Free Miller, Raine - The Undoing of a Libertine (Siren Publishing Classic) by Raine Miller

later for this defiance.
    Jeremy sounded truly worried now. “What would I be getting, Georgina?” He swallowed hard, his throat flexing.
    She turned to him and took a deep breath. “I can barely look at you and say the words, so great is my shame. But you deserve better than me. Much better.”
    “What would I be getting, Georgina?” He repeated the question, this time with the sharpness of daggers flying across the room.
    She gulped a deep breath and said it quickly, before she lost her nerve. “You would be getting a ruined bride—who’s no longer chaste—and unable to—unable to bear the touch—to do her duty in marriage. I cannot do it. I am as I said before, not fit for you. I am ruined.”
    She saw the sting flash in his eyes and a flinch as he comprehended her ghastly confession, and she had to cover her mouth. Georgina’s pain was naught compared to the ache of hurting him, but she could do nothing else. Her heart squeezed up tight, closing itself off.
    The hysterical idea of flinging herself down to the floor and begging him to marry her anyway, despite her disclosure, flashed as a possibility. But that was simply a panic reaction. She could never do such a thing to Jeremy. He deserved someone who could be a true wife to him and give him the heirs he needed.
    This hurt. So badly. The anguish terrified her in its intensity, but that must mean it was a worthy sacrifice—she was doing the correct thing. Yes. This was how it must be. Georgina would sacrifice her happiness to ensure his. Knowing the loss of Jeremy Greymont would be always be felt with great regret, but also knowing in her heart, that this night, she had done the right thing in letting him go.

Chapter Nine

    When we two parted
    In silence and tears,
    Half broken-hearted
    To sever for years…
    —Lord Byron, “When We Two Parted”(1816)

    Jeremy felt the breath leave his body. It eked out of him slowly, letting him feel the loss at its most painful depths.
    Georgina’s sorrow-filled eyes had glowed at him in the dim of the room, and he’d never forget how she’d looked. Like a princess. So soft and alluring in her nightclothes with her hair spilling down over one shoulder. A tragic, but exquisite princess in his eyes.
    Right before she had said the words that broke his heart, he’d felt the coldness of dread seize that beating muscle which gave him life, felt it turn brittle, so that when he did hear those terrible words, it just splintered all apart in an instant. Like an icicle dropping onto a rock and shattering into oblivion, as if it had never been, at one time, whole and shimmering.
    His chest ached. He felt sure there must be a blade still embedded there after slicing him open, slowly being turned to ensure a maximum degree of suffering. He knew the need to lash out at something.
    Georgina fled the room first, a desperate attempt to hold on to her composure for dignity’s sake, her final words to him being, “I am so sorry, Jeremy. Forgive me.” And then she turned away. Turned from him and was gone.
    Mr. Russell followed his daughter out, having the grace to look shamed for his duplicity as he departed.
    The keening of the library door closing on its hinge screamed through the silence of the cold room. But even the chill of the room could not compare to the coldness in his heart right now.
    Being so close to getting what he desired and having it snatched away was cruel.
    I cannot marry her. She will never be mine. I’ll never hold her in my arms or sleep with her or be inside her. I’ll not touch her body or kiss her or make any babies with her.
    His body gulped in some breath, and he dropped to a chair, his legs unwilling to hold him up. Jeremy couldn’t believe it. Georgina was supposed to be the girl for a libertine rip like him. He’d found her amid the bleak matrimonial landscape he thought never to make much sense of, let alone have to wade through. She was good and beautiful and gentle, but not weak. She’d have