How to Lose a Duke in Ten Days: An American Heiress in London by Laura Lee Guhrke

Author:Laura Lee Guhrke [Guhrke, Laura Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Historical, General, Historical romance, Victorian, Fiction
ISBN: 9780062118202
Google: xtxzAgAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00G97C51K
Publisher: Avon
Published: 2014-04-28T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 12

STUART HAD FELT many powerful emotions in his life. He’d been in the idiotic throes of first love and the dark depths of grief. He’d been awed by the breathtaking beauty of an African sunset and stopped in his tracks by the vibrancy of a girl’s freckled face. He’d known lust, hunger, joy, and despair.

He thought he’d known rage. Until now.

Stuart stood in Edie’s bedroom, and he knew all the angers he’d ever experienced before were nothing but petty irritations. Rage was different. Rage was this—his blood seething through his veins like lava, his head feeling as if it would split apart, blackness descending over his eyes and blotting out everything but Edie’s shaking hand pulling her clothes together.

In that tiny action, the truth had come to him like a lightning flash, shocking him into utter paralysis as Edie had run out. He couldn’t follow her, even now. He couldn’t move, or even think, not with this rage erupting inside him. He could only feel.

Standing here, in a prim and pretty English bedroom of lavender silks and velvets, he felt more savage, more primordial than any beast he’d ever encountered in the African bush.

He wanted to kill the son of a bitch who’d done this to her. He wanted to hunt him, track him, bring him down and shred his flesh to his bones. He wanted to confront her father and demand why the hell he hadn’t done something to avenge her. He wanted to flay himself for not seeing the truth before now. He wanted to get drunk, start a fight, put a hole through a wall—do anything but the one thing he knew he had to do.

Stuart took a deep breath and rubbed his hands over his face, working to govern the violence inside himself. Rage would be of no help right now.

He reached for his walking stick, took up his shoes, and returned to his own room. He dressed for dinner, and somehow, putting on a starched bib shirt, white waistcoat, black trousers, and black dinner jacket helped him tamp down the rage inside. As he tied his white silk tie into a proper bow, as he fastened shirt studs and cuff links, as he tucked a white pocket square into place, he was able to set aside the part of his soul that was raging beast and regain the part that was civilized man.

Then, and only then, he went in search of his wife.

He found her in the Roman Garden, or as she called it, the Secret Garden. She was sitting on the bench where they’d sat the day before, but as she caught sight of him emerging from between the tall clumps of fennel and spires of mullein, she jumped to her feet. “What do you want?”

He stopped, studying her across the courtyard, considering how to proceed without causing her more pain or making things worse. He’d come out here to comfort her, but looking at her now, he suspected she would welcome comfort about as much as she would welcome having a tooth drawn.

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