The Dare Collection May 2020

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CONRAD ORDERED TEA.

On the list of things that were epically wrong with this moment, this engagement of hers and her entire life, Jenny had to place that at the very top.

The world was ending and Conrad ordered tea. As if he was a proper Englishman when she was the one with the British title and the bloodline to match.

And the word proper kicked around inside of her, spiked and mean, until she felt more or less bloodied, inside and out.

The tea service arrived, and Jenny had been entirely too well taught to sit back listlessly. Or to slump over and wail, the way she had half a mind to do. So she busied herself pouring out steaming cups, asking muted questions about sugar and cream and then sitting there in the little study Conrad had led her to, staring across a fine antique table at this man there was no possible way she could marry.

He gazed back at her with absolutely no expression on his face.

Clinically speaking, he was a handsome man. Jenny knew that, even if she didn’t feel the way a prospective wife likely should. Erika had spent the whole of their friendship moaning about how cold her brother was, how cruel, but Jenny had never seen any of that herself. He was simply…expressionless, always.

But what she hadn’t understood until now was that he had never truly focused all of his attention on her before.

It was…intense. Something very nearly alarming.

The full force of his attention made her want to squirm. But she didn’t.

“This is very awkward,” she said instead, because it seemed better to say it than to continue to sit there in silence.

Conrad only gazed back at her, as unreadable as before.

“I certainly never anticipated that you would see…that.” Jenny knew she should start apologizing, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Because she wasn’t sorry. If anything, she was sorry that Conrad had interrupted them. “I realize that we never spoke directly about fidelity, but it can’t have been pleasant to look up and see…” She blew out a breath and stared down at her tea, not remotely tempted to take a sip. “I take it you’re a member of this club?”

“I stay here often when I arrive in Sydney too early to conduct business,” Conrad said, his voice as devoid of emotion as the rest of him.

Jenny lifted her gaze to his. And even as some part of her told her she didn’t owe him anything, that theirs was an arranged marriage and surely he couldn’t expect anything of her, another part of her cringed in shame. Because she’d promised to marry him, and the promise had meant something to her. And then she’d gone to such lengths to tell herself that promise didn’t matter when she was down here in Australia.

Was that really who she was now? Just…a liar?

Once Jenny started questioning the lies she’d told, they all seemed to crowd in on her. Stretching all the way back to a beautiful Irish boy with eyes of the deepest green, who’d appeared in front of her out of nowhere one day when she was barely eighteen.

And had stolen her heart in an instant.

But Jenny had never planned on falling in love. It was the one thing her otherwise indulgent father forbade her—and she’d agreed, because she never again wanted to feel the way she had after her mother had died. She’d done everything she could to make sure she never would.

And yet here she sat, with a cup of tea she didn’t want and a sea of grief inside her anyway.

Jenny had ended up right where she’d never wanted to go.

“We have no sexual relationship,” Conrad was saying, his voice as remote as the rest of him. “As little as I might enjoy seeing a woman wearing my ring in the arms of another man, I can’t claim the sight hurt me in any way. I do not feel betrayed.” He studied her for a moment. “I do feel curious, however. Do you plan to continue this affair after our marriage?”

And somehow, that made it worse. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

She cleared her throat, then tried again. “I haven’t actually given the matter any thought.”

One of Conrad’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t object. In theory. But there’s the issue of paternity.”

Jenny could remember, so vividly, standing out there near the Opera House Bar, blithely assuring Dylan that this would all be fine. That even if she fell in love, ha ha ha, she would scamper back off into the arms of the husband her father had arranged for her, and all would be well.

How had she ever imagined that she could do that?

She barely knew chilly, controlled Conrad. And she couldn’t imagine, now, allowing a man she barely knew to touch her body. To pull out his cock and put it inside of her. The very notion made her feel ill.

Which put rather more of a damper on the issue of the paternity of their potential children than she thought he meant.

And Conrad was a decent man, as she told anyone who dared question her on her choices. Kinder than she’d imagined, if this calm response to finding her with Dylan was any indication. Then again, perhaps that only meant he was significantly more controlled than she’d thought.

But most of all, he was Erika’s older brother. And even Erika had softened toward him recently, mostly because she happened to be shacked up with Conrad’s best friend.

Whatever the reason, Jenny found herself leaning forward, over the table between them, so she could take his hands in hers.

Something flashed over his face and made those cold eyes of his look silver for a moment. She had the shocking notion that there was a different man in him, too. And one she would likely never see.

“Conrad,” she said softly. “Why do you want to marry me?”

“You’re Lady Jenny. Who wouldn’t want to marry you?”

Jenny could think of one person who didn’t want to marry her. One person who’d looked at her with something like torture in his eyes and talked to her about how to let go of him.

“You mean, because of my father,” she said, concentrating on the man before her. Not the man she’d already lost.

The faintest shred of amusement moved across Conrad’s face. “If you mean your father’s money, I have my own.”

“Then why?” Conrad’s hands were warmer than she’d expected. And a whole lot tougher. “If I’m not mistaken, this is the first time you’ve ever really looked at me.”

Conrad turned her left hand over, and fiddled with the ring he’d put there.

“In the spirit of this sudden attack of honesty,” he said, and his voice was so dry that she couldn’t tell if he meant to sound that sardonic, or if it was simply a byproduct of the chill, “I didn’t need to look at you. You were good on paper. And I wanted to make the right choice. To live up to what was expected of the head of the Vanderburg family.”

“Ah, yes,” Jenny said. “Expectations.”

For a moment, they both stared at her ring.

“You don’t seem at all angry,” Jenny ventured. She peered up at him. “You don’t even seem mildly irritated, if I’m honest.”

His gray gaze touched hers and she didn’t know how she kept herself from flinching.

“I’m not pleased,” he said.

Jenny blew out a breath. She thought about her father and how disappointed he would be with her.

But then, that was all about his fear. And she’d let that fear and her own grief hang over her for so long now that she’d accepted that it was simply…how things were. She’d decided long ago she could never be with someone she loved. And she’d never tried, so she’d assumed she could handle a loveless life.

She knew better now.

Jenny had no idea if she could make Dylan love her, all these years later. What she did know was that she’d never forgive herself if she didn’t try.

She pulled off the ring that Conrad had given her, and she met his gaze—and held it—as she placed it back in his hand.

For a moment, he only stared back at her. As unreadable as ever.

“My sister tells me that Dylan has been your best friend as long as she has,” Conrad said then. “Though she claims she’s your real best friend, because he’s not really a friend at all, is he?”

“No,” Jenny said. At last. “I’m afraid Dylan has always been a lot more. Even if he did walk away today.”

Conrad smiled, then. And his eyes had gone back to that frigid gray. He let the ring roll forward and back in his palm before he closed it up in his fist.

He stood, tucking the ring away in his pocket. And it struck Jenny as funny, almost, that she was yet again in a supplicant position, staring up a man.

But not the right one.

“He wanted to tear me apart with his bare hands,” Conrad said, gazing down at her. “I thought he was going to try to put me through the wall. Instead, he walked away. Why would a man do that?”

Jenny only stared up at him as her heart began to pound at her like a battering ram.

“I don’t love you, Jenny,” Conrad continued. His voice was matter-of-fact. “If you married me, I never would. Love is not something I have to offer. But even a blind man could see that your friend does not suffer these same restrictions.” He inclined his head, cool and unbothered, and she couldn’t tell if that made it better or worse. “If you’re not content with our arrangement, if you feel even half the things I can see all over your face, go. Find him. I don’t think you need my blessing, but you have it.”

And Jenny stayed there, still leaning out over the small table, while the man she’d intended to marry turned and walk from the room.

She stayed where she was, there beside a lovely tea service she didn’t have the slightest urge to touch.

She thought about all these years since her first sight of Dylan at Oxford. And it was a temptation to think of them all as wasted. But when she set all those years of friendship next to the past few weeks of absolute joy, she knew, somehow, that she couldn’t have had one without the other. That it had always been leading here.

What she had to ask herself was whether or not, had Conrad not turned up the way he had today, she would have called off this wedding herself.

Jenny tried to imagine walking down an aisle in the spring, and seeing Conrad standing at the head of it.

And it was wrong. It was just…wrong.

There was only one man she’d ever wanted to see smiling at her, from the head of an aisle or anywhere else.

Her breath left her in a rush. She dug into the pocket of the coat she hadn’t managed to take off and pulled out her mobile. Then she called a number she knew by heart, though it was ten o’clock at night there and she knew her father didn’t like late night calls.

And in fact, he sounded typically put out when he picked up the phone.

“It’s me, Papa,” Jenny said. “I know you’re asleep or on your way. But I have something to tell you and I know you’re not going to like it. I need you to love me anyway.”

And when her father sputtered, Jenny told him the news.

Then repeated it when he fell silent.

“Do you love him?” her father asked. He sounded old, for the first time that she could recall. And it made her sad, but it didn’t make her change her mind. “Do you really love him?”

“I think I always have, Papa,” Jenny whispered. “But I tried not to. For your sake.”

“Does he love you?” her father asked, sounding almost severe. As if he couldn’t bear to think about it.

“That’s the thing,” Jenny said with a quiet conviction she hadn’t known, until now, was there inside her. “I think he’s loved me even longer.”

And when her father sighed, she knew she’d won. Or that he would support her, anyway. It felt much like the same thing.

“You don’t have to love him,” she told her father. “I don’t require it.”

“I love you, Jenny,” her father replied gruffly, and she knew those weren’t words that came easily to him. Bringing with them, as they did, the potential for so much loss. So much grief. But she’d never doubted the truth of it, no matter how little he said it. “If this is what you want, I support it. Your mother would have flayed me alive for making you think you couldn’t love the man you wanted to love.”

And Jenny didn’t know when she started crying, but she didn’t stop. Not when she ended the call. Not when she sat there a moment, thinking of the mother she’d lost, the father she still had and all these years she’d tried so hard to keep herself from feeling.

But she couldn’t cry forever, not even if the tears had more to do with the acknowledgement of emotion—and the sheer relief that she was no longer expected to marry a man she hardly knew and didn’t want. She took a deep breath. She wiped at her eyes. She stayed where she was and finally drank her tea.

And then she set off into Sydney to find the love of her life, and convince him that they had never been meant to be friends.

By any means necessary.

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