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“Especially if he saw you wearing only this.”
Lottie glanced away. “It wasn’t like that.”
Alec grasped her chin and forced her to look at him. “It never is, darling,” he said with a cruel smile. “Not at first, anyway. It must have been exciting, being caught unawares by a strange man. Do you find him handsome? Plenty of women do.”
She pulled out of his grip. “Are you actually jealous? We talked aboutyou.”
Alec immediately went rigid. “What the hell does that mean,” he growled.
That wasfarworse. If Rafe had said one bloody word—
“All this time you let me think you wanted this life. But it wasn’t your choice, was it?” There was no judgment in her gaze. Only sympathy.
It was infuriating.
Alec clenched his hand in a fist and gave no answer. “I can’t imagine what you mean. Of course it was my choice.”
Lottie worried her lip with her teeth. There was still more to come. He clenched his other hand until she finally spoke. “Alec, I know about your mother.”
His uneasiness transformed into a sickening dread. He swallowed down the bile rising in his throat. “Know what?”
“I—I found her portrait,” she explained, confused by his caginess. “She wasn’t a laundress at all. And that name, Petrucci—”
“Her husband’s,” Alec finished.
Then she still didn’t know the very worst of it. Alec hid his relief behind a glare. It was short-lived.
“Why did you never tell me about her? All those years…” Her voice trailed off but she had the audacity to look hurt.
As if it were that simple.
As if it hadn’t ruinedevery bloody hopehe had ever harbored for her.
Never tell her? He was supposed to share his greatest shame with the girl who had been utterly adored by her parents? Who had been separated from them only by a horrible accident? Who had never once been given any reason to doubt that she was loved, completely?
Even now, his neck burned with shame. With rage. He suddenly felt like doing something purely destructive, like smashing the mirror behind her or shoving his father’s writing desk into the canal. No. It would have killed him to stand there and tell her the truth. To reveal that his own mother hadchosento leave him, that his father had rather die than live for Alec, and that their choices had taken away his own. Ensured that he would never, ever, be good enough for her.
So he had left instead.
“I don’t owe you anything.” He turned away from her and hauled up his trousers.
“You’re wrong,” she said softly.
Alec whipped his head around. Lottie still sat on top of the dressing table, hands demurely on her lap, despite having just been thoroughly ravished. To think, only days ago he had lost his breath over the sight of her gloveless. “What?” he barked.
“You owe me some honesty.”
Alec glared as he fastened the buttons. Her eyes dipped down to his hands and she swallowed. Christ. The pair of them were like dogs in heat.
“About what?” he prompted.
“I’m right, aren’t I? You came to the house the morning after my ball to see me. But it was Uncle Alfred who made you leave. And told you not to write.”
How pathetic that made him sound. How powerless. It was stomach turning. And every word was true. It had taken Sir Alfred less than a minute to expose Alec’s every weakness, unearth every last doubt.
You can’t marry my niece because you are illegitimate. And even if the world doesn’t know the truth,Ido.
“I didn’t write because there was nothing for me to say,” he snapped.
