Willful Depravity by Ingrid Hahn

Author:Ingrid Hahn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Entangled; Scorched; Historical Erotica; Regency Erotica; Victorian Erotica; Regency Romances; Historical Romance; Historical Romances; Romantic Heroes Royalty & Aristocrats; Romantic Heroes Alpha Males; Sexy; Regency; 19th Century; Virgin Heroine; Plus size; Plus size heroine; Plus size romance
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC
Published: 2018-11-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Giles spent the next hour standing wordlessly before the smoldering pile of what had been his paintings. In his years abroad, he’d spent time in graveyards, among tombstones and carved remembrances. They were usually beautiful and peaceful, and an afternoon with the dead had given him time to be alone and, well, not be alone.

Nothing had made him think of death with as much visceral resonance as standing there in the courtyard, in the damp darkness, with so much of himself at his feet…destroyed.

Dawn was a dirty gray smudge on the eastern horizon when Giles returned to the castle’s interior. It took fewer than five minutes for him to realize that something was wrong.

Very wrong.

Telling himself he had to be mistaken, he went to the room they shared. “Miss Em—Mrs. Warrington?”

No voice answered.

If she wasn’t there… He returned to the old solar that he’d turned into a temporary studio. Empty. A sense of foreboding permeated his senses. But he was still agitated from the night’s events. Surely his suspicion had to be in error.

Leaving the room, Giles caught sight of a maid at the other end of the corridor scuttling away, no doubt hoping she wasn’t seen.

“You there. Wait a moment. I’m looking for my—” The word caught in his throat and he swallowed. He’d been a monumental ass trying to force Miss Emery’s hand in marriage. If he’d witnessed another man do what he’d done, he’d have had some choice words for the miserable fellow. “I’m looking for Mrs. Warrington.”

The girl stopped and turned, trepidation on her features. “Mrs. Warrington left, sir.”

The maid’s words ringing in his ears, Giles stormed through the narrow spaces and uneven corridors of the old part of the building until he found the duke and burst in. His sire had taken one of the family rooms as opposed to the guest chambers, and was at the window with his hands clasped behind his back.

The tables between them, so to speak, had turned. More like the tables had been thrown out the fucking window, but that didn’t have the same ring to it, did it?

Giles stalked into the room. Though he bore no marks on his body, the last few hours had flogged his equilibrium. A hundred lashes had torn away the protective layers governing his control. The wounds inside wept—watery and bloody and bruised.

That would not stop him. He’d already lost his paintings. He wouldn’t lose Miss Emery, too. “Where is she?”

Not moving his hands, Silverlund turned his body slightly, brows lifting. “Your whore?”

The force of Giles’s rage could have snapped his bones as if they were no more than twigs.

That’s what the duke wanted. That’s what the man lived for. Thwarting his son and seeing Giles suffer. It was the duke’s daily bread.

“What did you do?”

“Really, you don’t think I’d sully myself with humiliating her now, do you?” The duke used the same tone as when he’d asked his wife why she had to leave to attend her cousin’s wife in her confinement.

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