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And best of all: Arabella, naked too, comfortable by his side.
He reached for her and she fell half on top of him, skin to skin, pulse to pulse. He wrapped an arm around her, held her tight, basking in the mix of decadence and intimacy as they lay amid silk and fire.
“I do see you differently now,” he murmured, his hand tracing lazy lines over her back. She tensed ever so slightly, then once more became supple. Lowering her walls, or at least opening a door for him to find his way in. “But I still don’t understand London,” he added. “Explain to me. How did we get here?”
He felt her stiffen, come alert and wary, like a guard listening for bandits in the night.
He had misjudged. No. He had judged exactly right. Whatever lay behind London mattered to her—which meant it mattered to him. He needed to know.
He needed her to trust him enough to confide in him.
She pulled away and he let her go. She sat up and hugged her knees, her hair falling around her.
Guy sat up too. “Arabella?”
“Sculthorpe… He had an obsession, one might say. With my virginity. He prized it above all else, talked about claiming it. Claimingme. It repelled me.”
Immediately, he understood. “So you decided to claim yourself first. That’s what you wanted from me that night.”
“But Sculthorpe guessed,” she said softly. “Not you, specifically, but he learned I was no longer a virgin and he… He was angry.”
“Yet he left without saying a word. Maybe I misjudged the man but I would expect him to be so outraged he would make sure the whole world knew.”
“You didn’t misjudge him. That was his intention.”
He waited, but she added nothing. She merely rested her chin on her knees, studying him with unreadable eyes.
“Why didn’t he tell everyone, if he knew that about you?” he finally prompted.
“Because I knew something about him too.” Her voice was flat. “I told him that if he shared my secret with the world, I would share his.”
Her words caught him off-guard. His spine straightened with abrupt tension. In a single, swift movement, Arabella pivoted around to face the fire, still hugging her knees. Her hair washed over her back, parting to reveal the bumps of her curved spine.
“That sounds like…” He groped for words amid the confusing clamor in his head. “The way you phrase that, it sounds as if you blackmailed him into silence.”
For long moments she said nothing, the silence punctuated only by a crumbling log, breaking apart in a shower of sparks.
When she finally spoke, it was with her typical hauteur. “I suppose I did.”
“Why?”
“Because I could. Because it achieved the desired effect. Because I wanted to defeat Sculthorpe and I did.” She twisted and straightened to look at him directly, brows raised in a challenge. “That must appall you, learning I am a blackmailer, in addition to all my other sins.”
True: Blackmail was appalling. Yet all those other sins she had committed for a good reason. At least, he believed she had—unless she had indeed been manipulating him. After all, his father had been the most unprincipled person Guy had ever met, and his explanations always sounded reasonable too.
She was eyeing him defiantly, as if wanting him to agree that she was appalling. Using her sins to shut him out.
“But what did he do?” he insisted. “You’re not telling me everything.”
Her gaze veered away. “It’s enough.”
It wasn’t enough, and it never would be.Talk to me, he wanted to plead, but he had tried that and it had not been enough.
Perhaps she refused to confide because she truly had done something unpardonable this time. How could he know? If Arabella wouldn’t confide in him, if she wouldn’t trust him, how could he trust her?
Neither wore any clothes, but their intimacy had dissolved like mist, and suddenly Guy felt that he was the much more naked of the two.
Why did he even bother?
