“Everyone will know,” he said calmly. “Because I will tell them. I will tell your father and your mother and your brother and your sisters. I will tell Wycombe and Greymoor and even his dragon of a mother. I will stand in the goddamn supper room and announce it to everyone in residence, and I will make sure I shout it loudly enough that Potter hears it too. Do not think I won’t.”
She swallowed hard. “You would never do something so reckless.”
He raised a brow. “Won’t I? You are eager to think the worst of me when it suits you, but not when it does not. Hmm?”
“You think to bribe me into remaining here and marrying you? Why?”
“I am not bribing you, but neither will I allow you to leave me like this,” he countered. “I will own that I never should have allowed her close enough for unwanted liberties. I must beg your forgiveness for that. I also should have waited to speak to her until this morning, when we could have conducted our conversation in a neutral chamber. The fault is mine for all those missteps, but I can assure you that I did not welcome her advances. I told her as much, and I also told her to never again dare to be so familiar. This is nothing but a misunderstanding.”
“It did not feel like a misunderstanding last night when I saw you kissing her,” she said coolly. “You can explain it away in whatever fashion you like, my lord, but that does not mean I have to accept it or believe you. I will not bind myself to a man I cannot trust. I have suffered enough.”
“This marriage is not merely about the two of us, Izzy. It has ceased to be from the moment we involved our families and friends and made all the bloody announcements and traveled to Staffordshire. And after yesterday morning, there could be yet another added to the mix. Would you forsake your own child just to spite me?” he demanded.
She had to admit the possibility she carried his child was sobering. Alarming.
And more alarming? The foolish part of her that had begun to fall in love with him was not at all horrified by the prospect. Rather, the notion filled her with warmth. Hated, unwanted warmth.
Made her weak, too. Her defenses were crumbling.
“Izzy,” he said softly, tenderly, looking at her the same way he had yesterday. The way that never failed to make her melt. “Look at me, Izzy. You can trust me. I swear it to you.”
She did not want to believe him. But also, simultaneously, part of herdidwant to believe him. Her heart, however, was too battered. She was wary of him, his motives, his words. Suspicious of his past with the widowed countess, and far more concerned now that she knew without a doubt that Lady Anglesey wanted him for herself.
“Stay,” he said.
His arguments had not been without their weight or legitimacy. She had known all along that leaving would cause a dreadful scandal. That her refusal to carry on with the wedding would cause tongues to wag.Heavens, the whole reason she was marrying him to begin with was to spare Corliss and Criseyde any negative impact her actions would have on them. She had been thinking of only herself, her need to spare herself further pain.
But Anglesey was right. The damage she would cause was too much, and if she were indeed with child, she had no wish for that babe to be born out of wedlock.
“Please, Izzy.”
She closed her eyes, wearier than she had ever felt in her life. “Very well. I will stay.”
* * *
“You are leaving, madam,”Zachary informed Beatrice coldly.
After narrowly avoiding Izzy jilting him before breakfast, he had decided to waste no time in removing the parasite before him from his life for good.
Beatrice gasped, holding a hand to her heart as if he had wounded her, when he knew better than anyone there was nothing within but an empty husk. “You cannot mean that.”
“I can, and I do,” he countered, unmoved. “You went too far last night, and I cannot afford to allow another such lapse in the future. It is best for everyone that you leave Barlowe Park. You were only allowed to remain previously because of the generosity of Lady Isolde. However, your machinations have pushed even my future wife past the point of understanding.”
That was rather putting it mildly. But he had no wish for Beatrice to know Izzy had seen her kiss him last night. The less she knew, and the sooner she was gone from his sight, the better. She was a poisonous presence, and how he had ever believed himself in love with her was quite beyond his comprehension now. She was not a good woman. Her only concern was for the title and for herself.
But if he had thought Beatrice would go quietly and with her dignity intact, he had been wrong. She refused to leave.
“Please, Zachary,” she said, moving toward him. “I beg you, do not send me away.”
He held up a staying hand, feeling sick. “Stop. Nothing you say will alter my mind. My decision has been made.”
“It almost killed me to marry Anglesey instead of you, but I had to do what my father asked of me.”
“These are explanations which could have been made long ago,” he told her coldly, “when they mattered. They no longer matter to me. And nor do you. You are a burden to me, nothing more.”
She flinched. “You are cruel.”
“Truthful,” he corrected, a modicum of pity for her tempering his anger. “Eight years is a long time, Beatrice. You could have explained to me at any point, and perhaps it would have meant something. The time for that is long gone, and I am going to be marrying Lady Isolde in mere days. I will make certain that you are taken care of in the manner to which you have grown accustomed, as Horatio would have wanted, but my primary concern is my wife.”
