The woman snatched her hand back, face going from red to white. “I-I have no idea what you are talking about! How dare you threaten me?”
“I dare a great deal.” He stepped forward, and the small crowd flinched back as one. “I find myself wondering, in fact, whether your entire family’s business, Dansbury’s business inparticular, even your own mother’s, would survive the sort of scrutiny I could bring down on them by day’s end. Shall we discover the answer together?”
Silence.
His gaze swept over the whole crowd. “In fact, I’m getting more curious by the second, about each and every one who claims a connection to you. And their families. And the family of their families.” And if they dare utter Elowyn’s name on their lips . . . God help them all.
“Mandeville!” the woman exclaimed. “You forget yourself!”
He laughed at that, a cold, hard laugh. “I’ve never forgotten myself, woman. It’s because I remember myself that I can tell you frankly, you’ve forgotten yourself. Did you really believe I’d ever allow a woman such as yourself to hold the title of my Duchess?”
“Mandeville . . .”
Shivers erupted all over his body at the soft voice, but he couldn’t rein in his temper. More people were gathering, but that didn’t deter him either. He wanted this woman to disappear from his life. Elowyn’s life. “Since you wish to speak of deception, let us speak plainly, then, of a woman who lures a duke into an empty drawing room, uninvited and unchaperoned, pawing at him, and then crying how he touched her when her plan to trap him fails. I wonder, madam, how many others you’ve tried to entrap unsuccessfully.” His gaze swept the crowd once. “Draw your own conclusions as to her morals. I’ve already drawn mine.”
Wrath, who arrived to hear that last part, stepped forward. “Mandeville. That’s enough.”
He nodded. “As for Lady Elowyn and myself, the lady stumbled over a root and I caught her. That’s all.”
He should walk away now. This was the perfect time.
His feet did not move.
Julien could feel her behind him, and if he turned, he would see her face. Her beautiful heart-shaped face with big, bright, innocent blue eyes.
Turn around.
He couldn’t. He couldn’t do it.
Say something to her. Anything.
Claim her.
He forced himself to turn his head, but his chin refused to move past his shoulder. He couldn’t meet her gaze.
He couldn’t do all the things he wanted to do because that would mean bringing her into his life. A life consumed by anger and the need for revenge. If she were inclined to accept him, she might demand he change his ways if she learned the truth. Demand he stop. Someone as pure and innocent as his wildflower might even grow to loathe him.
No, he couldn’t do it.
Julien shook off the longing and strode to Wrath, nodded once and left the crowd behind without a backward glance, each damn step an act of violence against the part of him that wanted to stay.
He couldn’t give up his plans.
Not for her.
Not for anything.
Chapter 10
Elowyn covered her face with a pillow, her heart in a thousand tiny pieces. A horrible, aching feeling. Never mind that she’d been the one to declare they owed each other nothing—that she’d told him to let them part on good terms. She hadn’t realized, until she saw his back as he walked away from her, how much she wanted him to stay. How much she didn’t actually want the distance she insisted on.
How could she be so foolish?
In the end, wasn’t that just her running away? Retreating when something didn’t turn out the way she had planned? And hadn’t he agreed each time she insisted on going their separate ways? The man clearly didn’t want her complicating his “business.”
Urgh. She wanted to rage and wail at the injustice of life and this nightmarish season, but all she could do was lie numbly on her bed and silently scream into her pillow.
You just didn’t want to get hurt, Elowyn.