Page 126 of Lessons for Marquesses
Georgiana stared at letters. Her heart tripped at a pace so fast she couldn’t feel the individual beats. The strength and honesty in his touch were at odds with the eyes staring through her, the lie that had brought them together.
Her entire body shook at the unfairness of it. “Nick, please.”
He unfolded a letter for her, displaying her words.
She studied in disbelief the mouth she had kissed, that spoke words from his soul she had thought would take lifetimes to know. How had she not made the connection? She had been waiting for the marquess yesterday. And Nicholas had arrived.
“You are the Marquess of Eastwick,” she said tightly.
“I am.”
She tented both hands to her cheeks to still the trembling. There was the involuntary cringe at her cheeks to sob. She swallowed it back and gained her feet. She took a step, and then another, to the basin to wash her face. And then more steps as she turned back after endless moments, endless steps back to him.
She stood over him, shoulders back, heels dug in. “So, my lord, you came to take my land. My life. My dreams. Was that not enough? Did you have to take my heart?”
He rubbed his brow where there was no denying the truth or the regret lining it. “I love you, George. I had no plans to seduce you or to fall in love you. But I did. And I will do anything to make this right.”
His voice was exactly as it had been when she had believed she was special.
Georgiana clenched her fist and drove it into his jaw. She retrieved the rest of her clothing and ran from the room.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Crying was beyond her.
In a vacant room, Georgiana tucked in her shirt and fed each foot into her hose. She shook her hand, the fire clinging to her knuckles. That was how hard she had hit him. It had barely moved him, the monster. But by God, she prayed he had lost a tooth and every time he felt the empty space, he thought of her. Just as she would forever have an empty space where he had opened her chest and found her heart. Just to wrench it out and stomp on it.
For a piece of property.
She shoved into her boots and kicked the tester bed. Like the marquess, it shuddered and nothing more. She hurled a wash basin from a stand and reveled in the crash of porcelain against the paneled wall and the gash it made in the portrait it struck.
A piece of property!For property, he had stolen her heart.
Marching across the debris, she crushed the shards into the faded carpet with her boot heels. She clawed the portrait’s canvas, ripped the rest of it from the frame, cursed over the bits that clung to their hold, and didn’t stop until all had been obliterated.
Like her.
How Nicholas must have laughed when she stupid, stupid, stupidly had tried to comfort him over René Durand. When she had asserted his goodness. When she had said she wanted tobe like him.
She yanked the curtains from the bed, crawled upon the mattress, and ensured those at the head met a similar fate. At the windows, she jerked the drapery to the floor. The enormous ruby caught the light. She held out her hand, watching it quiver with her unspent rage, her eyes prickling and hot as she studied the blood-red gem. She should have thrown it at him. How final. How horribly weak that she wanted a reason to see him again.
Monster.
Monster she still loved.
She sobbed over her knees, clutched her face, wanted to rip her skin away. She just cried. And cried. She wandered the room with nothing left to do except cry.
What could she do about it? How could she live with it? She would never, never be whole again. All that was left was to cry and mourn and live with mistake of falling in love with a monster.
Who she still loved.
Her sobs coming in heaving rasps, she raked her shaking, throbbing hands through her hair and swiped her waistcoat from the floor. With each button fastened, she wept at how she had unbuttoned his waistcoat. After she had stood like a fool and pleaded to be a woman. To feel it. Withhim. The Marquess of Eastwick.
She dropped to the floor and just, just prayed, prayed she would cease to exist. Nicholas appeared, a groan wrenching from his chest as he crouched down before her.
Georgiana searched his face, her tears hopeless and blinding. “For a piece of property?”
Strong arms enfolded her. Familiar arms. The only arms she had said she wished to cry with. He pressed her cheek gently to his where it was damp, and she couldn’t tell if it was from her tears or his. He soothed her. He rocked her in his arms.
