Instead, he was holding her to the squabs like an anchor.
Damn him!
“I saw you kissing your brother’s widow,” she charged. “The woman you wanted to marry. The woman you loved. And then I saw you taking her into your chamber. That is what I saw.”
“I can explain.”
“There can be no explanation for your actions,” she snapped. “There is only truth. There is what happened, which I saw with my own eyes. Nothing you can say will change that.”
“Izzy, please, try to calm yourself,” he urged. “I know this feels like a betrayal to you, but—”
“Itfeelslike one?” she interrupted, her voice high and shrill and fraught with emotion. “Yes, my lord. It feels like a betrayal to watch your betrothed kissing another woman and escorting her into his chamber. Because itisone.”
“It is not so uncomplicated as that in this instance,” he countered. “Beatrice came to me last night when I was retiring to my chamber for the evening. You are right that she kissed me. Your eyes did not deceive you. But I can assure you, I did not return her kiss. I pushed her away and, fearing we would be seen by someone in the hall and tongues would wag, causing you a scandal you did not deserve, I pulled her into my chamber so we could talk.”
“Talk,” she repeated with a bitter laugh. “Just as wetalkedyesterday morning when you wished to show me the little falls and ended up making love to me? I pray you, sir, spare me the attempts at further explanation. You are only digging yourself a larger hole in which to bury the tattered remnants of my regard for you.”
“I know Penhurst hurt you badly,” Anglesey said, his gaze holding hers, as if she had not just essentially told him to go to the devil and leave her alone. “But I am not him. I promised to make a marriage between us work. To be a faithful husband to you. I meant that promise when I gave it, and I still mean it now. What happened between us yesterday was special, Izzy.”
“It was so special that you shared the same with Lady Anglesey later that evening,” she drawled as if the notion did not cut into her heart like a blade. “Do not think to persuade me of your goodness, my lord. Your abysmal reputation as an immoral seducer is well-known. It is the reason I first sought to make a scandal with you, after all, in the deluded hopes I could somehow make Arthur jealous. I should not have expected you to change your rakish ways, and I realize that now. The fault is mine for believing you, but I’ll not make the same mistake again. I have made far too many.”
She was grateful for her poise in this moment, for her ability to hold her tears in check and not allow him to see her weaknesses. Had he come to her chamber earlier, he would have witnessed a blubbering fool. Instead, she had been harsh and sharp in her words. She hoped they laced into his heart, had at least some small effect upon him. Guilt, shame, whatever he might feel at having been caught.
His jaw tensed, and he stared at her in silence for an uncomfortable length of time before answering her charges. “I never claimed to be a saint, madam. Need I remind you of the reason for the necessity of our nuptials? You accosted me at a ball when you were foxed.”
“I told you we did not need to wed,” she reminded him tensely, hating his pointed dredging up of her own past sins. “I gave you your freedom, and you could have taken it. You should have done, if you intended to use me and lie to me.”
“I never used you and nor have I lied to you.” He released her and scrubbed his hand along his jaw, looking at once weary and angry and frustrated. “I have made mistakes in my past. Many of them. But if I had wanted to fuck my brother’s widow, I would not have needed to wait until I had been saddled with a betrothed, would I? I could have done so months ago, and I never would have met you at Greymoor’s ball.”
“I wish to God you had not met me there!” she cried, wanting to affect him. To make him show at least a hint of hurt.
It was small of her, she knew. But she had never felt smaller, nor more insignificant and unworthy of love.
“I am beginning to wish the same, my lady,” he said roughly, a flash of anger in his gaze. “You have caused me no end of trouble. At every turn, I have attempted to do right by you, to protect you and keep you safe from scandal and harm. I have been inside you, and still you choose to believe the worst of me when the truth is staring you in the face.”
His blunt reference to their intimacy the day before made her long to slap him. She had trusted him. Had entrusted not just her body, but her innocence and her heart to him. And look at what he had done. His weak attempts at explanation were unbelievable.
“Do you truly expect me to believe the passionate embrace I saw last night was one-sided?” she asked him. “And that the reason you pulled her into your chamber was to talk? Because if you do, then you must think me the greatest imbecile in all England.”
“You are certainly behaving like one at the moment,” he snapped.
She flinched, for his words had the impact of a physical strike. “Get out.”
But still, he did not budge. “I will not.”
“I do not want to marry you,” she ground out.
“What you want is immaterial at this juncture,” he said matter-of-factly. “You could be carrying my child. If you think for one moment that I will allow you to leave me while the possibility my daughter or son is growing in your womb, then you are indeed the greatest imbecile in all England.”
A chill stole across her that had nothing to do with the weather. She had not thought about the repercussions of what they had done together. There had hardly been time.
“I am not with child,” she denied.
She could not be. It had just been the once…
Anglesey shook his head. “You do not know that, and nor will you, until you have your courses, whenever that may be. In the interim, I am not inclined to allow you to gad about the countryside carrying my heir without benefit of marriage. Regardless of what you think of me, what happened between us at the little falls makes our marriage inexorable.”
Her mind was racing over itself, trying to make sense of what he had said, to find an escape route. “But no one else knows what has happened. If I am not carrying a child, then there is no need for a marriage.”
