“No, I’m not the man you thought I was,” he said with cold deliberation. “I tried to warn you, but you would not listen.”
She looked at him then, with sorrow and grief etched on her sweet face. Her eyes shone with unshed tears, the sight ripping into his wretched heart and making a mockery of that manly pride.
“Perhaps Iamignorant and naive,” she said quietly. “I thought Celeste was trying to poison my mind against you. I thought everyone else was repeating the same baseless rumors. I wouldn’t let myself believe you were anything but good and noble.”
He had hoped and asked too much of her. He had killed his brother. He had callously seduced women. He had dishonored them, and himself. No woman of virtue and honor would—or should— welcome his love.
It had been a mistake to believe otherwise.
Never again. He would be alone, as he must and always would be.
“I was wrong to hope,” he said at last. “I’ve been living in a dream, wishing that some of your goodness, your purity, would help to cleanse me. But I was wrong. I’m not fit to be near you, let alone to love you, and God knows I shouldn’t ask to marry you.”
Bea nearly groaned aloud. She had waited weeks to hear him say that he loved her and had lived in hope he would ask for her hand in marriage. Now her optimistic dreams seemed a cruel jest. Ranulf was not the man she’d fallen in love with. He was…something else.
He was not the noble knight, the chivalrous friend, the handsome, desired lover. He was a man capable of cold-blooded seduction, of heartless cruelty to women who’d done him no harm.
“There is one thing more I must tell you,” he said, his face like a statue, his expression resolute.
“I don’t want to hear any more,” she protested, half commanding, half pleading, as she ran to the door.
He crossed the room and stood in front of it, blocking her way. “No, Bea, I want you to know everything, so you’ll hear this, too, from my own lips.”
Those lips that had kissed her with such passion and tenderness. Those lips that had uttered lies to woo women into his bed.
“Today I was in Celeste’s chamber,” he continued inexorably. “I was summoned there by her maid. Celeste embraced me and Maloren saw us together.”
Beatrice closed her eyes, fighting her despair, summoning her strength. She should not care about this, not after the other things he’d confessed. But she did. God help her, she did, and it was like a dagger through her heart.
His voice softened, more like the loving Ranulf she’d wanted him to be. “No matter what else you believe of me, Bea, no matter what Maloren or anyone says to you, I’m innocent of any wrongdoing with Celeste.”
Opening her eyes, Beatrice looked up at him, this man she’d thought she’d love until the day she died. The first man to arouse her passionate desires.
This stranger.
“Let me pass, Ranulf,” she said as she forced her feet to move toward the door. “I can’t bear to be near you now.”
He stood aside and when she fumbled for the door latch, he opened it for her. She wrapped her arms around her body as if touching him would kill her, then slipped past him and away.
WHEN SHE WAS GONE, Ranulf went to the window and stared out at the sky, then the castle he commanded.
He’d thought he had come a long way since he’d left Beauvieux. He had dared to hope that he might yet find happiness and contentment.
Obviously Bea had not been the only one to harbor impossible dreams that were doomed to fail.
He had been a fool and, unlike Bea, he didn’t have the excuse of youthful innocence.
There was only one thing left to do: his duty as castellan of Penterwell. He must and would find out who had murdered Hedyn, Gwenbritha, Gawan and the others, and bring them to justice.
WITHOUT CONSCIOUS THOUGHT, knowing only that she wanted—needed—to be alone, Bea stumbled toward her bedchamber. She closed the door behind her and staggered to the bed. She sat heavily and stared at the wall opposite as she tried to comprehend the full import of Ranulf’s confession.
Such terrible things, and especially the heartless seduction of those innocent young women. How could he? She had thought him the most noble and chivalrous of men.
She’d been wrong. So very wrong. She couldn’t love him now. Over and over, this rang through her mind. His reasons simply did not excuse his actions.
How could she have been so wrong? How could Constance and Merrick? And Henry?
As those tumultuous thoughts and questions whirled around her distraught mind, the door to the chamber burst open and Maloren appeared on the threshold.
