“And where are you going to be?”

“At my townhouse. I suspect he’ll return there. Better lodgings and finer fare. I’ll be in wait for him and his driver. One way or another, I’ll have him. And Grier’s whereabouts.”

“Don’t think things will go light for you if something befalls my daughter, Maksimi. You’ll not find another bride so easily when everyone hears you’re responsible for killing the last one.”

“Father,” Cleo whispered harshly, her wide eyes horrified at his blunt words. “He didn’t intend for any of this to happen.”

“But it did happen. All because of him.”

Sev stopped in his tracks but didn’t turn around. Rage coursed through him, hot and acrid as the fear he battled inside himself for Grier.

Jack Hadley was completely correct. Sev was at fault here. He should have seen, should have somehow known his cousin was as rotten as his sire.

But Jack was wrong to think Sev would ever try to replace Grier. Grier was more to him than a bridal settlement. She could not be replaced.

Perhaps Grier thought the same thing that Jack did. His stomach churned uncomfortably at the notion. Perhaps she didn’t know what he was just discovering standing in the middle of Jack Hadley’s foyer with gawking servants all around him.

He was in love with Grier Hadley.

He’d fallen totally and irrevocably in love with the most unseemly female of his acquaintance.

For no other reason had he offered her marriage. For no other reason would it break him if something happened to her. If he lost her from his life, he would be lost as well.

Chapter Twenty-five

When Grier woke she wasn’t certain she was not in fact still sleeping. Trapped in darkness, she considered that maybe she dreamed, caught in some state between sleep and waking, the air as deep and pulsing as a night in the thickest woods.

She shivered as the cold penetrated her consciousness. The icy wet saturated her bones and she knew this was no dream.

Memory flooded her. She saw Malcolm’s face, remembered his cruel hands, the sting of his slap on her face.

Blinking, she peered into the penetrating dark. It seemed lighter to her left. She listened hard, trying to glean something about her surroundings. Nothing. The silence was deafening. That ruled out Town. Even in her room at night the sounds of life in the city prevailed, a living, breathing thing all around her. Wherever she was the air was still, dormant.

Wincing at the throbbing pain in her head, she pushed up with her hands. Grit and dirt scraped her palms. The floorboards creaked beneath the pressure.

Footsteps suddenly sounded. She froze, considering dropping back down and feigning sleep, but the door slammed open. Light flooded the small room. It was too late. Malcolm stood on the threshold, gazing down at her.

“You’re awake. I began to wonder if maybe I’d hit you too hard.”

Grier rose to a sitting position. “Why are you doing this?

“Because you can’t marry Sev,” he snapped, stepping deeper into the room.

“Why not?” Her gaze moved beyond him, calculating her chances of making it past him.

“No one can. At least not until our grandfather is dead.”

Grier pushed herself unsteadily to her feet. “I don’t understand.”

“Did Sev not tell you about me? That I’m the black sheep of the family? Or at least my father was. My grandfather banished my father, humiliated and shamed my parents—me.” He gestured wildly and paced the room. “That old bastard wants the satisfaction of seeing Sev married before he dies? He would like to go to his final rest knowing the Maksimi line is secured? Well, he shall not have such peace. I’ve waited years to make that old man suffer. I’ll make bloody hell certain of that.”

Grier moistened her lips, quite convinced she was in the hands of a madman. He would thwart Sev’s matrimonial goals for the sake of disappointing their grandfather. No. She doubted he’d stop there. He was too obsessed with devastating the king. She wouldn’t put it past him to try and destroy Sev. He was simply warming up with her. She doubted he would ever let Sev return to Maldania alive.

“But weren’t you encouraging Sev to court Lady Libbie?”

“Of course. Because I knew it would go nowhere.” The light from the main room cast one side of his face into relief while the other side stayed hidden in shadow. “I’d heard rumors. Servants talk. I knew she was sneaking about with her father’s groom. I didn’t anticipate she would run away with him quite so soon, however.”

Grier shook her head and then stopped at the sudden lancing pain.

Malcolm continued, his voice taking on an accusatory whine. “You weren’t even to be considered.”

She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders, glad that the motion didn’t make her feel instantly ill. “What do you intend to do with me then?” she demanded. “Hide me away until your grandfather finally expires?”

Malcolm crossed his arms, the motion as petulant as a child. “I hadn’t quite thought as far as that. I was simply determined to keep you from sailing for Maldania.”

Grier nodded and edged closer to the door. The fact that he hadn’t yet decided what to do with her didn’t bode well. She didn’t intend to stick around waiting for him to make up his mind.

Although he hadn’t said it, it was there, a dark shadow lurking in the back of her mind. He could simply kill her to be rid of her.

No one would ever know the truth. Her disappearance would forever be a mystery. She would simply have vanished.

Sev would never know. Not what happened to her. Not that she loved him. Her stomach lurched sickly.

She watched Malcolm, her chest tightening almost painfully. She shoved tangled strands of hair from her face and took a bracing breath.

He paced the room, tugging at the ends of his hair as if he might tug free a solution from that mad mind of his. Every once in a while he’d shoot her a measuring glance, seemingly unaware that she had been moving at a cautious, crawling pace toward the door, her fingers twitching at her sides as her nerves snapped and trembled throughout her.

“I can’t believe Sev actually decided to marry you! This shouldn’t have happened.” He sliced the murky air angrily with one hand. “He’s the bloody crown prince and he should damn well act like it!”

She couldn’t help rolling her eyes as she inched closer yet toward the door leading into the well-lit room from which he’d emerged.

“You’ve bewitched him! Snared him in your woman’s web . . . just like that whore who tempted my father so many years ago and then cried rape after he took what she offered!” His eyes glittered with a frightening faraway light and Grier swallowed against the sudden bitter taste in her throat. “I should take you myself . . . see what the great allure of you is.”

She stiffened, her pulse spiking into a feverish rhythm against the flesh of her throat. Her every muscle tensed, bracing for an attack.

Without looking at her he continued, as if he had not just voiced that he might like to assault her. “If I didn’t fear that you would weave a spell on me, I would.” His lips twisted into a snarling grin. “I should like to take something that is Sevastian’s . . . arrogant bastard. He doesn’t know what it’s like to suffer, to have everything taken away. . . .”

Grier refrained from pointing out that Sev had spent the last ten years fighting a war in which he lost his own brother, countless friends and comrades. Malcolm was past the point of reason. He was deteriorating—making less and less sense as he paced back and forth in the small room, his boots scuffing the grimy wood planks.

Again, her gaze darted to the lighted room beyond. She didn’t know what waited outside the meager dwelling he’d taken her to, but she knew her odds were better out there than here with him.

As Malcolm dove into another diatribe on all the injustices delivered to him and his family, she sucked in a deep breath and bolted for the door.

Adrenaline rushed her veins at his shout. She cleared the door into the main room and skirted a small table, her gaze locking on the single door. Her hand grasped the latch. She yanked the door open in one clean pull and burst outdoors.

She didn’t waste a moment to acclimate herself. Malcolm’s curses burned her ears. He sounded close, terrifyingly close, but she refused to waste a second to look behind her.

Dark night surrounded her. The cold winter wind cut through her clothes, but she didn’t let it affect her—didn’t let it stop her from diving into the woods pressing all around the small cottage she had just escaped.

The loamy odor of wild earth filled her nose. Clearly he’d taken her somewhere outside the city.

With a fortifying reminder that the forest never scared her, she plunged headlong into the teeth of it.

He followed, crashing through trees and brush behind her like an angry boar. He was faster than she would have expected.

Or perhaps her injuries slowed her—that or her heavy skirts. Her thin-soled slippers couldn’t gain much traction on the slushy ground. Whatever the case, she couldn’t lose him as she raced into deep woods, her legs pumping hard and furiously beneath her cumbersome garments. Her muscles burned, but she didn’t stop. Her wet hem dragged across the frozen ground and she grasped a fistful of skirt, trying to lift the fabric high as she zigzagged wildly through trees.

He shouted her name, the sound echoing on the frigid air, sending the birds above squawking and flying from their night nests.

Ugly sobs tore at her throat, but still she ran on, a certain, stark knowledge pressing its full weight on her.

He’d kill her if he caught her .

He was past reason at this point and enraged as he tried to run her to ground like a hound after the hare.

Panted breaths crashed from her lips. Tears trailed cold wet paths down her cheeks. Branches tore at her exposed face, snagging her clothing. Her chest hurt, but she pushed on, blindly running through the moon-soaked night. Still, there wasn’t enough light. Not nearly enough. Not enough to see any great distance ahead of her.

Suddenly the trees and undergrowth thinned out on every side of her. But by the time she realized this it was too late. She couldn’t stop in time.

She jerked to a halt, just as the ground beneath her feet ended. Her arms flailed wildly, fighting for balance. The tips of her slippers toed the rocky edge. Rocks hissed and slid loose.

She yelped, hovering, wobbling precariously on the precipice. Arms sawing at the air, she struggled to fling herself back away from the drop.

All to no avail. She toppled forward, her scream a horrible unearthly sound on the night.

Icy air rushed past her as she careened down the side of the steep incline with no hope of stopping. Not until she reached bottom.

Wind tore at her body. Her hands dragged against the craggy wall, ripped to bloody shreds as she fought for purchase, a handhold, anything to stop her descent.

The floor of the earth loomed somewhere below, waiting to greet her. To break her with cold, relentless force.

Sev . She’d never see him again. Never tell him how she really felt . . . that she wanted to marry him. Only him. And not because she’d decided she needed to marry. Not because of security or because she craved respectability. Not because marriage was that thing every woman should do.

She loved him and he would never know it. She would be gone. Forever lost, forgotten at the base of some ravine.

With a desperate cry, she fought harder, her nails splitting as she clawed. Bits of rocks and grass flew around her as she plummeted, but nothing more. She couldn’t save herself.

Malcolm had gotten his wish after all.

Chapter Twenty-six

The hand on the mantel clock chimed the hour as a carriage clattered to a stop in front of Sev’s townhouse. Sev held his breath, waiting at the window to see who stepped down. The instant Malcolm emerged from the carriage, Sev signaled the grooms hiding behind the hedges and along the side of his townhouse.