“To hell with what those ladiessay.”Nicholas moved so that he was half sitting beside her in the bed, his jaw tight, his eyes as dark as night.“I am telling you that, no matter what any of those ladies might claim to the contrary, I have never bedded nor had sex with any woman in order to seduce information from her about her husband or her friends or relatives.Am I making myself clear?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe me?”
Julia gazed up at him searchingly, seeing the anger blazing in the depths of his eyes and the temper visible in his flushed cheeks.Those brown eyesdaredher to disbelieve him.
“I believe you,” she finally murmured.“But I am curious as to why those ladies would claim such a thing when it is patently untrue?”
“Pride.”
“Pride?”
He nodded, his mouth twisting.“The ladies you are referring to would never want to admit to their friends, after we had indulged in a public flirtation, that they hadnotbeen privately seduced by the Earl of Wolfingham when so many others claimed to have been.”
Julia frowned.“But you could so easily disprove their claim by announcing it to be a lie.”
“I never have,” he drawled.
“No,” Julia acknowledged slowly.“Have youneverindulged in carnal pleasure?”Impossible to think this could ever be true when Nicholas was so handsome, charming too, when he wished to be.
He winced.“Is there a right or wrong answer to this question?”
“There is only a truthful one.”
“Well, then, of course I have indulged,” Nicholas admitted.“But not for some time and never with any lady in Society.”
Julia’s cheeks were hot because of the subject they were discussing, but she was determined to learn all that she could while Nicholas was willing to talk.“Why not?”
“Because three years ago, the lady to whom I am betrothed had her sixteenth birthday.”
Her eyes widened.“You have not…indulged these past three years because of me?”
“No.”
It sounded too good to be true to Julia.A Julia who had discovered during this revealing conversation that she very much disliked the idea of Nicholas being intimate with other women.That, in fact, no matter what she had told herself in the past, this jealousy had been at the very root of the distrust she had felt toward him all these years.
“But those other ladies still confided private things to you about themselves and their husbands?”she persisted.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“In the hope of persuading me into seducing them.”His grimace showed he was not being conceited in that claim.“And, on occasion, those husbands who believe themselves to have been cuckolded by me have paid thugs to attack me, or they have personally challenged me to a duel.”
She gasped.“The Prince Regent has outlawed duels.”
Nicholas smiled wryly.“And gentlemen with more stupidity than sense will always circumvent that rule.I have a knife wound in my shoulder and two scars from bullet holes, one on my chest and one on my back, to prove it.”
Julia stared at him with wide and shocked eyes.“Will you show me?”she invited huskily.
“I made a promise to myself that I would only reveal those scars to my fiancée or wife.”
“Of which I am neither,” she acknowledged heavily.
“I could make an exception,” he continued lightly.“If the lady asking me to bare myself to her assures me there is a great possibility, even a certainty, of her becoming my fiancée and my wife in the near future, then I believe I could be persuaded into unfastening my nightshirt.”
Julia giggled.“My father’s nightshirt.”
