Page 15 of The Duke's Only Desire

Rough and uneven, like stretched leather left to blister beneath the heat of the sun, his once handsome face was marred with rippling swells and indentions covering from his temple and eye to nearly half his nose, his entire right cheek and down to his jaw, only to disappear beneath his neckcloth and collar. How far over his body did those scars stretch? Was everywhere beneath his clothes the same mottled mix of dark red and white, of smooth and rough patches of skin? Did they cover his shoulder and chest, his arms and legs?

Yet she knew the brutal truth—those scars had little to do with the way he’d come back into her life, if at all.

So she repeated, resolved to continue until she had a proper answer, “Why did you do this to me? We were friends once.”

“We still are. If I didn’t care about you, I wouldn’t have forced you into marriage.”

Now that she could see his full mouth, she noted how its two sides moved out of unison as he spoke, and a faint slur that hadn’t been there before colored his words. It wasn’t strong enough that anyone else would have noticed, but Sophie did. Just as she had noticed everything about the way he moved and smiled and spoke so many years ago.

She shook her head in frustration. “That makes no sense.”

“You asked for an answer. You didn’t ask for logic.” His eyes softened on hers for a moment, just long enough for her heart to skip at another glimpse of the old Shay. “Nothing about our friendship has ever made sense. Why should our marriage?”

She opened her mouth to give a scathing retort, only to close her lips when she could think of nothing to say.

He was right, blast him. That, too, was the old Shay, the most challenging man she’d ever conversed with. His intellect had been most of the reason she’d been drawn to him, even if he sometimes wielded it as a double-edged sword. Like now.

“I don’t believe I did receive my answer,” she countered, twisting the conversation back on him. “Why did you do this?” Her bottom lip threatened to tremble, so she bit it. Hard. “I was going to be married.”

“Youaremarried.”

“I was going to be happy.” Her quiet words were as sharp as a blade.

“You were going to be miserable.”

“You don’t know that.” Her eyes locked with his across the gently swaying compartment. “But I certainly will be now.”

His silence did nothing to challenge her assertion.

And everything to infuriate her even more.

So she pressed on. “You didn’t want to see me again. Youneverwanted to see me again, that’s what your letter said.”She had no choice but to whisper because if she’d dared speak any louder, she would have screamed. “When the accident happened, I was terrified for you and so afraid you were dying all alone.” The fears she’d kept hidden for five years rushed out on one long breath she couldn’t control. “I was in the village, only a mile away, yet you wouldn’t let me see you—yourefusedto let me see you. I begged you, begged the doctors, begged my grandmother, just to let me see you for even a few minutes. That was all I wanted, just to be at your side…just to let you know I cared about you and that I—” Her voice cracked, and when she continued, an awful anguish colored her words. “Ibeggedto be with you. But you sent me back to London without a word, where I was forced into mourning for a man I never loved. For a man Ihated.”

Tears she tried to keep in check caught in her voice and made breathing nearly impossible, her lungs constricting painfully with every breath. His face blurred, yet she could still see the grim darkness in his eyes, made even blacker with every confession she shared.

“I finally heard from you six months later. You’d sent a letter I thought would be like all the others, filled with news of how you were and little teasings to hide the gravity of the situation, just as you had done during the wars. But it was nothing like those. Those were filled with affection. But that last letter—it was pure betrayal.”

He didn’t look away, didn’t move at all except for the gentle swaying of his body that matched the carriage around them. His stony expression remained as inscrutable as ever.

“You said the last thing you would do was honor the contract and marry me. That all hopes of me becoming Duchess of Malvern were as dead as your brother.” She swallowed to clear the knot of emotion from her throat. Those had been hisexactwords, too. She’d been unable to scorch them from her mindeven after she threw the letter into the fireplace and watched it burn to ash. “What you told me…” She sucked in a harsh, ragged breath. “I know the fire was an accident, that you didn’t kill your brother.” So softly, barely more than a breath now and so low she wasn’t certain he heard it—“But your letter killed my heart.”

He flinched. No, that was only an illusion, only a movement caused by the bounce of the carriage over the rough road. Certainly not because he felt any remorse over what he’d done. She wasn’t certain he felt anything anymore.

She leaned toward him and reached out, praying he would take her hand and that they could salvage something—anything—of their old friendship. “Help me understand,” she pleaded, realizing with irony that she was once again begging him to come to her, this time with his heart. “Explain to me why—”

He pounded his fist against the roof, hard and sharp. Immediately, the coachman pulled the team to a stop. Even before the carriage had stopped rocking, he’d flung open the door to jump outside. Sophie grabbed for his arm and stopped him in mid-descent, leaning halfway out of the carriage after him.

He froze and looked down at her hand on his coat sleeve.

Her hand tightened on his bicep until she felt the flexing of hard muscle beneath his clothes. But she refused to let him leave. “You’ve shackled us together for the rest of our lives.” The intensity of her pounding pulse was so painful she could barely tolerate the prick of needles it shot through her with every beat. “With a woman you never wanted to marry nor ever see again. Why ruin our lives that way? Why do that to us—to yourself—if you—”

“Sir?” Shay’s valet appeared at the side of the carriage, having dropped quickly to the ground to assist them. Pearson’s puzzled gaze swung between them, surely thinking somethingwas wrong. Oh, how wrong things were! And not one of them could be fixed by a valet.

“We need a moment for a bit of fresh air,” Shay announced in a loud voice to Pearson and the driver. He removed Sophie’s hand from his sleeve and stepped away from the carriage to stand alone, several feet further down the road, where he stared inscrutably off into the snow-covered distance.

Pearson held out his hand to help Sophie to the ground. “Your Grace?”

She shook her head as she settled back on the seat, defeated.