nodded to his father, caught a flash of wicked amusement in his eyes—yet another sign of the duke’s warped paternal instincts—and climbed into the carriage, directing the coachman to the largest inn in Piggleston. He spent the next few hours alternating between berating himself and suppressing stifling waves of anger at Vander. Finally, the horses trotted off the post road and moved onto cobbled streets.

When they pulled into the courtyard of the Coach and Horn, Thorn leapt down and roused the innkeeper. But though he handed out five-pound notes as if they were ha’pennies, every man he talked to, at all three inns in Piggleston, swore up and down that no couples resembling Vander and India had been seen. By that point a muscle was jumping in Thorn’s jaw, and his face was apparently so distorted by rage—not to mention his black eye—that men fell back as he approached.

There was nothing more he could do. He’d marked the location of the church, and he would be there in the morning to stop the wedding.

India would not marry Vander, if Thorn had to assault the vicar at the altar.

He took a room, but he couldn’t lie down. Every time he pictured Vander and India on a bed together, scorching pain shot through him. The memory of her face when she lied to him and he believed her . . . the scorn on her face when she told him that she’d been a virgin, though he hadn’t noticed.

That was why she would marry Vander. He had broken what they had . . . in fact, he was afraid that he had broken
her
.

She hadn’t fought back against Lady Rainsford’s ugly insults. She hadn’t said another word after coming forward to claim Rose as her own. That wasn’t like her.

He stared into the dark, waiting.

Planning.

Chapter Thirty-one

I
ndia lay on her back, staring up at the bed canopy. She felt like the ice princess in the fairy story, the one with a frozen heart. Someone had carved out the inside of her body and replaced her heart with ice.

Evidence of that? Next to her was a valiant and handsome lord, a fairy-tale prince. She should have been indescribably happy at this moment.

Vander was on his side, head propped on one hand, watching her. She knew he had a sweet expression, because she’d glanced at him. She also knew that he was able to keep his mouth shut, because he wasn’t saying anything. And she knew his body was as muscled as any medieval knight, because there it was, albeit clothed, next to her on the bed.

There was no unmarried woman in all England who wouldn’t secretly want to lie next to a future duke while he gazed at her with that expression. It was scandalous to invite him to do so, of course, but she was determined to erase the memory of Thorn lying beside her. Not that Thorn had ever given her a worshipful glance, because he hadn’t.

Vander must have gotten tired of waiting for her to speak, because he reached out and gently put a hand on her wrist. It was a large hand, but she didn’t think it was quite as large as Thorn’s.

Thorn’s body was traced all over with scars. Like a warrior’s.

Again she reminded herself that Thorn had never looked at her the way Vander was now. Vander seemed to think she was wonderful.

Thorn looked at her as if she were mad, and sometimes, as if she made him laugh. The rest of the time he looked at her with such raw desire that he seemed ready to throw her to the ground.

Well, he’d done that, hadn’t he? He had taken her like a sluttish housemaid, downstairs, where anyone could have caught them. She couldn’t have been the first woman to fall into Mr. Dautry’s snare. She was sure of it. There were probably broken hearts strewn all over England.

“India,” Vander said quietly. He began tracing a soothing pattern on her arm.

She glanced at him again, just to confirm that he was as handsome as she thought. He was. Many English gentlemen had jaws and chins that receded in a steady slope right down to their necks. Vander looked like one of those Greek statues she’d put in Thorn’s attic. They would have beautiful children together.

What’s more, he gave her a feeling of safety. He was big and bold, and he would frighten off Lady Rainsford or anyone else who thought to attack her. He would be a good husband.

She could do this.

She could sleep with him. And marry him. Surely.

“In the scene with Lady Rainsford, you were like St. George killing the dragon,” she said, managing a weak smile.

“Alas, the dragon is not dead.”

“It was very honorable, though, the way you announced that we were already married.”

“It is the desire of my heart,” Vander stated, his eyes intent on hers.

In the last hour, he had said all the respectful, adoring things that Thorn had never said or thought. What’s more, Vander was on the same bed with her, and hadn’t tried to kiss her. He cherished and respected her.

They would have a fine marriage.

Above her, the bed curtains were gathered and pleated into a pretty rosette. She was done with lying. “There was a slender chance that I may have been carrying Thorn’s child,” she said, not looking to the side. “It did not come to pass.”

Unable to resist, she turned her head. Vander’s jaw was clenched.

“Are you disgusted with me?” she whispered.

“I am grappling with a wish to murder my closest friend.”

“I led him to believe that I had experience,” she said drearily. “It’s my fault.”

“How could anyone believe that you are a loose woman? You are like a treasure that a man could spend his life unwrapping.”

“Thorn believed me. And then when he announced that we would marry, I refused and told him that I would give him our child when it was born.” Tears pressed on her eyes and made them ache. “He believed me. Both times, he believed me.”

Vander leaned closer. “He’s damaged, India. I don’t want to make excuses for him, but that’s the truth. Once we marry, any child you carry will be mine.” His eyes lightened and his mouth curved into a smile. “In fact, let’s make love right now.”

He was trying to make her feel better, so India smiled at him. But tears were beginning to spill from her eyes. “Thorn desires me, but he doesn’t love me.”

Vander sighed. “He’s my best friend, but he’s also an ass, who took advantage of you. He never should have slept with you, let alone without using a French letter.”

Hot tears ran down India’s cheeks. “He said . . . he said he couldn’t control himself around me.” The sympathy in Vander’s eyes was like a kick in the stomach. “I suppose that’s what men always say.”

This day had definitely been the worst of her life, other than the day she had been told of her parents’ death. “You rescued me from Lady Rainsford,” she said, a little sob breaking in her chest. “He just stood there, watching.”

“That’s not quite true. To be fair, I thought he would strangle the woman.”

India had forgotten the moment when Thorn’s face went black and he moved toward Lady Rainsford, fists clenched. “But you told her we were married and forced her to stop calling me names.”

Vander pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “Thorn may be unable to see you clearly,” he said, gently wiping away her tears, “but I can.”

India was bent on telling him everything. “After . . . after she had said those things to me, and I—” She faltered to a halt.

“Why
did
you say that Rose was your child?” Vander asked.

“I wasn’t thinking. I got angry, and I wanted Lady Rainsford to stop ranting. But it’s probably just as well. Thorn wants to marry someone sweet and kind. He told me that Lala was perfect for him.”

“Are you in love with him?” Vander’s warm brown eyes were nothing at all like Thorn’s wintery gray ones.

“He made me feel beautiful, and he listened to me.” She managed to shrug. “I sound like the seduced virgin in a melodrama, don’t I?”

Vander ran his fingers down her cheek. “I cannot tell you what Thorn is or was thinking, India. All I know is that you are unlike any other woman I’ve ever met. You’re exquisite, and brilliant, and brave.
You
are perfect for me.”

“I’m not like this,” she whispered, wiping away another tear. “I don’t cry. Even when my parents left me, I didn’t cry.” The sympathy in his eyes was humiliating. “And I don’t whisper either!”

Thorn didn’t love her. He didn’t care. He believed her lies, even when she told him—stupidly told him—an absurd falsehood that a stranger could have seen through.

It was over, absolutely over. She simply had to make herself believe that.

“All I can say is that I’m deeply grateful to the loathsome Lady Rainsford,” Vander said. “I had the chance to proclaim that you were my wife. And it felt good, India. It felt right. You are my future duchess. Let’s see how it sounds: Hello, Your Grace.”

His thumb rubbed her bottom lip, and his eyes flared.

“Hello, wife.”