Supposing he had formally agreed to offer for her, that was.
She spun about to face him, taking a deep breath. “What have you decided?”
He scowled, keeping his distance. “That is what you wished to discuss? With your actions, you have already stolen the freedom of choice from me. Unless you have so soon forgotten the melee in which I found myself yesterday following your false revelations to your brother?”
“They were not all false,” she defended.
“The worst of it was,” he countered. “Tell me, was this your plan all along, to fool me into keeping you from courting scandal and then seduce me yourself?”
His accusation took her by surprise. “Youkissedme, Huntingdon, not the other way around, and if you will recall, I was quite put out with you for interrupting my plans on every occasion.”
He raised a dark brow, eying her impassively. “Or was your outrage yet another act? I confess, I cannot be sure, my lady. All I do know for certain is that I shall soon have a wife who is an excellent actress, instead of the bride of my choosing.”
Relief washed over Helena, along with the accompanying guilt and twinge of jealousy at the reminder of Lady Beatrice. He had offered for Helena, then. There was that. He must have also ended his betrothal.
“My outrage was not an act,” she said, collecting herself. “How can you think otherwise?”
“Your actions leave me with no choice but to question everything I know of you.” His voice was bitter, his expression shuttered.
His revelation struck her with the force of a slap. “Can you not forgive me?”
He remained icy and aloof, a damning stranger who had once kissed her with a lover’s unrestrained passion. “I cannot say, my lady. What I do know is that it will take time. You can hardly expect your lies to be forgotten after a mere night’s sleep.”
He was not wrong about that. Nor had she expected him to so easily move past her actions. But what she had been seeking now was a glimmer of hope that her sins would not forever haunt them. Would not forever taint their marriage.
“I understand it will take time,” she said then. “All I can hope is that you will come to understand the reason for my actions.”
“I can promise you nothing. Now, if you will excuse me, I must go.”
When he turned to leave, she chased after him, heart tight in her chest. She caught his sleeve, intercepting him. “Huntingdon, do not go yet.”
“Damn you, I told you not to touch me,” he snarled, turning back toward her with so much festering anger, she faltered.
“Do you hate me that much?” she whispered, humiliated by the rush of tears in her eyes.
This was misery in its truest form. She finally had what she had always wanted almost within her grasp, but she had ruined it utterly. She had taken what should never have been hers. She saw it clearly now. Huntingdon would not forgive her for this breach. For forcing his hand. For making him betray his cursed sense of honor and duty.
“I do not hate you,” he said coolly. “All I have ever felt for you, Helena, is pure, base lust. It aggrieves me mightily that I was drawn to a woman willing to go to the lengths you have stooped to.”
She flinched. “If you think so little of me, why should you agree to marry me?”
“Because,darling, you have told your entire family you are carrying my child,” he sneered. “Which you and I both know to be a spurious lie.”
“I only told Shelbourne, and I recognized it for a mistake as soon as I uttered the words,” she said truthfully. She still did not know where her lie had sprung from in that wild moment, save overwhelming desperation and fear her father would still somehow find a way to bind her to Lord Hamish. “I cannot convey how sorry I am for what I said and did.”
“Apologies do not make a difference, Helena,” he snapped. “Do you not see? This is not some sort of bloody game. I was engaged to another woman. She was planning her trousseau, and I had to go to her and cry off yesterday. My own inexcusable lack of honor was bad enough, but to allow her to think the worst of me, to hurt her when she has only ever been the soul of virtue, is akin to swallowing a live coal.”
She reeled, for she had not once considered he may have been in love with Lady Beatrice, nor she with him. If he had been, he would not have kissed Helena, would he have? His impassioned response had her more uncertain of herself than ever. Suddenly, she needed to know.
“Do you love her?” she could not keep herself from asking.
“What I feel for her no longer signifies,” he said. “Just as what I felt for you no longer does either.”
Felt.
Past tense.
He turned to go once more.
