Page 25 of His Brazen Tart
By the time he swiveled to face her, Piers had smoothed his expression blank. “What concern is it of yours who I associate with?”
Lysandra shrugged one shoulder, her lips quirking in a taunting smile. “Why, none at all, darling. It was a simple question, nothing more.”
Piers’ nostrils flared as he assessed his former fiancée. The little viper was up to something, but Piers couldn’t be certain exactly what unless he talked to her.
With an exasperated sigh, he waved toward the door of his townhouse—still hanging open with his butler watching from within.
“Five minutes,” he grumbled.
Lysandra’s footsteps sounded behind Piers as she followed him to the cold and empty morning room. He chose the dark, chilly space on purpose, not wanting Lysandra to feel welcome or comfortable in his home. The sooner he could get away from her, the better.
He made quick work of lighting a few tapers, though he left the door open to allow in the light of the entrance hall. As well, he wouldn’t leave any room for Lysandra to claim that something untoward had happened. She had made enough of a mess of his life as it was.
Leaning against a nearby settee, he folded his arms over his chest and stared at her. “Lysandra—”
“Please, hear me out, Piers,” she said, using the soft, sweet voice he’d learned was a facade. She used it often and effectively to manipulate the people around her. It no longer worked on Piers.
“What is there for us to discuss?”
She began pacing before the door, the yellow light framing her with a soft glow. Hands folded, she looked young and innocent. No one knew better than Piers how false appearances could be when it came to this woman.
“Everything,” she whispered. “All the things we never said to one another. Oh, Piers, I fear I made a horrible mistake—”
“No,” he blurted, snapping upright as her words burrowed beneath his skin, prodding at wounds that had never completely healed. “I will not do this, not now or ever!”
“Have you grown to hate me so much?” she whined, her eyes glistening with unshed tears—she had always been good at conjuring them up on a moment’s notice. “I hurt you and I am sorry, but you don’t understand the position I was in. As the daughter of a duke—”
“You should never have given me the time of day,” Piers cut in, acid burning through every word. “No one knows that better than I do. But you did, and like the fool I was, I believed you loved me. I believed it when you said you didn’t care about positions or titles or gossip.”
“I did love you,” she pleaded. She had begun taking slow steps in his direction, pleading hands outstretched as if to embrace him. “I love you still. But I was so afraid—”
“Bollocks,” he spat. “You delighted in toying with me. But of course, the game was over once your marquis came along.”
“He isn’t half the man you are,” she murmured, her mouth twisting and her nose scrunching as if she smelled something rancid. “He spends all his time at his clubs and in Parliament and … and he cut my allowance in half last year after claiming I was wasting it on frivolous things! You would never be so parsimonious.”
Piers snorted. “I can afford to be generous, but even that wasn’t enough for you. It would never have been enough without the title of His Lordship before my name.”
“I was a coward. My family would have disowned me, and my friends would have shunned me. My parents expected an advantageous marriage; they didn’t care that I was in love.”
Piers’ upper lip curled into a snarl as fat tears rolled down her cheeks. They glistened in the meager lighting of the tapers. “You have never loved anyone but yourself. The marquis was the perfect choice of husband for the status and attention you could gain, but he barely knows you exist, does he? That’s what this is about. You could never be content, Lysandra—you always wanted more. You had to have everything. It wasn’t enough for me to love you and want to shower you with everything you could ask for. And now, it isn’t enough for your husband to have given you everything I couldn’t. But it is too late, and I thank God for it, because had I wed you when I was a young idiot, I might never have come to see you for the lying, treacherous witch you are. Or, perhaps I would have, and be all the more miserable for it. Whatever your complaints regarding your husband, you have made your bed and now you must lie in it.”
Without waiting for a rebuttal, he strode to the door and waved a hand toward the opening. “Your five minutes is at an end. You have made me late enough for my engagement as it is.”
Lysandra stared at him, unmoving, hands clasped demurely before her. Within seconds she underwent a rapid transformation from sniffling and weeping to icy disdain. The glisten in her eyes disappeared, the candlelight offering only a glimpse of pupils gone dark and coal-like. Raising her chin, she approached with a swish of her skirts, her gaze never straying from his.
She paused before crossing the threshold, a cat-like smile warping her lips. “She’ll discard you, as any well-bred lady with sense would. Just likeIdid.”
Piers’ fingers curled into his palm, trembling with barely-checked rage. He fought not to display his emotions outwardly. This woman had embarrassed him once; he would be damned if he allowed her to do it again. “It eats you alive to know that I haven’t wasted the past few years pining over you. What I do, or whom I consort with, is none of your concern.”
Lysandra pursed her lips and made a dramatic show of pulling her skirts aside so they wouldn’t brush him as she stormed into the entrance hall. “You cannot claim I didn’t warn you. The only difference between you and a gutter rat, is that the rat knows its place.”
Piers stared after the woman he had once loved and wondered how she’d fooled him so effortlessly. It was difficult to believe he had ever perceived her as sweet and innocent. She was poison, and always had been.
He paced the room a few times to gather his bearings. Lysandra’s visit had served as a potent reminder of the mistake he had almost made. Being forced to face that should bring him nothing but relief.
So, why did his insides churn as if he had swallowed an acidic tonic? His skin was flushed hot, and his head whirled with dizzy turbulence. He had done an admirable job of remaining unmoved in the face of Lysandra’s taunts, but he was alone now and not nearly as unaffected as he wanted to be. The little witch had hit him in his most vulnerable place—a part of himself Piers had thought long destroyed and buried in the ashes of his forgotten pain.
But as he walked out into the chilly night, hands stuffed into his greatcoat pockets, Piers thought of Joan with a sick feeling in his stomach. She was nothing like Lysandra. Joan was refreshingly free of wiles, and had never misled him about who she was or what she wanted from him. He wanted to believe they had a connection, even if the bond was far stronger on his end than hers.
