Page 80 of A Bride for the Cruel Duke

“Is that what you think?”

She continued closer to him, only a few feet away. “It is what Iknow.”

He shook his head and she heard him laugh. But it was cold and dispassionate, and it sent a shudder through her body. “You don’t know me nearly as well as you think you do.”

“I know you better than that.”

“No…” Slowly, he turned around to face her and she had to withhold her urge to gasp as the man who glared at her was not once that she recognized. “I have been lying to you, Caroline. All this time, everything I have said and done, has been a lie.”

“What do you…?” She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“This…” He gestured vaguely. “Us! Did you really think that any of this was true? That you and me—that I was capable of this farce! A happily married couple. Peace and quiet. Is that what you thought was happening?”

“I…” Caroline felt her stomach twist, words he spoke that she didn’t want to believe.He is just saying these awful things. He does not mean them. Although why he is…“I know what I feel in my heart. I know that I love?—”

“Don’t,” he snarled at her. “Don’t say it.”

“I love you,” she spoke over him, forcing him to meet her eyes so that he could see the truth in them. A truth that she knew more than anything he felt for her also. “Just as I know you love me. That is not a lie!”

“I have been using you,” Anthony said. “This entire time, I have been?—”

“You are lying.”

“No,” he said, with a shake of his head. “Five chance? Were you really so naive as that? Did you really think that was all it would take to change me?” He laughed coldly at her. “I did not want five chances to prove that I could change, Caroline. What I wanted was…” He winced, looking away as if in regret, but then forced himself to look at her again. He bared his teeth and glared. “What I wanted was five chances to have an heir. That is all I ever wanted.”

“No…” Caroline took a step back as if she had been slapped across the face.

“Yes,” he said, stepping down from the stairs and taking a step toward her. He was trying to intimidate her with his size and indomitable presence, and for once it was working. “I wanted an heir only, just as I told you from the beginning. Everything else…everything… it was for your benefit only.”

“No…” She felt a stabbing pain in her chest. “I don’t believe you.”

He shrugged. “Believe what you want. I do not care. I…” He took a moment, struggling with what he was about to say. “The other night, in the glade, when you and I…” He swallowed. “I got what I needed from you. And now that I have, it is time for you to go.”

The world turned around Caroline as his words struck at her. Words that she still could not believe, even though Anthony gave no indication that they were a lie. Had she not felt the change in him since she had fallen from that horse? Had she not been worried that he seemed to be pulling away? She had tried to tell herself she was imagining it, but now her fears seemed well realized.

How can this be… after all we have been through… all we have done… it can’t be real. It can’t be.

“I don’t…” She swallowed as her chin began to wobble. “I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care.”

“I know you feel what I feel.”

“I really do not.”

“Anthony…” She took a step toward him, but he took one back from her. “Please, do not… I do not know why you are saying this. Is it because of what happened just now with Daniel? If that is why, I do not care!”

“And how could you not?” He sounded disgusted, only with himself, not her. “How could you not care? This was what you feared, was it not? That you would be married to a monster who would eat you up and spit you out? That I am exactly what people say.”

“You are not.”

“I am!” he roared suddenly, and she cried out. “I am that thing! I am that monster! And you should be thanking me—on your knees in thanks because you have caught me in a good mood. Enough of one that I am letting you go.”

“Letting me go…?”

“What I told you of my mother…” His chin was trembling, his eyes were glistening with tears, and she could see the pain in him as if it was her own. “That was a lie.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t believe you.”

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