“You…” he stammered, the blood draining from his face. Gladys was… Lady Dawn? The woman he’d been pining after for five long years? And she hadn’t married Alsop? “Y-you…”
“Me,” she confirmed, her eyes flashing. “Because of that kiss, I was instantly and irrevocably ruined. I lost my reputation in the blink of an eye. My family was forced to disown me in order to save themselves. My suitor married my sister. And I became this.” She gestured at her body. “A bauble, for men like you to play with, when they have too much time or money on their hands.”
Horror drove waves of clammy gooseflesh along his skin. The blackguard who had destroyed her life… The blackguard Reuben himself had sworn to rend limb from limb… Was him.
He was the monster. The villain. The self-centered good-for-nothing that poisoned with his very touch and yet blithely continued doing so, without a care in the world.
“I do not need you,” she enunciated, pronouncing each syllable with devastating exactness. “And I certainly don’t want you.” With a curl of her lip, she added, “Or your money.”
“I didn’t know,” he managed to choke out. “I thought… I thought you had married Alsop.”
“If that’s true, it’s because you didn’t bother to listen to me when I told you my name. Just like you didn’t listen to me today, when I told you I’m not for sale. No, I’m not my sister. Kitty’s the one who got to keep her reputation, her standing in society, and my parents’ love. I’m the one who lost everything, because I had the misfortune to come in contact with you.”
“I thought… That night, I thought you were someone else. That’s why I grabbed you. I was waiting for someone…”
“You discovered your mistake straightaway. If not from the first moment, then certainly when I looked you in the eye and told you my name was Miss Gladys Bell, and not whomever you’d expected. And then what? Nothing. You let the chips fall where they may. You flounced along to pollinate your next flower, as you always do, and I was sent penniless into the streets to pay for your mistake.”
No, no, no. He staggered backwards. This was not what was supposed to happen. Then or now. He’d thought it was an innocent stolen kiss. Meaningless. Harmless. Instead, Reuben had inflicted more harm than he could ever imagine.
Reuben put his hands over his face. He wasn’t innocent at all. He was guilty of every single thing she’d accused him of. He’d walked away. Actively chose to push her from his mind. Avoided all news of her.
Hadn’t even bothered to check if he had the right name.
No wonder she’d fled from his embrace. He wasn’t a catch. He was a nightmare. Insisting she play the role of whore—his whore—when she’d told him point blank that her sole desire was to make her own decisions, to choose her own partners. To live her life as she wished for once, rather than cater to the whims of spoilt and selfish “gentlemen” like him.
Reuben wasn’t just not good enough for someone like Gladys.
He was poison.
Chapter 20
Gladys fled into her hotel room, shut the door tight, and flung her shoulders against it as though to keep out a charging bull. Or to keep herself upright.
She had done the thing she’d set out to do: snatch the toy out of The Despicable Medford’s hands and break his heart.
It didn’t feel nearly as pleasant as expected.
She’d also done what she’d sworn not to do: told him exactly who she was and how deeply he’d hurt her. Fat lot of good that had done. He’d looked startled, yes, but he hadn’t even bothered to claim he was sorry.
Perhaps he wasn’t sorry. Perhaps the only thing that had surprised him was that a woman had any thoughts and dreams or life at all outside of wishing to spend a moment in his storied arms.
Then good riddance of bad rubbish! She’d been a fool to want him, for a minute or a lifetime, then or now. It was time she wised up and used her eyes. Tigers didn’t change their stripes, and rakes didn’t gad about proposing marriage.
No one would propose marriage to someone like Gladys.
Originally true because she was a hopeless wallflower, and now even doubly true because of the opposite. She was too ruined to be wanted for anything other than a monetary transaction. The idea that she could be more than a temporary pastime didn’t even cross men’s minds.
Heat pricked her eyes and she blinked hard to rid herself of the brief weakness. She hadn’t cried over Reuben’s disinterest in years, and wasn’t going to start back up again now.
She hated herself for believing, even for a moment, that he’d finally seen her for the entire person she was. That he chose her and valued her. That he could change. That an inveterate self-indulgent scoundrel like Reuben Medford actually wished to be her husband and a true partner. That his shriveled black heart knew what it meant to love.
“Imbecile,” she muttered. “Rotten feathers for brains.”
She pushed away from the door and hurried into her bedchamber, where she set about packing her valise as quickly as possible. She’d originally intended to return home in the morning, after the festival had ended, but she couldn’t stand a single moment longer beneath the same roof as Reuben Medford.
With every fiber of her being, she longed to be back in the safety of her home, in her favorite chair, Count Whiskers on her lap, petting his soft gray fur and listening to the soothing sound of his low purr vibrating beneath her fingertips.
She closed her valise and dragged it to the doorway, then rang the bell for aid. It was unlikely that Reuben was still out in the corridor—Lord knew, he hadn’t bothered to knock with an apology—but there was no sense exposing herself to him anew without a burly footman or two as reinforcements.
