Page 57 of The Dragoneers of Longbourn and Pemberley
He heard her approach, and startled upright. “Miss Longbourn.” There was no bow to accompany this greeting, no graceful sweep of the arm to invite her into the gazebo. Only fidgeting with the button at his shirt cuff.
“Mr. Pemberley,” Valeraine returned, and climbed the two stairs to join him on the marble floor. “I have something to tell you, and be reassured that I have proof —”
“You must allow me to speak.”
Valeraine didn’t intend to allow him to do anything, much less speak at her with this fervor. But the passion in his voice, thepain there, stunned her into silence for a moment and he took the conversational reins with an unforgiving jerk.
“I have toiled for months now, against my feelings. It has been a war with many battles, no survivors. You have placed me in a terrible position. I will struggle with this for no longer.”
“You needn’t struggle, for this charade between us is over. I know you are —”
“You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
This was the second time he had interrupted her, and the shock was even greater than the first. He admired her? It must be a terrible joke. Next, he would manipulate her into some terrible position. It would not work, of course, because she had the upper hand. He could ruin her reputation, but she could ruin his just as effectively, and he had so much farther to fall.
He falsely took her silence as a kind of encouragement, and continued with the momentum of a diving dragon, unstoppable and with fire building. “This is fully unsuitable to my station. Your family is so lowly, not a proper house. It should be out of the question for me to love someone of your status, and yet I still sputter against my feelings.”
Valeraine felt that she needed to argue, to take control of this exchange, but she hardly knew where to begin. “Longbourn house has a dragon, who is mighty —”
“Yes, you and your insistence to pretend as if your house still belongs among the dragoneers. My disdain for this should be strong enough to overcome your allure, but it fails. My reason tells me your attitude is fully unsuitable for that of a wife. You are rebellious, and already mired in a scandal waiting to break. And yet some perverse part of my nature is drawn to that conceited independence of yours.”
Valeraine could only say, her fury building, “Conceited independence?”
“When we are married, I will do all in my power to conceal that you have ever raced, to shield us from scandal.” He said this in a reassuring tone, as if this would be her only objection.When she married him, he would no longer be threatening to reveal her secrets lest they spill onto him, her husband.
“When we aremarried?”
Pemberley moved his hands, as if to start another speech, but Valeraine preempted him.
“You say my status is so much lower than yours,” she said, “but I do not see how that can be. You are the vilest being on this earth. You are arrogant, selfish, violent, and manipulative. At our very first conversation I already knew you were the last man in the world whom I would ever marry.”
Now, Pemberley’s nervous energy transformed into something darker. Deprived of his assumed success, he grew angry. “You return such rudeness to my generous offer?”
“A generous offer? When you so carefully outlined the deplorable state of my family and my person? I’ve only returned rudeness for rudeness.”
“So if I had presented things prettily, had lied and pretended at your suitability, you would have accepted?”
“No. If you had presented yourself with humility and supplication, if you had behaved in a gentlemanlike manner, I would have felt the slightest concern as I refused you,” Valeraine said. “That concern would have been wiped away the second I considered the hurt you’ve caused to me and my family. You are —”
“I have dealt no injury to you or your family!”
“Is that what you call spoiling the romance between Alyce and Mr. Nethenabbi? She truly cared for him, and he her, and you kept them apart.”
“I would hardly call that injury to —”
“Do you deny it? Do you deny forcing Nethenabbi to stop his courtship?” she asked.
“I first tried to reason with Nethenabbi on the unsuitability of the match, on grounds of lack of consequence of Longbourn house,” he said. “When he would not act to protect himself, I needed to do something. I stopped her letters from reaching him, and his from being sent. I persuaded him to go to Kinellan City.”
“You act in the vilest manner to someone whom you call a friend, then turn around and propose to a daughter of that same house. I should not be so surprised, for I already knew you were —”
“As I have told you, it is not from my reason or better nature that I’m here. I will have you as my wife not because it is right, but because I need it and in vain I have resisted —”
“I know you are Scaleheart!” Valeraine cried. “I have proof. If you act against me I will spread it abroad.”
This, finally, silenced both of them. They were breathing hard, as if they had been boxing with each other instead of merely ripping their souls apart.
“How do you —” Pemberley said.
