She caught at his shoulders with a cry. “Yes… like that… yes—”
Her long legs wrapped about his waist, sucking him deeper in, and he groaned. “By God, sweetheart… you’re… incredible…”
“And you’re definitely… Alexander the Great…”
A laugh tore out of him even as he pounded into her, losing himself, striving to conquer her so thoroughly she would never regret choosing him. And when his release neared, he held it ruthlessly back until he felt her shudder beneath him again, her body straining against him as she cried his name.
Only then did he let himself come, spilling himself inside her, fiercely determined to bind her to him for life, sure they could make a future together despite all his deceptions.
But as he collapsed atop her, drained and sated yet still wanting her, she whispered, “I love you, Alec.”
And he knew he couldn’t lie to her anymore.
Chapter Twenty-five
Beware of scheming Mamas—they will
throw all your plans into disarray.
—Anonymous, A Rake’s Rhetorick
Katherine hadn’t meant to say those words, hadn’t even realized she’d felt them until that moment. But she’d said them, and she didn’t regret it.
Until he drew back to stare at her in clear horror. “You told me you didn’t believe in love.”
She blinked at him, her heart sinking. “I changed my mind.”
“You can’t. You shouldn’t.”
This wasn’t the reaction she’d expected. “Why not?” she whispered, her contentment at their joining slowly draining away.
With a groan, he rolled off her to he on his back staring up at the ceiling that showed through the canopy frame missing a canopy.
Feeling suddenly exposed, she sat up and reached for the extra blanket that lay folded at the foot of the bed, covering them both with it as she turned on her side to look at him. “What is it, Alec? What’s wrong?”
“You can’t love me.” The harsh words pummeled her tender heart. “You must not love me.”
“It’s not something I can turn on or off. It’s how I feel.” She swallowed down the fear rising in her throat. “But if you don’t feel that way—”
“How I feel has nothing to do with it.” He finally looked at her, and she saw a struggle in his eyes. “My God, how you’re going to hate me.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, her fear growing. “How could I hate you when I just said I love you?”
“It won’t be hard, trust me. There’s something I—”
Before he could say more, someone tried the door, then pounded on it.
“Go away!” Alec called out as Katherine tensed up.
“I’m ill!”
When a moment of silence passed, she relaxed… until she heard the lock being turned. Someone had found the key she’d thrust under the door.
Katherine dragged the covers up to her chin just as the door was flung open, and her mother stood there, looking surprisingly fierce.
With a curse, Alec sat up. “Hello, Mrs. Merivale.”
“Don’t you hello me, you… you fiend!”
“He’s not a fiend!” Katherine protested.
Mama’s furious gaze shifted to her daughter as she rounded the bed on Katherine’s side. “You silly fool!” Mama snapped. “For a woman who prides herself on her clever mind, you can be amazingly stupid sometimes.”
Alec glared at her mother. “Don’t blame her for this— it’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”
“Believe me, I know it,” Mama retorted. “You made sure she had to marry you, didn’t you? She might still have caught Sir Sydney, but you had to ruin her, you… you devil!”
Katherine grew more confused by the moment. Why was Mama bent on Sydney all of a sudden? She sat up, dragging the cover tightly about her breasts. “I want to marry Alec, Mama. You know that. We were going to marry in a day or two anyway, so I don’t see why you’re so angry.”
“You don’t see— My word, how can you be so blind?” Her mother hadn’t looked this furious since she’d caught Papa in the stables with one of the dairy maids. “If I’d thought you would be up here with him doing this… I swear I would never have left you alone with him for one minute.”
“Oh, please,” Katherine said with a snort, “you’ve been trying to arrange my doing this ever since we met the man.”
“Not after we got here, and I realized he must be a fortune hunter.”
“Don’t be silly, Alec isn’t a—” She broke off, realizing that he wasn’t leaping to defend himself. She turned to look at him, her blood chilling as she saw the alarm in his face. “Tell her, Alec. Tell her you didn’t know about my fortune.”
“I can explain, Katherine—”
“He has no money, and you expect a fortune upon your marriage,” her mother interrupted. “Do you think that’s just coincidence?”
“Perhaps,” she whispered, though she began to see her mother’s point. Especially when Alec was looking at her with such dread. “But you said you didn’t tell anyone, Mama. So how could he have found out?”
“Oh, I don’t know, girl,” her mother said impatiently. “Perhaps he spoke to your father’s solicitor or one of his creditors or—”
“Mr. Byrne.” As the light dawned, Katherine’s heart sank. She remembered when Alec had spoken privately to Mr. Byrne in the hall—could the man have explained then?
“Yes!” her mother cried. “Come to think of it, that night we were at Lady Jenner’s ball, I saw him speaking to the man. I assumed it was one of those conversations gentlemen have about cricket and war and nonsense.”
“You knew him even then?” Katherine asked Alec. This grew worse and worse. If Alec had known Mr. Byrne from the night he’d first met her— “You knew him even before you met him at our house and pretended not to know him?”
He winced. “Yes.”
She thought she might be sick. All of his sweet words and courting had been for money? Her money?
“So… so you and Mr. Byrne plotted this from the beginning? Oh, of course you did.” And she was every bit the fool Mama said. “He wanted his money; you needed a fortune. It was an alliance made in heaven.”
“It wasn’t like that,” he protested.
“Oh?” Her hopes crumbled around her more with his every word. “You didn’t court me for my fortune?”
“No! Not exactly. It was a factor, but—”
“I thought so,” she whispered.
Dragging the blanket off him, she wrapped it around her and started to leave the bed, but he rose up on his knees, thoroughly naked, to catch her by the arm.
“Wait—”he began.
Mama’s shriek cut him off. “My lord, please!” she protested as she covered her eyes.
He shot her a baleful glance. “Get out. I wish to speak to your daughter alone.”
“Now see here—” Mama began, peeking at him from between her fingers.
“Out! Now! Or I swear I’ll throw you out myself!”
“I’m going, I’m going.” Mama’s face was a mottled shade of red, though Katherine noticed she took one last glance at Alec naked before she vanished.
A hysterical laugh boiled out of her. Leave it to Mama to notice that about him, when she’d ignored the rest for so long.
She herself should have paid better attention. How blind she’d been. She’d guessed he was deceiving her, but she’d been so busy worrying about his fidelity that she hadn’t considered any other reason for deception.
But now certain things came back to her—his gifts, the private box at Astley’s, and the nice carriage, probably rented. He’d had no reason to pretend to be rich… except that he had to allay her suspicions. Because he knew she had a fortune, and he didn’t want her to know he knew.
Oh, Lord, how would she bear it? This wasn’t Sydney, whom she’d only thought she loved. This was Alec, her Alec. A fortune hunter, a deceiver, a man with no heart.
Tears sprang to her e
yes, and she dashed them away. I should brain him with the sculpture again, curse him.
“Katherine—” he began.
“Why me?”
“What?”
As she gripped the blanket to her chest, she slid off the bed and turned to him, choking down the lump of raw hurt in her throat. “Why choose me? Surely there were other prettier heiresses.”
His eyes blazed. “I wanted you. When I first saw you—”
“You thought, ‘I can learn to tolerate the red hair and the lack of curves as long as she has a fortune.’ ”
“Blast it, it wasn’t like that!” he roared as he slid off the bed after her. “Yes, Byrne suggested you, and yes, I needed your fortune, but it was your conversation with Sydney that made me want you. You were so… so…”
“Pathetic?” she whispered, mortified to the depths of her soul.
“Intriguing,” he said fiercely. “Passionate and interesting and… full of life. I liked that you spoke your mind, that you were clever enough to see past Lovelace’s evasions, that you were real when no one else in society was—”
“Especially you.”
Pain slashed over his face. “Please believe me, sweetheart. Except for lying about knowing Byrne and deceiving you about my financial situation and my knowledge of your fortune, I did my best not to lie to you about anything else. The rest of it was the absolute truth. I wanted you from the moment I saw you.”
“You wanted my fortune.”
“I wanted you. I needed the fortune. It’s not the same thing.”
“How can you separate them?”
“Don’t you understand? I had no choice—” he began, reaching out to grab her arm.
She snatched it free with a hiss. “Don’t touch me! Don’t you ever touch me again!”
He looked stricken. “That will be difficult once we’re married.”
She gaped at him. “You still expect us to marry? You took a harder blow to the head than I realized if you actually think I’d marry you now.”
“Be sensible.” He left the bed to jerk on his drawers. “You’ve been compromised, and you need the money as much as I do. I know you’re upset, but in time—”
“You don’t know a blessed thing about me if you think I’d live one day with you after this.”
A cold stillness came over him as he faced her. “You don’t mean that.”
“I most certainly do.”
“But what about your father’s debts, what about—”
“I don’t care about all that, don’t you see? I’d rather rot in debtors’ prison than stay with a man who made me think he cared for me when he only wanted…” She broke off with a sob and turned away, not wanting him to see her tears. Shaking with the effort to restrain them, she dragged on her chemise, then picked up her gown.
“Please, sweetheart, I do care,” he said hoarsely. She felt him come up behind her, but when he slid his arms around her waist, she shoved them away.
“I know you can’t believe this now,” he went on in a rough whisper, “but I meant what I said about not being able to imagine anyone else as my wife. I wanted you from the day we met. And I swear I’ll make this up to you for the rest of our marriage, if that’s what it takes.”
“We are not getting married!” She whirled on him, her anger so intense that just the sight of his handsome face notched it higher. “And your promises and… and lies won’t work on me this time.” Yanking her gown on, she fumbled with its fastenings. “You can forget about any marriage between us.”
“You can’t just throw away what we have together,” he choked out.
The stark pain in his face gave her pause. But she knew better now than to believe anything he said. “And what exactly do we have?” Hastily, she slid on her shoes. “A collection of lies and deceptions, that’s all.”
“Katherine, I never meant to hurt you so badly.”
His look of remorse only fired her temper higher. “No, you thought we would marry, and you would jolly me out of my anger with your seductions if I ever discovered what you and Byrne had plotted.” When his guilty look told her she’d hit it right on the mark, she went on more coldly, “What a pity for you that you weren’t alone in wanting my fortune. But at least Mama is honest about what she wants.”
He stiffened. “So what do you mean to do? Marry Sydney? Who didn’t fight for you, whose mother disapproves of you, who—”
“I don’t know what I’ll do,” she snapped to stave off the cruel flow of his words. “But I’d rather make one of those awful marriages of convenience with an honest fortune hunter than marry a man like you.”
His eyes turned deadly cold. “You mean a man who would do what he must to restore his estate, protect his tenants, and save his servants from poverty?”
She forced herself to ignore that very valid point. “You didn’t have to lie to me about it. You should have told me you needed to marry a fortune—”
“And then you would have leaped eagerly into my arms?” he growled. “You, who won’t trust any man because of your blasted father?”
“That’s not true! I trusted Sydney—”
“Because he never got close enough to make you not trust him. You could always keep him at arm’s distance. You liked him precisely because you knew he would never hurt you. But he wouldn’t move you or challenge you or—”
“Leave Sydney out of this!” she cried, hating that he knew her so well.
“Why? He’s your idea of the perfect man, isn’t he? God forbid you should risk your heart on a man who breaks your blasted rules about how a courtship should run and what a husband must be.”
“Don’t you dare give me all that nonsense about how wonderful it is to break the rules and how dreary my life is because I follow them.” She gave up on buttoning her gown and crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t mind your breaking the rules. I even admire you for it sometimes.”
She choked back the tears burning in her throat. “But breaking rules is one thing, and breaking hearts is quite another. You broke my heart to get what you wanted, and for that I can’t forgive you.”
The fight seemed to drain out of him. “I went about this all wrong,” he admitted in a low voice. “But I thought it was the best way to handle it. My parents married because of Mother’s money, and they never had a real marriage because that always stood between them. I thought that if you and I got to know each other first, then once you found out—”
“It wouldn’t matter? I wouldn’t be hurt? Don’t you understand? How can I ever separate the things you said to win me, from the things you said to win my fortune? I doubt even you can do it. And that’s nothing to base a marriage on.”
“Then what about basing it on love?” he bit out. “You said you loved me.”
“That was when I thought I knew who you were. But I didn’t know anything about you at all.”
She turned toward the door, but he was at her side in seconds, grabbing her arm to stay her. “I won’t let you do this,” he said fiercely. “You agreed to marry me, and I’ll hold you to it. I won’t let you simply walk out of my life, blast it.”
She glanced up into the face she still found dearer than any other, knowing that what she felt didn’t change her decision one whit. “Do as you please. Tell the world I shared your bed. Bring suit against me for breach of contract, so you can gain some of the fortune you need. But you’ll never, ever, get me to marry you.”
This time, when she wrenched free of him, he let her go. But the shocked expression on his face haunted her as she strode out into the hall.
That last glimpse of his face tortured her even as she dealt with Mama’s protests that they couldn’t leave, that Katherine had to marry the earl. And even after Mama had helped her finish dressing, and Katherine had convinced her to leave Edenmore, Alec’s wounded gaze lingered in her memory as they were driving away in the carriage.
Especially after she made the mistake of taking one last look toward Edenmore as they thundered up the driv
e after dusk. For she could plainly see, through one of the upstairs windows, Alec watching them leave.
Without making any other protest.
Without storming after them on Beleza.
He was letting her go, after all. And that made her want to cry all the more.
Because a tiny part of her had wanted to believe he really did desire her, not her fortune. That he truly couldn’t live without her. How stupid was that?
“You were a fool to let him bed you,” her mother snapped, “but now that you have, you should certainly marry him.”
“You have no say in this, Mama.” She faced her mother with a grim look. “You have no say in my marital plans from now on. If you want to see any of Grandfather’s fortune, you’ll leave me to settle my affairs exactly as I please.”
Her mother gaped at her. “B-But, my angel—”
“I’m through with letting you push me toward the men you think are best, whining about your life until I feel guilty enough to obey. You want that money? Fine. Let me make my own decisions about marriage, and stay out of it. Or I swear I’ll give the entire amount to charity the minute it’s mine.”
When her mother blinked, then closed her mouth with a sullen sniff, Katherine felt a surge of triumph. She should have put her foot down long ago instead of seeking to escape her misery through Sydney, then Alec.
Alec had been right about one thing—it was her life, and she should be the one to decide how it should go. Family obligation should only go so far, especially when her family had made a hash of things long before she’d come along.
The way Alec’s had.
Ruthlessly, she thrust that thought aside. She would not feel sympathy for that beast—she absolutely would not. He should have told her the truth instead of trying to pull the wool over her eyes until they married.
And then you would have leaped eagerly into my arms? You, who won’t trust any man because of your blasted father?
She swallowed. If he had told her, would she have listened? Or would she have sent him packing?
She let out a sob. It didn’t matter. He should have picked a woman who would have been glad to have an earl marry her for her fortune, instead of trying to deceive her to gain the same aim. Why didn’t he?
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