“I am unwell, it is true,” she said, “but it is because of you, Your Grace. How dare you tell anyone that I am your betrothed?”
“I proposed to you,” he reminded her.
“I denied you,” she countered, “and then, I was hauled off to prison.”
“I am sorry for that.”God, how very sorry he was. He blamed himself for the way everything had unfolded. “If I had possessed an inkling of how quickly it would have happened—”
“You would have made certain to cozen me into marrying you so I was well and truly trapped?” she interrupted. “Was that your plan all along, Winchelsea? To stop my brother at any cost? Did I ever mean anything to you at all? Was it all a farce? Was everything we shared a lie? Did you seduce me so you could get to him?”
“I never had a plan when it came to you,” he admitted, the words torn from him. “I was meant to, Johanna, but nothing has happened the way I expected it would, from the moment I first met you. Because that night, I met a woman I admired. A woman who was not just beautiful, but daring and bold. One who looked down her nose at me and told menowhen I had expected her to sayyes.”
“I do not believe you,” she said, hurt sparkling in her brilliant-blue gaze.
He did not expect her to.
He did not deserve her trust, and he knew it.
He had let her down in so many ways.
“Here is the truth, Johanna,” he said, needing to explain himself even if she had no wish to hear it and even if she still rejected him at the end. “I have spent the last few years of my life devoted to my service to the Home Office. When dynamite began to be planted throughout England and when innocent civilians were wounded and hurt, I was compelled to do my part. I became involved in plans to capture your brother, using you as a lure. At the time, it was believed you were McKenna’s mistress. The supposition was that you would possess knowledge of him better than anyone.”
“And that is why you approached me that first night,” she guessed.
“That is why you were offered the tour at the Crown and Thorn,” he added. “I asked Theo to bring you here. In truth, your talent is undeniable and renowned, and Theo would have made you an offer regardless of my request.”
She seemed to shrink away from him in the bed. “You knew, all along. You do not deny it. You knew who I was, and you intended to use me.”
“I knew you were connected to McKenna,” he corrected her. “I had no inkling you were his sister until you divulged that information to me. Nor did I know you had smuggled dynamite and correspondence here. But from the start, before I realized you had never been McKenna’s mistress and that you possessed a heart that was true and good, I was inexplicably drawn to you. My attraction to you and my admiration for you were never feigned, Johanna. Please believe that. Nor was my love. Norismy love.”
Her lips tightened. “I wish I could believe anything you tell me, Your Grace, but I cannot.”
“Will you not call me Felix?” he asked, hating the wall she had put up between them.
A wall of formality.
A wall of his own making, it was true.
He had been wrong, so wrong, and he knew that now. He had failed her on so many fronts. It was his fault she had been arrested, his fault she had been in the offices of Scotland Yard when the Fenian bomb laid in the street outside had exploded.
“To speak so familiarly suggests a relationship we do not have, Your Grace,” she denied. “Indeed, we do not have a relationship at all.”
Her words filled him with a new anguish. He had not lost her in the explosion, and yet, he was losing her anyway. He felt it as surely as he felt the chair beneath him. She was slipping away before his eyes. Retreating to a place deep inside herself. A place where he could not reach her. And he had forced her into it.
“I planned to tell you everything,” he told her. “I would have told you before, but everything was happening so suddenly.”
“How convenient for you to believe that,” she snapped. “You had ample opportunities to tell me the truth. You had days upon days to tell me. But you knew if you had, I would have never willingly allowed you into my bed.”
She was right.
He could have told her.
Heshouldhave told her.
“The fear of losing you kept me from telling you,” he said, being bitterly honest now. “I knew I had to, but I also knew I was falling in love with you. The moment just never seemed right. The risk was too great. I am a selfish fool when it comes to you, Johanna. An utter blockhead, and that is the undeniable truth.”
“You lost me anyway,” she told him, the sheen of tears in her eyes. “Please go now, and leave me in peace. I am weary and in pain, and I should like to rest before your police arrive to arrest me again.”
Just the thought of the manacles being slapped on her wrists, watching her be led away from him, was enough to fill him with impotent rage all over again.
