Page 89 of The Runaway Duchess

Anthony looked like Achilles.

She hated him and George, hated them for their beauty, their money, their power, the devasting impact they’d had on her life.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of a midnight call from the illustrious Duchess of Cranbrook?” Anthony’s drawling coldness was the opposite of Neal’s frank, rough warmth. How enticing she had once found such aristocratic airs. How hard to fathom now.

“Don’t call me that.” She glared. “I think I shall murder a duke before I’m done, and it might as well be you.”

“You’ve come to murder me?” Anthony sighed with mock resignation, as though people were often turning up at his house on such desperate missions.

Perhaps they were. Never so dissolute as George, Anthony possessed nonetheless his brother’s knack for making enemies.

“Be quick about it, then, or Lucy will beat you to it.” He looked down his nose at her. “We were having a bit of a row, and she’s run off for a kitchen knife.”

Lavinia blinked. He didn’t seem upset about the row. His wife, Lucy, was a prickly, outspoken East Ender, poor and not in the least pretty or obliging, an artist with an inveterate streak of bohemianism.

Now that she was Duchess of Weston, she probably quarreled with her soft-boiled eggs. Anthony probably enjoyed it.

“I’m surprised she doesn’t carry a knife,” muttered Lavinia. “I remember her lugging a bag that could have supplied sixteen junk shops. There must be artillery clattering around between the vials of acid.”

When first they’d met, Lucy had produced such a vial from her bag and deliberately stained Lavinia’s gown. She’d done it for Lavinia’s good, proving thereby that the green silk was dyed with arsenic. Still—a barbarous act of sartorial defacement.

Anthony laughed. He did enjoy his wife’s eccentricity. She’d never seen such a light in his eyes.

He stretched, threw an arm up on the doorframe, and regarded her with better humor. They used to joke together, the three of them, she, Effie, and Anthony.

“Lavinia,” he said, and it sounded so normal she almost sagged to the ground.

Duchess.

Darling.

Whore.

He hesitated. “I will not apologize for my actions as regards your father.”

“I didn’t expect you would.” She spoke with difficulty. “Revenge is sweet, as they say. It suits you.”

He’d shorn his hair since she’d seen him last. The severe style emphasized the boldness and harmony of his Grecian features. And his green eyes, touched with that dreamy light.

His smile had faded. “Marriage suits me.”

She snorted her incredulity, but it was so plainly true. Anthony had found happiness with his odd duck of a wife.

“As for revenge,” he added. “If I could have spared you and your mother, I would have.”

Despite herself, she didn’t doubt it. Anthony had always tried to treat her decently, even during their farcical engagement. She wanted to hate him but she couldn’t, not really.

God, though, she resented him. His good fortune.

He was waiting for some reply. She spread her hands wide. His prosecution of her father had completed her ruin. It didn’t matter that the damage was incidental to the main objective.

“What is that worth?” she asked.

“Nothing, I suppose.” He shrugged, expression hardening. “But, as you said, one duke is the same as another. I never thought you cared much for Cranbrook. Well played, Your Grace.” He flashed white teeth. “You always land on your feet.”

“My feet?” She laughed shrilly. “My feet are bleeding.”

Anthony straightened, seeming to take in her ravaged shoes and bedraggled dress for the first time.