Lord Ruin by Carolyn Jewel

closed his eyes.
    What scenes his friend saw behind those tight-shut eyes Ruan knew only too well: him covering Anne, head back in a howl of almost ungodly pleasure; the blood when he rolled off her, baffled by the intrusion; Ben’s sister-in-law sprawled on her back, insensible and naked for any and all to see.
    Ben’s eyes snapped open. Iron crept into his voice. “He will be a man known to have deliberately and maliciously—” He whipped up his hand, cutting off Ruan’s attempted protest at his characterization of the event “—
deliberately
and with
malice
, ravished a drugged woman, a spinster of heretofore irreproachable reputation. An innocent formerly innocent of men.”
    Anne felt the noose tightening about her neck. She tried to swallow. For some time, she stared at her feet. At the bandage wrapped around her ankle. Lord Ruin. Married to Lord Ruin. All this time she’d been frantically searching for some way to stop him from marrying Emily, and here it was. On a silver platter. She smothered a very inappropriate urge to laugh.
    “I have no illusions about my importance relative to you, your grace.” At last, she looked up. “Under any other circumstance I’d be whisked away to the deep countryside never to be heard from again and this meeting would never have taken place.”
    “Quite true,” he said.
    Aldreth walked to her and stood hands on his hips. “I don’t give a damn what happens to Cyn. He can rot in hell for all I care. It’s you that matters. What will you have, Anne? Wretched poverty or wealth beyond imagining? Which will you choose?”
    Ruan saw a flash of frustration. Unexpected spirit. “I don’t want to choose.”
    “You’d risk a bastard when legitimacy is within your power? Think what that means. And not just for you, but for Emily and Lucy, and even Mary.” She shook her head, but Ben gave no quarter. “You’d deny your child Cynssyr’s birthright? Stop shaking your head like that.”
    “It isn’t fair. Aldreth, please. It isn’t fair.”
    “You haven’t the right to ruin a child’s life,” Ben said in a low, harsh whisper. “You have no right to take that gamble.”
    She lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. “I know that. Aldreth, I know. But it isn’t fair.”
    “To hell with what’s fair, Anne.”
    “I don’t want to marry him, and I daresay he doesn’t care to marry me.”
    “What either of you want no longer matters.”
    She shivered, the proverbial goose walking over her grave, and looked at the two men. “I know. I know I haven’t any choice.”
    Aldreth sat heavily on the sofa, head in his hands. “Thank God,” he whispered. He lifted his head, looking at Anne. “The arrangements have been made. Cyn will marry you this afternoon. Right now, as a matter of fact.”
    “I am sure, Miss Sinclair,” Ruan said with no conviction whatever, “we will get on splendidly.”
    Slowly, she rose, gripping the chair back for support. All she could think about was Devon. She had lost him again, and this time she would never get him back. “That hardly seems likely, sir.”

 
    Chapter Six
      
    The ceremony took place in the chapel at Corth Abbey. Ruan had obtained a special license very early in the morning before his bride was awake and knew she was to be a bride. He fetched the parson on his way back. Every wedding had its tearful women, but in this case the tears were in no way joyous. Ruan’s mother provided the ring, offering her own wedding band until such time as Ruan could replace it with one of his choosing. Anne’s finger was slender, and the gold band slid on too easily. His wife.
    Pretending this was a happy occasion took a toll on everyone. Devon, of course, glared murder. Thomas Sinclair glowered, which wasn’t so different from his usual expression, and was drunk well before the clergyman stood to read the vows. Benjamin was uncharacteristically subdued, with none of his trademark good humor. A waterfall of tears came from Lucy, and