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fraction, warred for the briefest instant before saying, “It is of little consequence what you desire, Alynwick, for now I find I no longer want you.” BOUND GALLEY EDITION March 23, 2012
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CHAPTER THREE
    I NO LONGER want you.
    Was there a more painful phrase in the English-speaking world? Iain didn’t think so. He’d been hurt, his heart smashed open, bleeding, upon hearing those words. Now, hours later, he still bled, the severed vessels opening every time he heard that hated sentiment repeated in his turbulent thoughts. Even closing his eyes, he heard her, and saw her, too—the way she had stood up to him, back straight, regal chin tilted at the perfect angle to relay feminine hauteur. She had not been playing coy when she had told him that. She had been speaking the truth, a truth born deep in her soul. And hours later, the bleeding continued, and the pain of that reality shattered whatever illusion and pitiful hope he had been desperately clinging to.
    Most horrible, for him, was the realization that he had not even known he’d been clinging to anything, much less hope. But comprehension had dawned the minute Georgiana had challenged him about regrets. It had been then that he realized he harboured the sentimental emotion.
    For the first time in his life he had not run from the knowledge, from the feeling that made its presence known. He’d accepted it, and by the time he had arrived at the Sumners’ musicale, he had actually claimed it, welcomed it. But with that revelation, so foreign to him, BOUND GALLEY EDITION March 23, 2012
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    TEMPTATION & TWILIGHT
    and yes, terrifying to admit, had come the heartache of knowing that Elizabeth had washed her hands of him.
    She didn’t want him. And he had never stopped wanting her.
    “Miserable existence,” he muttered as he lifted the bottle to his mouth and drank heartily of the Scotch. He deserved no less, he knew. But somewhere inside him he had always believed that Elizabeth York understood him. Knew deep down the extent of his flaws and the defects of his personality. He had always thought that she accepted that about him, and had forgiven him his trespasses all those years ago, like the angel he not only thought her to be, but knew her to be.
    But his angel had teeth—and claws—that had effectively eviscerated him tonight. By God, what had he been about, doing what he had? Demanding such things? He knew better than to let the years of hunger for her get the best of him. And they had.
    He’d been in a murderous, incredulous rage when he’d first glimpsed Elizabeth standing beside the earl. A living, breathing darkness had blanketed him, and while he wished he could feign ignorance as to its cause, he knew better. The carpet had been torn from beneath his feet, and landing flat on the ground had winded him. A sort of red mist had gathered and clouded his sight: rage stemming from the shattered hope that one day he might find his way back to her.
    It had always been a comfort to him—a perverse comfort, because he was a capricious man who took pleasure in such selfish thoughts as the one he had long clung to.
    In his mind, there was still time, still a chance that she might one day be his. Elizabeth did not go out in Society. She did not accept men’s arms and stroll about salons with them. In essence, there was no other man in BOUND GALLEY EDITION March 23, 2012
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    CHARLOTTE FEATHERSTONE
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    her life. No golden male to rival Iain’s black soul. And the knowledge had always comforted him.
    Selfishly, he wanted her to stay free of courtships and such. It gave him hope. And tonight, when he had been feeling strangely melancholy and…alone, he had needed Elizabeth. Needed for them to find their way to one another again. And that… Well, that had been all dashed to the farthest regions of hell.
    Seeing her with