Her heart was pounding fast. With fury, of course. Not with…anything else. She was not attracted to this odious villain. Decidedly not.
“Stop this madness,” she ground out, shifting again, to no avail. “I will not marry you, and nor am I attracted to you in the slightest.”
“Then I suggest you cease bloody moving, because it is damned difficult for a man to think straight with your bottom rubbing all over his cockstand,” he growled.
If her cheeks had been hot before, they were positively scalding now.Dear heavens, had he just said what she thought he had said? The man was an unrepentant rogue. Scandalous and horrible and evil.
“Lord Sinclair,” she chastised past her own shock. “How dare you speak to me with such vulgarity?”
“Do you truly fancy me a murderer?” he asked then, taking her by surprise with his query.
She blinked. “Yes.”
But within her, deep within her, confusion reigned. She was not entirely certain, now that she had met him at long last. Oh, he was a villain. That much was clear. But her brother, Benny’s, words returned to her now, suddenly.
Our brother’s death was an accident.
Benny was wrong, because he had been too lost in his work for the Special League to investigate the truth. She could hardly blame him. He was weighed down with so much responsibility—Fenian bombers running rampant all over London, attempting to blow up the London Bridge and the Tower and even Parliament itself.
But after her mind had cleared from the terrible grief infecting her in Paris, she had seen the answer with such shocking clarity, it had stolen her breath. Alfred had been in love with Lady Sinclair. Lord Sinclair was a devious scoundrel. Of the three, only one of them remained. Logic suggested the culpability of one man and one man alone.
Alfred had fallen down the stairs at his home in St. Johns Wood. But onlyafterLord Sinclair had paid him a call there, argued with him, and threatened him over his illicit relationship with Lady Sinclair. She must not forget that the man holding her captive was the last who had seen her beloved brother alive, aside from the servants. Or that his wife had died that same night. Two problems, gone from the earl’s life.
Forever.
“I have never killed anyone or anything,” the earl told her solemnly, his lips far too near to her ear. “Not even a damned pheasant. I hate to dispel you of your notions that I am a murderous monster, princess, but I am not.”
She thought about the evil-looking blade he kept upon his person. And his abduction of her.
“Do you truly believe I will accept anything you say as truth?” she demanded.
“Suit yourself.” He released her at last, rolling away. She tried to ignore the sense of loss, as unwanted as his presence had been. “But I have never harmed another soul. I did not kill my faithless wife. I did not kill your foolish brother.”
She turned toward him, stymied by the binding on her left wrist, which held her captive as surely as he did. “My brother was not foolish. He was one of the most intelligent, good-hearted men alive.”
Indeed, she had never known anyone better, aside from Benny and Simon.
Her mouth went dry as the Earl of Sinclair slipped from the bedclothes, revealing his bare back to her. He was all muscle and sinew. Broad shoulders, lean waist. And the way his smalls clung to his firm bottom was… Positively sinful. That was what it was. She could not entirely banish the effect he had upon her.
He turned toward her, catching her staring, and raised a brow. “My former wife was a coldhearted shrew who ate good-hearted men for breakfast. I am sure your bloody brother never stood a chance against her.”
He spoke with such rancor that it took her aback. “You hated her.”
The three simple words hung in the air between them.
His brown gaze was upon her. Searing her. “I loved her once. Stupidly and without reason, other than that she was beautiful and told me everything I wanted to hear. The hatred, however, was earned. She worked hard for that. She deceived me, cuckolded me, and stole from me more times than I can count.”
Sinclair’s admission shocked her. But then, his earlier words returned to her.My wife was a manipulative whore.For a moment Callie could not think of a single response. Her impression of Lady Sinclair, aside from the recollection of her loveliness, was vastly different. She had been a stunning woman, almost ethereal. The perfect foil to a man of the earl’s dark, sullen masculine beauty.
“She was quite gracious when I met her,” Callie managed to say.
“I have no doubt she was.” His tone, like his expression, was grim. “The heartless bitch would have been better served had she trod the boards as an actress.”
“My lord,” she gasped, shocked. “It is unwise to speak ill of the dead.”
“Or what?” The grin he sent in her direction was cold. “Hmm? They shall haunt us? Too late for that, princess. That woman ruined me a long time ago. There is nothing she can do to me from the grave that holds a candle to what she did to me when she walked this earth.”
So much unabated vitriol. And for his own wife.
