Page 61 of The Duke of Deceit

“Exactly what I wanted you to see.” She stopped pacing and shook her head. “No—not exactly. You came looking for me too early, and Crewe had been too slow to accept what I was offering. When you found us, all that had happened was kissing.”

“Amanda,” Jess somehow managed to ask while also holding her breath, “what did you do?”

She boldly met Jess’s gaze, despite the softness of her confession. “Crewe didn’t try to seduce me. It was me. I was the one who led him beneath the bower, who lifted my own skirts. It had only been two months, and there was still time to…” Then her bravery faltered, and she looked out the window at the lateafternoon. “He’s a rakehell, the kind of man who would never have passed up the opportunity to be intimate with a willing woman.”

Anger flared inside Jess, who rose to her feet to defend Lucien. “You wanted to trick him into marrying you, to let him believe he was the father of some other man’s child—How could you do something like that?”

“No! That wasn’t it at all. I never would have married Crewe.”

“But you sent that letter to—” Jess’s voice choked in her throat as the realization of what Amanda had planned struck her. No,notto marry him.

Jess knew now why there had been no mention of a baby in that letter, why Lucien had sent back the reply he had. The letter hadn’t been for Lucien at all. It had been nothing but pretense to appease Jess.

“You played me for a fool,” Jess rasped out, more wounded by her sister’s betrayal than she could ever have expressed. “And Lucien.”

“I had no choice!” Amanda’s expression was stricken, and she began to shake even as she pressed her hand to her forehead. “Don’t you see? I cannot marry Henry. He’d been offered an administrative position in the East India Company, with plans to travel to India. But he couldn’t be assigned to Calcutta if he had a wife and child. They would have taken his position away from him if we married, and I could never hurt him like that.”

“But you could hurt Lucien?”

“No—it isn’t like that.” She clasped Jess’s upper arms beseechingly. “Crewe is a rakehell whose reputation was already so black that rumors of another woman ruined at his hands wouldn’t draw any attention at all. That’s why I picked him. I knew he would never marry me, and I would never have let him anyway.”

Jess could barely breathe! So she pressed her fist against her chest as if she could physically make herself continue to pull in air. “Then you did it only…only to fool me and Aunt Matilda.”

The guilt that radiated from Amanda was palpable. “It had only been two months,” she repeated, barely louder than a whisper. “I knew all along that I’d have to go to Ireland, that I couldn’t keep my baby. But I thought—I thought I could…”

“You thought you could lie to me for the rest of your life,” Jess whispered, blinking hard as she stepped out of her sister’s reach. “But why? If you knew you weren’t going to ask the real father to marry you, if you knew you couldn’t keep the baby—why go to all that trouble with Lucien?”

“Because of you, Jess.” A hardness flashed in her eyes as she crossed her arms in an unwittingly scolding pose. “You wouldn’t have been able to let it be and leave me to my own wishes.”

Her mouth fell open. “I would have helped you.”

“Help? Is that what you’ve been doing for the past two months?” She threw up her hands in sheer frustration, her eyes glistening. “Look at what you did when you thought I’d been ruined by Crewe. You demanded he marry me, and when he didn’t, you set out to destroy his reputation.”

“By making him good,” she corrected, but that defense sounded paltry even to her own ears.

Amanda shook her head. “You would have done the same thing to Henry—demanded he marry me and ruin his career when he did, because he is a good man and would always do the right thing. He would have chosen me over his career. I couldn’t let you do that to him. That’s why I can’t tell you anything more about him. I won’t! I’m protecting him as much as my baby.”

The world was tilting around her, and Jess couldn’t find the right way up. She had been the one who had been lied to, misled, and betrayed, and by her sister no less, the one person in the world she thought she could always trust. Now to be accused likethis… For once in her life, Jess couldn’t find the words to defend herself. The pain was simply too overwhelming.

Yet she didn’t cry. Somehow, she kept the stinging tears from spilling down her cheeks.

“I know you feel responsible for me,” Amanda continued, “that you blame yourself for Papa’s leaving us. But you didn’t cause that, Jessamyn, and you have to stop trying to protect me. If I’m in trouble, then it’smyfault, and I’ll find my way out on my own. The best thing you can do for me sometimes is just tonot doanything. That’s what I need you to do now. Just leave it all alone.” Her lips pursed into a determined line. “That’s why I had to return in person, why I couldn’t simply send you a letter. I couldn’t let you continue to punish Crewe when the fault was all mine.”

Jess recognized that for the lie it was. Amanda couldn’t send a letter and risk that Aunt Matilda would discover what had really happened, that she had gone into her situation fully under her own decision and not because she’d been manipulated by a rake. That harsh truth rushed through Jess like ice water.

“Please understand.” Amanda hugged Jess tightly to her even though she stiffened like stone in her arms. “I’m not angry with you, and I don’t want you to be angry with me. I just want us to go back to being as we were, when we trusted each other in everything.” She shook her head even while her arms tightened around Jess, who didn’t move to hug her back. “Can we try that again?”

Jess forced a jerking nod. Was it lying if she didn’t utter a word?

A knock rapped at the door. They both stepped back and turned to see Simms appear in the doorway.

“Miss Amanda, the refreshment tray and your travel bag have been taken up to your room,” he informed her, “and Cook said the water would be brought up shortly.”

She gave the butler a tired smile. “Thank you, Simms. I’ll go up in just a minute.”

As pleased as if she’d just complimented him on inventing world peace, Simms turned with a smile and walked back toward the rear stairs.

Amanda let out a long sigh as the weight of the world finally lifted from her shoulders now that she’d confessed her secrets. “I really am exhausted,” she told Jess, “and I can use a long bath and even longer nap.” Concern drew together her brows, but the worry that Jess had seen earlier was gone. “We’ll talk more later, all right?”