Grimacing, she drew herself up. “I uh—just happened to pass by and—” she waved a hand, “it occurred to me, well—the truth being—” Her shoulders slumped. “I suppose you just caught me in the act of breaking into your strongbox.”
There was a silence so terrible that Evie cautiously lifted her eyes.
His face was still and pale, and a muscle jumped in his cheek. There was something disquieting in his eyes that made her look away, quickly.
Her brain raced, furiously, to seek some sort of excuse that would make sense, something, anything at all, but all she came up with was a resolute blank. The truth was that there was nothing at all she could say that would alleviate this situation.
“I trust you found what you were looking for?” His voice had an edge of steel that made her shudder.
Evie lifted the watercolour sheet. “Just this.”
He stared at it for one moment, then took it, placed it back into the strongbox, closed it, and snapped the portrait back into place.
Then he returned to the door and held it open for her, waiting for her.
As Evie walked past him, she avoided looking into his face.
He held out a chair for her and motioned her to sit.
Evie sat, clutching at her skirt. He sat in the chair across from her. A quick look up told her that his face was hard.
After another painful pause, he finally spoke. “When we had the conversation with Metternich the other day, I did not dream that you would be dancing to his pipe so willingly. Nor so promptly.”
Ah. So he thought she was spying for Metternich. Of course. Maybe the best course of action was to go along with his assumption, since she could hardly tell him the truth that she was spying for the Widows.
She licked her lips. “Well, my reasoning was that if I gave him something right away, he wouldbe satisfied and leave me alone. Contrary to what you may think, I am not much into this spy business after all, as I see no sense in it. But he wouldn’t leave me alone.”
He still stared at her, poker-faced, which left her squirming rather uncomfortably in her chair. It occurred to her that he was furious, and when he got furious he got terrifyingly quiet, and that was rather more alarming than if he had shouted at her.
“A-are you angry now?” she blurted out. “O-of course you are.” She cleared her throat when he continued to be silent. “I wish you would just go ahead and yell at me. I know what I have done is a breach of trust.” She twisted her moist hands into the fabric of her dress.
“Then why do it?”
She knew what he was asking. Once trust was broken it was broken and gone for good.
“I, um, was just nosing about and I know I should not have. One thing led to the next and then I saw that watercolour…” Her voice petered out. She cleared her throat. “I did not know you’d kept it.”
“It is none of your business what I keep and do not keep.”
Of course it was not.
“How did you manage to open the chest?”
She told him about the trick with the hairpin.
His face darkened. “If you were looking for more substantial intelligence, you would not have found it here.”
That she already knew.
“It is a disappointment, Lady Evangeline. I believed I could trust you.” A pause, in which she felt the full weight of it. “I see now that my first impression of you was the correct one. At heart you are precisely what you appear: a pretty ornament, decorative and diverting, and entirelyfalse. Since the moment we met, you have lied, dissembled and deceived me at every turn. I was fool enough to think otherwise.”
Evie flinched. Her first impulse was to flare up and tell him how very wrong he was, except…he was right, was he not? She had lied, dissembled and deceived him again and again. She’d given him the worst possible impression of her. What else was he supposed to think of her?
She made herself meet his eyes. “What do you intend to do now? Are you going to dissolve the betrothal?” she whispered, her heart aching at the mere thought.
He studied her for a long moment. “No. This union is too useful for both our families. But I do not make the same mistake twice, Lady Evangeline.” The bite in his voice was precise and cutting as a blade. “I will not trust you again.”
Something in her chest contracted sharply at that, as though a door had been closed and bolted from the other side, with finality.
