“About Freddy, I think—”
“What about Freddy?” She interrupted him, shocked that of all the things he chose at that moment to speak about, he had chosen to bring up his nephew.
“I should think you would understand that it is time for you to send him off. I only hope you will let him down easy.”
He sounded so cold, collected and formal. He sounded as though he had done a job, and now that job was done, it was time for payment—that payment was to free Freddy. How could he? Did he not know who she was? Had he not realized that she had refused Freddy long ago? Had he not realized she had told Freddy firmly to go back to school? How could he think that after she had lain with him? How could he think she would in any manner have encouraged Freddy to court her? And why hadn’t Freddy told him she had refused him over and over again?
Hurt crept into her heart, and for a moment her mind was filled with fog and mist, as were her eyes.
There had been no affection in his tone, no concern for her and how she might feel at this moment. He knew she had been a virgin, and he was experienced enough to know that she must be, at the very least, taken with him—and here he was, talking of Freddy?
Waves of doubt and pin pricks of hurt flooded through her as she realized that perhaps, just perhaps, he had made love to her to pry her away from his nephew.
“At the moment, I have done nothing to give Freddy hope in my direction and, thus, have nothing to let him down about.”
“Have you not? And yet he hangs on your every word and follows you around like a puppy. Do you mean to tell me he does so without encouragement?” he said in a clipped voice.
She frowned. There it was. The truth staring her in the face. He was suddenly cold, and his tone held condemnation.
“Do you question me?” Her chin was up.
“I am only pointing out the obvious,” he answered sharply.
He had seduced her to pry her away from Freddy.
It was all so clear. Did it matter? Even though she had gone willingly and with her eyes wide open into his arms, it did matter. It mattered a great deal. It was one thing to make love to a woman without making promises; it was quite another
to make love to her for an ulterior motive.
She sat her saddle stiffly. “I have only encouraged one man … and already regret it.” She turned her horse away from him and, without looking back, took the line fence and rode straight to the stables. He did not follow, and she felt as though her heart had been torn in two. She jumped off her horse, and before her groom was able to reach her and take the reins, she ran for the house, her heart already breaking and the tears racing down her face.
He did not love her.
She had known at the outset that he might not love her, but she had believed he wanted her and that perhaps, just perhaps, that might grow into love.
She had never suspected that he was merely seducing her away from Freddy. How could he think she would accept his nephew’s suit?
How could he think she would pry the boy away from school and a future that was still ahead of him?
He could not know her. And Freddy? Why had he not told his uncle that she had refused his offer of marriage and told him to return to school?
She opened the door and ran past Davis, up the stairs, and to her bed, where she threw herself down with some abandon.
Her sobs were muffled by her pillow, but even so, the squire, who had just been walking down the hall to his own chamber, heard very well.
He frowned, his eyes narrowing, and decided that he needed to do some investigating. Something or someone had hurt his niece.
~ Twelve ~
SERENA TOOK UP the reins of her small curricle and clicked to the single horse pulling it to go forward. She was determined to get his lordship out of her mind. Daniel Pendleton, she told herself wasn’t real. It had all been a dream. She had experienced lovemaking for the first and probably last time in her life, and that was what she had wanted, wasn’t it? Yes, it was.
She turned off Moorely drive onto the main pike, and suddenly there he was, Lord Daniel Pendleton. He immediately maneuvered his horse so that he rode his horse alongside her curricle.
“Stop a moment, and let me tether my horse to the boot,” he said without preamble.
She sat rigidly. “I don’t think so.”
“Why?”