The knot in her belly tightened even more. No, she wasn’t going to think about that. It hurt too much, even after so much time had gone by.
“Wait a minute,” Mama said. “Isn’t Malet also the name of that fellow who tried to kidnap Heywood’s wife and her cousin at Christmas?”
“Yes,” she said blandly. “Turns out he’s actually the same fellow.”
“Well, if anything proves he was a scoundrel from the beginning, that does.” Mama breathed deeply. “Now that you’ve both finished your ices, we should probably head home, don’t you think? You may wish to rest before attending the opera this evening.”
“We’re attending the opera?” Joshua asked, looking as if someone had just threatened to kill the hunting dogs at Armitage Hall.
“You don’t have to go,” Mama said. “I’m sure Grey wouldn’t mind accompanying Gwyn. I daresay Eliza would be grateful for any night she doesn’t have to chaperone.”
“Does Grey enjoy the opera?” Joshua asked skeptically.
“Who doesn’t enjoy the opera?” Mama said.
Joshua snorted. “Beatrice told me that the only thing she dislikes about London is the opera. And from what I understand, Grey doesn’t enjoy going anywhere in society unless my sister goes with him.”
“Yes, those two are still madly in love,” Gwyn said, trying to squelch her envy of that. “To be honest, Mama, I may not be up to going either.” It depended on her talk with Joshua. “Although I do have the most fetching opera gown . . .”
Joshua stared at her. “You would go to the opera to wear a new gown?”
“Of course not.” She forced a lightness into her voice that she didn’t feel. “I would go to the opera to be seen wearing my new gown.”
When that got a laugh from him, the knot in her stomach loosened a bit, for the first time all day. If she could still make him laugh, he might not be too angry with her.
Though it wasn’t his anger she dreaded. It was his contempt for her as an unchaste woman. Not that she thought she deserved it, but if he turned out to be the sort of fellow who believed that she did, she didn’t know how she would bear it.
Mama rose and took their bowls, then handed them to the footman with a request that he also fetch them a hackney coach. As the footman hurried across the road, Mama said, “I hope you don’t mind, but I do not relish the walk back. You’re welcome to walk, however, with the footman.”
“We’ll ride with you, Mama,” Gwyn said. Because if she and Joshua walked back, he would wish to talk, and she didn’t want to talk about Lionel in public.
As Mama nodded, then headed toward the street, Joshua offered Gwyn his arm, and she took it. He slowed his pace so that they fell a bit behind Mama. She knew it was deliberate, because even with his bad leg, he seemed able to keep up with them most of the time.
“Do you know that suite of rooms on the third floor that is closed up just now?” he murmured.
“The Tapestry Suite?” she asked.
“Is that what it’s called?”
“Given that every wall has a tapestry? Yes.”
He cast her a searching glance. “We need to talk. Privately. That seems as good a place as any. Meet me up there as soon as you can get away from your mother when we arrive back at Armitage House.”
“Very well.”
Her stomach sank. Now came the reckoning. He had sort of offered marriage, but that had just been his way to shut Lionel up. Still, after everything the two of them had done together, she supposed he might actually want . . .
She sighed. She had no idea what to expect from him. She would simply have to brace herself for whatever it was.
Though if he condemned her for her past, she wasn’t sure she could ever forgive him.
Chapter Seventeen
As Joshua paced the drugget-covered carpet of the Tapestry Suite’s bedchamber, the largest of the rooms, he began to wonder if Gwyn would actually come. He’d been waiting quite a while, and the longer he waited, the more questions he had. And the angrier he grew.
She’d repeatedly lied to him about Malet. And considering that her brother had paid the arse off ten years ago, Thornstock had lied to him as well, both about her prior connection to Malet and the nature of the threat he posed to Gwyn.
How much did Thornstock know about her past with Malet anyway? For that matter, could Joshua even believe what Malet had accused her of?
He had to. Otherwise, Malet had no reason to blackmail her.
“I’m sorry it took me so long.” Gwyn walked in and closed the door behind her, then locked it, to his surprise. “I had a difficult time getting rid of Mama. She finally went up to take a nap, after I refused to talk about . . . us.”
“Why refuse?”
“She was hoping we might marry,” Gwyn said bluntly. “But don’t worry. I squelched that idea.”
Damnation. Part of him had begun to hope that himself. Which just showed what a fool he was. “You mean, because you would never wed me.”
“Don’t be silly. If things were different—” A weary sigh escaped her. “But they’re not. And I’m not daft enough to hold you to the promise—threat—you made to Lionel: that if he sought to ruin me publicly, you’d save my reputation by marrying me. For one thing, I know you were just trying to protect me. For another, you deserve to have the sort of wife you actually want.”
That caught him entirely off guard. “What sort of wife would that be?”
“You know,” she said with a vague wave of her hand, “a wife above reproach, who doesn’t . . . have a checkered past.”
“Yes,” he said sarcastically, “because I’m so far above reproach myself that I must needs have a wife who is equally so. Never mind that I can’t walk properly, that I jump at loud noises, that I have trouble controlling my temper . . . That I nearly beat a man to death in a fit of anger earlier today.”
“On my behalf!” When he lifted a brow, she walked over to stare blindly out the room’s one window. “Don’t think I’m unaware of why you were so angry at him. You realized I was . . . not the chaste innocent you’d assumed, and you blamed it on Lionel.” Her back was as straight as a ramrod. “And to a certain extent, on me.”
“What? That wasn’t why I was angry, for God’s sake. It was because Malet was threatening you, trying to line his pockets by holding your past association with him over your head. Any man who does that isn’t worth the ground he slithers on.”
Her breathing grew ragged, as if she were on the verge of tears, and she still wouldn’t look at him. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly. The bastard took advantage of you in your youth, was paid off by your brother to put an end to it, and then tried to come back and take advantage of you all over again in a different fashion.” He approached her. “He’s the sort who preys on women. Heywood told me that much. And hearing how he acted with you, how he’s acting now, merely confirmed it.”
Her gaze swung to him, so dark and uncertain that seeing it cut him to the bone. “You seem to be operating under the assumption that he forced me into his bed. But he didn’t. I let him seduce me.”
That gave him pause. But then he realized—“It doesn’t matter. He knew what he was doing. You did not. He had an unequal advantage. Just like—” He caught himself before he revealed Beatrice’s secret about their Uncle Armie. “I’ve seen how scoundrels like him work. Hell, if your brother hadn’t married Beatrice, I would have had his head for daring to take advantage of her, duke or no duke. I certainly wouldn’t have blamed her for it.”
Frustration knit her brow. “You still don’t understand. At the time, I genuinely fancied myself in love with Lionel.”
He ignored the pang those words gave him. “I assumed as much. The only thing that matters is whether you fancy yourself in love with him now. And I gather that you don’t.”
She blinked, as if that were a silly remark. “Of course I don’t. Once he took Thorn’s money to leave, his mask was ripped off and I saw him for
what he truly was—the worst sort of blackguard. Although by the time I realized it, he was long gone, leaving me . . . no longer chaste. Indeed, it was some months after his disappearance that I even learned of Thorn’s meddling and what it meant.”
“Is that why you’re still so angry at what Thorn did?”
“Partly.”
When she said nothing about any other reasons, he bit back an oath. It rankled that she still didn’t completely trust him with her secrets, but he could hardly blame her. Malet had taught her not to trust men. In some respects, her twin had taught her that, too.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand about all this,” he said. “When your brother paid Malet off, did he know that the man had seduced you?”
“I doubt it, or he wouldn’t have given Lionel a penny. And even after Lionel mysteriously vanished, I didn’t tell Thorn, for fear he would challenge Lionel to a duel upon his return. You see, I didn’t realize that Lionel was gone for good. I–I thought he’d been posted elsewhere or—” She shook her head. “I didn’t know what to think, frankly. I just kept waiting for a letter or a visit that didn’t come.”
God, it was worse than Joshua had thought. No wonder she was angry with Thornstock. The duke had left his twin to dangle in the wind. Granted, Thornstock had thought he was doing the right thing, but . . .
“After Thorn revealed everything,” she went on, “which he did only because I was pining away for Lionel, I continued to keep my physical relationship with Lionel secret because I dared not risk Thorn’s hunting Lionel down to duel with him.”
“Thornstock probably would have won, judging from what I’ve heard about his prowess with a dueling pistol.”
“I couldn’t be sure. And though I didn’t want Thorn to die, I was just as worried he might ruin his own life by killing Lionel. After all, not even the stepson of a British ambassador on foreign soil can murder a British soldier with impunity. What’s more, our stepfather wasn’t expected ever to become duke, so—”
“It would also have ruined his future in diplomacy.”
“Exactly.”
Another question occurred to him. “So, does Thornstock still not know that Malet seduced you?”
“He does not. And I prefer to keep it that way.”
Joshua remembered her threatening to turn in both Malet and her brother if Malet initiated a duel. “Then should I assume you also didn’t tell Thornstock about the blackmail?”
She looked at Joshua as if he’d gone mad. “I would have had to tell him the reason for it.”
“And once again, you were worried he’d fight Malet.”
“Yes.”
“So what did you tell him about why Malet was on the estate a week ago?”
“That Lionel had asked me to meet to renew our acquaintance, and I’d gone there in person to make sure he understood I was no longer interested. Then Lionel had attempted to kidnap me.”
Joshua gaped at her. “Your brother believed that ‘balderdash,’ to use your favorite word?”
She nodded. “That’s when he decided I needed a bodyguard.” Interlacing her fingers over her stomach, she smiled faintly. “I think he just felt so . . . guilty over sending Lionel away years ago that he didn’t pry too much into whether I was telling the whole truth.”
Anger swelled up in Joshua again. “That means both you and your brother lied to me about my purpose here. If even one of you had told me the truth about the blackmail—”
“I didn’t tell you because you would have gone straight to Thorn. He’s the one who pays you, after all.” She tipped up her chin. “And Thorn didn’t tell you because he doesn’t trust anyone, even me. Thorn figured it was best for us to focus on what he believed to be true—that Lionel was trying to kidnap me.”
“What about once we got to London? If you’d told us about the blackmail then—”
“You both would have known I’m . . . what Lionel called me.” She straightened her shoulders. “A harlot.”
Joshua snorted. “Neither of us would consider you a harlot.”
“No? Trust me, sometimes Thorn can be quite prudish. And you don’t strike me as the . . . sort of fellow to condone fornication.”
It was beginning to dawn on Joshua what was at the root of all this. And why Malet, clever devil that he was, had stumbled on the one thing she feared most of all, the one thing that had kept her silent. Like the torn ligatures and muscles in Joshua’s leg that still ached after five years, her wound was hidden, and no one except Malet could see it. What was worse, the bastard knew exactly how to press on it to cause her pain.
“You’re afraid to find out what your twin might think about you and Malet.” Joshua walked closer, his heart pounding in his ears. He was on the verge of really understanding her. “You’re afraid to find out what I think. That’s why you’ve chosen the strategy of not telling anyone the truth. Of rejecting me before I can propose marriage. That’s why you’ve drummed up this nonsense about my deserving a different sort of wife.”
“You do.”
“I don’t know what I deserve. But I know what I want.” He stared into her lovely face. “And I’m not stupid enough to base it on anything Malet said. Long before he appeared in our lives, I’d already formed an opinion of you, based on what I’d witnessed of you and your family, what I’d heard about you and your family from Beatrice. I paid attention to every detail, especially about you.”
For a moment, her eyes widened and her features softened. “Did you really? Because you mostly seemed to ignore me.”
“I will concede that. It was my attempt at self-preservation. I could already tell how dangerous you were.”
“Me! I’m not dangerous.”
“You’re more dangerous than you know, at least to my peace of mind. Because although I denied it to myself, I knew you had the capacity to wreak havoc on my carefully manufactured life.”
She stiffened. “How? By exposing you to my harlotry?”
“You are not—” He huffed out a breath. “Are you aware what a major in the Royal Marines does, Gwyn?”
“Fights?”
“Leads men. Not just men, but thousands of men. To get to that position, I had to learn how to assess situations. Strategize. Most importantly, I had to pay attention to the qualities of the soldiers and junior officers under me. I had to know who had proved worthy of their rank, who could best handle a landing party, who was well-versed in the art of war. I had to be a good judge of character, and I was, which is why I was promoted to major so young.”
“Precisely,” she said in a defeated tone of voice. “And why you are considered a hero. It’s also why you deserve a wife who’s above reproach.”
“You mean, a wife who’s not a ‘harlot.’”
She thrust out her chin. “Yes.”
Her stubbornness on the subject was starting to irritate him. “With all my experience at judging people, I should hope to hell I can tell the difference between a woman who was led astray and a ‘harlot.’ Tell me, Gwyn. How many times did you share Malet’s bed?”
“Only once, I’ll have you know!”
It didn’t matter to him, although he was surprised it was only the one time. But he believed her. She looked so adorably outraged that he couldn’t do otherwise.
He wanted to laugh at that, but somehow, he knew she wouldn’t take it well. “And how many other men’s beds have you shared?”
“None. But it’s not really a matter of quantity to men, is it? Or to good society. Once a woman loses her virginity—”
“You’re not a harlot!” He shook his head. “If anything, Malet is the harlot.”
“A man can’t be a harlot, more’s the pity,” she said mutinously.
“I don’t see why not. From what I understand, Malet has bedded plenty of women, and he was paid a great deal of money by your brother after bedding you. If that’s not the definition of a harlot, I don’t know what is.”
“Someone should tell him that.” She crossed her arms over
her chest.
“Take it from me, dearling—if you accept every insult or slur hurled at you, you will spend all your days dodging them. Some people’s opinions aren’t worth worrying over. And yes, I’m still trying to learn that. But I’m doing better.”
“Except in certain situations.”
He gave her a ghost of a smile. “True.”
“The point is, now that you know I’m not the sort of woman you wish to wed—”
“You have no idea what sort of woman I wish to wed.” He strode up to her, and, when she looked as if she would back away, caught her about the waist to pull her close. “I don’t care about Malet or what you did with him. Do you think I’ve been chaste my entire life? I assure you, I have not.”
She glared at him. “It’s different for men, and you know it.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“I do. The world would be a better place if there were more gentlemen in it who treated women as ladies.”
She lifted her hands to his shoulders. “Now you sound like a prude, which I know quite well you are not.”
“Not around you anyway.” When she looked stricken, he added hastily, “And it has naught to do with some secret ‘harlotry’ in your makeup. It has far more to do with the fact that I can’t resist you. I’ve fought hard to do so for the past several months, and all it did was make me want you more.”
She cast him a sad smile. “That’s why you have this mad idea that you must marry me to save me from Lionel. Because your rules as a gentleman dictate that it’s the only way you can make love to me. But it’s not. You don’t have to worry about deflowering me, about ‘ruining’ me. You want me, don’t you?”
Bloody hell, the very idea of having her destroyed his resistance. “Gwyn—”
She placed a finger to his lips. “The only way to satisfy that need is to take me to bed. Here. Now.” She looked behind him. “And, conveniently, there’s already a bed in this room. How clever of you to arrange matters that way.”
“Gwyn—”
The Bachelor Page 17