Henry swallowed hard, his entire face softening. “I didn’t intend to put you in the middle of it—”
“But you did. You used me to get what you wanted. To avoid responsibility once again.”
“I wasn’t trying to avoid responsibility.” He stepped closer, cloaking her in his warm scent. “But you know I didn’t want to marry her. This… happened to work in my favor.”
Her jaw slackened. “So this was a happy accident. Taking me to Italy just before she returned to marry you. Pretending to be my husband, acting as my lover—”
“That part was your idea, if you recall,” he shot back.
“No.” The fist around her throat had turned to fire, a fury she had kept banked for ages, years when she was used as a means to another man’s end. “I hoped you would bemy friendand help me find happiness.Yousuggested inserting yourself into the role. How convenient you had some diversion at my expense.”
He shook his head, his eyes blazing. “I wasn’t using you—”
“Tell me the truth!” she cried. “You owe me that much, after—aftereverything. What did you do?”
Henry reared back, biting his lower lip. He took several deep breaths before speaking again, his voice low. “A few people knew we were traveling together.” He would not meet her eyes. “Enough for some gossip to spread and for word to reach Brightling, and my father.” He looked up at her quick intake of breath. “Your name was never part of it, I swear. I wanted to protect you.”
“You told people,” she whispered. “You promised me—”
“I know.” He dropped his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m just as horrible as you thought me to be.”
“Ineverthought you were horrible.” She stepped closer to him now, pointing a finger at him as she spoke. “Not until now. I never thought you capable of such cruelty, just to help yourself—”
“Claire asked me to do this.” His words fell like lead between them, the ensuing silence deafening.
“She asked you… to be unfaithful?” Ellie’s mind whirled.
“She didn’t want to marry me either,” he said, approaching with tentative steps. “She’s in love with a man in New York. But her father refused to let her end the engagement. She wrote me, begging me to help her.”
The pieces began falling into place, the horrible picture suddenly clear. “When did she ask you to do this?”
A flush crept up his cheeks, but he had the decency to hold her gaze. “I received her letter in May.”
Ellie was an intelligent woman; she should have known this was coming, the natural progression to this horrid course of events. And yet she still wanted confirmation, needed to know the truth for certain, before he tore her heart completely from her chest and crushed it beneath his boot. “So you suggested taking me to Italy, posing as my husband, knowing you could use the gossip to end your engagement.”
She hadn’t asked a question, but Henry answered anyway. “I did.”
Nothing about this should have surprised her. He was trying to help the people he cared for, to give them the happiness they deserved.
Ellie’s falling in love with him wasn’t part of the plan.
She turned away, pressing her palms against her eyes. She knew what Henry was like, and yet she still thought she could capture his heart. But holding onto Henry was like capturing a dream in her fingers. She was beyond foolish to think, after all these years, that he might hold a flame for her, despite all evidence to the contrary.
“I never meant to hurt you, El,” he said, a tremor in his voice. “I didn’t think about what would happen once the engagement ended.”
“Of course you didn’t. You never think so far ahead.” Her words were sharper than she intended, and she derived a modicum of pleasure at seeing him wince. She squared her shoulders and exhaled. “I would ask for your reassurance that my reputation will be unscathed, but there is no sense in worrying about that anymore, is there?”
“El,” he said, his tone just short of pity. That, perhaps, stung more than anything.
“It’s fine, Henry,” she interrupted, raising a hand. “You gave me exactly what I asked for, no more and no less. I was silly to think—”
She stopped herself. There was no point admitting the truth to him now.I was silly to think you could have fallen in love with me.
Ellie whipped around to her trunk, blinking as her breathing came quick and rough as her heart raced.
“I know you’re not fine, El.” Henry stepped behind her and placed a hand on her hip, a gesture that only hours before felt so comfortable, sonatural, but now was foreign.
She pushed his hand off and stepped away, turning to face him with her lips set in a tense line. “I changed my mind,” she said, surprised by the stability of her tone. “I do not want to continue our… arrangement when we return to London.”
