When He Was Wicked

But that was the thing about words.

He laughed miserably.

You couldn’t take them back.

Spread it on the floor now. There you go, stamp it down. No, harder. Harder than that, Frannie. You can do it.

Six years.

Six bloody years, all lost in a single moment. All because he’d thought he might actually have the right to feel happy.

He should have known better.

And for the grand finale, just set the whole bloody thing aflame. Brava, Francesco!

There went his heart.

He looked down at his hands. His nails had carved half-moons into his palms. One had even broken the skin.

What was he going do? What the hell was he going to do now?

He didn’t know how to live his life with her knowing the truth. For six years, his every thought and action had revolved around making sure she didn’t know. All men had some guiding principle in their lives, and that had been his.

Make sure Francesca never finds out.

He sat in his chair, barely able to contain his own maniacal laughter.

Oh, Michael, he thought, the chair shaking beneath him as he let his head fall into his hands. Welcome to the rest of your life.

His second act, as it happened, opened far sooner than he’d expected, with a soft knock on his door about three hours later.

Michael was still sitting in his chair, his only concession to the passage of time the movement of his head from his hands to the seat back. He’d been leaning like that for some time now, his neck uncomfortable but un-moving, his eyes staring sightlessly at some random spot on the ecru silk fabric covering the wall.

He felt removed, set apart, and when he heard the knock, he didn’t even recognize the sound at first.

But it came again, no less timid than the first, but still persistent.

Whoever it was, he wasn’t going away.

“Enter!” he barked.

He was a she.

Francesca.

He should have risen. He wanted to. Even after everything, he didn’t hate her, didn’t wish to offer his disrespect. But she had wrenched everything from him, every last drop of strength and purpose, and all he could manage was a slight lifting of his brows, accompanied by a tired, “What?”

Her lips parted, but she didn’t say anything. She was wet, he realized, almost idly. She must have gone outside. Silly fool, it was cold out.

“What is it, Francesca?” he asked.

“I’ll marry you,” she said, so quietly he more read the words on her lips than did he hear them. “If you’ll still have me.”

And you’d have thought he’d jump from his chair. Rise, at least, unable to tamp down the joy spreading through his body. You’d have thought he might stride across the room, a man of purpose and resolve, to sweep her from her feet, rain kisses on her face, and lay her on the bed, where he might seal the bargain in the most primitive manner possible.

But instead he just sat there, too heart-weary to do anything other than ask, “Why?”

She flinched at the suspicion in his voice, but he didn’t feel particularly charitable at the moment. After what she’d done to him, she could suffer a bit of discomfort herself.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. She was standing very still, her arms straight at her sides. She wasn’t rigid, but he could tell she was trying very hard not to move.

If she did, he suspected, she’d run from the room.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” he said.

Her lower lip caught between her teeth. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “Don’t make me figure it out.”

He lifted one sardonic brow.

“Not yet, at least,” she finished.

Words, he thought, almost dispassionately. He’d had his words, and now these were hers.

“You can’t take it back,” he said in a low voice.

She shook her head.

He rose slowly to his feet. “There will be no backing out. No cold feet. No changed minds.”

“No,” she said. “I promise.”

And that was when he finally let himself believe her. Francesca did not give promises lightly. And she never broke her vows.

He was across the room in an instant, his hands at her back, his arms around her, his mouth raining desperate kisses on her face. “You will be mine,” he said. “This is it. Do you understand?”

She nodded, arching her neck as his lips slid down the long column to her shoulder.

“If I want to tie you to the bed, and keep you there until you’re heavy with child, I’ll do it,” he vowed.

“Yes,” she gasped.

“And you won’t complain.”

She shook her head.

His fingers tugged at her gown. It fell to the floor with stunning speed. “And you’ll like it,” he growled.

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

He moved her to the bed. He wasn’t gentle or smooth, but she didn’t seem to want that, and he fell upon her like a starving man. “You will be mine,” he said again, grasping her bottom and pulling her toward him. “Mine.”

And she was. For that night, at least, she was.

Chapter 22

… I am sure you have everything well in hand. You always do.

– -from the dowager Viscountess Bridgerton to her daughter, the Countess of Kilmartin, immediately upon the receipt of Francesca’s missive

The hardest part about planning a wedding with Michael, Francesca soon realized, was figuring out how to tell people.

As difficult as it had been for her to accept the idea, she couldn’t imagine how everyone else might take it. Good God, what would Janet say? She’d been remarkably supportive of Francesca’s decision to remarry, but surely she hadn’t considered Michael as a candidate.

And yet even as Francesca sat at her desk, her pen hovering over paper for hours on end, trying to find the right words, something inside of her knew that she was doing the right thing.

She still wasn’t sure why she’d decided to marry him. And she wasn’t sure how she ought to feel about his stun-ning revelation of love, but somehow she knew she wished to be his wife.

That didn’t, however, make it any easier to figure out how to tell everyone else about it.

Francesca was sitting in her study, penning letters to her family-or rather, crumpling the paper of her latest misfire and tossing it on the floor-when Michael entered with the post.

“This arrived from your mother,” he said, handing her an elegantly appointed cream-colored envelope.

Francesca slid her letter opener under the flap and removed the missive, which was, she noted with surprise, a full four pages long. “Good heavens,” she murmured. Her mother generally managed to say what she needed to say with one sheet of paper, two at the most.