Page 48 of To Hunt the Hunter

Matilda and Marguerite both leapt in shock as his fury rang out through the room. Matilda suspected he’d never raised his voice in such a way in his entire life. The impact was clearly too much for Marguerite, who swooned and crumpled to the ground.

“Good lord!” Matilda cried, and ran to pull the cord for a servant before falling to her knees beside the old woman and taking her hand, chafing it to revive her.

“Is she dead?”

If Matilda hadn’t known him so well by now, she would have thought he didn’t give a damn, so cold was the enquiry. She did know him, though, and knew just how profoundly he must be hurting to realise that, even in light of everything that had happened, his aunt still did not believe him. Even now, she would believe Theodore over Lucian. She had come only to blame Lucian for the horrid scandal and make him feel wretched, even invoking his father’s and brother’s names to pile the guilt higher.

“No, sadly,” Matilda replied, seeing no reason not to wish the miserable old cow six feet under.

She looked up as Lucian gave a startled laugh. He was staring at her with such adoration that her breath caught.

“I love you,” he said.

Matilda smiled, though her heart was breaking.

“I know,” she said softly. “I love you too.”

They could say no more, as Denton appeared and helped get Marguerite into a chair. Another servant was sent running for hartshorn and water. Matilda looked up as Lucian watched the proceedings with a detached expression.

“Go and see Phoebe,” she said, not wanting this wicked old woman to hurt him anymore than she already had. “She’ll be wanting to see you before bedtime, and will cheer you up. I can deal with your aunt, I assure you.”

“Oh, I can see that,” he said, a thread of amusement in his voice. “I see no reason why you ought, though.”

“Because someone other than you ought to,” Matilda said, her voice gentle. “Someone ought to have done it when you were a boy, and it is a crime that no one did, but I am here, and I will stand beside you for as long as I am able to.”

She did not acknowledge the fact that it would only be until he married. It did not need saying aloud, they both knew it. Marguerite was right about one thing, the public announcement of his engagement to some pristine lady of the ton would go a long way to repairing the damage his uncle had wrought. They both knew it. As hard as it would be after everything that had passed between them, after hearing him say the words she had never dreamed he would give her, one fact had not changed. She could not be with him if he married another. That was the road to misery and madness. She would never love another man, she knew that and accepted it. Therefore, she would not marry, not have the family she had longed for, but she would have this time with Lucian, no matter how short that was. She was resolved to embrace it, to both the joy of giving herself to him entirely, and the devastation of walking away from him. Her decision had been made and she was, if not at peace with that, then at least accepting of it.

“Lucian,” Matilda said again, holding out her hand to him.

He came to her and bent over it, kissing her fingers tenderly, such a courtly, old-fashioned gesture that her eyes filled.

“Now run along and see that dreadful niece of yours. She’s bound to be up to mischief by now and she’ll have something to say about Mouldy Marguerite that will make you smile, I don’t doubt.”

Lucian held her hand for a long moment, watching her, his expression unreadable. “Thank you.”

“I’ll let you make it up to me,” Matilda whispered, earning herself a flickering smile and the glimmer of a dimple.

She watched him leave as a servant hurried in with the hartshorn. Marguerite was stirring now, one bejewelled hand going to her temples as she groaned and her eyelids fluttered.

Matilda helped her to sit up, handed her water and hartshorn and prepared her a cup of tea once she had revived sufficiently to take the cup between trembling hands. The old woman said not a word during this, not that Matilda had expected her to. Not yet. She would say her piece once she was composed enough to do so, and then Matilda would return the favour. With a bit of luck, she might give the wicked creature a heart attack.

“He’ll never make you his marchioness. No matter what he wants for himself. Your father was a bankrupt, your brother runs a gambling club, and you have a damaged reputation. You’d be lucky to marry a man like that jumped up mushroom Mr Burton, and you ought to have snapped his hand off instead of causing all this trouble, leading my idiot nephew about by the nose. How you have the temerity to consider you could be the next Marchioness of Montagu is beyond me. For all his failings, he’d never disgrace the family like that. You’d make him a laughingstock. So you can put the idea out of your pretty head. He’ll not marry you.”

Matilda sipped at her own tea with every outward sign of serenity, having anticipated the attack. Inwardly she was vibrating with indignation and fury, but she’d rather stick pins in her own eyes than allow the dreadful woman to see that.

“I never expected him to,” she said, accompanying the calm reply with a placid smile.

“And yet you deny you are his mistress,” the old woman sneered.

Matilda considered this.

“No,” she said. “At least, I am not his mistress now, but I will be for a brief time. Until he marries. I love him too much to share him.”

“You don’t love him enough to share him, you mean,” Marguerite sneered.

“Do you believe that?” Matilda asked her, frowning as she considered whether that could be true. “I suppose I can see why you would think it, but I’m afraid I am not the kind of female who can turn a blind eye to the truth. Unlike some. I would make him miserable, for he could never show affection towards his wife without making me wild with jealousy. It would make us all wretched. I love him too much to force him to endure that. He would never have a moment’s peace, forever torn between the two of us. That is most unfair to him, and to whomever he marries.” Matilda took a sip of her tea, exerting a supreme effort to keep her hand from trembling, her voice steady. “He should at least try to find happiness, find someone he can be comfortable with, if not love. I am selfish enough to hope he cannot love her as he does me, but they must find contentment of a sort. Otherwise his children will be unhappy too, and that I could not endure, no more than I could stand to see another woman bear them. I believe I would go mad.”

“You’re honest for a trollop, I’ll give you that.”