“Refer to the Duchess with respect,” Arthur barked.
But Isabella shook her head. “She doesn’t have to,” she said, dismounting from the horse and coming up to stand alongside her husband. “I don’t care what she calls me, Arthur. It doesn’t make any difference now. It doesn’t change the fact that she sent a man in the night to drag me out of my bed. Why would I care if she referred to me with my title or not? She’s already shown that she has no respect for me or for you either. There’s nothing she can do now to make me believe otherwise.”
“Idon’thave any respect for you,” Lady Reeves agreed. “When I met you at the ball, you seemed like a lady who understood the world isn’t fair. You seemed willing to stand up to your father. I thought you might be someone more like myself.”
“You thought I might be likeyou?” Isabella was shocked. “I could never be anything like you, and it shocks me that you could think it, Lady Reeves. You sent a man to my house to kill me!”
“Oh, do be sensible,” Lady Reeves said. “If that man had been there to kill you, you would be dead! I didn’t send him to kill you, I sent him to take you away. I would have had you brought back to my house.”
“What did you want me there for?”
“A lady after my own mind? I thought perhaps I had finally found someone I could associate with—someone worth knowing,” Lady Reeves said. “I thought perhaps I’d met someone who would understand what I meant when I said that all gentlemen are the same! Youseemedas if that was something you understood, based on the way I saw you respond to your father.”
“But all gentlemen aren’t the same,” Isabella replied. “You saw me struggle to respect my father because he has never shown me any kindness. It’s different with my husband. I know that he cares for me and desires my happiness—he has my best interests at heart. That’s why I feel differently about him.”
“You’re fooling yourself,” Lady Reeves said, laughing unkindly. “Do you really think he would take your needs and desires into consideration when push came to shove? Do you think that he would give up anything he wanted in favor of taking care of you?”
“I don’t have to tell you the answer to that question,” Isabella said with a smile. “What I believe about my husband and the kind of man he is—that’s my business. I don’t need to justify my feelings to you.”
“Just look at what he’s done today!” Lady Reeves cried. “This whole situation—he’s set me up, he’s tricked me, and he’s done it easily because that’s what men love best. They love to trick people.”
“You killed his parents.” The smile dropped from Isabella’s face. “I don’t think you can fairly say that he set you up just because he thrives on tricking people. This is a very different situation, and if you have a shred of honesty in you, you’ll admit that. But also, I don’t care whether you admit it or not because I know the truth of the matter. And so does he. We don’t need you to understand.”
“You entrapped my father,” Arthur said. “You ensnared him in a web of deception and led him to his death.”
“No,” Lady Reeves argued. “Your father toyed withme. I told you this already. My feelings for him were genuine. But when I returned to him, after the night we spent together, he treated me like nothing and sent me away. He behaved as though I didn’t matter to him at all. Anyone would have been hurt. Anyone would have wanted to do what I did, but most people wouldn’t have had the courage.”
“Don’t ask me to believe you were only following your heart,” Arthur said. “I know the truth. You’re trying to do the same thingto my wife’s father even now. This is a pattern with you. You entrap men. You lead them astray, and then you force them to pay you money for your silence.”
“But it wasn’t that way with your father,” Lady Reeves responded. “He was someone who truly mattered. I thought that he might feel the same way for me as I did for him, but of course, it was only the alcohol. He regretted our time together, and he made sure I knew that.” She smiled. “Of course, he had no idea how much he would live to regret it. Not until he tasted the poison on his lips.”
Isabella felt Arthur grow tense beside her. She spoke quickly. They needed more answers, and they needed this to be stalled until the constables could arrive. “Why did you continue to do this if it was personal?” she asked. “If it was about seeking revenge on the one man who you felt had wronged you, why do you continue to entrap men now?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” Lady Reeves asked. “Why shouldn’t I do the very same things to men that they do to women? Trick, lie, deceive—get what I want from a situation and then leave their lives in shambles? If men can do it, why can’t I do it?”
“Men shouldn’t do it,” Arthur said quietly. “And you’re wrong when you say that all men do.”
“Well, enough of them do that I don’t care to differentiate,” Lady Reeves snapped. “In my opinion, they deserve whatever they get at my hands. If you were any different, you would have put mefrom your mind and remained at home with your wife, the way a loving husband should.”
“I don’t need advice on how to be a good husband from you,” Arthur said. “I can manage it on my own. What I need from you is for you to confess all the things you just finished saying to me—but this time, in front of the constables. I need you to own up to the things you’ve been doing.”
“As though I would,” Lady Reeves sneered.
“It’s too late,” Arthur said. “They’re already on their way.”
“And why would I confess anything?”
“You haven’t behaved like an innocent person, Lady Reeves. Running from me, always hiding, meeting with me in an abandoned house. And I know that my wife’s father will be more than willing to give testimony against you as well—to explain all the things you did to try to rope him in. And then there is Miss Felicity, who was injured by the man you sent to capture the Duchess. The evidence against you is too powerful now, and it won’t matter that you don’t wish to confess what you’ve done. The constables will believe what I tell them no matter what you say. It’s for your own sake that I ask you to be honest. If you tell the truth about who you are and what you’ve done, there’s a chance you might be shown mercy. But if you resist what’s coming, that won’t happen.”
Lady Reeves was quiet for a moment.
When she spoke again, it was directly to Isabella. “I would expect nothing other than this from a man,” she said, her voice cold. “But how could you go along with it?”
“After what you did to my sister?” Isabella felt a spike of anger at the thought of Felicity lying on the floor. “Your man could have killed her, and you expect me to take your side?”
“I expect you to take your own side. Of course, I should know better by now. No lady ever takes her own side. Just look at your duke’s mother! Look what she did to herself.”
“What doesthatmean?” Arthur demanded. Feeling his sudden burst of wild rage, Felicity put a hand on his arm in an attempt to calm him, but he shook her off. “Why would you speak of my mother? She never did anything to you, and you killed her anyway. You killed her fornothing at all. Don’t speak of her to me after having done that.”
