Julian stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles, but he gazed at her with an intensity that belied his casual posture. “Are you all right, Charlotte?”
Don’t say my name. Don’t be kind to me, because I can’t bear it.
She forced a laugh through stiff lips. “Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?”
He stared at her for a moment, his face hard and tight. “Don’t do that.”
She pressed her back against the seat, but there was no escaping him in the close confines of the carriage, no escape from that gaze that seemed to see right through her fraudulent smile. “I don’t know what you mean.”
His dark eyes bored into her. “Don’t pretend.”
Charlotte made an effort not to flinch in the face of his hard stare. She forced a tinkling laugh through her lips and it rang through the carriage, loud and false. “Why should I pretend? If you think I care what they think of me—”
“I know you do.”
“—a passel of cork-brained chits like that—”
“Stop it, Charlotte.”
“…then you’re very much mistaken—”
Without any warning his hand snaked out. His hard fingers wrapped around her wrist, and he pulled her from her bench onto his with such force she landed on top of him. Before she could think to scramble away, he wrapped his hands around her waist. “Do you think to lie to me? I saw your face when they all turned their backs on you.Damn it,I saw you.”
Oh, God, she couldn’t be this close to him.Her heart gave a panicked thud at the sensation of his thighs under hers, his heat surrounding her. For one wild moment she started to reach up to brush away the silky hair that fell across his forehead, to cup his flushed cheek in her palm. Her gaze dropped involuntarily to his lips, and longing shot through her, so fierce it made her lower belly clench.
“Go on. Lie to me, Charlotte.” His low voice rasped against her nerve endings, his ragged breath hot against her cheek. “Tell me you feel nothing. Tell me nothing matters to you.”
Charlotte stared at him, half panicked, half mesmerized. It was beautiful and awful, the way he pierced through her every defense. The way he made her remember. But she couldn’t afford those memories, and for all her promises to never lie again, she couldn’t afford honesty. Not with him. She tried to pull her imperiousness around her again, tried to hide behind Lady Hadley’s brittle mask, but the most she could manage was one word. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t tell the truth? It’s easier that way, isn’t it, my lady? At first, anyway, until you can no longer tell the difference between the truth and a lie.”
She forced a bitter laugh. “Do you think you know the difference?”
He ran a light, teasing finger down her cheek, but his voice was hard. “You’re about to find out. Do it. Lie to me.”
No more lies. She’d sworn it, and dear God, how easy it would be to trust him, to close her eyes, press her face into his chest, and drown in him.So easy, and so dangerous.“I feel nothing. Nothing matters. I don’t think it ever will again.”
“Never is a long time, my lady.” He brushed his fingertips against her lower lip. “Can you feel this?”
She jerked her head back but his hand followed her. He touched her chin and turned her face up to his. “Ah, I think you do feel it. Tell me, how does it feel? My touch used to matter to you. Does it still?”
“No.” But even as she denied it, her breathlessness gave her away.
His smiled mocked her. “I remember everything about you, Charlotte—the taste of your lips, the way your body feels when you writhe against me, but I don’t remember you being such a liar.”
She jerked her chin from his grasp. “You don’t know anything about me anymore, Julian.”
He laughed softly. “But I do. You might have left your black silk mask at the whorehouse, but you have another one—Lady Hadley, the grand marchioness who cares for nothing and no one, and you’ve been hiding behind it since you arrived in London.”
Charlotte stared at him in horror.
“Cam and Ellie have been asking the wrong question all this time, haven’t they, Charlotte? Instead of asking why you won’t leave London, they should have wondered why they couldn’t find even a trace of Charlotte Sutherland in the Marchioness of Hadley. They should have asked why they no longer recognize you.”
How did he see it, when no one else could?
She pushed hard at his chest, desperate to squirm away from him, but he pulled her tighter against his body. “Do you know what happens when you hide? When you pretend you don’t care for anything, and don’t feel anything? When you act as if you’re cold and selfish, as if nothing matters to you but your own pleasures? People believe it’s the truth, and it makes it easier for them to hurt you.”
She jerked her head from side to side, but she couldn’t meet his eyes. “No, I never—”
