“Now, it is,” he replied, maddeningly calm. “Congratulations.”
“You arrogant, impossible man!”
“You should be more careful with lies,” he said in an almost seductive whisper. “They have a habit of becoming inconvenient truths.”
She stared at him. He stood composed, not a hair out of place, as though not a single thing could ever rattle him. There was a quiet anger beneath his coolness, though. A deep, settled thing. He didn’t raise his voice a single time. He didn’t need to.
If she were quite honest, he frightened her. Not because he was cruel but because she couldn’t read a single thing that formed inside his mind.
“Why would you agree to this?” she asked, voice softening only slightly.
“Because you made it necessary.”
Her breath caught.
“Because,” he continued, “you threw my name to the wolves and left me no choice but to step out of the shadows I was quite content in.”
“I’ll undo it,” she pleaded quickly, her pride clawing at the edges of panic. “I’ll tell them it was all a lie?—”
He stepped closer. Just one step.
“No,” he said. “You won’t.”
She trembled. “Why not?”
His eyes, colder than the wind, studied her face. “Because then you’ll be ruined fornothing.”
The wind pulled at her skirts and the pale gold ribbons at her waist, but Evelyn hardly felt the cold. She was burning. She was humiliated, trapped, and furious in equal measure.
“I only chose your name because I thought you weredead!” she snapped, her voice a low, vicious whisper.
His expression did not change. He regarded her steadily as the shadow of a smirk ghosted across his mouth.
“But I am not.”
Her hands clenched into fists. That cool, infuriating tone again. As though he were commenting on the weather.
“You can’t… thiscannothappen. I will not let it happen,” she hissed. “I’ll find a way. I’ll make certain we never walk the aisle together.”
He tilted his head, thoughtful, almost amused. “What will you do? Claim another dead duke as your virtue’s ruiner? Shall we go down the peerage alphabetically?”
“You are vile.”
“No, I’m inconvenient. There’s a difference.”
“You think you’ve caught me in some net?—”
“I think,” he said, cutting across her, “that you’ve tangled yourself in your own threads, and now, you’re looking for someone else to blame.”
“Only my mother knows of the lie,” she said quickly, desperately. “No one else. I can still undo this.”
He stepped forward. “What lie is that, exactly?”
Her breath caught. The chill air was nothing now compared to the sensation of him near her… close… too close.
“Do you even know,” he asked, his voice much lower now and meant just for her, “what it means to be ruined, Miss Ellory?”
Her lips parted, but nothing came out. Her cheeks went crimson.
