Page 2 of Ruthless with a Rogue
She glanced up at his weighty sigh.He’d already thrown on his thin lawn shirt and was tucking it into his buckskin breeches.She pulled her dress over her head, her movements sluggish, like her body was trying to delay the inevitable.She had some assumptions about where this was going.And she didn’t think she wanted to find out if she was correct.
She finished the last button on her bodice, and Warren approached her.He took her hand and led her to lean against the edge of the large four-poster bed.“Liv, you are a lovely girl.”
Her eyes fluttered shut.Her sinking stomach turned to lead.She could hear the ‘but’.Why was it that when it went unsaid, it felt as though it’d been screamed?
A warm palm cupped her cheek, and her eyes snapped open to meet Warren’s light-blue gaze.An apology glittered in those irises, in the furrow of his blond brows.He swallowed hard.“We’ve had much fun over the past few years.But that’s all it will ever be.I cannot marry a girl like you.”
Livy froze.Her heart, the blood in her veins, her lungs.Her vision dotted in front of her.And just like that, she was a heartbroken six-year-old girl again, standing outside her father’s study while her mother and father argued.
“At least stay for Ollie, Clementine.A girl needs her mother, needs a woman’s guidance.Someone to prepare her for her entrée into society one day.”
“Don’t make me laugh, John.That girl isn’t suited for society.It would be cruel.She’d only bring me embarrassment.”
“Clementine,” Father had warned.
“This marriage has failed in every regard.It was supposed to lift me up—grant me standing, riches, a place among those who matter.Instead, I am wearing second-rate fabrics and subject to penny-counting.Olivia was my last chance.And naturally she inherited nothing of my beauty.She’s plain, ungainly, and forever prattling arithmetic.A girl like that will never draw a husband of worth.She is of no use to me.You’ve proven no use to me.There’s nothing here for me any longer.I am leaving.”
“Perhaps it is best you go then.”Father’s voice had been quiet, but no less hard for it.
“Breathe, Liv.”
She sucked in a gasping breath, her memories clearing away as oxygen finally filled her depleted brain.“A girl like…me?”she whispered.
Warren’s eyes fell shut, a grimace contorting his features.When he finally opened them again, what stared back at her was a pale, sorrowful blue.“I came home early because my father has fallen ill.”His words were hoarse, and Livy wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that he felt some sort of pain too.“My parents are demanding I take a wife.And…” He swallowed, his features tightening.“You must understand, Liv.I am to be a viscount.I need to marry someone refined.I cannot marry the girl who runs wild in the country.”His fingers traced down her cheek, down her jaw, lovingly, forlornly.“Even if that’s what I want,” he whispered.
Thunder boomed outside, a crash that tore through her chest as she stared at the young man she’d known she would marry since the day they met at the age of fifteen.Oh, how she had drastically miscalculated.Five years.Of affection, of the warmth of his arms around her, holding her like she mattered.Correlation does not equate causation.
“My parents expect me to marry someone of high social standing and good breeding.Wealth wouldn’t hurt, either.Unfortunately, your father is not known for his financial aptitude, and with your mother’s family in trade…” He shrugged, a hollow look taking over his face, as if to say,This is the way of our world, and I’m helpless against it.“You’d need to bring something to the marriage.The way I feel for you isn’t enough.”
Livy barely heard his words.They were far away, like she wasn’t even sitting in the hunting lodge any longer.Or maybe it was because she couldn’t hear anything over the cracking of her heart, shattering as if hit with an axe, the shards slicing her lungs, making it impossible to breathe.She brought one shaking hand to cover her mouth, the other to clutch her stomach.
She is of no use to me.There’s nothing here for me any longer.I am leaving.
“Take me home,” she choked out.
He stood and helped her up.The steady beating of rain echoed off the roof of the lodge.The deluge had come out of nowhere.Just like Warren’s pronouncement.
“Liv, there is nothing I enjoy more than our time together.”He reached for her hand, intertwining their fingers, his gaze tracing where they were joined.“It pains me as well,” he said, his words so low they were barely audible.“To know I will never be able to feel the softness of your skin again.”His misty blue eyes met hers, flashing with anguish, and he leaned forward.“The press of your lips…”
The axe came down a second time.She jerked away before he could kiss her, anger roiling in her gut—at him?At herself?
Both.
How could he do this to her?She had tried so hard to be the type of woman worthy of being his wife.She’d hidden her knack for numbers.She didn’t curse.She might runwild in the countrywith him—something he never seemed to mind when it was him she was doing it with—but she’d always acted demure and respectable in public company.Always trying to prove she was fit to be a lady.But it didn’t change the fact that her father was a poor baron.Her mother not even gentry.Her family held no standing.
Once again, Olivia Forester wasn’t enough.
He roughly cleared his throat.“I’m sorry, Liv.This isn’t easy for me either.”
She balled her fists, the blood pumping through her veins so cold it burned.It wasn’t easy for him?For him?
“I wish it could be different.”
Or, in other words, he wished shecould be different.
She did too.
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