aisy flinched as the door joining their chambers slammed.
He didn’t believe her, even after what they’d just shared. The moment he’d rolled away from her and righted his clothing, his expression impassive, she’d known. She’d created a chasm, and it threatened to engulf them both.
A part of her wanted to rail against him for so easily doubting her. But part of her knew that if she wanted his honesty and his trust, she would need to meet him halfway. She wanted the truth from him, wanted him to lower the walls he’d erected around himself, for the sake of their marriage but most importantly for the sake of their child.
Knowing what she needed to do, she rose from the bed and took up a dressing gown, belting it at her waist. Her feet carried her to the door he’d just closed. She didn’t knock, didn’t hesitate before turning the knob and crossing the threshold. This distance between them had to end.
He stood at the window, his back to her. The curtains he’d drawn back were clenched so tightly in his fist that his knuckles were white.
“Get out,” his deep voice cut into the silence, the only acknowledgment he’d made of her presence.
“No.” She didn’t stop until she was so near to him that his familiar scent hit her and she flattened her palm against his shoulder. “Look at me, Sebastian.”
He tensed beneath her touch but remained otherwise immobile. “I can’t bloody well look at you.”
Had she thought he would bend? When had he ever? Her chest grew tight as she recalled the charmed fortnight they’d spent together. Laughing with him. Loving with him. A one thirty-second Your Grace. The library’s worth of books he’d had delivered to her door. A favorite for a favorite. Those two weeks had been the best she’d ever known. She wanted that life with him back, wanted him back. Forever.
“Padraig McGuire was here because of my sister,” she told him softly. “I have a half sister, Bridget. She works—worked—at a milliner’s shop here in London. A few months ago, she left without word. Padraig had information about her. That and that alone is why I received his calls.”
Sebastian whipped about, his face carved in hard, grim lines that did nothing to detract from his startling looks. Even in his rage, he was beautiful. “Padraig?”
She took a step back from him, wincing at his furious tone and harsh expression. “Mr. McGuire. I’ve known him for several years, Sebastian, and yes I was betrothed to him once. But I was young and foolish and desperate to escape my father. There is nothing between us now, nor has there been since our engagement was broken.”
A muscle ticked in his cheek. “Do you love him?”
“Of course not.” Giving in to the need to touch him again, she moved nearer, reaching up to cup the rigid set of his jaw. When he didn’t withdraw from her touch, a brief flutter of optimism beat in her breast. “I love you.”
He was silent for so long she feared he wouldn’t speak. His eyes devoured her, hungrily raking her face and lower, dipping to her mouth. “Damn you,” he whispered.
“No, my love.” She glided her palm over the prickly stubble of his whiskers, caressing him. “Damn you for leaving. Why did you go? Where? Tell me, please. I want to understand. Let me in, Sebastian. Let me love you.”
But he remained unyielding, even if he allowed her touch. “This sister of yours. Tell me about her.”
It wasn’t what she’d expected him to dwell on, but neither was he pushing her away, so she supposed that, at least, was something. “Bridget was born out of wedlock soon after my parents married. Father was on business in Ireland. Her mother worked at a tavern. When I learned she was here in London, I was overjoyed. I had always longed to meet her, you see.”
“She’s a shop girl.”
“Yes. I wanted her to leave her position and stay with Aunt Caroline, but she refused. My father… he wouldn’t acknowledge her or help her in any way.” She took a breath, searching his eyes. “I wanted to tell you about her before. I was hoping she might live with us. But then, you were both gone. I’m worried about her, Sebastian. Mr. McGuire told me she’s involved with the Fenians.”
Sebastian’s gaze sharpened. He caught her hand, removed it from his face. “What else did McGuire tell you?”
She focused on their linked hands, the heat of his skin burning into hers. He had not let her go. “He said she was in danger, that somehow she’d gotten caught up with the dynamitards. Why do you ask?”
All her suspicions crowded down on her in that moment. His abrupt departure, the odd note she’d discovered, the length of time he’d been away, the darkness and secrecy she’d always sensed in him. Georgiana’s words echoed eerily in her mind. Dizzy. She felt so dizzy.
My husband isn’t hunting game, Daisy… it’s something to do with the Fenians… there was a name on one of the letters.
The name on the letter had been Daisy’s.
The day after Sebastian left, the papers had been filled with news of a foiled Fenian bomb plot. The bomb had been discovered prior to detonation. The people clamored for answers and reassurance. The government’s response had remained a secret, but it stood to reason that it would not show its hand to the players seated at its table. No, the Crown would keep its emissaries enshrouded in secrecy, all the better to gain the advantage over their foe. Secrecy such as a husband who disappeared without word.
Dear God.
The chamber spun around her. A rushing sounded in her ears, her breath going shallow. She couldn’t seem to suck enough air into her lungs. Or perhaps it was too much air. Little pinpricks of light marred her vision. She tried to pull free of Sebastian’s grasp, but he refused to release her.
“You’re a spy,” she accused.
He stared at her, not denying her charge.
And then her world went black.
Bloody, bloody hell.
Sebastian caught Daisy against his chest before she pitched backward and landed in a crumpled heap on the floor. With little effort, he swept her into his arms and carried her across the chamber, laying her on his bed. His mind spinning, he patted her pale cheeks.
“Daisy, love.” His fingers found her pulse, steady and thrumming in her throat. Her chest rose and fell in normal breaths. Christ, she had fainted. And in the moment he watched the bloom fade from her cheeks, her eyes going wide as she issued that lone, correct allegation, he had known.
His instinct had not been wrong. The heated interlude he’d shared with her had pierced the haze of jealousy fogging his brain, had undone him in a way nothing else could. He’d removed himself to his chamber, trying to gain some perspective, to objectively study the situation and facts. But she had just lowered the gavel for him.
She was telling the truth. Not even the greatest actress alive could have managed to feign the shock on her face, the ghostly pallor her skin had taken on, the weightless fall. There was no mistaking the limp feeling of an unconscious body to anyone who had ever known it.
Daisy was not a Fenian plotter. The Irish shop girl she’d been in contact with was her bloody sister born on the wrong side of the blanket. The jagged pieces of truth formed together into a perfect puzzle. He ran his hands over her now, rubbing her arms, urging her to wake. For the first time since his return, he allowed himself to relish the feeling of her, warm and soft. Reassuring. Beloved.
He believed her. Believed everything. Her innocence, her recklessness in trying to force his return, her love for him. Guilt slammed through him with the force of a runaway carriage. He had doubted her. Lied to her. Used her. Abandoned her when he should have never left her side.
He was not worthy of her love, and she was lying supine, out cold, so bloody still and pale it scared him. “Daisy, come back to me,” he said, patting her cheek again.
A low moan issued from her parted lips. Golden lashes fluttered on her cheeks. Her eyes opened, startling and verdant. “Sebastian?”
“Buttercup.” He pressed a fervent kiss to her brow. “Thank God.”
Her hands fluttered to his shoulders, tentative at first as she became lucid once more. Then she clutched him, her fingers digging through the fabric of his shirt. “Who are you?”
Christ if he knew. Right now, in this moment, he was a man who loved the woman before him. A man who had wronged her in the name of duty. A man who very much wanted to atone for his sins.
He lowered himself onto the bed alongside her, framing her face in his hands. Somehow, he needed to unburden himself to her. He owed her his honesty. Owed her so much more. “Sebastian Fairmont, Eighth Duke of Trent, Marquis of Sunbury, and other lesser titles.”
His attempt at levity met with a frown that furrowed the smooth expanse of her forehead. “That wasn’t what I meant, and you know it.”
Could he do it? Did he dare reveal the truth to her? A great, gaping fear paralyzed him for a moment. He had been a spy his entire adult life. He traded in secrets. He deceived everyone he knew. He couldn’t recall when his life had been his. When he’d been free. He lived and died by his oath. He was bound to the League.
But now, here, in the woman at his side, was a different form of bond altogether. The sort that transcended everything and everyone. As much as she was his, he too was hers.
“Sebastian.” Her voice prodded him, ate at him, forced its way through the indecision. Those moss-green eyes plumbed his. “What I want to know is whether or not you’re a spy.”
A spy.
All he needed to say was one word. One response. The truth.
He closed his eyes, whispered the answer. “Yes.”
Silence stretched between them in the wake of his crippling admission. She stiffened. He kept holding her face because he couldn’t bear to release her, stroking his thumbs over her cheekbones with tender care. Such delicate bone structure, so refined. Regal as a queen.
“You’ve been spying on me, haven’t you?” she asked at last, a shimmer of unshed tears glistening in the light, making her eyes all the more vibrant, mossy green.
He wanted to lie. Christ, it would be so much easier.
“The truth, Sebastian,” she demanded when he hesitated again. “It’s why you were following me when we first met. It’s why you married me, why you disappeared. How you knew that I was betrothed to Padraig, how you knew he’d called here. I’ll wager you didn’t earn those scars in a childhood fire, did you? Don’t lie to me any longer.”
He’d spent nearly half of his thirty years keeping the truth guarded, locked away from everyone who wasn’t part of the League. Unleashing it made his chest go tight, as if the air was being knocked from his lungs by a sound punch to the gut. “You are… my mission,” he allowed at last.
She pushed at his shoulders, dislodging his gentle hold on her. A gasp tore from her, and it was the raw sound of grief, and he was its cause, and that wracked him all the way to his bloody bones. “Was any of it true?”
Fuck. He swallowed around the bile rising in his throat. This was not how he’d intended to tell her. Her pain was like a knife to his chest. “You and me, Daisy and Sebastian. That was true. Is true. What I feel for you is as real and true as the roof over our heads and the stars lighting the night sky.”
Her hand rose to her mouth as if she attempted to contain the sob shuddering from her. “My God. Was… just now, making love to me, was that part of your mission?”
“No, love.” Feeling like the world’s biggest rotter, he touched her shoulder, seeking to comfort her.
But she didn’t want his comfort.
She shrugged away from him and scooted across the bed, not stopping until she threw her feet onto the floor and stood on the opposite side of him, a pale goddess, brave as ever. His heart ached for her. And he hated himself for the deceptions he’d perpetrated against her. He should never have consummated their marriage, not while he’d been dishonest. Not without giving her the choice of knowing who and what he was.
He recognized it now as she faced him with the look of a woman whose world had just been torn asunder. “Do not dare to call me that. And do not touch me. Is our marriage even binding, or was that a part of your lies as well?”
“It’s binding. You are my wife, and I’m your husband.” It hadn’t been meant to remain that way, his conscience needled him. Damn it, he had to tell her everything and hope that he could somehow regain her trust. He skirted the bed, going to her again, taking her cold hands in his. “Do you want the full truth, Daisy?”
“Release me.” She tugged at her hands fruitlessly. He wasn’t letting her go. Not now. Not ever.
“The truth,” he continued, lacing his fingers through hers and forcing her to meet his gaze, “is that I was meant to annul the marriage at the conclusion of my assignment. Your father is deeply involved with the Fenians who are setting bombs throughout England. He is funding them, running ships with his guns and supplies, but he’s a clever bastard, and no one has been able to furnish absolute proof of his guilt. I was assigned to get closer to you, glean as much information from you as I could.”
“Glean information from me.” She jerked her hands from his grip and stalked around him in such fury that her robe billowed out around her. Halfway across the chamber, she stopped and spun back to face him. “And you intended to learn my father’s secrets by following me into a moonlit garden? By marrying me? By consummating the marriage you were meant to annul?”
“It is complicated.” Damn Carlisle to hell for what he’d forced him to do. Damn himself for doing it. He followed her, stopping only when the hem of her robe brushed his trousers and her sweet scent wafted over him. So near he could make out the flecks of gold in her eyes. “I wasn’t meant to do half of what I’ve done. My mission was to marry you, keep you close, get even closer to your father, and gather enough evidence against him to see him thrown into prison. But from the moment I first saw you, I couldn’t stop wanting you. I tried my damnedest to keep from consummating the marriage, but you were no longer a pawn to me the moment I brought you here as my wife.”
She gave a bitter laugh, crossing her arms over herself in a defensive posture. “How honorable you were to refrain from consummating our marriage for the span of one whole day.”
Well, Christ. When she put it in those terms… he was a bloody beast, and he knew it. How had this golden angel come to earth, entrusted to him, and he had forsaken her? He passed a hand over his face, trying to gather his thoughts, to marshal them into something worthy of her listening. “I’m not an honorable man. When I should have placed my duty first, I followed my own selfish desires instead, and when I should have placed you first, I answered the call of duty. The truth is stark and ugly, but if you must know one thing, buttercup, know this. I married you out of duty, but I fell in love with you somewhere in between you taking me to task for turning up half-inebriated at breakfast and that morning we lay in bed laughing and making love. Do you remember it?”
She shook her head. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” Another step brought their bodies together. His hands found her waist, anchoring her to him. “Don’t tell you that I love you? How can I not? I love you, Daisy, Duchess of Trent. You sealed my fate from the moment you dared me to take my turn at the Beresford ball. You had such fire, such daring, the likes of which I’ve never seen in a woman. You humble me. You inspire me. You make me want to be better so that I’m worthy of being your husband.”
“No,” she cried out, shaking against him. Her palms flattened to his chest. “Stop it, Sebastian.”
He couldn’t. He held her to him, made her listen, because he couldn’t shake the feeling that if he allowed her to walk away now, he’d lose her forever. And he couldn’t bear that. Even with the accusations in the report running through his mind, fury and jealousy wreaking havoc on him for the entire trip from Liverpool to London, he had been thinking of ways he could reform her, convince her to see reason. Keep her safe and at his side.
“I’ve been living a lie for years. I’ve devoted my entire life to duty and protecting Crown and country. I don’t know how to be different than who I am, but I do know that I love you. I love you, and I will change for you. I’ll do anything for you, buttercup.”
“Don’t you see?” She exhaled, her tone steeped in sadness as she touched his face for a fleeting moment. “I don’t want you to change. All I ever wanted from you was your love and your honesty. But you came to me in lies. Everything we shared emerged from your deceit. Do you think you can tell me the truth and everything else will fall into place, that I’ll swoon into your arms in gratitude? Because I can assure you it won’t. I won’t. I’m stronger than that.”
Of course she was strong. She was the strongest woman he’d ever known. He was in awe of her. “I’m telling you all this because I owe you the truth, Daisy.”
“The truth or your version of it?” Her eyes flashed as she faced him, vibrant in her ire. More beautiful than he’d ever seen her as she stood up to him. “Because as I see it, the truth is that you returned for me tonight believing the gossip and lies and whatever information you’ve received. You believed I had betrayed our vows. I cannot fathom what changed your mind, but I haven’t forgotten your words earlier this evening. You are a hypocrite, sir, to charge me with deceiving you when you are the greatest dissembler of them all. A hypocrite and a liar, and I want nothing more to do with you! Grant me the annulment I was meant to have.”
With that final, parting shot, she spun on her heel and quit the chamber. The door slammed closed, humming on its frame. He remained where he was, in the center of the chamber. He may as well have been in the middle of a bloody wilderness for all that he could find the answers for what to do next.
Because she was right. He was a hypocrite and a liar. And he didn’t deserve a woman as good as Daisy. He didn’t deserve her at all.
Unfortunately, that realization didn’t make him want or love her any less.
“Fuck me,” he growled into the night.