Thump,thump,thumpwent his cane on the Axminster as he drew nearer. “I have come to finish what was begun last night.”
“Then you can go.”
She told herself she would not retreat. That she would not remember what had passed between them. That she would not weaken. But oh how difficult it was when she had spent all the days of his absence longing for him, praying for his safe return. When she had passed so many lonely nights wishing for one more embrace, one more chance to see him.
Her every effort to find him had turned up naught.
She had exhausted every avenue, had involved friends in her fight to discover what had become of him. She had railed against Longleigh, rowing with him endlessly in her ceaseless pursuit of the truth.
And now, here he was. Himself, and yet not.
Nearer he came. Until there it was, the familiar scent of his shaving soap, and she could define the grays and greens hiding in the irises of his sky-blue eyes. “I will not be going, Duchess. Not until you hear what I have come to say.”
Duchess.
Hated title.
Her life had been a misery from the moment she had acquired it. For a brief, wild few months, she had found happiness, until it had been ripped away from her. Now, it seemed even that happiness had been a lie.
“You may refer to me asYour Grace,” she bit out.
“Fair enough.” His gaze swept over her face, lingering for a moment upon her lips before drifting upward. “I shall call you Your Grace, and you may call me Husband.”
Husband.
He thought to marry her?
That was what he wanted?
“I will call you a liar, sir, as that is what you are,” she managed to say, pleased with her flippancy.
Entirely feigned.
“I may be one, but that makes us a pair, does it not? You, with your pretty deceptions.”
She wanted to move away from him, but doing so felt as if it would signal to him that she was faltering. That she feared him.
Instead, she remained where she was, fingers laced in the silken fall of her skirts to keep from reaching for him—to shake, to slap, to hold, she could not say in that moment. Only that the desire was there. The need. Her fingertips fairly itched with it.
“I never deceived you.”
“You only harm yourself with your claims of innocence. I’ll not believe a word that falls from your sweet, cunning lips.”
“As I will not believe a syllable that drips from yours.” Her heart was galloping faster than a runaway horse, her stomach twisted in knots. “We are evenly matched in our distrust, it would seem, though I have given you no cause for yours.”
“Admit it,” he said, his voice low, urgent. “You feared him enough to send me to hell just to save yourself.”
“I sent you nowhere. You asked me to leave with you, and before the time came, you disappeared. Why?”
He laughed, a bitter bark, a mockery of all the times he had laughed with her what seemed a lifetime ago. “You can cease pretending. You know very well I was sent to prison.”
Prison.
One word.
Someone gasped. She thought it must have been her. But as it had the night before, her mind was whirling, the room spinning about her as she tried to make sense of the muddle surrounding her.
“Prison,” she repeated, lips numb.
