Chapter 4
Despite the expensive appointments of the Marquis of Devon’s library, entering it eerily reminded Roman of his entrance into another room half a decade and half a world away. That room had held the meanest of furnishings and the air had smelled of the wild and of sex and blood. In this moment, the past foreshadowed the present.
With the wisdom he’d gleaned from the East, Roman knew he had always been meant to be right here, right now.
He closed the door.
“Open it,” Leonie ordered, her tone imperial, but there was another edge to it, one of fear.
So. He wasn’t the only one experiencing this awareness of the past. She’d been frightened of himthatnight as well.
She backed another step into the far corner. Tension radiated from her. She did not look well.
“Leonie, he deserved to die.”
She shook her head so vehemently a few curls escaped their careful pins.
“What Paccard did was wrong. You were protecting yourself.” He’d spoken these same lines the night he’d found her with Arthur Paccard’s body in the abandoned ruins of some raja’s hunting palace in the deep forest. Roman had tried to catch her and Paccard in time, but had failed.
Not every rescue in life was successful.
She looked at her hands as if she could see something he didn’t. She rubbed them together. “He didn’t die right away.”
“I know.”
“It took a long time, or so it seemed. I tried to stop the blood.”
“I remember.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “You do, don’t you? And you told everyone that you had found me safe before there was harm. You told them you shot Arthur. That the two of you had dueled over me.”
That, too, was true.
“If I was in the right,” she challenged, “why wouldn’t you have told them that I was the one who shot him? Why did you claim he died in a duel?”
“It was easiest.” It had also saved her reputation.
“But they blamed you. Everyone thought you did it because you were jealous that I favored him. That he died because you wished him dead.”
The room suddenly closed in around Roman. So, she knew.
“Leonie, we don’t need to talk about this.”
“Yes, we do,” she said. “I knew what they said and I didn’t speak up. I didn’t have the courage—”
“You had just turned seventeen. You were young—”
“I was old enough to know better,” she countered, “as my father told me repeatedly after it was all over. He swears my being involved with the whole incident is the reason he has never received a knighthood. If he knew the truth, he’d disown me. My only worth to him is marrying the title he could never have. No one would touch me if they knew what had really happened.”
“Then we won’t tell them.”
“You don’t understand. It is not that simple—”
“Yes, it is.”
When Roman had entered the library, releasing her of her guilt had not been his plan. She owed him a debt and he intended she pay up. Otherwise, he could lose Bonhomie.
However, faced with her shame, he found himself softening toward her. She’d been so young back then. He and Paccard had also been young and randy and frustrated to find themselves in India. Their feud over Leonie’s affections had been intense and heated and it really hadn’t had anything to do with her. It had been about keeping a step ahead of the other.
