Prologue
Rhodes, Greece
Charlotte paced before the hearth of her bedchamber with her hands balled at her sides.
“How long have you been sleeping with her?” she said in a trembling voice.
“For the last bloody time, Charlotte, I am not having an affair.”
In contrast to her agitated movements, her husband Sebastian James Courtenay, the Marquess of Fayne, remained perfectly still, his hands braced on his hips, his expression hard and unyielding. Charlie hated that her rage and despair did not diminish her sensual awareness of him. Tall and muscular, he had a commanding presence that shrunk any room he entered. The light of dusk streaming through the villa’s windows gilded his thick chestnut hair, angular cheekbones, and square jaw. Beneath his straight brows, his eyes belonged to a warrior: the iron-black orbs were fierce yet guarded, revealing little of himself.
Charlie, being more observant than most, had learned to read her spouse somewhat during their year of marriage. After they made love, his eyes were as warm and potent as freshly brewed coffee. When they locked horns, his gaze turned unyielding, specks of bronze glittering in those coal-like depths. As they were both hotheaded, their rows were not infrequent, but they usually made up in ways that compensated for the emotional bloodshed.
But not this time—not since he’d betrayed her—and never again.
“Pray do me the courtesy of not treating me like an idiot,” she snapped. “Isawyou, Sebastian. With my own eyes. You were kissing Eleni Pappas—making love to her in the back room of her dashed taverna!”
The memory drove a red-hot spike through Charlie’s breast, and she choked back a sob. She’d caught the proprietress and Sebastianin flagrante, the former’s bountiful curves pressed against the latter’s hard edges. And the pair’s mouths had been fused together.
How could Charlie have been such a fool, trusting her happiness to a man? One of her earliest memories was of being lost in a bustling Cairo market when her papa, a gentleman with a fever for antiquities, had abandoned her to chase down some relic. Frozen with terror, she’d huddled in the stall of a kindly Egyptian fruit seller, waiting for Papa to return for her. Wondering if he would. To this day, figs tasted to her of fear. From that experience, she’d learned to make herself useful so that Papa would not leave her behind again. So that she might claim some of his attention, maybe even some of his affection.
An invisible hand fisted around her heart.I should have known better than to trust a man.
“It wasn’t what you think,” Sebastian said.
He shoved a hand through his hair, tugging back the heavy front wave which needed a trim. Annoyingly, his casual style suited his outsized virility. Although a nobleman by birth, Sebastian despised foppery. His current outfit consisted of a linen shirt rolled up to reveal his hair-dusted forearms and toast-brown trousers that clung to his long legs. Even in a laborer’s garb, he looked like a king. He dressed and lived as it suited him, and devil take what anyone else thought.
From the instant Sebastian had come to her aid at a port in Marseille, Charlie had been drawn to his confidence and power. When he bestowed his attention upon her, she felt as if she’d been given the greatest gift in the world. And when he took it away…
The feeling was all too familiar.
It was an important artifact, Charlie.Papa’s impatience had shone in his grey eyes, the only inheritance she’d received from him.I had to go after it. If you were a boy, perhaps you would have kept up.
“Eleni and I are…we’re just friends,” Sebastian said gruffly. “I swear it upon my honor.”
Hearing him and the widow paired in the same sentence, Charlie felt sick with jealousy.
“Your honor.” Her pain hardened into sarcasm. “We both know what that is worth, don’t we?”
“Bloody hell.” His flaring nostrils conveyed his growing frustration. “If you were a man, I would call you out for that.”
“Go ahead. I know how to use a pistol,” she retorted.
Growing up in excavation camps and other rough-and-ready environments, she’d learned to fend for herself. Which was a good thing. Clearly, she couldn’t trust someone else to look after her best interests.
“For Christ’s sake, Charlotte. I am not going to shoot you?—”
“Why not? It would be kinder than what you did,” she said bitterly.
A muscle flickered in his jaw. “I didn’t fuck Eleni. Why can’t you trust me?”
Because you are you, and I am me. I was a fool to think our happiness could last.
Even though her late father had been the Earl of Bembridge, Charlie lacked a genteel upbringing. Her mama had died when she was a babe, and her papa’s hobby had consumed him far more than his impoverished estate. Whenever he’d had two pennies to rub together, he would spend it on things he cared about: a shard of Mesopotamian pottery, some ancient religious relic. He wasn’t about to waste money on a boarding school for his daughter. He’d simply brought Charlie with him on his travels, the way one might a battered valise.
At two-and-twenty, Charlie was aware of her physical charms; during her travels with Papa, her honey-blonde hair and grey eyes had attracted plenty of unwanted male attention. She felt like a lady in name only despite her lineage. She had few drawing room accomplishments and no experience whatsoever with the polite world. Her main skills pertained to survival and taking care of her father. When Sebastian had proposed after a whirlwind courtship, she’d felt as if she were dreaming: a man like him could have anyone, yet he’d chosen her.
Now she knew why.
