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‘Oh, I see! At least a married woman genuinely wants you for yourself, not for what you can buy her.’
‘You are elevating those encounters to something they never were,’ he grated. ‘They didn’t want me. They just wanted someone in their bed to alleviate the boredom they experienced with their own husbands. Don’t make excuses for me. I treated them all abominably. I demonstrated how much I despised them for breaking their marriage vows even while I stripped them naked. They liked it,’ he said with a curl to his lip. ‘The more brutal I was with them, the more my reputation for being an exciting lover spread,’ he said with disgust.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand how you can have driven yourself into such a miserable state. Why did you not—?’
‘What?’ He laughed bitterly. ‘What alternative did I have? I have a healthy sexual appetite, but I dislike women intensely. As people,’ he added swiftly when he saw her eyes widen in surprise. ‘I enjoy women’s bodies. I hunger for the satisfaction that I can find only in bed. But as for forming any kind of connection outside the bedroom...’ He shook his head. ‘I cannot believe I am talking to you about such a sordid topic. I could excuse myself by saying that right from the first, you have had the power to make me blurt out thoughts I have never had any trouble concealing from everyone else. But it is not sufficient. Instead, it is just one more sin,’ he drawled darkly, ‘to chalk up to my name.’
‘We are going to be married,’ she said softly. ‘We should be able to talk about anything. And from what you have just told me, it sounds as though you have been at war with yourself for quite long enough. There is nothing wrong with wanting a woman to love you, and only you. Nor in disliking visiting brothels. Nor keeping a mistress, if you have not been able to find a deep and fulfilling relationship with a woman. Lord Deben,’ she said with a twinkle in her eye, ‘I rather think you have more moral values than you like to let the world suspect you of harbouring.’
‘Nonsense!’ He drew himself up, affronted that she should suspect him of harbouring moral values. ‘This is just one more example of why it would be quite wrong to make you marry me. You won’t face the truth. You keep looking for the good in me, and there isn’t any!’
‘This, from the man who drew back from taking my innocence when he was so aroused his breeches must have been positively painful? A man with no good in him would have taken what he wanted and probably tossed his victim aside afterwards.’
‘What would you know about such things?’
‘I have four brothers,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘And the two older ones have not always been as discreet as they might be when embarking on their own adventures of that nature. They talk to each other and forget that, in the dead of night, when they roll back from the tavern, my window might be open and I might not be asleep.’
‘Nevertheless,’ he said, pushing himself away from the fireplace and walking across to the sideboard, ‘I should not have exposed you to my lust.’ He picked up the decanter. ‘It was wrong.’ He slammed it back down again. ‘I am not good enough for you. That was, in the end, the only thing upon which your father and I could completely agree,’ he finished morosely.
‘My father? How do you know my father?’
‘Where the hell do you think I’ve been these past two weeks? Or do you still maintain it is of no concern to you?’ he said bitterly, swinging round to scowl at her.
‘No,’ she said, completely entranced by the sight of the self-contained, suave, sophisticated Lord Deben in the throes of an emotional crisis.
Over her.
‘I should like to know, very much, where you have been and what you have been doing, now that I begin to suspect,’ she said shyly, ‘that you might not have spent the whole time in some secluded love-nest with a woman who was able to give you what you didn’t seem to want to take from me.’
He looked at her sharply, his brows lowering even further.
‘You thought I didn’t want you that night? You thought I was with another woman?’
