She pivoted to look at him, drank him in even now when she was so hurt and confused. “Was anything true?” she whispered.
He caught his breath. “Yes.”
She shook her head. He’d said the word she wanted to hear, but now it felt so hollow. “How can I believe you?”
“You can’t,” he said without hesitation, without excuse. “Not after what you just heard. Not after what more I’ll tell you. I don’t expect you to believe me. But I will tell you just the same that whatever my purpose was in initially pursuing you, every time we talked or touched or kissed, it was real. So real that I lost myself in it. In you.”
Oh, but those words were seductive. So was his expression, and she saw honesty and passion and emotion in his green eyes. And yet she could not be such a fool as to lean into that. “You seem to have every reason to lie, though, don’t you?”
He pursed his lips. “I deserve that. But if it wasn’t true, then I could have allowed us to be caught at the gallery for a scandal that would please my cousins. I could have taken you on that very settee behind me instead of pulling away when I did. I could have disclosed to my cousins what happened between us instead of telling my family that nothing had transpired.”
She shifted. Perhaps all those things were true. But she still didn’t understand the motivation. “Why did they send you after me?”
“The additional clause to my uncle’s will,” he said.
She blinked. “Clause?”
His eyes went wide. “You don’t know?”
She shook her head. “The will was resolved years ago. I know nothing else but what was revealed at that time.”
“Damn them.” He squeezed his eyes shut and took a long breath. “I-I know you received a settlement after his death, but it turns out there was more. If you hadn’t remarried or taken a lover by the three-year anniversary of his death, you would get an additional ten thousand pounds.”
For a moment it felt like the world had screeched to a halt. She struggled to find her breath. “I-I didn’t know.”
He bent his head. “Well, they thought you did. They cruelly assumed you would act as they would, and hide any lover you had waiting in the wings in order to collect on the inheritance next month.”
She flinched. She hadn’t exactly been thinking of the impending anniversary of her loss. For the first time since Stuart’s death, actually. This man’s doing, and now it was all a lie. Her newfound peace ruined by a few callous actions. “So they sent you to spy?”
“Yes.” He looked sick as he said it. “They thought I would uncover that secret lover’s identity and they could bring it to the solicitors to void the clause. So I…I investigated you. Followed you.”
She heard a broken sound escape her lips and wished she could take it back. She didn’t want to show him that vulnerability.
“And yes, I did use my relationship to Callum and Theo in order to meet you.”
She shook her head. “It was all a manipulation.”
“No,” he insisted, and took a step forward.
Oh, how she wanted to fall into him, to receive whatever comfort he would offer. But that time was over now. Instead she stepped back and he stopped his advance with a frown.
“No,” he repeated. “I met you and was instantly charmed. Taken in by your very real and true kindness and warmth. I didn’t know you weren’t aware of the money, but I knew you weren’t lying so you could receive it. And I told them that.”
Anger swelled in her as she stared at him, full of excuses and seductive words and sentiments. “You act as though you were heroic. But you’ve already admitted that you also agreed to seduce me so that they would win their blood money back.”
He blanched. “Yes. I did that. When I told them that you weren’t doing anything wrong, they blackmailed me. I have nothing, Flora. It wasn’t just my father who was imprudent. I losteverythinglast year in a terrible investment. I have to beg them for the smallest amount of money just to maintain my mother’s small existence. I live in a wretched place I would never subject you or anyone else to. They know all that and they threatened to take everything away. And not only that but to ensure I couldn’t even work in order to support her.”
She bent her head. If she knew one thing it was that her stepchildren were very capable of such cruelty. She had been the butt of their actions many a time during her marriage. They had always been Stuart’s blind spot. He insisted she would one day win his children over and excused their bad behavior.
And here they were, at the ultimate consequence of their unchecked greed and malice.
“I was trapped between protecting my mother and protecting you. And trying to find a way out without harming either one of you. I swear that I intended to tell you today.”
She lifted her gaze back to his. “That is mightily convenient. You meant to tell me today, after what happened between us here yesterday, after we were interrupted in a passionate embrace by my friends.”
“I know I was wrong,” he said, and his voice cracked. “But you don’t know how much your company, your light, has meant to me in the few weeks we’ve known each other, Flora. I was selfish, I wanted to hang on to that for a few more moments.”
She stared at him. “Well, you did. You made me a fool in the process. Is there anything else?”
