The Wicked Ways of a Duke(44)

She pressed a shaking hand to her mouth, looking as if she would be sick. “You manipulated me at every turn, playing with me as if I were nothing but a pawn in some chess game!”

Rhys told himself he could make everything right if only he could find the right words to say. “I can explain—”

“How you must have laughed at the chubby, foolish, lovesick spinster making a fool of herself over you.”

Rhys gave a violent start, and he felt as if he were coming apart. She was the sweetest, loveliest thing he’d ever come across in his life. That she could think he would ever laugh at her nauseated him. “I have never laughed at you. Never!”

With a sound of disbelief, she started to turn away, but he gripped her arms and swung her around to face him, knowing he had to find a way to explain it all from his point of view. “Yes, I did know about the money, I admit it. Cora told me at the opera, just as she said. Yes, I arranged things and manipulated the situation, but it was because I didn’t see how I could be honest about my motives. You’ve got such romantic ideas, Prudence, and I—”

“Foolish ideas, you mean!” she cried with a sob. She wrenched free of his grasp. “I thought you were a hero. I thought you were a true gentleman, honorable and chivalrous. I thought you loved me!”

“I do love you.” The moment he said it, he knew it was true. He loved her. And he knew from the hard glitter in her eyes that he’d realized it too late.

“You bastard.” Her palm hit his cheek with enough force to swing his head sideways. “You lying bastard.”

The loathing in her voice sent panic coursing through him, and he fought back, refusing to believe he was losing her now. Not now, not when everything to make both of them happy was right in their grasp. “Prudence, listen to me. I wanted you from the first moment I ever saw you. I always desired you. That was no pretense, I swear. I needed money, it’s true, but I always wanted you.” He took a deep breath, trying to think. He ought to tell her everything he felt, everything he’d thought about today, everything he envisioned for their future. But desperation was clawing at him as he watched the resentment and hurt in her eyes hardening into hatred. Finding the words for a long, poetic speech about his feelings proved beyond him. “I love you.”

“Liar!” Her condemnation rang out like a knife twisting in his guts. She began walking backward, shaking her head as if in disbelief at his gall. “You are such a liar.”

“I’m not lying!” he said, forcing the words out past the sick fear that gripped him. “I’m not!”

“And you expect me to believe you when I know you’ve been lying to me all along?” Her gaze raked over him with utter contempt. “It’s the money you love, not me.”

“That’s not true.”

“Well, you’re not going to get any money from me,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken. “You’ll have to go find yourself another heiress. After all,” she added with a humorless laugh that cut him to ribbons, “you’re a duke. You couldn’t possibly earn your living the way most of us do. You have position, but without money, what are you? You’re a lily of the field.” With a sound of dismissal, she turned her back. “You’re worthless. You’re nothing.”

He watched in despair as she walked away. Her rage, even her hate, he could handle, for they told him she still had a passion for him that could be turned to love. But her contempt was different. Without her respect, her words became true. He had nothing. He was nothing. Rhys watched her walk out the door, and he saw everything he’d dared to dream these last few days crumbling into dust.





Chapter 16


Abernathy heiress breaks her engagement! Jilted duke appears devastated.


—The Social Gazette, 1894





Before confronting Rhys, Prudence had made preparations. She had already packed her things and settled her account with the innkeeper of the Black Swan. She had given Woddell the painful truth about Mr. Fane. She had endured the pleas of her uncle and the self-satisfied crowing of her aunt. She had arranged for a hired carriage to convey them to the village’s tiny train station and for the train to be ready for departure the moment they boarded.

When she walked out of the parlor, there was nothing left to do. She departed from the inn and stepped up into the carriage beside her maid. She didn’t know if Rhys even tried to follow her because she never looked back.

At the station, she boarded the train Rhys had bought her, but as it conveyed them back to London that night, she did not sleep in her compartment, for she couldn’t bear to lie in the berth where Rhys had kissed her and touched her so sweetly. Instead, she sat alone in the parlor coach while the others slept, staring out the darkened window and trying to decide what to do next.

The Abernathy millions would be forfeit, for she couldn’t see herself marrying anyone now. She could not imagine allowing any man to kiss her or touch her as Rhys had. And his betrayal had shown her that no man could ever be trusted with her heart when millions of pounds were at stake. She thought of the other people who had gathered around her these past two months—Edith, Robert, Millicent—people who wouldn’t spare her a thought if not for her inheritance, and she felt a bitterness she’d never felt in her life before.

She had always assumed having money would be the most wonderful thing possible. How wrong she’d been. Maria and Mr. Whitfield both tried to warn her that money might not provide the happiness she expected. She hadn’t understood then what they meant. She understood now, and it was a hard, painful realization. And though she’d enjoyed having pretty clothes and staying at the Savoy and having her own private train, none of that could replace the things that truly made a person happy.

Because of that, she didn’t mind giving up the inheritance, although she regretted that she would be unable to help her friends as she’d hoped. But for herself, she had lived the life of a wealthy heiress for two months now, and decided she’d had enough. She just wanted to be herself again. Prudence Bosworth had been happy. She’d known her place in the world, she’d had friends—true friends—to rely on and a cozy little flat to call home. That and enough money to live on were all a person really needed in life anyway.

She’d have to find a new post, something perhaps that didn’t involve working such long hours. Her allowance from her father’s estate was hers to spend as she liked until the year was up. Perhaps she could use that money to finance a dressmaking establishment of her own. Her friend Emma, being a viscountess, might be able to help her establish a clientele. The train would have to be returned, and the legal terms of the engagement officially severed. She supposed Mr. Whitfield could take care of all that.

In making these decisions about her life and her future, she tried not to think of Rhys, but in the quiet darkness, with nothing to distract her but the rhythmic sound of the train, it was impossible to veer her thoughts in any other direction. Impossible not to remember the beauty of his smile and the magic of his touch, the hot, sweet feel of his kisses and the thrill in her heart when she’d believed he loved her.

She struggled to be numb, yet as often as she reminded herself he wasn’t worth a single moment of pain, she could not be numb. Every part of her was bruised and battered and raw.

Kiss me, tipsy girl.

Prudence closed her eyes and a tear slid down her cheek. She brushed it away, but it was followed at once by another, and she got angry all over again, angry with herself for wasting tears on that lying, worthless cur of a man. Yet when the next tear spilled over, she didn’t have the strength to stop it.

She curled up in a ball on the seat, hugged her knees to her chest and gave up, letting the tears fall. She cried for all her silly illusions, her romantic ideals, and the death of her dreams. Most of all she cried for the love that had existed in her heart but had never existed in his.



Day was breaking. Rhys stared out over the lake at the blue and pink shades of a pastel sunrise, but in his mind all he could see was love and adoration dying in Prudence’s eyes. All around him was silence, but ringing in his ears was the sound of her contempt.

You’re worthless. You’re nothing.

She hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know. He’d known for years his life was an utter waste of time. He thought of those days in Paris, drunk on absinthe. All those days in Italy—the gambling and the champagne and the sexual escapades. Numbing himself with any sensations that could help him forget that he’d failed his brother. Refusing to let anything matter to him because the things that mattered were impossible to hold onto. Building layers of cynical, man-of-the-world wit to form a shell around the emptiness that had been in him since he was twelve years old.

Liar. You are such a liar.

Prudence’s accusation shouted through his mind, echoing back to years ago. Letitia saying the same when he’d tried to tell her about Evelyn, when he’d tried to save Thomas from a second summer at Winter Park. How ironic that the times in his life when the truth had mattered the most, he hadn’t been believed. Rhys rested his elbows on his knees and cradled his head in his hands. He was so much better at lying, he thought wearily, than he was at telling the truth.