An Offer She Can't Refuse

"You are leaving tomorrow?" The words left Rhea before she could stop them, her voice heavy with accusation and a hint of betrayal.

Augustus' face grew tight as if it hurt him to admit the inevitable. "There are matters at Ravenholm that require my attention and I have overstayed my welcome....."

"Not to me!" she argued, fiercely, reaching out to grab his arm, as if it would stop the much stronger man from standing up and walking out of her life as suddenly as he came in.

"I want you here! I nee..." Rhea stopped herself before she could finish the sentence but it was already too late.

His lips curled in a smile, grey eyes glowing with glee at her admission.

"Careful, My Lady, it almost sounds like you would miss me when I'm gone." Augustus teased, lightly, his large hand playfully caressed her hand clutching his arm in a tight grip.

Flustered, Rhea yanked her hand away from him, nearly tumbling over as the edge of her dress caught beneath her flailing legs, and shuffled away until her back met the headboard.

A respectable distance for a soon-to-be-divorced woman and the man she almost had an affair with.

'What a joke,' snarked her mother's voice in her head, meanly.

"My Lady...."

"Y-you fought my husband to save me. Pinned him to the ground and threatened him in his own home and territory." She began listing with a count of her fingers.

Augustus listened with rapt attention, his head tilted, curiously as he tried to understand why she was naming his crimes -or heroic acts, depending on her state of mind.

"You..." Rhea paused, trying to find the right words, "....kissed me and we almost...."

Voicing their near-affair sounded too obscene and unlike her so Rhea chose not to, instead leaving Augustus to fill in the blanks.

"I assumed that all meant something. Something meaningful enough to...."

Keep you with me, went unsaid but the way his face softened and his lips twitched with a smile let her know he understood.

Augustus had a way of knowing the words she could not dare to say, and Rhea already missed the comfort of it, even as he had yet to leave.

"Believe it or not, I don't usually try to have sex with my hostess on the night of my arrival." He said bluntly, his voice low and soft as her voice had unconsciously become. "Yet I did, for reasons I struggle to understand, and I have not once regretted it."

"What I am trying and hopefully not failing to say is that you mean something to me now, even as I fail to voice it eloquently, and the last thing I want is for this beautiful mess we have created to come to an end."

Rhea's lips quivered as his confession overwhelmed her, and she turned away from him to gather her thoughts.

Rhea has talked her way into rooms and out of situations no one had thought she could. And yet, all those words her tutors had spent hours drumming into her head and had made her a Countess failed her.

All because of Augustus and his firm muscles, his stupidly sharp jaw, warm personality and eyes that were staring patiently at her. All because of his words, given to him by far greater tutors, that made her feel warm and bubbly inside.

Her eyes fell on the divorce papers, wrinkled and carelessly thrown to the ground alongside her pen sometime in Lonan's attack.

"I was going to sign them before Lonan came in," she confessed, turning back to look at the dark-haired man, whose eyes bore into the papers with an intensity that the innocent papers did not deserve.

"I had my pen to the paper, and it had felt so real. So freeing. So frightening," she added, breathlessly, her eyes, glassy with unshed tears, watching him glare at the papers.

"To think that everything would end with a curve of my signature is.... like a middle finger to everything I had sacrificed to keep my marriage alive."

"Everything that lead to the end of your marriage is Lonan's fault and his alone," he insisted, moving closer to cradle her face in his large hand and brushing away a stray drop of water caught in her damp hair.

His well-meaning words had the opposite of his intended effect as Rhea rested her hand on her belly, warm through the thin material of her nightgown, and painfully empty.

Like it had been for the last seven years.

"That's not what people will say. It's not what my parents will say when I go back to them," Rhea sighed, admitting one of her biggest fears about the divorce to both herself and Augustus.

Augustus remained silent, his hand falling away from her face and hair.

She watched him go, calmly, and then her eyebrows lifted with interest when his eyes began flitting from one end of the room to the other, in a manner too quick to be taking in the luxurious decor.

"Do your eyes usually flit around like that when you are deep in thought?" She asked with a small giggle that left her hissing with pain when her throat throbbed in reminder.

Augustus snapped out of his thoughts with a confused scrunch of his brows, his eyes falling still on her.

"Pardon?"

Amused, Rhea shook her head and smoothed down her gown. "It's nothing of importance. What were you thinking so hard about? If you don't mind me asking...."

"Come with me," he blurted out, nearly trembling in excitement.

Rhea blinked, her startled mind working to pick apart his words for what they could mean, in the order he had said them.

"I want you to come to Ravenholm with me," Augustus repeated, slowly, sensing her confusion.

Rhea shook her head, instinctively, and stopped when he suddenly rose from his seat and made his way over to the divorce papers, undisturbed by her quick refusal.

"I can't," she rasped, as she watched him crouch down and pick up the papers and pen.

"It would..... People will talk," the blue-eyed woman stuttered, trying to talk some sense into him. "Rumours will spread that I am your mistress and our affair is what ended my marriage. Your enemies, competitors, News sites, anyone you have ever offended, in Euthoria and much farther, will turn you into a spectacle and ruin you...."

"Me?" He questioned with an amused chuckle and a lift of his brow as he rose to his full height.

A soft breeze blew in through the open windows, ruffling his dark, soft curls and the fabric of his silky, white shirt.

Rhea's eyes fell on the silver pin tacked to his right breast, a subtle emblem of a raven with a single rose clutched in its beak and a wreath made of leaves, vines and blooming roses surrounding it.

A simple pin that signified he was Grand Duke Augustus Carlton Holloway, Lord of Ravenholm. Son of two of the most beloved Lord and Lady, former ward of the Royal family of Euthoria, the face of everything a nobleman was supposed to be.

A man who rumours and the wagging tongues could not touch, and Rhea's best bet of riding the waves of gossip and accusations that were sure to come when her separation from Lonan was announced.

"You'll be fine," she answered the unasked question.

"And so will you," Augustus proclaimed as he dropped to his knees in front of her, set the papers and pen down on her lap, and took her hands in a gentle cradle.

"As long as you are with there is not a single thing anyone can say or do against you without explaining themselves to me. Your family included if they are what chains you to this hell you call a life."

"Returning to Ravenholm with you would be reckless and stupid and far from ..."

He placed a gentle kiss on the back of her left hand, his soft lips tickling the sensitive skin, stunning Rhea's silent

"I wish we had more time for you to make a decision, My Lady, I really do" He whispered against her skin, the tip of his nose nuzzling the soft flesh, "but time is not on our side and duty calls me."

Augustus let go of her hand and rose back to his feet, leaving Rhea to follow him with her eyes, even as her neck burned with pain.

"I will be leaving tomorrow, at nine o'clock in the morning. Meet me by the manor gates five minutes before my departure if you wish to come with me."

"And if I don't?" Rhea questioned, the muscles in her face so tense it began to hurt.

He pursed his lips, his eyes flashing with too many emotions for her to read.

"Then it has been a pleasure knowing you, My Lady, and I wish you the best in all your endeavours."

With that, he gave her a small bow, then turned around and exited the room, not once turning back to meet restless blue eyes that followed his every move.

Leaving Rhea to suffer with his offer and her husband's handprints branding her neck in red and purple.