She opened and shut her mouth, trying to find words to respond to that cruel dismissal but unable to find any. Then the door behind Harry opened and words fled even further as Lord Blackburn entered the room. Horror flooded her as time turned to slow motion. Harry turned back to see the intruder. His eyes widened and there was that flare of emotion again. He was clearly shocked to see his former friend. He wasangry.
And as he jerked his gaze back and forth between her and Blackburn, he showed something else. Just a flash of that passion he had denied her since his arrival. He looked…jealous.
“What the bloody hell is this?” Southwater said. “Wh-what ishedoing here?”
“As if you have any call to question Evelina’s actions after you discarded her so callously?” Blackburn folded his arms, one fine brow arched in challenge.
“And what do you know of it?” Southwater retorted, his cheeks darkening to a deep red. His fists gripped at his sides. “Why the hell would you insert yourself in this, a private moment between us?”
Evelina almost scoffed out loud. After dismissing her as nothing more than a grasping, idiot whore, he now implied his friend had interrupted an intimate moment between them?
Without thinking, she stepped up to Blackburn and slid her hand through the crook of his elbow. “He is here because I asked him to be. Because I wanted him to be present when I told you the other reason why I asked you to join me this afternoon.”
“And what is that?” Southwater’s tone was rough and she hated herself for reveling in it.
But she didn’t stop. Instead, she forced a smile that felt as tight and unnatural as a mask. “I wanted to tell you that you needn’t be concerned about my future, not that you seem to be. But if you ever had a care for me, you’ll be happy to know that Blackburn is taking care of that, and of me, very well.”
What happened next was something she hadn’t truly intended nor planned to do, but the drive for it was too powerful to resist. She turned toward the earl, cupped the back of his neck and pulled him down. He didn’t resist her though his expression was shocked before she closed her eyes against it and he was stiff when her mouth found his and she kissed him.
CHAPTER6
Vaughn had been too shocked to deny Evelina her kiss, and the entire endeavor ended too swiftly for him to really feel it. She released his neck and tucked her arm around his waist, pulling herself up close to him. He looked at Southwater, his former friend, his most hated enemy, and he saw the bright anger and jealousy in the duke’s stare.
Oh, how he loved to see it. Loved to see even a fraction of the pain that this man had created in his selfish wake be revisited on him. He put his arm around Evelina in return and smiled broadly.
“You said you were a courtesan,” Southwater hissed out, his voice a little sharper. He seemed to have more emotion about this than what Vaughn had overheard when he was dismissing Evelina with such cruelty. It was why Vaughn had felt driven to intervene. “But I think I’d call you far worse based on this. Don’t send for me again, either of you.”
The duke pivoted on his heel and stomped from the room. The front door slammed just seconds afterward and immediately Evelina shrugged from Vaughn’s embrace and paced to the window, watching her former lover’s carriage leave. When she looked back at Vaughn, her hands were shaking and her cheeks were pale.
“I’m sorry, my lord. I shouldn’t have sprung such a thing on you.”
“Well, we did talk about it before,” he said softly, still trying to process what had just happened. “It was even my idea.”
She shook her head. “But we never agreed to it. It was a violation of your consent and I know better than most what a betrayal that is.”
He wrinkled his brow and wondered what had happened to her in her past. Had Southwater violated her consent or someone else?
He cleared his throat because the answers to those questions were none of his business. “Did you see his face, though?” She hesitated and then a small smile just barely tilted her lips, like she was fighting any pleasure. He leaned a little closer. “He wasfurious, Evelina. Seeing us together drove him mad.”
The smile on her face grew wider. “Oh, I’m the worst person, but I admit seeing him finally moved after everything that has happened was satisfying. But perhaps I went too far. Did too much.”
“After the way he treated you?” When she began to shake her head as if to dismiss that, he continued, “Evelina, I heard everything he said to you. He deserved a little cruelty. More than a little, in truth. And you must admit I was right when I suggested we pretend a connection. He was bothered by you moving on and especially moving on with me.”
“He was,” she admitted slowly. “Almost in the same breath that he dismissed me as nothing, he was wound up that someone else would actually want me.”
“If we continued on, that feeling would only be worse, you know,” Vaughn said. “He would think about it, even when he was withher. He would know people were talking about it, just as they’ve been talking about what the two of them did to us. It’s not justice, not truly, but it is something, isn’t it?”
She worried her full bottom lip. “You can’t really mean to continue.”
“Why not? You just told him we were together, didn’t you? The lie is set in motion. Why not let it play out a little while? Not for long, of course, just enough to make both Southwater and my wife uncomfortable. Just long enough to make them stare at each other over a supper table and know that they didn’t win.”
He could see Evelina pondering that. Perhaps even playing it out in her mind, watching the possibilities come to fruition. Then she let out a long, shuddering sigh. “As you say, I already set the wheel in motion. If we abandon the deception, I suppose it would only make it worse, especially for you.”
He flinched as he thought of the other thing he’d overheard a moment before. Evelina had chided Southwater for his behavior toward Vaughn almost more than she had about what he’d done to her. And it had…mattered somehow to have a champion. Which was entirely foolish.
“Don’t do it to protect me,” he said swiftly. “That isn’t your duty. Do it because…I don’t know…we’re both just petty enough to want the tiniest hint of revenge.”
“I will admit I’m feeling very petty after watching his reaction,” she said. She paced away, worrying her hands in front of her, shaking her head. He waited for her to decide and finally she stopped and faced him. “Oh…yes. I agree to continue. But we must come to terms.”
