Читать книгу My Bought Virgin Wife - CAITLIN CREWS - Страница 9

I WAS A man built from lies.

My faithless father. My weak, codependent mother. The lies they had told—to each other, to the world, to me and my sisters—had made me the man I was today, for good or ill.

I allowed no room in the life I had crafted from nothing for lies like theirs. Not from my employees or associates. Not from my sisters, grown now and beholden to me. Not from a single soul on this earth.

And certainly not from myself.

So there was no hiding from the fact that my first glimpse of my future bride—the unfortunate Fitzalan sister, as she was known—did not strike me the way I had anticipated it would.

I had expected that she would do well enough. She was not Celeste, but she was a Fitzalan. It was her pedigree that mattered, that and the sweet, long-anticipated revenge of forcing her father to give me the very thing he had denied me once already.

I had never done well with denial. Ten years ago it had not taken me to my knees, as I suspected Dermot Fitzalan thought it would. On the contrary, it had led me to go bigger, to strive harder, to make absolutely certain that the next time I came for a Fitzalan daughter, their arrogant, self-satisfied father would not dare deny me.

I had expected that my return to this cold, gloomy mausoleum in the north of France would feel like a victory lap. Because it was.

What I did not expect was the kick of lust that slammed through me at the sight of her.

It made no sense. I had been raised in the gutters of Madrid, but I had always wanted better. Always. As I’d fought my way out of the circumstances of my birth, I’d coveted elegance and collected it wherever I could.

It had made sense for me to pursue Celeste. She was grace personified, elegant from the tips of her fingernails to the line of her neck, and nothing but ice straight through.

It had made sense that I had wanted her to adorn my collection.

The girl before me, who had dared try to sneak up on a man who had been raised in dire pits filled with snakes and jackals and now walked untroubled through packs of wolves dressed as aristocrats, was...unruly.

She had red-gold hair that slithered this way and that and stubborn curls she had made no apparent attempt to tame. There was a spray of freckles over her nose, and I knew that if I could see them from this distance, it likely meant that my eyes were not deceiving me and she had not, in fact, bothered with even the faintest hint of cosmetics in a nod toward civility.

On the one hand, that meant her dark, thick lashes and the berry shade of her full lips were deliciously natural.

But it also showed that she had little to no sense of propriety.

She was otherwise unadorned. She wore a navy blue dress that was unobjectionable enough, with classic lines that nodded toward her generous figure without making too much of it, and leather boots that covered her to her knees.

I could have forgiven the hair and even the lack of cosmetics—which suggested she had not prepared for her first meeting with me the way a woman who planned to make the perfect wife would have.

But it was the way she was scowling at me that suggested she was even less like her sister than I had imagined.

Celeste had never cracked. Not even when she’d been denied what she’d so prettily claimed she wanted. Oh, she’d caused a carefully prepared scene for her father, but there had never been anything but calculation in her gaze. Her mascara had never run. She had never presented anything but perfection, even in the midst of her performance.

The fact it still rankled made it a weakness. I thrust it aside.

“Surely that is not the expression you wish to show your future husband,” I said quietly. “On this, the occasion of our first meeting.”

I had heard her come in and creep along the strange balcony above me the butler had told me was a gallery. Not a very good gallery, I had thought with a derisive glance at the art displayed there. All stodgy old masters and boring ecclesiastical works. Nothing bold. Nothing new.

Until she’d come.

“I want to know why you wish to marry me.” She belted that out, belligerent and bordering on rude. A glance confirmed that she was making fists at her sides. Fists.

I felt my brow raise. “I beg your pardon?”

Her scowl deepened. “I want to know why you want to marry me, when if you are even half as rich and powerful as they say, you could marry anyone.”

I thrust my hands—not in anything resembling fists—into the pockets of my trousers, and considered her.

I should have been outraged. I told myself I was.

But the truth was, there was something about her that tempted me to smile. And I was not a man who smiled easily, if at all.

I told myself it was the very fact that she had come here, when our wedding was not until the morning. It was the fact she seemed to imagine she could put herself between her grasping, snobbish father and me when these were matters that could not possibly concern her. Daughters of men like Dermot Fitzalan always did what they were told, sooner or later.

Yet here she was.

It was the futility of it, I thought. My Don Quixote bride with her wild hair, tilting at windmills and scowling all the while. It made something in my chest tighten.

“I will answer any questions you have,” I told her magnanimously, trying my best to contain my own ferocity. “But you must face me.”

“I’m looking right at you.”

I only raised a hand, then beckoned her to me with two languid fingers.

And then waited, aware that it had been a long time indeed since I had been in the presence of someone...unpredictable.

I saw her hands open, then close again at her sides. I saw the way her chest moved, telling me that she fought to keep her breath even.

I learned a lot about my future bride as the seconds ticked by, and all she did was stare down at me. I learned she was willful. Defiant.

But ultimately yielding.

Because when she moved, it was to the spiral stair that led her down to the stone floor where I stood.

Perhaps not yielding so much as curious, I amended as she drew near, folding her arms over her chest as if she was drawing armor around herself in order to face me.

I took a moment to consider her, this bride I had purchased outright. This girl who was my revenge and my prize, all in one.

She will do, I thought, pleased with myself.

“I suppose,” I said after a moment, in the cool tone I used to reprimand my subordinates, “you cannot help the hair.”

Imogen glowered at me. Her eyes were an unusual shade of brown that looked like old copper coins when they filled with temper, as they did now. It made me wonder how they would look when she was wild with passion instead.

That lust hit me again. Harder this time.

“It is much like being born without a title, I imagine,” she retorted.

It took me a moment to process that. To understand that this messy, unruly girl had thrust such an old knife in so deftly, then twisted it.

I couldn’t think of the last time that had happened. I couldn’t think of the last person who had dared.

“Does it distress you that you must lower yourself to marry a man so far beneath you?” I asked, all silk and threat. “A man who is little more than a mongrel while you have been deliberately bred from blood kept blue enough to burn?”

I could not seem to help but notice that her skin was so fair it was like cream and made me...hungry. And when her eyes glittered, they gleamed copper.

“Does it distress you that I am not my sister?” she asked in return.

I hadn’t expected that.

I felt myself move, only dimly aware that I was squaring my shoulders and changing my stance, as if I found myself engaged in hand-to-hand combat. I supposed I was.

“You cannot imagine that the two of you could be confused,” I murmured, but I was looking at her differently. I was viewing her as less a pawn and more an opponent. First a knife, then a sucker punch.

So far, Imogen Fitzalan was proving to be far more interesting that I had anticipated.

I wasn’t sure I knew where to put that.

“As far as I am aware,” she said coolly, “you are the only one who has ever confused us.”

“I assure you, I am not confused.”

“Perhaps I am. I assume that purchasing my hand in marriage requires at least as much research as the average online dating profile. Did you not see a picture? Were you not made aware that my sister and I share only half our blood?”

“I cannot say I gave the matter of your appearance much thought,” I said, and I expected that to set her back on her heels.

But instead, the odd creature laughed.

“A man like you, not concerned with his own wife’s appearance? How out of character.”

“I cannot imagine what you think you know of my character.”

“I have drawn conclusions about your character based on the way you allow yourself to be photographed.” Her brow lifted. “You are a man who prefers the company of a very particular shape of woman.”

“It is not their shape that concerns me, but whether or not other men covet them.” This was nothing but the truth, and yet something about the words seemed almost...oily. Weighted. As if I should be ashamed of saying such a thing out loud when I had said it many times before.

Though not, I amended, to a woman I intended to make my wife.

“You like a trophy,” she said.

I inclined my head. “I am a collector, Imogen. I like only the finest things.”

She smiled at me, but it struck me as more of a baring of teeth. “You must be disappointed indeed.”

Though she looked as if the notion pleased her.

I moved then, closer to her, enjoying the way she stood fast instead of shrinking away. I could see the way her pulse beat too fast in her neck. I could see the way her copper eyes widened. I reached over and helped myself to one of those red-gold curls, expecting her hair to be coarse. Much as she was.

But the curl was silky against my fingers, sliding over my skin like a caress. And something about that fell through me like a sudden brush fire.

If I was a man who engaged in self-deception, I would have told myself that was not at all what I felt.

But I had built my life and my fortune, step by impossible step in the face of only overwhelming odds, on nothing short of brutal honesty. Toward myself and others, no matter the cost.

I knew I wanted her.

She reached up as if to bat my hand away, but appeared to think better of it, which raised her another notch or two in my estimation. “You have yet to answer the question. You can marry anyone you like. Why on earth would you choose me?”

“Perhaps I am so enamored of the Fitzalan name that I have hungered for nothing but the opportunity to align myself with your father since the day I met your sister. And you should know, Imogen, that I always get what I want.”

She swallowed. I watched the pale column of her neck move when she did. “They say you are a monster.”

I was so busy looking at her mouth and imagining how those plump lips would feel wrapped around the hungriest part of me that I almost missed the way she said that. And more, the look on her face when she did.

As if she was not playing a game, any longer.

As if she was actually afraid of me.

And I had dedicated my life to making certain that as many people as possible were afraid of me, because a healthy fear bred respect and I did not much care if they feared me so long as they respected me.

But somehow, I did not wish this to be true of Imogen Fitzalan. My bride, for her sins.

“Those who say I am a monster are usually poor losers,” I told her, aware that I was too close to her. And yet neither she nor I moved to put more space between us. “It is in their best interests to call me a monster, because who could be expected to prevail against a creature of myth and lore? Their own shortcomings and failures are of no consequence, you understand. Not if I am a monster instead of a man.”

Her gaze searched my face. “You want to be a monster, then. You enjoy it.”

“You can call me whatever you like. I will marry you all the same.”

“Again. Why me?”

“Why does this upset you?” I didn’t fight the urge that came over me then, to reach over and take her chin in my fingers and hold her face where I wanted it. Simply because I could. And because, though she stilled, she did not jerk away. “I know that you have spent your life preparing for this day. Why should it matter if it is me or anyone else?”

“It matters.”

Her voice was fierce and quiet at once. And emotion gleamed in her lovely eyes, though I couldn’t discern what, exactly, that sheen meant.

“Did you have your heart set on another?” I asked, aware as I did so that something I had never felt before stirred to life within me. “Is that why you dare come to me with all this belligerence?”

It was because she was mine, I told myself. That was why I felt that uncharacteristic surge of possessiveness. I had not felt it for a woman before, it was true. Despite how much I had wanted Celeste back in the day and how infuriated I had been when I had lost her to that aristocratic zombie of a count she called her husband.

I had wanted Celeste, yes.

But that was a different thing entirely than knowing she was meant to be mine.

Imogen was mine. There was no argument. I had paid for the privilege—or that was how her father planned to spin this match.

He and I knew the truth. I was a wealthy man, my power and might with few equals. I took care of my sisters and my mother because I prided myself on my honor and did my duty—not because they deserved that consideration. And because I did not want them to be weak links others could use to attack me.

But otherwise I had no ties or obligations, and had thus spent my days dedicating myself to the art of money.

The reality was that Dermot Fitzalan needed my wealth. And better still, my ability to make more with seeming ease. He needed these things far more than I needed his daughter’s pedigree.

But I had decided long ago that I would marry a Fitzalan heiress, these daughters of men who had been the power behind every throne in Europe at one point or another. I had determined that I would make my babies on soft, well-bred thighs, fatten them on blue blood, and raise them not just rich, but cultured.

I had been so young when I had seen Celeste that first time. So raw and unformed. The animal they accused me of being in all the ways that mattered.

I had never seen a woman like her before. All clean lines and beauty. I had never imagined that a person could be...flawless.

It had taken me far longer than it should have—far longer than it would today, that was for certain—to see the truth of Celeste Fitzalan, now a countess of petty dreams and an angry old man’s promises because that was what she had wanted far more than she had wanted me.

But my thirst for my legacy had only grown stronger.

“If there was another,” my confounding betrothed said, a mulish set to that fine mouth and a rebellion in her gaze, “I would hardly be likely to tell you, would I?”

“You can tell me anything you like about others,” I told her, all menace and steel. “Today. I would advise you to take advantage of this offer. Come the morning, I will take a far dimmer view of these things.”

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” she threw at me, pulling her chin from my grasp.

I assumed we were both well aware that I allowed it.

“I never said that it did. You are the one who came here. Was it only to call me names? To ask me impertinent questions? Or perhaps you had another goal in mind?”

“I don’t know why I came,” Imogen said, and I could tell by the way her voice scraped into the air between us that she meant that.

But there was a fire in me. A need, dark and demanding, and I was not in the habit of denying myself the things I wanted.

More than this, she was to be my wife in the morning.

“Don’t worry,” I told her with all that heat and intent. “I know exactly why you came.”

I hooked my hand around her neck, enjoying the heat of her skin beneath the cover of those wild curls. I pulled her toward me, watching her eyes go wide and her mouth drop open as if she couldn’t help herself. As if she was that artless, that innocent.

I couldn’t understand the things that worked in me. To take her, to possess her, to bury myself in her body when she looked nothing like the women that I usually amused myself with.

But none of that mattered.

Because I already owned her. All that remained was the claiming, and I wanted it. Desperately.

I dropped my mouth to hers.