“Indeed. Your brush with death put quite a damper on things. Most of us are off for London. I wanted to speak to you alone, but you’ll be getting more visitors shortly.”
“Good. It will allow me to say farewell.”
Clune raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“I intend to resign my membership in the Hellfire League.”
“Sin… surely you are overreacting. You needn’t give up your friends over this unfortunate episode.”
“I don’t mean to end my friendships, but my days of playing the rakehell are over.”
The earl frowned. “It’s because of her, isn’t it? Lady Wyndham. I was right. You are smitten.”
“Yes, you were right.”
Clune shook his head. “I confess not much astonishes me these days, but you’ve managed to floor me. You vowed you would never be trapped into love. What the devil happened?”
“I met Vanessa,” Damien said simply.
“Love will not guarantee you happiness. Quite the contrary, in fact.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“You will be opening yourself up to all manner of misery.”
“Perhaps.”
“Well,” Clune commented, still marveling, “better you than I, my friend. Love can turn a man into a fool.”
“The worst sort of fool,” Damien agreed pleasantly. “Otherwise I would never have challenged you to pistols at dawn.”
Clune studied him a long moment, amusement and pity warring in his expression. “This humility is not like you, Sin.”
“I know.” He was not ashamed to admit he’d fallen. He’d lost his heart beyond all pride or reason. “But I’ll thank you to cease calling me “Sin.” I’m doing my best to divest myself of that appellation.“
“As you wish,” Clune said skeptically. “When may I offer felicitations?”
Damien frowned. “That I can’t say. She refused my offer of marriage.”
“She refused?”
“She didn’t wish to wed a man of my ilk.”
“Ah. Thus the resignation from the League. You’d best beware, my friend, or she will turn you into a milksop.”
His gaze grew distant. “She may turn me into anything she wishes, if she will only forgive me.”
His sister was more skeptical about his desire to reform. As soon as he regained enough strength, he summoned Olivia to his rooms. She obeyed reluctantly, her jaw locked in a stubborn set as she was wheeled in by an attendant footman.
“I have nothing to say to you,” she began even before the servant was dismissed.
Grimacing in pain, Damien sat up in bed. His left arm was immobilized in a sling to prevent movement and protect his injured shoulder, but the flesh wound was still quite raw.
He waited until they were alone before taking the wind out of her sails. “I am withdrawing my objection to your wedding Rutherford.”
Olivia stared. “Is this some sort of cruel trick?”
“No,” Damien replied. “I still question his sincerity, but I’m willing to give him the chance to prove himself. I want you to be happy, Livy. If Rutherford can make you so, then I won’t stand in his way.”
Hope flickered across her face. “You really mean it?”
“I really mean it.”
Joy dawned in her smile and in her sparkling eyes. “Oh, Damien… you don’t know how happy that makes me.”
“I have some idea,” he said mildly.
“I must tell Aubrey-” She stopped suddenly and gave her brother a questioning glance. “May I tell him? You won’t shoot him if he calls here at Rosewood?”
His mouth curved wryly. “No, Livy,” he said with the teasing charm that once characterized their relationship. “I promise to be on my best behavior. I’m through dueling.”
Her blue eyes grew serious. “I’m so glad you’ve given up your revenge, Damien. Vanessa was right; vengeance is never as sweet as it is cut out to be. I thought that was what I wanted with Aubrey, to punish him for his cruelty, but what I really wanted was for him to love me.”
Damien allowed himself a bleak smile. “You are wiser than your tender years, puss,” he observed quietly.
He called out to the footman in the hall and winced at a sudden, painful twinge in his shoulder. “Now go and celebrate your victory with your betrothed.”
The servant responded at once. Before she could be wheeled out of the room, though, Olivia said over her shoulder, “I’ve received a letter from Vanessa. It seems she arrived home safely.”
“Oh?” Damien tried to keep his tone casual.
“She wanted to explain why she left so abruptly.”
“And what did she say?”
“That you and she had strong differences of opinion, but that she would always be my friend.”
Damien felt his chest tighten. “You are fortunate then,” he said softly.
He felt her gaze search his face, before she said tentatively, “Damien, I do miss Vanessa terribly. Would you mind if I begged her to return?”
He gave his sister a quiet look. She was no expert at subtlety; her expression nearly radiated earnest manipulation.
“She won’t return,” he answered. “But thank you.”
Her sad smile wrenched his heart.
When Olivia was gone, he lay back, thinking bleakly about what she’d said about the sweetness of vengeance. To his sorrow he’d discovered how bitter its taste could be.
It was ironic, perhaps. He’d been fiercely set on revenge, but Vanessa had had her own revenge by making him love her. Against his will he had been caught up in a dance as old as time.
Love. He had lain awake nights wanting it, hungering for it, never naming it. Irresistible desire had grown into undeniable love.
The poets were right, Damien reflected. The power of love could shake even a world-weary rake to his jaded core.
His longing was a fever that never left him. Vanessa always held the greater part of his conscious moments. She was the last thought he took to bed and the first thought he awakened to. She filled his dreams. His heart. In Vanessa he bad met his match. Only she could ease the restlessness, the emptiness inside him…
He would never be content with anyone but her. Never be free of her. He didn’t want to be free.
Damien squeezed his eyes shut. Dear God, was he too late? Was there any possible way to win her love after what he’d done to her?
He was willing to change, to try to become a better man. How he should change was the question. The example his cold, selfish parents had sent him was no model. Ignored as a child, he’d been raised in unbridled self-indulgence and scandal. As an adult, he’d had too little purpose in life, too little meaning.
But he could try to reform. He could prove to her that all rakes weren’t alike, that even the most hardened libertines could be redeemed by love.
His heart contracted with desperate hope. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to win her, to earn the love he so terribly needed from her.
He had nearly been her ruin, but he prayed she would be his salvation.
Chapter Twenty
Vanessa sat in the morning room with her mother and sisters, paying little attention to their desultory conversation as the younger ladies worked their tambour frames. She felt nothing but a frightening, deathlike dullness.
She had returned home to Rutherford Hall over a week ago, and shortly afterward received the letter from Aubrey that she could now recite by heart.
My dearest sister,
I’m certain you would not wish to learn the outcome of Sinclair’s duel from a stranger, so I will take it upon myself to report. Pray, do not be overly alarmed, but he was wounded rather seriously in the shoulder and surgery performed to remove the bullet. His opponent, Lord Clune, remained unscathed. It seems that Sinclair deloped, to the shock of his many friends.
I understand he is expected to recover fully, but as lam not allowed communication with that household, I must rely on hearsay to fathom events about the latest scandal. My own situation remains unchanged, regrettably.