Amelia frowned. “What wedding?”
“I heard there were endeavors underway to be granted a special license.”
Amelia’s confusion deepened. “If so, I have not heard anything of it. Do you mean because of the change of date? That was my fault entirely. I realized I had put the wrong date upon the first invitations I sent to guests, so that had to become the date of the party.”
“Then, what are you hiding?” Evan walked to his aunt, his chest filled with stinging wasps of anger and frustration.
Amelia subtly shook her head, clamping her lips shut. And in that one expression, the awful thought that had crossed Evan’s mind earlier decided to raise its ugly head again.
“Did… my father choose Olivia to be my wife? Was he the one that made the arrangement, using you as an intermediary?” Evan felt sick, a cold sweat prickling down the back of his neck. “He seemed to be friendly with Olivia’s father. Is that it? Is that what you will not say?”
Did Olivia know of him before all of this? Was she sent to tame me?Her parting words chilled him.
Amelia would not look at him, her body trembling as if she was struggling under the weight of the truth. Evan did not need her to speak; he could see it, plain as day, in her reaction. The man he hated had engineered the match. The man he despised was still trying to control him, trying to determine his future. If this was not fate’s cruelest swindle, he did not know what was.
So, in the end, I have done exactly what you wanted…Worse still, it had happened without him realizing. He might never have known if his father had not shown up to the party, but his father had always needed his son to know who was pulling the strings.
“Excuse me, Aunt,” Evan said tersely, striding out of the storage room and back into the noise and heat of the ballroom. Although, he had no intention of staying. He could not; he needed time and fresh air to cool his temper and gather his thoughts.
But, to get to the medicine of the outside world, he had to walk past the very person who had blasted all of his joy to smithereens.
Balling his hands into fists and lowering his gaze, Evan made his bid for freedom. He did not even attempt to search the ballroom for Olivia; he did not want her to see him like this.
Crossing the threshold into the hallway beyond, he thought he had succeeded, and almost expelled a breath of relief when a voice called out behind him, “Where do you think you are going, without so much as a greeting to your dear old father?”
Evan froze, his breath of relief lodging in his throat, turning into something thick and sour.
“I know you hear me,” his father, Martin Thorne, the Duke of Lisbret, continued. Footsteps followed his voice and, a moment later, the wretch was standing right in front of his son, blocking Evan’s exit.
Evan glowered at the weathered face he had hoped to never see again. “Stand aside,” he demanded. “I have no desire to speak with you.”
“You are already speaking with me,” Martin replied with a triumphant smile that made his cold, dead eyes even eerie. “So, be a good son and greet your father properly. I did not raise you to be impolite.”
Evan’s heart thundered in his chest, pumped harder by the twin rush of anger and fear that charged through his veins. “You should not be here. You are not welcome here.” He heard the weakness in his voice and hated it. What did he have left to fear from this man? Evan was bigger, taller, stronger now and yet… the boy in him had not forgotten every cruelty.
“I hear no complaints,” Martin said, gesturing around the wide hallway. “So, do as you have been taught, and greet me.”
Evan’s rage flared, his body shaking with it. “All you taught me was how to make others fear you. Should I do that? Should I give you the same education you gave to me, to show how much I learned?” He closed the gap between himself and his father until he was almost nose-to-nose with the older, slightly shorter man. “Shall I fetch my cane, or did you bring one with you? I should hate to show what you taught me with the wrong instruments.”
But Martin just sighed as if the exchange bored him. “I will not indulge this behavior,” he said flatly. “How is your lovely betrothed? I assume you are making preparations for the wedding. Indeed, I thought we might make use of Lisbret House for the celebrations.”
“Do not speak of her,” Evan choked, detesting how small his father could make him feel with just a few words.
“Whyever not?” Martin went on, clearly pleased with himself. “I personally chose her for you, so why should I not speak of her? She will be my daughter-in-law, will she not? And when there are children, I shall be a grandfather, helping to raise those children as I raised you.”
Acid burned up Evan’s throat, his stomach roiling. “You will never be part of my life again.”
“Come now, I put great care into my decision, for your benefit,” his father said. “She reminded me of your mother, and I knew she would be the perfect choice to bring you to heel. She seemed to be in agreement in that regard, and she has certainly done an exemplary job of enchanting you. Better than I could have imagined, in truth.”
Evan’s blood ran cold.So, she was part of it…
Perhaps she had seen his father and had decided to get ahead of him, softening the blow of her involvement before Evan’s father revealed the truth. Evan could imagine the excuses,“It began as a ploy, my darling, but then I met you, and I really did fall in love with you…”It sickened him to his stomach, feeling every string that had been pulled, manipulating him this entire time. Indeed, he suspected his father had already warned Olivia of all the rakish rumors, for what respectable young lady, in her right mind, would have pursued such a man otherwise?
“And, like your mother,” his father went on, “she will be the perfect wife and duchess and you will be an upstanding duke, honorable and proper at last, like me. Oh, and worry not about her health when you have children, for there is no evidence of any female weakness in her lineage. I checked on your behalf. You ought to be able to have many, many children without any… unfortunate losses.”
Evan did not know if it was the casual manner in which his father mentioned investigating Olivia’s potential for breeding, the crushing realization that she was part of the scheme to make Evan obey, or Martin’s insistence on inserting himself into Evan’s life again, or if it was the cold, emotionless way in which he referred to the death of Evan’s mother, but Evan snapped. Nine-and-twenty years of hatred spewed out of him in a searing torrent.
“If my mother were still here, she would look at you as if you were dirt on the ground,” he seethed. “You rule with fear because you are a weak, pathetic little man that no one would respect if they truly knew you. You are scared of society finding out that you are meritless and dimwitted, so feeble in your own health that even the militia would not have you. All of your failings, you punished me for, because I was something you were not—I was intelligent, athletic, kind-hearted, and I had no brothers ahead of me. You are only a ‘proper Duke’ because your brothers died, and the worst part is, you were grateful when they did. It was only later that you realized you were not fit to hold the title.”
