Page 148 of The Royal Art of Revenge

I put down my laptop, irritation snaking across my skin. She’s upset? What the fuck did those bastards say to her now?

I meet her melancholy gaze, my own as hard as steel. “What did they do to you, baby?”

She slips inside, pushing the door closed behind her, and whispers softly, “What do you think?”

The ruination of her family can’t come soon enough.

I want to kill them all a little more each day.

I never should have let her go alone.

Not that anyone ‘lets’ Harriet Sinclair do anything.

I push the coffee table away with a shove of my foot and hold my arms out to her. Without a word, Hattie rushes over and throws herself at me. She straddles my lap, burying her face into the curve of my neck, and I wrap my arms around her, cradling her tightly against me. I press a kiss into her soft, blonde hair, and breathe in the calming scent of her strawberry shampoo.

She’s trembling. Whatever those bastards have said to her has really gotten to her, and my anger blooms to life more ferociously than before. I can feel it—it’s skittering along under my skin, prickling at every hair on my body, demanding I get up and handle the situation.

“What happened?” My voice is barely above a murmur as I stroke small circles on her lower back.

“I hate them so fucking much,” she whispers in response, her legs clenching at my sides. “It was exactly what we thought. Dad wanted to talk about the wedding.”

“Were Rosalyn and Jasmine there?”

She nods. “Rosalyn… She didn’t want to at first, but Dad kept asking. In the end, she told me to step aside. To give Jasmine back what’s rightfully hers. And my father said nothing. The coward just looked away and let her yammer on about how I’m so fragile and delicate and should reconsider this whole thing in favour of Jasmine, then he left me alone with them.”

My grip on her tightens, my fingers digging into her curves, and she whimpers. “Sorry.” I kiss the side of her head, relaxing my hold as much as I can. “How fucking dare they? We’ve already made it perfectly clear there’s no chance I’ll ever marry Jasmine. How many more times must it be said?”

Not to mention I fucking warned William. I fucking told him to keep his daughter in line, and it sounds like he just sat there and did nothing while his wife gaslit my fiancée.

They’re delusional. Completely out of their minds.

“I don’t know.” Hattie’s voice thickens. “This engagement is rightfully hers, as far as she’s concerned. It’s a fucking joke. We all know the only reason anyone ever considered her marrying you is because I wasn’t here.”

The thought of marrying anyone other than my Hattie makes my skin crawl. I’ve never liked it, but it’s my duty to marry and provide an heir—at least that’s what everyone has always told me. I was prepared to fulfil my role and do what was expected of me, but that was as far as it would have ever gone.

Things are different now, though.

Now, if she disappeared, I’d never touch another woman.

There is only Harriet Sinclair for me.

“Or did I get in your way?” She sits up, looking down at me, an uncharacteristic vulnerability making her words shake. “Did me coming back mess things up? Did you actually want to marry her?”

Shit. They’ve done a number on her tonight. They’ve hit her in her deepest, darkest fears, ones she’s never even shared with me. Ones she knows are unfounded, because I’ve told her so many times how she’s made for me.

But she can’t believe it right now.

And that’s not her fault.

I can scarcely believe this broken, insecure shadow is the same Hattie who looked me in the eye and declared that I belong to her.

How fucking dare they hurt her this way?

“What kind of nonsense is knocking around in that pretty head of yours?” I cradle her face in my hands, drawing her lips close to mine. “If I wanted to marry her, I’d have done it years ago. But I didn’t. I waited for you, Hattie. I spent my whole life waiting for you. Just you. Even when everyone said you’d never come back, even when they buried someone they said was you, I still kept waiting for you.”

Her lower lip trembles, and tears shimmer in her eyes.

“No, no crying.” I lean up and kiss the corners of her eyes, stopping the tears before they can fall down her soft cheeks. “If you cry, I’ll have to kill someone.”