“Imogen…” He scraped his mind for something—anything—to say to this woman he truly didn’t know. “When you were sold into marriage to Bridgewater?—”
“Sold?” Her brow creased and her head canted, as if she were conversing with the biggest dunderhead in England.
Actually…maybe he was.
“Well, weren’t you?”
She flicked her wrist. “Oh, I don’t care about being a countess.”
See?he wanted to say to an imaginary Beatrix. Imogen didn’t care about such things.
He’d been right about something, at least.
Her smile turned positively feline. “Not when I can be so much more.”
Dev’s brow furrowed deep trenches into his forehead. A glint had entered Imogen’s eye. “More?” he asked and braced himself for whatever next was about to issue from her mouth.
“I can be more than a countess. I can be infamous. Bridgewater was merely a stepping stone.” She shifted forward,her eyes alight with excitability. “Without him, you and I would simply be a mister and missus when we set out for our notorious future.”
Was Imogen possibly…mad?
No, not mad.
Ambitious.
All this time, Imogen had a plan of her own.
“My beauty will achieve legend,” she continued. “If we put our minds to it, I could best the Duchess of Devonshire or Lady Worsley for notoriety. Where on the Continent shall we go first?”
This future wasn’t based on revenge or conquest or even love.
Her intention was to use him as the instrument of her ruination.
Use him.
Had it always been so?
From the moment they met all those years ago… Had he been doing her bidding all this time?
The answer his mind suggested…
He didn’t much like it.
“Oh, first,” she said, a new thought occurring to her, “there’s the matter of your little business.”
“Mylittle business,” he repeated. “Are you speaking of my factory?”
“You’ll be selling it, of course.”
“The first I’ve heard of it.”
“It’s served its purpose, hasn’t it?”
“Which is?”
“To achieve…me.”
Beatrix would never think or say such a thing. Strangely, though his arrangement with her involved money, she wasn’t the sort of woman who could be bought.
