Chapter Eleven
Matthew entered his study and closed the door behind himself. How he had gotten here, he didn’t know. Everything had been a blur from the moment he stepped away from the heated temptation of Isabel’s kiss to the moment he was currently in.
He’d left the Callis home, found his carriage, come back here…but the details of those actions? Indistinct at best.
Details of the kiss? Crisp and sharp and playing on a repeating cycle in his dizzy mind. Their background was a drum beat of guilt and shame.
He’d always been able to measure his emotions. He’d had good role models for that in his beloved parents. He didn’t let passions rise, he held them in check. Even when Angelica died, he’d turned his feelings inward, keeping them to himself because the world was bound to go on without him. Without her.
But now all that ability to control himself felt lost. All the feelings, the desires, the betrayals bubbled up, and with a curse, he swiped his hands across the top of his desk and sent papers and quills and ink bottles scattering on the floor around him. It wasn’t enough.
He thought of Isabel, looking up into his eyes. In a mask, then unmasked, with her uncle, then only with himself. He thought of how he wanted to run from her as far and as fast as he could, but also how he wanted to pin her against a wall and fuck her like a wild animal. His head throbbed with all the overwhelming and discordant desires and he strode to the sideboard. He poured himself a drink and lifted the glass to his trembling lips.
He downed it all in one gasping gulp and then pivoted to throw the glass against the wall. It shattered with a very satisfying sound, one that almost seemed to lessen the riotous emotion in his chest. He threw the next, then the next, and was about to throw a fourth when the door to his study flew open and revealed his butler, Portman, and behind him, Baldwin.
Matthew slowly lowered the glass to his side and looked around the room as they did the same. The destruction was clear and he was certain his own emotions were, too.
Baldwin stepped inside, but held up a hand to stay Portman. “That will be all for tonight.”
Portman looked past him, his face lined with concern. Matthew turned away from it, from the trouble he had created both in this room and in his life. He heard the butler murmur something to Baldwin and then the door shut.
“You left the party,” Baldwin said, his tone very careful. “It was obvious you were in a great upset. And I was the one sent to ensure you were well.”
Matthew laughed, though he felt no pleasure. “Is it not obvious? I’m right as goddamn rain.”
Baldwin sucked in a long breath. “Once upon a time, I might have expected this kind of reactionary behavior from say…Graham, or maybe Lucas? Perhaps I’d still look for it in Hugh given his mood of late. But in my friend Matthew? Never. So something very bad must have happened at that party, and I’m demanding you tell me what it is right this moment.”
Matthew faced him at last. Baldwin’s face was tight with worry. An expression he had not seen on his friend’s countenance since before he married Helena the previous year.
“You didn’t abandon your bride to come seek me out, did you?”
Baldwin arched a brow. “Don’t try to distract me, it isn’t going to work. Helena was just as worried about you as the rest. She stayed behind and will be escorted home by James and Emma. She does not expect me back until morning, so you have plenty of time to stop dancing around it and tell me just what the hell is wrong with you.”
Matthew sagged and leaned heavily against the sideboard. “I have this one glass left. Drink?”
“Certainly, we can share it. Pour, sit and talk.” Baldwin marched across the room and sat down in a chair before the fire. He kept his dark gaze focused on Matthew, who poured the drink, and settled in place across from him, handing over the glass.
“I don’t know where to start,” he said softly.
Baldwin tilted his head. “I know you saw Fenton Winter at the ball tonight. Did he speak to you? Make the same old accusations as he’s been repeating for three years?”
“No,” Matthew whispered. “I did see Winter and it did upset me, as it always does. But it’s not him. It’s…her.”
“Angelica?” Baldwin said.
Matthew tensed. Her had always been Angelica, from the moment he’d carried her limp body from the lake and his life had been blown to bits. She was the her he brought with him to every corner of his life.
He’d assumed she always would be. But tonight, now, the her was very different.
“No,” he ground out. “I’m talking about my swan. My stranger.”
Baldwin’s eyes widened, and he looked around the room at the destruction once more. “A woman you hardly know inspired…this?”
“I saw her tonight,” he admitted, tilting his head back against the chair and closing his eyes. “I know who she is.”
Baldwin caught his breath. “Who?”
Saying it out loud was not going to be easy. It forced him to relive every bloody moment of that night all over again. “She is…Isabel Hayes.”
“Who?” Baldwin asked again. “I don’t know that name, nor why it would inspire all this in you.”
“She’s Angelica’s cousin. Fenton Winter’s niece and his fucking houseguest.”
Baldwin was utterly silent and Matthew waited a moment before he looked at him again. When he did, his friend’s face was pale, his mouth dropped open in shock, his eyes wide as saucers.
“Yes, that was my reaction, as well,” Matthew drawled, and reached out to snatch the glass from Baldwin’s hand. He downed half of it before he handed it back. Baldwin drank the rest, his hands shaking as he did so.
“I-I don’t even know what to say, what to do with that information,” Baldwin said at last. “It cannot be a coincidence, can it?”
Matthew got up and went back to the sideboard. This time he returned with the bottle. He filled the glass and then took a swig from the bottle itself before he set it on the floor next to his chair.
“I dragged her off to a parlor to confront her about just that. And I was…cruel.”
Baldwin drew back. “You? Not that I don’t think she deserved a little cruelty after she deceived you, but I have a hard time imagining it.”
“Just like you have a hard time imagining me destroying my study in a fit of rage and…well, other things?” Matthew asked, flicking his head toward the damage behind him. “Of course I wasn’t physically hurtful. Though I’m sure she must have felt threatened. I was…coarse. I’m never coarse. But I was overwhelmed.”
“I’m sure you were,” Baldwin reassured him. “After all, she knew your identity, did she not?”
Matthew nodded. “Though she insists it wasn’t until after my mask slipped off the first night we…” He shivered. “I would say made love, but that isn’t exactly accurate, is it? I didn’t make love to a stranger in a mask. I took her. Claimed her. Burned something into her, just as she burned something in to me. And now I know that the person I did that with is my fiancée’s cousin. A woman who lives with a man who would shoot me through my heart if he had a chance.”
“Are they in league?” Baldwin asked.
Matthew drew a long, ragged breath. “That was my guess. He despises me, blames me, though he’s been quieter about it in the last year or so.”
“Doesn’t mean he isn’t still nursing his hate,” Baldwin said.
Matthew sighed. “And what better way to get to me than through Isabel? But she said not.”
“Of course she would,” Baldwin scoffed. “To protect herself.”
Matthew found his fists tightening in his lap. There was a flare of protectiveness that he didn’t want rising in his chest. Something Isabel surely hadn’t earned.
And yet…
“She seemed sincere in her terror on the subject. She said he couldn’t ever know what she did. That she came to me at first because she wanted…it doesn’t matter what she wanted. Once she knew the truth of my identity, she came the second time to investigate me. Of her own volition.”
Baldwin pursed his lips. “And you believe her?”
Matthew shut his eyes. He could see Isabel so clearly now, those big, dark eyes holding his. Those full lips trembling as she begged him to believe her despite the fact that she had lied. And then the feeling of those lush lips when he claimed them once more. Despite what she had done. Despite what and who she was.
He shook away the thoughts and got to his feet.
“I don’t know what I believe,” he admitted.
Baldwin nodded slowly. “I think that’s fair. To not know, I mean. After all, it’s a complicated situation. Perhaps you don’t have to know what you believe all at once, when you are overwhelmed by all the aspects of this unexpected development. I think a better question might be, what do you plan to do?”
Matthew moved to the fire and stared at the flames. Everything had happened such a short time ago. His world had been suddenly flipped, both by the realization of what and who Isabel was and by the fact that it didn’t change the pulsing desire he somehow felt for her.
And he hated himself for that. Deeply.
“I don’t know that either,” he whispered. “My gut tells me that I must stay far away.”
He heard those words come from his lips, and immediately they sounded wrong. Staying away wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to dive further into this. To understand her motives more. To try to discover why he was so drawn to her when he had not allowed himself to be drawn to anyone in such a long time.
Baldwin pushed to his feet, oblivious to the thoughts in Matthew’s mind. “I understand that,” he said slowly. “I even agree it would be for the best.”
“Yes, for the best.” His voice sounded hollow and far away.
“And it shouldn’t be so difficult to avoid this woman. You’ve done so with her uncle for years. That party tonight was unexpected, but we will all be more vigilant about invitations from now on.”
Matthew found himself nodding, but he didn’t believe what he was agreeing to. In truth, he had the impression that avoiding Isabel might be harder than his friend imagined. Especially since the coiled desire inside of him turned him into a wolf, more like Robert than any of his other friends.
And that wolf inside told him one thing: to chase her. Not run.
Isabel staggered as she reentered the ballroom, her head spinning wildly and her lips hot and tingling from Matthew’s hard and passionate kiss. Her heart fluttered as she scanned the room, but did not find him. Had he left? Was he hiding? Was he going to publicly expose her?
She had not taken two steps into the chamber when her uncle appeared at her elbow.
“There you are,” he said, his tone odd and echoing and faraway.
She turned to face him and found he was staring at her with an expression as strange as the tone of his voice. Heat rushed to her cheeks, as she feared she might be showing the strength of her reaction all over her face.
That would not do.
“Hello, Uncle Fenton,” she said, her voice shaking. “Were you looking for me?”
“You disappeared from the ballroom,” he said.
She swallowed. “I didn’t mean to worry you. I went to the retiring room to gather myself. I have a bit of a headache.” The lies fell from her lips a little too easily. But then, that was what she was becoming: a liar. Matthew certainly thought so.
Her uncle tilted his head. “Funny, I looked for you in the retiring room.”
She froze. If Fenton knew what she had done with a man he so deeply despised…oh, it would be very bad, indeed. He could never know. Never.
“We must have just missed each other,” she breathed.
He looked at her more closely. “Yes. Well, if your headache is still troubling you, perhaps we should end our night a bit early.”
She nearly collapsed with relief. “Oh, thank you, uncle!” She clasped his arm with both her hands. “You do not know how much I want exactly that.”
He arched a brow and looked her up and down. “I shall call for my carriage then. Come along.”
He moved them toward the door where she had just entered. She couldn’t help but toss one last glance over her shoulder as they left, but found no Matthew within. His friends, all those dukes and their wives, were gathered in a cluster, though, talking and frowning. Had he spoken to them? Did they know?
Nausea rose in her stomach, and she turned away and focused on making it to the foyer without casting up her accounts. Her uncle called for his rig and she stared at her slippers as they waited, reliving every moment with Matthew in the chamber.
His anger had been so big, it filled the whole parlor. But the desire was still there, too. Like warring factions trying to lay claim to him. Desire had won for a moment, but she feared the rage, the hatred she had inspired by deceiving him…those would take the war. She deserved it, of course, but it still made her heart sink to think that the conversation they’d just shared would likely be their last.
“Isabel.”
Her uncle’s tone was sharp, and she looked up to find him watching her closely. His expression was unreadable but utterly odd. “Y-yes?”
“The carriage,” he said, motioning to it.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
She followed him to the vehicle and let him help her up. He took a place across from her and off they went into the night, away from the ball. Away from the moments that had truly changed her life.
“What is it?” he asked.
She jerked her face toward him. “I’m sorry?”
“You are very distracted, Isabel,” he said, his tone harsh. “Far more than I would expect from a mere headache.”
She swallowed. If she wanted to survive this mess, she would have to learn to cover her reactions better. She forced a smile. “It was merely a very interesting night, uncle. Nothing more.”
“Interesting. Yes, I agree. It was a very interesting night.” He leaned back against the carriage seat, his arms folded and his gaze still locked on her. “You created a stir, didn’t you? Even bigger than I thought you might.”
She wrinkled her brow and her musings on Matthew faded. Her uncle’s demeanor was so very strange now that her heart began to pound. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing yet,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I must think a bit before we talk about it.”
“Think?” she repeated. “Think about what?”
“About your future,” he said. “I realized tonight that you might have a much bigger one than I’d originally hoped for. It changes my plans, that is all.”
“What do you mean a bigger future?”
“Perhaps a baron or a second son just isn’t lofty enough,” he explained with a shrug.
Her heart sank and she slouched down in her seat a bit. Here she had been so terrified about her connection to Matthew she’d thought Uncle Fenton could see it. But he was instead focused on that marriage he planned for her. That future she had tried to ignore was rushing toward her despite each passing moment in Matthew’s arms.
Now it was almost here. She had to find a way to accept it. And accept that whatever fantasy she had built around Matthew would never be a reality again. Her memories, even the terrifying ones from tonight, would likely be all that kept her warm from this moment forward.