“Eleanor,” he said quietly.
At the sound of her name, she stilled. Her shoulders rose and fell as she inhaled. Slowly she turned. Over the last few minutes, he’d seen her terror and hatred. Now she regarded him like a stranger.
His soul revolted at that idea. They’d shared a bed. He believed that Eleanor Trim was the other half of his soul. God grant him the eloquence to convince her to give him another chance.
“I don’t care if you hurt me,” she said coldly.
His temper, barely controlled, fueled by worry and sleeplessness, sparked anew. “Hells bells, do you really think I would?”
Her face remained a beautiful mask. Since she’d deserted him, he’d hungered for the sight of her. But her stony expression made him want to break something. “I don’t know anything about you.”
“Yes, you do,” he barked before his tone lowered to acid derision. “And surely you credit me with the intelligence not to murder you with a house full of witnesses.”
“You’re angry enough.” Contempt dripped from her words. “And desperate enough. I mean to bring you down, my lord.”
She’d already brought him down, did she but know it. Mere weeks in Eleanor Trim’s company and his life was bedlam. “I still won’t hurt you.”
She tilted her chin. “That would sound more convincing if you weren’t trampling me.”
Shocked, he realized that in his rage, he crowded her. She pressed against the door to avoid contact with his vile self. The urge to grab her and kiss her until she forgot this nonsense surged, but he beat it back. He glanced down at his fisted hands. No wonder Eleanor was frightened.
While she seemed certain that nothing between them had been true, he remained sure of her. He’d always been sure of her obstinacy. A disconcerting quality in a housemaid. In a woman who set herself up as his enemy, it was dangerous. He stared into her eyes, eyes that had once been full of sweet passion, and saw fear and anger and courage.
The courage reminded him why she was worth every effort. Why he’d allow her more leeway than anyone else. He stepped back, uncurled his fingers, and spread his hands. “I’m sorry.”
She frowned as though his apology made no sense. He bit back another snarl as he realized that she hadn’t expected him to act like a civilized man, but like the cur she believed him. So far, he wasn’t doing much to refute that opinion. Sighing he gestured for her to move into the room. “Please sit down. We need to talk.”
She didn’t budge. “No, we don’t.”
If his life wasn’t spinning completely out of control, he’d smile at that stalwart response. He pointed toward the chairs near the fire. “Please.”
Eventually she pushed away from the door and edged across to the hearth. With a pang, he noticed what a wide berth she gave him. He noticed something else. “Where did you get that dress?”
“It’s Lady Hillbrook’s.” The exasperated glance she shot him as she perched on a chair was a painful reminder of their former ease with each other. “My clothes are still at the cottage.”
“Whose fault is that?” he snapped, following with deliberate slowness so that she wouldn’t feel pursued. Although he stalked her now as carefully as a starving tiger stalked a stray goat.
“Yours.” She sat rigidly and folded her hands in her lap.
The dark blue dress brought out the satiny whiteness of her skin and the pale splendor of her hair, caught up in a more elaborate style than usual. She looked like a great lady. How he wished that his mother could see her. He wasn’t entirely delighted with her finery. When Miss Trim had flitted about his house in her puritanical dresses, he’d lived under the happy illusion that he alone had noted her beauty. She’d been his private treasure. Anyone seeing her now would be rightly dazzled.
There was a chair close to hers. Now that the shock of seeing her passed, he was able to consider strategy. With a completely assumed nonchalance, he took the seat on the opposite side of the fire. “You lied to me. There’s no Lady Bascombe. No Willow House.”
She frowned as if struggling to remember. “I needed references to work for you.”
“So you wrote them yourself?”
The frown deepened. The accusation of dishonesty troubled her. “I hated lying to your mother.”
She didn’t say that she’d hated lying to him. He had so far to go before she’d give him a chance. For a man who spent his life coaxing people in directions they didn’t want to take, he was depressingly unsure whether he’d win her over. “She doesn’t know you did.”
“She will.”
Yes, bugger it. If Eleanor’s plot succeeded and those infernal letters became public, his mother would indeed know that she’d fostered a traitor. “Sedgemoor told me everything. I know why you joined my household. You wanted proof of my crimes.”
“I found it,” she muttered, looking down at hands clasped so tightly in her lap that the knuckles shone white.
He ignored that. “Finally I understand so many things. Not least your night wanderings and why I found you in my bedroom.”
She’d been worryingly pale, but now pink colored her cheeks. “I nearly died when you came in.”
Bitterness edged his tone. “I’m sure.”
Eleanor cast him a searching glance. “I thought that you’d be furious.”
“You also thought that you’d be far away and safe from retribution,” he said in that same grim voice. “Under bloody Sedgemoor’s protection.”
Her eyes widened. “Not in… that way.”
He almost smiled. “No, not in that way. Sedgemoor’s notoriously devoted to his wife.”
“I’d heard you were enemies. I thought he’d welcome the chance to destroy you.”
Leath arched his eyebrows, beating back barely contained outrage. How could she range herself against him like this? “When you’re basing a fiendish plot on gossip, you should make sure it’s up to date, my dear.”
She glared. “Don’t call me that.”
For all her composure, she was no closer to relenting. His voice lowered, although he could barely hide his hurt disbelief. “You came to my house, convinced I’d defiled women up and down the country. You inveigled yourself into my mother’s life, my life, under false pretenses.”
A hunted expression entered her eyes. “Given your sins, deceit is justified.”
“What about your kisses? Were they justified?”
She flinched so violently that her back slammed into the chair. “You can’t—”
“Can’t what?” He couldn’t restrain his anguish. “Can’t remind you that two nights ago, you lay in my arms?”
She raised a shaking hand to cover her face. He wondered if she hid from her seducer or from the truth inside herself. “Don’t.”
“Why did you give yourself to me?”
She lowered her hand to reveal eyes dull with misery. “Because I’m foolish and weak, and I convinced myself that you weren’t the man I knew you to be.”
“Or perhaps you discovered that you were mistaken about me in the beginning.”
She winced. “Those letters show the truth. You behave as if I’ve wronged you, when your misdeeds reach to the sky.”
“I’m sorry about your sister.”
“You should be sorry,” she retorted, cutting as a whip. “You killed her.”
He rose, fruitlessly wishing he could ease her grief. “No wonder you hated me.”
She stumbled to her feet and glared at him. “Don’t pretend this is news to you. Dorothy’s in your diary, the one that man Greengrass has. I know you were in Kent when she was ruined.”
“I—” He stopped. “Good Lord, so I was that summer. I was at a strategy meeting at Penshurst.”
Triumph lit her eyes as though she’d landed the winning blow. “You used my sister, then abandoned her to disgrace. When she told you she carried your child, you mocked her with foul details of the other women you’d despoiled.”
He felt sick. “Does that sound like something I’d do?”
She stood trembling behind the chair, hands digging into the leather back. “I don’t know you well enough to say.”
“Yes, you do.” His attention remained unwavering. “So you think that having ruined your half-sister, I ruined you too?”
He couldn’t mistake her shame. “Of course.”
Like an acid tide, rancor rose. “Well, at least I didn’t boast of prior conquests.”
“I found the letters before you could,” she said stubbornly.
He wanted to seize those slender shoulders and shake sense into her. He wanted to fold her in his arms and soothe away her wretchedness. “Ah, the letters.”
“They prove Dorothy’s accusations.” Her tone sliced like razors. “They prove I’m your dupe.”
Impatiently he sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “They prove someone using my name ruined your sister and those other women.”
Her eyes flashed. “I can’t blame you for trying to play me for an idiot. After all, even knowing what I did, I fell into your bed.”
He cast her an annoyed glance. “Doesn’t that strike you as significant?”
Her hands clenched against the leather. “Don’t taunt me.”
He stepped closer. “Eleanor, my uncle seduced those women under my name. I’ve been trying to compensate his victims. I had those letters because I was afraid that they’d fall into the wrong hands and be misinterpreted.” He sighed again. “And that’s just what happened.”
She snarled and backed away. “A likely story. Far more believable that my half-sister accused her betrayer as she died. There’s only one name in those letters, my lord. One man receiving blackmail demands.”
Defeat’s cold breath chilled his neck. She sounded so immovable. “Eleanor…”
She made a slashing gesture with one hand. “I told you not to call me that.”
He loved her strength so much, even when she turned it against him. “What shall I call you? My darling, my sweetheart, my lover?”
“Your victim,” she bit out, but she poised quivering a few feet away and he knew she listened.
“I could swear that everything you believe is false, but it’s only words,” he said slowly. He drew himself to his full height and faced her the way he’d face a hanging. “Remember everything you know about me. Remember what we shared. Remember, damn it, that I haven’t looked at another woman since I met you. Then tell me I’m the philanderer you describe.”
Something that looked like fear crossed her face and she faltered back. “You’re such a liar.”
Feeling like he set his heart out for her to stamp upon, he remained where he was. “I’ve never lied to you.” He paused. “While you’ve lied from the beginning.”
Her color had long since faded. She looked as pale as the wraith his superstitious servants had once thought her. “I won’t listen. You twist everything.”
He willed her to relent. “Yet even believing what you did, you shared my bed.”
“Because I’m a fool.”
“Because in your heart you know I didn’t seduce your sister.”
“I need to follow my head, not my heart.”
Recognizing this as his last chance, he spread his hands in appeal. He had no confidence that he’d prevail. “Think, Eleanor, think. Think of everything you know about me, and tell me that I could commit these crimes. Tell me that you could give yourself to such a man.”
She regarded him with glassy eyes, myriad expressions flickering across her face. Some he could read. Rage and disgust, certainly. Shame. Guilt. Determination.
Despairingly he reached out, then realized that his touch was the last thing she wanted. In a low voice, he made one last plea. “Trust me, beloved.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Helplessly Nell stared into Leath’s face. He shredded her heart into bloody gobbets. He looked so hurt. He looked so sincere. He looked as if her merest word could devastate him. Yet how could a humble creature like Eleanor Trim hold such power over this great lord?
She’d imagined when she found those letters that he’d never again be a danger to her. But her love, she discovered, was tenacious. And stupid.
Her love insisted that he hadn’t lied. Her love urged her to fling herself into his arms and beg him to forgive her for doubting him.
That same stupid, immovable love made her ache to assuage his exhaustion and unhappiness. If he’d been home to receive Sedgemoor’s message, he must have ridden all those miles from the cottage to Alloway Chase the same day she’d left. Then he must have turned around and headed for Fentonwyck. The timing made no sense otherwise. Was he so eager to see her? Or eager to stop her revealing what she knew?
Everything, everything had two conflicting sides. Nell felt ripped apart. Either the marquess was the good man she’d once thought. Or his transgressions condemned him to the lowest circle of hell.
Right now, looking into his strained features, she could almost believe him. Except that the man who had seduced those women must have been a convincing liar.
His story was plausible. Lord Neville Fairbrother had irrefutably been a villain. Was the nephew another rotten apple from the same tree? After tumbling headlong in love with Leath, she knew his ability to charm the most virtuous woman.
“Eleanor?” Her name in that resonant baritone contained every beautiful note in the world.
Nell squared her shoulders against a shiver of awareness and tilted her chin, battling to look defiant, when every atom wanted to stop fighting. How she wished he’d never come to Fentonwyck. Hating Leath from a distance was so much easier.
“I can’t…” She tried to sound strong and dismissive, but her voice emerged as a whisper. “I can’t decide now.”
“Yes, you can,” he said implacably, jaw hardening.
“Don’t bully me,” she snapped, welcoming anger. If Leath continued to stare at her with such yearning, she’d burst into tears. And that weakness would invite every other weakness home to roost, including the one that would make her forgive him, whatever he’d done.
Confusion left her dizzy. She shook her head and stumbled toward the door. She could no longer bear to be in the same room as Leath. Wanting him. Loathing him. Verging on trusting him. Not trusting her instincts. This was like wrestling with an enemy in a mirror.
“I can’t let you go.” His desperation scraped across her skin.
“I must,” she said brokenly.
As she passed, he caught her arm. “Do you believe me?”
“Release me.” She meant to demand, but instead she begged. It was so unfair that even now, his touch made her blood churn with desire.
“Do you believe me?” he repeated in an urgent voice that vibrated through her.
He looked pushed to the edge of endurance. Two days ago, before she’d found the letters, she’d have followed her heart. But those letters hadn’t only destroyed her certainty in him, but also her certainty in herself. How could she be sure that desire didn’t fool her into seeing honesty and need—and something that looked like love, God save her—in his silvery eyes? How could she be sure of anything, now that the Marquess of Leath proved false?
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
She jerked without breaking away. “Stop saying that. My sister died speaking your name.”
“But without my child in her belly,” he said harshly.
“How can I believe you?”
She saw his expression change to anger and purpose—and flaring passion. A snarl bared straight white teeth. “Perhaps this will convince you.”
Fear engulfed her like a rush of icy water and she parted her lips to call for Sedgemoor’s footman. But before she could make a sound—at least so she told herself as she hung from his grip—Leath’s mouth crashed into hers.
The kiss was all about dominance. She felt none of the heartbreaking tenderness, familiar from the cottage. She should be glad. That tenderness had been a lie.
Although even now, she had diffic
ulty believing that.
She kept her lips closed as his physical reality enveloped her. Heat and musk, overlaid with horses and sandalwood. With a muffled groan that vibrated on her lips, he wrenched her closer until she sprawled against him, too aware of every muscled inch.
She tried to force a gap between them, but against his implacable hold, she had no hope. The last time she’d been in his arms, they’d shared a joy that she refused to recall, because events since had tainted it so fatally. The last time she’d been in his arms, he hadn’t needed to fight to keep her. She’d been avid to stay—and she still couldn’t forgive herself.
He raised his head and stared down impatiently. “Kiss me, Eleanor.”
“Your kisses are lies,” she hissed, straining uselessly in his embrace. She’d always known how strong he was, but only now, when he used that strength against her, did she realize how gentle he’d been.
Her fear—and wicked excitement—sparked higher when his eyes narrowed in rage. “Then let me lie some more, my dear.”
She was mortified how easily he restrained her with one arm. He caught her chin and tilted her face. His grip was hard without bruising. She resented that he retained such control when his nearness ate at her willpower like rust at metal. “You’re contemptible,” she spat.
The smile curving his lips was wolfish. He knew how she struggled against giving in. “Let me prove it.”
Nell’s panic mounted to titanic heights. Not panic that he’d hurt her. Despite her silly fidgets earlier, he wouldn’t crush her rebellion with violence. No, he’d crush her with pleasure. And with the aid of the enemy inside Nell, the woman greedy for his touch.
Ruthlessly he kissed her. “Open for me, damn you,” he muttered.
She flattened her hands on his chest and tried to shove him away. This was like trying to move a mountain with a spoon. A warm, breathing mountain. A mountain that smelled like the promise of heaven.
He nibbled at her lips until she trembled. Still she wouldn’t relent. Even when she was so giddy with need that if he released her, she’d fall.
“Let me go.”
At her hoarse plea, he took advantage to slide his tongue between her lips. The satiny invasion shuddered through her and made her hands curl into his coat until she held him instead of pushing him away. He kissed her until she clung without any show of reluctance. If his touch could vanquish her like this, could he be the evil man she believed him? Could he deceive her so profoundly?
A Scoundrel by Moonlight Page 23