“And so we get to it.”
“So we do.”
The duke sat back in his chair. “I was not the instrument of her death.”
It was a strange phrasing, one that King imagined his father used to eschew his responsibility. “No, I was, and thank you very much for clarifying the situation as though I wasn’t there.”
“You weren’t, either.”
King held up a hand. “I carried the reins, Your Grace. I heard her scream. I was there when she fell silent. I held her in my arms.”
“And that will be your cross to bear. All men have them.”
King ran a hand through his hair, barely able to contain his fury and frustration. “Why am I here?”
“I offered her money,” the duke said. “The milkmaid.”
“To leave me.” Lorna had never said so, but it was not an enormous surprise.
“I am not proud of it, but I had no other way of ensuring that she wasn’t after your title. Your money. That she wasn’t trying to climb.”
King laughed at that. “I am supposed to believe that you were, what . . . making certain she loved me?”
The duke’s gaze flickered over King’s shoulder. “Believe it or not, it’s the truth.”
“It’s bollocks and you know it. You’ve done nothing for your entire life but espouse the importance of blue blood and good name and strong breeding. If you offered her money, you did it to ensure she would leave me. I assume you offered her father the same.”
The duke nodded. “I did.”
“And he accepted. And she ran to me. Because she loved me. And money wasn’t enough to end that.”
“Neither accepted it,” the duke said, “And money was not enough, you are right. You’d tempted them with something else. Something far more valuable. Something they thought they’d never get, and then . . . it seemed as though they might.”
The words unsettled. She’d wanted to run away from the start. Across the border. Into Scotland. King had pushed her to marry in a church. In Britain. In front of all the world. She’d agreed. Hadn’t she?
“She didn’t tell you about the money,” his father said, “because she knew that if she did, you’d come to me, angry. And I’d tell you the truth. She worried you’d believe it. So she told you something else.”
King did not believe it.
He shook his head. “It’s not true.”
“It’s true.” The words came from the door, where Agnes had apparently stayed, sentinel.
“He even has you lying for him?” he said, betrayal hot and unpleasant in his chest.
“She’s not lying,” the duke said.
“Her father came to the castle after her death, Aloysius,” Agnes said. “After you’d disappeared. He was destroyed. And he told the truth—that they’d been after a title from the start. Together.”
King shook his head. “No. She was afraid of him. She told me her father was coming. That he’d kill her if he found her. That he was afraid of you.”
“That man wasn’t afraid of me,” the duke said. “He had visions of being a Boleyn. He spat in my face and tore her gown. Backhanded her—and well. Split her lip. And vowed to me that she’d be the next Marchioness of Eversley by sunup.”
King could still see the gown, torn at the neck. He could see her lip, bleeding. He pushed memory aside. His father lied. It was what he did.
“Why didn’t you stop them?”
“I went to Rivendel.” The neighboring earl, master of the estate where Lorna and her father lived. The duke laughed at his stupidity. “I actually thought he would be able to help. But your girl and her father had been promised a dukedom. And they were willing to risk all. By the time I returned home, you were gone. With her. And the coach.” The duke paused. “That’s when I learned that against human will, the aristocracy had no power.”
King’s mind reeled with the images of that night, burned into his memory. Her tears, her begs, her eyes filled with fear. Those eyes. She’d have to be the best actress in Britain. Or want something badly enough to do anything.
But the idea that she’d lied—that everything he’d thought about that summer, that girl, the life they could have had, was imagined—it was devastating. And impossible to believe. It did not matter that the doubt was there now, seeded. Growing. What if the only love he’d ever believed was a lie?
What if the darkest pain he’d ever felt was the product of betrayal instead of love?
Who was he if not the man made by that night?
King stood, desperate to leave the room. To be rid of his father. To be rid of Agnes, whom he’d never thought would betray him. He leveled his accusation at her. “You’re both lying to me.”
“Call her a liar again, and you will no longer be welcome in this house,” the duke said, cold fury in his tone. “I will take your insults, but Agnes has been nothing but your champion since the day you were born, and you will not speak ill of her.”
At another time, the anger in his father’s words would have shocked him, but King hadn’t the patience for it now. He rounded on the duke. “This changes nothing. This place still made monsters of us both. The line will end with me, as I have always promised.”
“And the wife you presented to me? What of her desires?”
Sophie.
“Don’t tell me you believe she loves me. She’s a Dangerous Daughter.”
The duke’s gaze did not waver. “After witnessing last night, I think the girl might well care for you. Your milkmaid would never have left you the way the Talbot girl did.”