“Why?” Marcus had never known this pain and hadn’t even thought it was possible. How had he come to love the woman before him so much in such a short space of time, to the point that the fact she might have kissed another felt like someone stabbing a knife through his heart? “Why pretend you care for me if you were going to go off with …” He couldn’t even say David’s name at that moment.
He liked David, as he always had done, and what baffled him was that Marcus had convinced himself that David was fond of the maid, Alaina. Apparently, he was wrong about that, too.
Now, he felt consumed with envy that David could take Callie’s attention away.
“Marcus, it’s not what you think.” She walked towards him, tearing the mask off her face. “I am not Lady Caroline.”
“I beg your pardon?” Marcus blinked. For a second, what she said didn’t sink in.
“I am not Lady Caroline,” she said again, her voice wild, her manner frantic as she threw down the mask on the settee beside them. “There were two women at your ball tonight. I spent the night with you, and the real Lady Caroline spent it with her father, leaving the room whenever we were both in there. We wore the same gown,” she fisted the skirt of her dress, “the same mask,” she gestured towards it on the settee, “and we convinced everyone there was just one woman in that room. Caroline is the one who was kissing David tonight. Not me. The woman you see before you would never do that. Because I am in lov –”
“Don’t say it!” He held up his hands, stemming her words. He couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear to hear the words now. “Is this all true?” His words erupted from him fast. “Why wouldn’t you be Lady Caroline? You came to my door, stepped out of your carriage in your fine gown, and have sat by my side for weeks now as –”
“Alaina. My name is Alaina. Or … Ally.”
So similar.
Marcus backed up. He collided with a writing bureau and nearly fell across it. He rounded it quickly, tearing off his tailcoat, suddenly heated and needing some space from her.
“Have you not wondered why I don’t sound like a lady of the ton?” she asked, following him. He continued to increase the space between them. They ended up in a cat-and- mouse game around the next armchair. “Why I always doubted what cutlery to use at dinner? Why I curse like a maid rather than a fine lady –”
“You’re a maid?” he cried in disbelief, staring at her. “No. No, you can’t be.”
“Why?” She blinked, with her eyes full of tears. “Do you see me as someone different now?” She couldn’t stop them, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. “Now that I don’t have money to my name, am I no longer the woman you fell in love with?”
“Don’t do that,” he warned, holding a finger out towards her. “You don’t get to do that, Callie – Ally, whatever the hell your name is!” he cried out madly. “I fell in love with the woman I thought I knew.” At his words, she flinched as if the words struck her hard. “I did not fall in love with a lie, a woman pretending to be something she is not.”
“I lied about my name. I lied by omission, not telling you I was a maid,” she whispered, holding her chin high. “Yet I have always been myself with you. Always.” Another tear rolled down her cheek, but she made no effort to stop it. “Marcus –” She tried to walk around the armchair again to get to him, but he ran away, crossing the room completely now. She fell still beside the armchair as he stopped close to the fire. “I was always me,” she said quietly.
“No. No, you weren’t.” Marcus couldn’t take it in.
He turned away from her, covering his face with his hands as he tried to absorb everything. The woman who had come to his door not only didn’t have a penny to her name, no dowry that could save his financial situation, but had lied to him continuously. She had made him believe he had hope for the future when in fact, there was none.
“Why did you do it? Why?” he asked in sudden desperation, flinging down his hands and turning around to face her again.
She wiped the tears from her cheeks with the backs of her hands.
“For Caroline,” she whispered. “She couldn’t bear the thought that her father was ordering her into marriage, that her future was not of her choice. We look a little alike, the same hair.” She gestured to her head. “She wanted to do it. She’s my dearest friend in the world. She’s practically like family to me. She thought that if we swapped, it would be a chance for her to prove that … that …”
“That what?” He jerked his head towards her. “That I had no heart at all?”
She stepped back, holding her hand to her mouth as her tears made her breath gasp once again.
“It’s what you thought, isn’t it?” he asked sharply, his gut curling tightly now.
“No!” The word erupted from her, and she ran forward. “Do you not see, Marcus? Do you not see that I fell in love with you anyway? I do love you. Of course, I do.”
Her words had been everything he wanted to hear minutes ago, but they were agony now. He was loved by a liar. How could he even trust that what she was saying now was the truth when it could still be part of an act, some desperate attempt to reclaim Lady Caroline’s position?
“Marcus, please, listen to me.” She reached him, her hands taking hold of the edge of his waistcoat. That touch was bittersweet. He didn’t know whether to wrap her in his arms and bury his head in her neck, just to inhale her scent and kiss her again, or whether to demand she leave him alone. “Everything that passed between us,everythingwas true. That night we shared –”
“Don’t talk of it.” His voice was low and sharp. “That night.” He broke off, thinking of the way they had made love. He had believed every one of her touches, the way she had caressed him and held his hand as she had climaxed beneath him. Oh, how he had loved her at that moment.
Yet she is not Callie anymore.
“Alaina.” He used her true name, making her flinch once again. “I made love to the woman I thought I knew that night. Not you.”
She released him and stumbled back, flinging both hands over her face as more desperate cries escaped her.
