“You might not care if you’re ruined, but I do. And you’re wrong, Eleanor. It does matter, and it does change everything.”
Cam dragged his shirt over his head. His body had gone cold, numb. What had happened? She’d given herself to him. She’d let him hold her, her head nestled into his chest, and now this? She was wild-eyed, frantic.
“Sit down.” His heart thrashed and bled into his chest, but he forced himself to stay calm.
Her eyes widened in astonishment. “I’ve just told you I will never marry you, Cam. This is where the conversation ends, not where it begins.” She edged around him and crossed the room to open the door.
Cam’s lips moved, stretched into a humorless smile. “No, Eleanor. It isn’t. We’ve just begun.”
She paused, her hand on the knob.
He gestured toward the settee. “Earlier this evening, in the library, you said you knew everything. You don’t. I thought you might wish to know it, but I’d prefer it if you sit. It’s not the sort of story you should hear while standing.”
She opened the door, gestured for him to leave. “I know enough.”
Cam didn’t move. “You said my motherwas ruined, as if it were a thing that could happen by accident, like falling off a horse, or getting caught in foul weather. It isn’t.”
“What does that mean?” Her voice was strained but patient, as if she were calming a hysterical child.
But Cam wasn’t a child. He hadn’t been a child since he was nine years old, and far from being hysterical, he’d never felt more detached. It was damned odd, since he hadn’t told this story before in his life, to anyone. Even Julian only knew bits and pieces of it. “It means it wasn’t an accident. Someone ruined her. I thought you might like to know who it was.”
Her shoulders went stiff, and an odd expression flitted across her face. “Why should I care to know? It can’t make any difference to me.”
Cam didn’t answer, but held out his hand to her. “Come away from the door, Eleanor.”
She hesitated, but then she closed the door and stepped back into the room. He gestured toward the settee again, and she sat.
He remained standing. “You don’t have the whole of Amelia’s story. Not even close. You know she’s illegitimate, but you didn’t say a word about her father.”
“I assumed he was some aristocrat or other. Your aunt didn’t say so, but who else—”
“Who else but an aristocrat would ruin a grieving widow and then abandon her as soon as he put a child in her belly? Who else, indeed? You’re quite right. He was an aristocrat who cared for nothing but his own gratification.”
He paused, confused at the cold, hard edge in his voice. This wasn’t how he’d meant to tell her, but here was the old ugliness, sucking all the air out of the room.
“Surely you don’t claim an unfamiliarity with self-gratification, Cam?”
Cam caught his breath as pain shot through him, followed by a cold fury. Was that what she thought? That he’d made love to her only to gratify his lust? Damn it, he wasn’t at all like Hart Sutherland. “You went to great lengths to get Amelia’s sordid tale, Eleanor, but you abandoned the chase before you had the choicest bit of gossip. However will you become a competent blackmailer if you give up so easily?”
Eleanor flinched, and shame rose in Cam’s chest at the bitter sarcasm in his voice. He didn’t want to hurt her, but the despair he’d felt as a child was lodged in his throat, and he had to get it out before it choked him.
“My mother was beautiful,” he went on, struggling to stay calm. “Amelia looks like her. She has similar features, and the same fair coloring.”
Eleanor twisted her hands in her lap. “Angelic.”
Angelic, and cursed.
The harsh reply rose to Cam’s lips, but he bit it back. “Yes. Her beauty was out of the common way, and she attracted attention. Even after my father died and she was broken by grief, she was still lovely. Haunted but lovely, maybe even more so than she’d been before, for a certain kind of man, anyway. The kind that preys on vulnerability.”
“Yes, I think I know the kind of man you mean,” she said, not looking at him.
Does she imagine Iam such a man?
Cam’s hands tightened into fists. “My mother was on a ride one afternoon when she was unfortunate enough to catch the attention of the aristocrat in question. He’d been to Aylesbury and was headed back down to London by way of Watford. He saw her out on her horse.”
“And her fate was sealed, because she happened to be in the wrong place, and to stumble across the wrong man.”
Cam dug his fingernails into his clenched palms as another wave of pain and anger swept over him. “Fate is cruel—is that what you mean to say? Crueler to some than others, I think.”
