His fury was as sudden as it was murderous. Bess laid a staying hand on his arm, reminding him wordlessly that he needed to maintain the peace with the viper before them.
“Never dare to speak of my wife with such disrespect again,” he bit out.
“Are you threatening me in my own home, my lord?” the countess demanded.
“It isn’t a threat, it’s a promise that you won’t like the consequences if you fail to heed my warning.”
Bess squeezed his arm. “I thank you for your hospitality, Lady Worthing,” she said calmly, refusing to be ruffled by the other woman’s antagonism.
“As you may have guessed, we’ve come to discuss provisions for the child,” he said tightly, just barely keeping control over his emotions.
The countess’s abominable behavior toward Bess continued to rankle. But if Bess could rise above it for the greater good, then so too could he.
He had no other choice.
“The child?” Eugenia paled. “Why should you wish to speak of that?”
“Because I want to make certain the child is well provided for,” he said, trying and failing to maintain his own calm.
Her hostility toward Bess was infuriating. He didn’t want to be here. Most especially, he didn’t want to be in this drawing room with the Countess of Worthing as she insulted the woman he loved. But he had an obligation to the child. A duty he had every intention of upholding, regardless of how unpleasant Eugenia made the task.
“You needn’t concern yourself on that account,” she said breezily.
Tension knotted his gut. Damn it, perhaps he should have held more tightly to the reins of his temper. He had angered her, and now she would want him to pay the price.
“If you intend to keep the child from me, I will fight you, Lady Worthing,” he warned grimly. “I can assure you of that.”
“There is no child,” she said quietly.
Bess’s grip on his arm tightened.
He stared at Eugenia, thinking he must have misheard her. “What did you just say, madam?”
Surely, she had not just said that there wasn’t a child. How could there not be one? Had she lost the babe in the days since the ball?
Her gaze dropped from his. “There isn’t a babe. I’m not with child.”
His knees almost buckled, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. “You’re not carrying my child any longer?”
Eugenia huffed an irritated little sigh, looking much aggrieved. “Apparently, I was mistaken, and I never was.”
Mistaken?
She had never been carrying his child?
Torrie felt winded, as if he had just run a great distance, his mind too sluggish to comprehend. Slowly, the truth settled in, damning and undeniable.
“You lied to me?” he snarled, wondering if it was all just a ploy on her part, if she had used her announcement as a means to attempt to seduce him back into her bed.
If she had, by God.
The pain she had caused…
So severe was his anger that the hand reaching for Bess trembled. Their fingers tangled again, the comfort he needed, the reminder that she was his and he was hers.
“I didn’t lie,” Eugenia said coolly. “I told you the truth as I imagined it to be, and I thought at the time that it was fate bringing us back together. Clearly, I was wrong.”
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t understand.”
