Page 34 of Private Arrangements
“Absolutely nothing,” he admitted without hesitation. “But at least I saw a few of your faults. I thought you interesting and appealing in spite of them, or perhaps because of them. Lord Frederick worships the ground you walk on because you have the kind of strength, resilience, and nerve he can only dream of. When he looks at you he sees only the halo he has erected about you.”
“What's wrong with being perfect in the eyes of my beloved?”
His eyes locked with hers. “I look at him and I see a man who thinks we are going to be as chaste as God and Mary in this house. Does he know you are protecting him from the truth? Does he know that a few big lies in the service of love are nothing to you? That your strength extends to remorseless ruthlessness?”
She'd have spat on the floor if she hadn't been raised by Victoria Rowland. “I look at you and I see a man who is still stuck in 1883. Does he know that ten years have passed? Does he know that I have moved on, that he is the relentless, ruthless one now? And does he really think I plan to tell the man I love that I'm to be impregnated by another, against my wish?”
Someone laughed in the distance, a shrill, feminine giggle. Croesus whimpered and shifted in her arms. She was crushing him with the stiffness of her grip. She let out a shaky breath and forced her muscles to relax.
He pressed two fingertips to his right temple. “You make it sound so ugly, my dear. Don't you think I deserve to get something out of this marriage before you traipse into your happily-ever-after?”
“I don't know,” she said. “And I don't care. All I know is that Freddie is my last chance for happiness in this life. I will marry him if I have to turn into Lady Macbeth and destroy all who stand in my path.”
His eyes narrowed. They were the dark green of a nightmare forest. “Warming up to your old tricks?”
“How can I fail to be unscrupulous when you keep reminding me that I am?” Her heart was a swamp of bitterness, at him, at herself. “We will begin our one year tonight. Not later. Not whenever you finally feel like it. Tonight. And I don't give a ha'penny if you have to spend the rest of the night puking.”
He merely smiled.
Chapter Fourteen
January 1883
Gigi jerked awake in the small hours of the morning, gasping and covered in cold perspiration. In her dream, she had been running in her nightgown, chasing after something in the dark, screaming, “Come back! Come back to me!”
Was it an ill omen, this dream? Or was it her conscience, festering in the dungeon of the past three weeks, finally breaking out of captivity and, spitting mad, coming to settle the score with her?
She touched the engagement ring Camden had given her. It was reassuringly snug on her finger, the gold band as warm as her own skin, the facets of the sapphire cool as silk. At the foot of her bed, Croesus snorted in his padded wicker tray. She scooted until her head was level with his. He smelled clean and warm. She took hold of one of his paws and felt some of the fear drain out of her.
She let herself breathe again. All was well. And who needed a conscience when she had happiness by the bushel?
Right?
Hell did not begin to describe it.
Camden stood at the center of a maelstrom of joy and goodwill, drowning. The ceremony. The unending congratulations. The wedding breakfast. The flash and bang of the photographer recording the occasion for all posterity. So much laughter. So much cheer. So much genuine pleasure all around. He felt a complete fraud, a bigger fraud than she, if that was possible.
Several times his will nearly broke. People were happy for him. For them. Mrs. Rowland had tears in her eyes. So did Claudia. Surrounded by a sea of tulle and organza, with Briarmeadow decked to the rafters in daffodils and tulips, as fragrant as the first day of spring, they thought it a fairy tale still, the one marriage of convenience out of thousands so fortunate as to become a blissful, devoted union. The weight of his deception choked him.
It was she, in the end, who salvaged his iniquitous intentions, she with her radiance that struck him a physical blow every time he looked upon her. Every ebullient, cocksure smile from her was a little death for him, every mirthful giggle a stab in the heart.
Even so, he almost couldn't.
After the reception, they traveled fifteen miles to another Rowland house nearer to Bedford for their wedding night. The two of them, alone—if one didn't count Croesus—in the oppressive confines of the brougham. Giddy and loquacious from the champagne, his new wife strategized the surprise reception that they would throw for his friends.
The apartment her agent had found for them in the Quartier Latin, overlooking Rue Mouffetard, had ten rooms. How many people did he think could fit into such an apartment? Would her governess-taught French suffice for the evening's conversation? And if they served foie gras and caviar, perhaps his friends might not notice that they had hardly any furniture?
Her childish enthusiasm for the life that they would never share clawed at him with a ferocity he did not want to understand. An incandescent light illuminated her eyes, a light of hope and fervor. It made her intoxicating, enchanting, beautiful, despiteeverythinghe knew, despite the effrontery and selfishness that were the warp and woof of her corrupt femininity.
He wanted to violate her then, to assert his power over her in the crudest, foulest manner, to crush her and snuff that lovely light. It would have been malevolent, but honest, to a degree.
He held back because of his own reciprocal corruptness. It would have been too easy for her. Shattering, yes, but shattering all at once. He did not want that. He did not want her to recognize the beast in him. He wanted her to panic, to despair, but to still want him, still think him the most perfect man that ever lived.
That was how he would go on tormenting her, after his physical departure from her life. A baroque plan, byzantine even, a plan that both pleased and shamed him.
He awaited only the night, this one grotesque, terrible night.
Camden was drinking cognac directly from a decanter when the connecting door between the bedchambers opened. He turned around and took another swig, barely feeling the fire sliding down his throat.
