She was frowning now, so different than she had been only moments before, when it seemed that he had made her happy.He realized that he would do anything to fix it.He wanted to know the why.He wanted to know how this man had hurt her, and then he wanted to hunt him down and rip him limb from limb.
“He was a fool and a blackguard.”
She shook her head.“Perhaps a blackguard.I would have married him.But my father…” She swallowed, hard.“He was ruined.He lost everything.He was a wealthy man, but he made a few bad investments, and he was destroyed.He died not long after.His health was wrecked by his misfortune.”
“I am sorry,” he murmured.He’d had no idea that her father had met such an end.
“It was years ago now.Many years.Under the circumstances, my fiancé did not keep the engagement.I couldn’t blame him.What had been a match most appealing for its worldly advantage became anything but.And I wasn’t prize enough on my own, certainly.”
“Then I was correct in my assessment of him.”
Malcolm could not imagine such lunacy.A man had had the opportunity to make this rare and beautiful woman his own—and he had wriggled out of it as if it were an obligation he was happy to shirk.
“I don’t think the world saw it that way.Although they pitied him—and me.”
“Do you regret him?”
He felt unaccountably jealous at the thought.He hated that Scarlett might pine for another.
But she laughed.“No.I can hardly remember him.”
That gratified him.Good.
“I should probably wait outside the chamber,” he said, forcing his thoughts to return to the present moment.“The maid could return.With the doctor.”
“We have time, I think,” she objected.“Don’t go yet.”
Truthfully, he didn’t want to go.
And he had a question for her.“I should go.But I do want to ask you—about one matter.”
“Yes?”She looked up at him, her cheeks still flushed, her eyes open and trusting, and he suddenly wondered how he would ever survive her.
How would he ever let her leave this place and him forever?How would he bear it?
No, he told himself, he couldn’t think of that now.
“You said you wanted me to ruin you,” he began.
“Yes, I did.I do.Still.”
His heart and his cock lurched in tandem.It was too much, he thought frantically, to have to resist.
He had never before in his life had sympathy for his father.And he wouldn’t exactly call the feeling in his breast now sympathy for the wastrel who had been his sire.But he did feel something now, perhaps a bit akin to understanding.Was this how his father had been tempted?Had women kindled in his chestthisfeeling?
But no, he concluded.His father had ruined many women, and he had only ever felt this way for one.For her.
“I don’t understand,” he continued.“When you marry—”
“Oh, I’ll never marry,” she said.“That’s exactly why it doesn’t matter.”
“Why wouldn’t you marry?”
“Who am I going to marry, Malcolm?In London, I am on the shelf.I am already a spinster, merely a chaperone to my sister.I am too old and plain to attract a man for personal reasons—”
“Stop,” he objected.“I will not have you say such falsehoods aloud.”
She smiled up at him.“You are kind.But I say nothing less than the truth.”
