Page 46 of Her Duke By Accident
Matthew scowled at her. “Why are you so angry?”
“Why?” she repeated, aghast. “You’re rude. You’re intolerable. You act as though you care for your sister, yourfamily,but then ignore her and turn her away from you the next second.”
“Do not speak as if you know everything within these halls.”
“I do not!” Alicia shouted, unable to keep herself calm anymore. “I do not act as if I know, because I know I do not. Don’t you see? You have built this wall that separates me from all of Garvey.”
“If there is a wall,” he leaned down closer to her, an angry sneer pulling at his lips, “it is because you gave me reason to put it there.”
“I—” she stopped, and took a step back. “Please don’t tell me you’re referring to the library once more. After all this time.”
“I willalwaysremember that night, ” he growled. “I will always remember the moment a woman desperate for a savior caught me and bound me to her with shackles.”
“Shackles?” Alicia repeated. “You leave whenever you please! You abandon your sister and go to do God knows what without any explanation!”
“Stop talking about Lucy as if you know anything!”
“I know she is sad when you leave,” Alicia said. “I know how her face falls every time you decide to walk away.”
Matthew swatted his hand at her, turning to walk away further into the cold garden.
She called out after him. “I know how disappointed she is that her brother abandons her like a bastard abandoned on a doorstep!”
The duke froze.
Alicia paused, a fear striking deep within her chest. She stared at his back, watched as his fists tightened at either side of him.
“Your Grace,” she said with a shaking voice, “I’m sorry, it was just a foolish insult. I stepped too far.”
“Yes,” he growled, “you did.”
Alicia swallowed. “Why can’t you trust me?”
“Trustyou?”
“Please, Your Grace, just?—”
Matthew slowly turned on his heel till he faced her. “Why can’t Itrustyou?”
“Your Grace,” she said, sternly, as if to scold a child.
“Your family has forced me into a union that I did not seek,” Matthew began, his voice tense and short. “You have already gone behind my back when I gave you clear instruction on what I would not have in the halls of Garvey.”
“You don’t understand.”
Matthew walked closer to her. “You have ridiculed my hiring techniques, pried into my business when it is not your place, even tried to act as if you were always meant to be in these halls.” The duke was now directly before her, head bent down to meet her gaze. “And you expect me to trust you? To tell you every secret I have within, to tell you all that has transpired here?”
“I do not expect anything,” she whispered.
“That is a lie,” he snapped.
“It is not!”
Matthew pointed toward the estate. “You expect to be welcomed with open arms, to become a Garvey without a second thought.”
“A union means accepting someone into your family,” she shouted back at him.
“This was not a union of choice!”
