Page 77 of The Dangerous Lord

She seemed shaken. “I don’t blame her.”

“Nor do I, but surely you can see this tale is nothing but her attempt to strike back at him. It makes him appear a fool and a cuckold. That’s her only reason for spreading it.” Yes, perhaps it could work in his favor that Lady Brumley, of all people, had hit so near the truth.

“Actually, she told me her story because ...” She swallowed. “Because your uncle had told me a worse one.”

The blood drained from his face. “My uncle?”

“He accosted me in private at her ball, and ... and told me that you had ... forced his wife and she’d killed herself for shame.”

He sank into a nearby chair and stared off sightlessly. Damn Uncle Edgar and his lies! Rage swam up through his senses to tear at him like a hungry shark. “I suppose you believed him!” he snapped.

“No! Of course not!” She stepped toward him and laid her hand on his shoulder, a blush tinting her cheeks a rosy color. “I know from experience that you don’t force women. I found the entire tale suspicious even before Lady Brumley confirmed that he was lying. But as you can see, she didn’t tell me her story to strike back at your uncle. She was trying to help you. She’d guessed at your interest in me and wanted to reassure me of your character.”

“I see.” Shaking off her hand, he rose from his chair. “She wanted to reassure you I was merely an adulterer.” My God, this was a nightmare. Both tales were horrible. Yet the truth was so awful he couldn’t even speak of it, especially to her.

“Then that’s a lie, too?” she asked in a whisper.

Yes, he thought, but couldn’t say it, for then she’d want to know the truth. Damn them all for putting these doubts in her mind. And damn her for even thinking them partly true. “Obviously, you’ve decided the answer to that already. You believe I bedded my aunt—the wife of my own father’s brother—and then abandoned her.” An awful realization stole over him. Staring down at her, he growled, “And you let me make love to you last night even though you thought⁠—”

“I let you make love to me, because I didn’t want to believe it. I still don’t.” Her voice wavered, and he suddenly glimpsed the hurt she’d striven mightily to hide. “But I don’t know what to believe. Everyone speculates about your life, bombarding me daily with new tales about the dangerous Lord St. Clair. And you expect me—a woman who’s known you less than a month—to discern the truth amidst the lies while you act the tragic hero and keep silent about it all?”

Her logic only made it worse. “You have a history of writing lies about me, yet you wonder why I keep silent? Oh, that’s rich!”

Her eyes flashed. “That’s just an excuse, and you know it. Have I mentioned you once in my column in the past week? While you slobbered over every eligible woman with a pair of breasts, did I write one word about you or the women you courted?”

“Slobbered over— Damn you, Felicity, I see why you insist on knowing my past.” His anger at himself twisted into anger at her. “You’re jealous, that’s all, of women I didn’t even bed. It’s a wonder I had time for fighting a war or running Chesterley, considering all the women you think I lusted over.”

He paced the room as he repeated every snide tale ever said about him. “There’s my aunt, whom I apparently seduced at the precocious age of nineteen. Then I ran off to the Continent and into the arms of a score of Spanish women, depending on which source you credit. Oh, and let’s not forget Josephine, who apparently came to my bed despite the troublesome fact that I’m English and her sworn enemy. Not to mention all the women I’ve courted or supposedly bedded in the past three years in England.”

Stopping short, he glared at her. “And poor Miss Greenaway—I suppose you still believe her to be my mistress.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Is that all of them, or have I missed a woman or two whose association with me you wish to question?”

“Yes, you missed me—the woman you want to marry. But apparently not badly enough to entrust her with the truth. She writes gossip, after all.”

The accusation fell between them like a gauntlet. Her pain was so palpable, it glimmered bleakly in her green eyes. Bloody hell, he hadn’t meant to hurt her, not like this. It was just that the thought of her knowing so much and yet so little roused his temper as nothing ever had.

Frustrated, he stabbed his fingers through his disheveled hair. How he wished he could unfold the entire ugly story. It would almost be a relief.

Except that once she knew, she’d never marry him, not his self-righteous Felicity. She might even prevent anyone else from considering him as well. She had a deplorable tendency to air their arguments in her column, and he couldn’t allow that.

But besotted fool that he was, he couldn’t walk away from her either.

“This isn’t a matter of trust,” he said in an attempt to placate her. “Surely the very fact that I wish to marry you shows I trust you. I trust you not to shame my family name, and I trust you to be a good wife to me. I even trust you with the management of my home and the bearing and rearing of my children. Isn’t that enough for you?”

She squared her shoulders. “Ian, I’m not insensible to the amazing compliment you pay me with this offer of marriage. I’ll even admit I’d like nothing better than to marry you. But I don’t want a marriage full of secrets. Why can’t you understand that?”

“And why can’t you understand that none of my secrets has anything to do with us? You’re torturing yourself needlessly with all these questions about other women in my life. You’re jealous of a woman who died ten years ago, another woman whom I consider merely a friend, and a former empress, for God’s sake, whom I never even met, much less bedded. You’re jealous of ghosts when all I want is you.”

She sighed. “You insist on seeing this as mere jealousy. You can be such a vain, arrogant ass sometimes.”

How much more insulting the words sounded on a woman’s soft lips. “That’s why you should marry me,” he said in a weak attempt at humor. “It’ll give you ample opportunity to prick my vanity and subdue my arrogance.”

She raised one eyebrow. “That is indeed a temptation.” Then she added, “But not enough of one. As long as you won’t be honest with me, I can’t marry you, Ian. I’ll always know you don’t trust me, and the thought will eat at me until I grow to hate you. I care about you too much to have that happen. I’m sorry.”

He’d seen it coming, yet he couldn’t believe it. How could she be so bloody stubborn? Well, she wouldn’t deny him this marriage simply because of old gossip and wounded pride, not when it was the means to her salvation as well. He wouldn’t let her!

“You have no choice in the matter,” he told her grimly. “You will marry me.”

She stiffened. “I told you, I don’t care if you’ve compromised me⁠—”