Page 54 of The Dove
Nodding, she came into the room, approaching him slowly … as if afraid he might hurt her. In his present state, he could make no promises, so it was best she kept her distance.
“I know,” she said, keeping her voice lowered and her gaze locked with his. “But it doesn’t have to end like this, Adam.”
His fingers tightened around the neck of the decanter, and his hand shook as he lifted it for another swig. It did very little to calm his nerves. He was a bundle of nerve endings twisted inside out and exposed to the elements, a keg of gunpowder ready to explode.
“He is in a position to take her away from me,” he ground out through clenched teeth. “To take her away from her mother. I will not let him do that.”
“Then we shall simply have to find a way to outsmart him,” she reasoned. “You’ve done that all this time. I know you can—”
“He’s her father by law,” he snapped, shaking his head. “And if word gets out that Olivia suffers from a malady of the mind … No, I cannot risk it. And if I pay him, it will only put me at his mercy. He can extort money from me until the day I die. If I give in, he’ll only ask for more and more to keep our secrets.”
“I agree that you should not pay him,” she replied. “But, what you’re proposing—”
Her words choked off on a gasp when he advanced on her, dropping his brandy bottle to the floor. Ignoring the liquor sloshing over his boots and staining the rug, he grasped her shoulders and shook her, his teeth clenched so hard, his jaw ached.
“Will you pretend you’re still trying to protect anyone other than your cunt of a brother now, little dove?” he rasped, his blood boiling, his stomach twisting violently when faced with the evidence of her obvious loyalties. “He isn’t here, and Niall is no longer at risk of facing the gallows, yet still you try to save his life. Does precious Bertie still mean so much to you, even after all he’s done? Perhaps I was right about you, after all … you prefer your innocence and your pretty little cage over the realities I have shown you!”
She shrugged out of his hold and slapped him so hard, his left eye watered, his cheek blooming with an annoying sting. Striking him again, she sneered, her eyes blazing with blue fire.
“You bastard,” she growled, putting both hands against his chest and shoving him, causing him to stumble over the fallen brandy decanter. “You heartless, uncaring son of a bitch! After all you’ve put me through, I still believed you, I still took your side in all this … I turned my back on my family, and still, it is not enough? Ihaveno more innocence! My cage was destroyed! I have nothing except the world you wrecked, leaving me in the rubble as if I meant no more to you than an insect!”
Her words did not make him feel any better, even if they reminded him of all the ways she’d proved her loyalty to him. They only served to make him feel worse, the unwelcome sensation of guilt once again gnawing at his gut. He shoved it back down relentlessly, reminding himself that it was no fault of his she’d come to him so innocent and naive. If anything, she ought to thank him for exposing the charlatans in her family for who they truly were and freeing her from her gilded cage.
“He has to die,” he argued. “He even deserves it.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “He does. But if you think my interference means I give a bloody damn about the man who exposed me as a whore to the entireton, who ruined dozens of women without a care … then you really do not know, do you? You have no idea that I’m trying to saveyou.”
He scowled, blinking several times as he tried to make sense of her words. “Save me? From what? Your brother stands no chance against me.”
She looked away, but not before he noticed the glimmer of tears in her eyes. His belly clenched at the sight, his cock surging against the fall of his breeches. He wanted to kiss the skin at the corner of her eye, taste the salt of her pain just before taking her down to the brandy-soaked carpet and sinking into her bollocks deep. With the object of his rage no longer within his sights, he had very little recourse for easing the tension making his muscles grow tight.
“Perhaps he does not,” she relented. “But what of Serena or Olivia? What of me? Should the ramifications of this act fall onto us—”
“It will not,” he interjected, reaching out against his better judgment and taking her face in his hands. “Do you hear? It will not, because you are mine, and I protect what is mine.”
She winced when his fingers dug into her jaw, his grip speaking of the overwhelming possessiveness that swept over him in that moment. Even when the urge to murder her brother overwhelmed him, he could not fight off another, more visceral desire … the need to remind her that she was his, that nothing would change that.
“Does it bother you to think of me touching you with bloodstained hands?” he murmured, coming closer, until his body brushed hers. “Will you spurn me when I return bathed in your brother’s gore? Is that it, little dove?”
She trembled, whether from fear or desire, he could not tell. Nor did he care. He would have her when he wanted her, regardless of her own feelings on the matter. They both knew how easily he could turn her fear into lust.
“It is not your hands I am concerned with,” she whispered. “But your soul, Adam. Taking a man’s life is not the same as destroying his livelihood. Putting a gun to a man’s head and pulling the trigger is not the same as coercing him into doing it himself. Do not commit the one act you cannot take back once it is done.”
Her words took him aback, yet again, leaving his head spinning and his stomach roiling as he tried to make sense of her—this woman he knew so well, but failed to understand in so many ways. Even after the mess he’d made of her life, after the things her father and brother had done, a part of her remained untouched and pure. Did she truly believe there was any good left in him—that he even had a soul worth redeeming?
“What remained of my soul died the day I laid eyes on Olivia in that asylum,” he whispered. “So, you see, little dove, you are worried for nothing. I will kill Bertram, and I will do it without an ounce of hesitation, remorse, or regret. When I am finished, we shall all return to Dunnottar—yourself included. I suggest you send word to your servants to have your things prepared for the journey. We will procure them on our way out of London.”
At her shocked expression, he grinned.
“You did not think I’d let you go, even now, did you?” he teased, smoothing the pad of his thumb over her lips. “Not a chance, little dove.”
She scowled, shaking her head. “Surely, you cannot expect me to simply return to Scotland with you, to go on being your … your …”
“Whore?” he finished for her, unable to help another laugh at the way that word turned her cheeks pink and dilated her pupils. She could pretend to hate it all she wished, but he knew how it spoke to her wanton nature, how she reveled in acting as his whore every night when the sun set and the darkness masked their salacious deeds.
She frowned. “Adam—”
He tightened his hold on her jaw, silencing her protests. “I always get what I want, little dove. Do you really wish to fight me, and force me to prove that to you yet again?”
