The Knight; His secret author

Facing off

*Althea*

As soon as I had seen at the Twin Wolves that he had acquired a copy of the tome, I knew he would deduce that I was the author. My only surprise was that it had taken him a few days to arrive on my doorstep.

I'm also well aware he won’t leave without having his say. Perhaps he has come to blackmail me, although I can't see him engaging in such a reprehensible act. I straighten my spine and angle my chin haughtily, giving the impression I'm looking down on him when he stands several inches taller than I. “What of it?”

“You lied. You have read the book.” He says.

“Actually, I didn’t lie. I have not read the book, only the manuscript.” Its contents and what I know of them, yes, those I had lied about. But then he had lied as well, claiming to love me when he hadn’t.

He laughs loudly, almost joyfully, a sound that had once sung to my soul. When the echo of it fades away, he remains smiling, a touch of affection in his eyes. “Only you would parse words so carefully.”

My heart aches with the reminder of how well he’d come to know me, how much we had shared, how often he’d made me feel treasured. “What do you want, Knightley?”

“Does Chidding know about her?” He jerks his chin toward the doorway.

Other than the servants and my father, no one else yet knows about Arianna. However, only I and the ever-faithful Millie know the girl had actually been born in March, nearly nine months to the day after I should have been married.

We had vowed to claim June as the girl’s birth month to eliminate any suspicion that Arianna was Knightley’s. I had made the decision as a means to protect my child from possible hurt and to prevent Knightley from learning the truth about her. He didn’t deserve her. In the end, he hadn’t wanted me. Why would I think he would want his daughter?

Slowly I shake my head. “I have yet to determine if he can be trusted with the knowledge, how he might react to it. Once bitten, twice shy, or so they say. Will you tell him?”

“What do you think?” He asks.

“That I don’t know you. The man I thought you were wouldn’t have cast me aside on the morning we were to wed. Why exactly did you?” I know I shouldn’t ask.

Turning his back on me, he walks to the fireplace, presses his forearm against the mantel, and stares into the empty hearth. “To protect you.”

“By breaking my heart?” I ask.

He visibly stiffens, then sighs. “It seemed the lesser of two evils.” He faces me. “I assume he also doesn’t know you’re the author of that scandalous memoir.”

“He does not, nor do I intend to ever tell him. I will deny being the author with my last breath.” I tell him.

“Then why even write it?” He asks.

I had decided that revenge was not best served cold, but rather hot with heated words and searing passages designed to torment and tease the curious. With truth, conviction, and knowledge. When I had submitted the manuscript to a publisher, I hadn’t even cared if all the world knew I was the author, but at the last minute, I had made the decision to send it in anonymously through my trusted solicitor, who also collected my earnings. Now people debated whether it was truly a memoir or a novel. Surely it was fiction, the result of a wicked imagination. But if it was true, it had to be the product of a she-wolf scorned. I had been scorned.

“I grew up the object of unkind gossip and speculation. It turned savage when I was jilted. I was raked over the coals, my unworthiness proven when you announced I had changed my mind.” I tell him.

“I apologize for that miscalculation, Althea. I thought it would go easier on you if people thought you had found fault with me rather than my finding fault with you.” He says softly.

I close my eyes. “What fault did you find?”

“None. I told you that. My reasons had nothing to do with you.” He simply says.

Shaking my head, I scoff. “It doesn’t matter. However, I wanted you to feel the pain of the bite that was inflicted upon me.” Although I hadn’t expected the tale to be labeled indecent. Granted, the writing might be provocative, might hint at f*********n, but I hadn’t described the actual bedding in detail. That I had kept to myself, unable to share the intimacy of it because it had encompassed the whole of me.

“Well, the bite has been sharp, and I can hardly go to my club without hearing the nattering going on behind my back, much less conduct business with the success I once enjoyed when entrepreneurs are presently more interested in discussing if I’m Alpha K. The speculation is getting tedious. I want you, as ‘She-wolf’, to write a letter to the Alpha Times declaring I am not Alpha K.”

“We all want things, Knightley. We don’t always get them.” I tell him.

A muscle of irritation ticks in his jaw. Unfortunately, it's the same muscle that used to tick when he spilled his seed inside me. When I had loved him, I had memorized every aspect of him, and now I hate suffering through all the reminders.

“It’s a simple enough task, Althea. It’s not as though I’m asking you to scale a mountain.” He sounds pleading.

“I would rather scale a mountain.” I smile sweetly. “As a matter of fact, I have and found it much to my liking. Penning letters not so much.”

He narrows his eyes. “You wrote a blasted tome.”

I do little more than arch a brow. "Your point?"

A corner of his mouth hitches up, creating the solitary dimple that had always fascinated me. Once I would have pressed a kiss there. I suspect a change in tactic is coming, a cajoling maybe since I'm not conceding to his demands.

"You do realize your gent's prowess along with your not-so-subtle hints Alpha K is in fact based upon me is making me somewhat... legendary." He says.

I had, unfortunately, misjudged that aspect of it. "Completely unfair. You're viewed as a hero and me as a harlot. That is if the she-wolf of the tale was based upon me, which she is not. She is purely a figment of my imagination."

He takes two long strides away from the fireplace, so if he stretches out his arm and I lean forward the smallest fraction, his long, tapered fingers would be able to graze along my cheek. "So you wouldn't do anything Alpha K asked of you?"

"Once perhaps, but no longer." Hot anger begins pouring through me, and I'm surprised he doesn't see sparks shooting out of my ears. It is so like Knightley to lure me in, to be so easy to talk with, to make me forget he is a scoundrel extraordinaire. To make me believe his promises of a lifetime of love and happiness. "Do you not understand you are the villain? You used your charms to seduce an innocent into falling in love with you, in giving to you everything she held dear, without remorse or shame. Then you deserted her, left her to suffer her shattered heart alone. Now be gone and leave me in peace."

I turn for the door.

"If you didn't want me in your life, you wouldn't have written the book in such a manner that it couldn't escape my notice." He says.

I swing around. "I wrote the book to exorcize the last remnants of what we had that continued to plague my hopes and dreams. And it worked. Every word dripped with the loathing I hold for you. Every sentence scored you from my heart. Every paragraph bludgeoned my soul. Every passage served as a reminder of the fantasy you created for us, a love that did not truly exist. I poured every memory of you onto paper until not a single one holds sway over me any longer. I require no apology, no explanation, no repentance from you. You are no longer my reality. I don't think of you, dream of you, or yearn for you. I am free of you. Utterly and completely. Good day, my Alpha."

Spinning on my heel, I walk out as regally and with as much dignity as I can muster before he can decipher that every damned word had been a lie. Because instead of walking away, I would very much wanted to walk toward him and straight into his arms. Stupid, silly me.