To Pleasure a Duke (The Husband Hunters Club 3)

She tried to interrupt but he held up his hand.

“Now I find I don’t care after all. You are beneath my contempt, Eugenie. I am glad I discovered what sort of woman you were before we went any further. I have had a lucky escape.”

A blessed wave of anger washed over her.

“A lucky escape? I had no intention of becoming your mistress. I told you so from the beginning but you did not want to hear. You are so used to getting your own way you thought you could force me to your will. But I do not want to be kept like a nasty little secret. I want to share the life of the man I choose, Sinclair. I want to walk at his side and sit at his breakfast table. In short, I want to marry him.”

His lip curled in that way she loathed. “I pity the man you finally trap.”

Eugenie swallowed back more hasty words. This was not the time nor the place, and perhaps there never would be a right moment. But she could apologize, and then at least she may be able to put it behind her.

“The letter was very wrong and I’m sorry for it. Most of it I made up.”

“Most of it?” he growled. “It was a pack of lies from start to finish.”

Her wretched bluntness made her say, “Apart from your mother being so rude to me, that was true. And the way you sneer at those you consider beneath you—unless they can be of use to you, like Jack. And the way you curl your lip when you feel superior. Yes, just like that!” she burst out, as he obliged her.

For a moment he said nothing, his face white, his jaw bunching.

“So it is all right for you to insult me, but I am not allowed to insult you?” he said in a deadly tone. “Miss Eugenie Belmont can splatter her poison about without a thought for the damage she may do. And it is all my fault for curling my lip?”

“That isn’t what I meant at all!” she cried.

“Good-bye, Miss Belmont. Tell your father I have decided against his mare. She is far too tricky for my liking.”

She might have said more but her voice failed her. With a sob, she turned and kicked the mare into a gallop, her curls flying behind her, her skirts tucked up about her bare legs.

Anger was Sinclair’s companion on the way home to Somerton. He had business to attend to, important affairs he’d left to come here and see Eugenie. Luckily his mother had already set out to her friends in the west, but Annabelle wanted him to look at some filly she had her eye on, and he’d promised.

He needed to get himself under control before then.

Although his anger was justifiable, he told himself, it was aimed at himself just as much as Eugenie. Somehow he’d allowed himself to be drawn into her net, to the extent of believing she would be his. He’d even made plans as to where he would install her in London, he realized, with a savage bark of laughter.

How deluded he had been!

He lifted his head and looked up at the sky. Eugenie Belmont was nothing more than a devious, conniving slut who wanted to be a duchess and believed she could inveigle him into setting aside his principles for another taste of her body. Well, he would never marry her. There were plenty of other far more compliant girls out there who would be forever grateful for the chance to be his mistress. He could have any of them.

All of them!

Eugenie rode through the village, almost knocking over the postman’s wife. The woman shook a fist after her, but Eugenie didn’t stop. Everyone thought her a hoyden, even Sinclair. Suddenly their opinions of her seemed justified. She thoroughly deserved their approbation.

For several miles she rode on without easing her pace, and it was only when the tears had dried on her cheeks and her sobs quieted, that she finally stopped. She’d cried herself out but her heart was leaden in her breast.

Eugenie knew she’d learned a lesson she’d never forget. This silly scrape had changed her, made her more aware of her actions and how they might affect herself and others.

She’d been foolish and selfish and she told herself that from now on she would be neither.

Chapter 19

Once again Belmont Hall was in an uproar.

“Send for the doctor!” Mrs. Belmont wailed. “The twins are worse. I told your father it wasn’t a simple fever. The twins can never do anything simple!”

Eugenie put her palm on Benny’s and then on Bertie’s brow. They looked at her with listless eyes and flushed cheeks, lacking their usual mischievous grins.

The doctor, when he arrived, ordered the boys to bed until their fevers had broken, and wrote out a script for the apothecary in Torrisham. “Until we know what it is, I think we should keep the twins away from Jack and any other young children, Mrs. Belmont. Just a precaution. There has been a case of scarlet fever in the village.”

“Scarlet fever! Oh doctor, I don’t think I could bear to lose my dear, dear boys.”