“I’m looking for Ollie. Have you seen him? I didn’t know you were here.” Words came cascading out of her mouth faster than the water that fell through the grotto’s roof.
Nicholas stepped toward her. How could he smile at her like that? “No, I haven’t seen Ollie. But you’ve stumbled onto one of my favorite places in all of the world.”
Mercy pressed her back against the cool stone of the cavern wall. He kept coming closer, and she shouldn’t be here, tainting his favorite place with her presence. “I’ll go then. Your sister needs my help.”
“No, Mercy, she doesn’t.”
“She does. She is looking for her dog.”
“Ollie is back at the house, safe and sound.” Nicholas looked at his hands. “A lot like how you were safe and sound when I ended up looking for you, alone, with Miss Morgan in the Zoological Garden.”
Heavens above, he was going to kill her. That was the explanation for his smile; it must be. No one would find her body here. It was dark, and she caught her breath. The look in his eye was anything but murderous.
“What do you mean?”
“I thought perhaps it was time to give you a taste of your own medicine. You tried to get me alone with someone you thought I might have feelings for, and now I am doing the same.”
Nicholas was only a few feet from her now. He could reach forward and touch her if he wanted. But he wouldn’t want to, would he? He must hate her for what she had done, and he’d promised that no matter her answers over the chessboard, his feelings wouldn’t change for her.
“What do you mean by that?” She didn’t have feelings forNicholas. Not ones that mattered, anyway. Perhaps at one point they had, but they would do her no good now. “Are you going to torment me?”
“No. At least, I hope not. I have another question for you, and once again, Ineedthe truth. It is slightly different from the one I asked you earlier, but the distinction is important.” His hand lifted, and he touched the bracelet at her wrist. His fingers were hot in the cool grotto air. “If it weren’t for the fact that your sister has disappointed your family and tainted your reputation, would we be engaged today?”
Mercy closed her eyes. She couldn’t look at him. It was too painful, and her wrist burned from his touch. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? Is that your way of saying you would rather not answer?”
Mercy took a deep breath. He had asked for honesty. It was the least she could give him after what she had put him through. “No, Your Grace. I mean that I truly don’t know.”
He lifted her bracelet between his thumb and forefinger, spinning its delicate chains between them. Then he wrapped his hand around her wrist. He’d said he hadn’t brought her here to torment her, but he was doing exactly that. He leaned forward. “I need you to explain to me why.”
Mercy’s back was pressed against the cold stone of the grotto, but even in the cool air, her body felt like it was on fire. Nicholas didn’t love her. The look in his eyes was something else. It had to be. “If I answer you, do you give me the same promise—that your feelings for me will not change because of what I say?”
Nicholas grinned. “That I can guarantee.”
Which meant she could tell him. He wouldn’t propose again, and he wouldn’t link himself to her and her scandalized family. He’d had two months to forget her, and he practically told her he had done so. “The truth is, we might have been engaged, but—”
“But?” He stepped closer, his face only inches away from hers.He didn’t look like a man who’d forgotten her. He looked... like a man ready to drag her away from prying eyes and kiss her senseless.
She closed her eyes so her imagination wouldn’t run away with her. “But I may not have wanted to wait two months to be married to you. So perhaps we wouldn’t have been engaged, not any—”
Suddenly Nicholas’s hands were on her waist. She opened her eyes to find his smile gone and the warmth in his eyes replaced by something hard. He pulled her to him, and she let out a small yelp. He hated her. He had to. But then his mouth came to her ear. “Are you telling me that if it weren’t for your sister, you might already have become my wife?” The wordwifecame like a growl. Hewasangry, but perhaps not for the reasons she’d believed. For all the words that had been spilling out of her, uncontrolled, now she had none. Tears welled in her eyes. The past two months had been unbearable. Watching Rosalind spurn the love of her youth, learning which few friends of Mercy’s were truly her friends, and the ache of knowing how much she had hurt Nicholas—a man who deserved only the best, while she had treated him abominably—nothing about the past two months had been endurable.
She put a hand to his chest and leaned away from him. “I didn’t want to bring shame to the Harrington title. I still don’t.”
“The Harrington title has had its fair share of shame, Mercy. You wouldn’t have fit into the family if you were completely above reproach.”
Mercy’s chin quivered. “I was such a fool, Nicholas.”
“Yes, you were. But we have all been fools at one point or another.”
She released Nicholas’s chest and instead covered her face in her hands. “I never would’ve tried to foist you on other women had I known you could kiss me the way you did in my drawingroom. I was looking for fireworks and fairy tales when, in reality, your steadfastness and honor are the things my dreams should have been made of.”
Nicholas pulled her to him. “I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a woman go to such lengths in order to marry me, but to have worked so hard to get rid of me? I must admit it was a blow to my pride.”
Mercy let her hands fall away from her face. With Nicholas’s arms around her, they had nowhere to go but on his shoulders. The softness in his eyes and the warmth of his hands at her waist seemed to imply he wouldn’t mind. But did he really understand what he was signing himself up for? He hadn’t been in London. He hadn’t seen how her family had been treated. She was prepared to spend the rest of her life atoning for what she’d done if Nicholas would let her. But not if he would resent her for damaging his family and not if it meant ruining his chances of sending aid to Ireland. “Nicholas, I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to tell me the truth.”
He tightened his grip at her waist. “Always,” he answered.
