He straightened and moved back slightly, watching her with horrified fascination. “You’re trying to break me, aren’t you?” He spoke through clenched teeth. “You want to destroy my dreams. Otherwise, you’d just leave. Why torment me? I’m tormented enough already.”
Squeezing his eyes shut, he sank suddenly onto his bed and hunched his shoulders, his breathing fast, but controlled as he half turned away.
Hope thought he’d have taken her in his arms by now. Most men would have, especially one who admitted to loving her. Well, to having loved her.
She glanced at the door. If she left now, she’d still have the memory of their lust-crazed lovemaking. Two days ago, he’d been insensible to the fact she was reality, and therefore free to love her without censure. He’d indulged himself like a man in love. Truly in love, so she’d felt at the time.
Now, the circumstances were very different. Excruciatingly so.
“I’ll leave.” She said it decisively, and she meant it. “I didn’t come here to torment you. Go back to Annabelle. That’s her name, isn’t it? She’s pure and untainted, and you can love her without guilt.” Hope was pretty certain she’d summed up the situation correctly when she saw the rigid awareness transmitted through his suddenly stiffened shoulders, though he didn’t speak. Gaining courage, she went on, “Whatever you do with me—or feel about me—will cause you only more torment, and ruin whatever little we shared once. I don’t want that to happen.”
How noble she could sound when she fell so very far short of it. She started walking to the door, the decisive click of her neat kid boots giving substance to her intentions.
“Annabelle?”
She stopped when he spoke the name, but she didn’t turn. “She’s the woman you intend to wed, isn’t she?” Just speaking of it made her heart convulse.
“What do you know of Annabelle?” His voice was barely above a whisper. Hope looked over her shoulder, but he remained hunched over the bed, his face in his hands.
She sounded as guilty as she felt. “I saw you’d made several written attempts to apologise to Annabelle. Several of the letters had fallen to the floor.”
“Did you find anything else of interest when you went through my correspondence?”
“As I told you, I picked the letters up from where they’d fallen beneath your escritoire.” She changed the subject. “Are you in the habit of apologising to Annabelle for consorting with women like me?”
She deserved it when he swung around, fury in his eyes. “I have never consorted with women like you.”
“You’ve never been with a prostitute?”
“I was initiated at the urging of my father and I’m not proud of it. I do no choose to take my pleasure with a prostitute over a virtuous woman, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“But you did,” Hope interrupted, speaking slowly. “You had me not three days ago. And you enjoyed me very much.” She smiled, pushing aside a loose ringlet that fell across her face as she met his stare. His eyes flared with frustrated desire as again she turned and began to walk towards him, using her body like the instrument of pleasure Madame Chambon insisted her girls must regard it. Not for themselves, of course. But for men like Mr Durham.
The rustle of her skirts across the floor was loud in the sudden quiet. He seemed to be mesmerised. The longing in his eyes made clear she’d won.
Until he whispered, “Miss Hunt is my likely intended. It’s all but agreed.”
“So, it really is Miss Annabelle Hunt?” Hope blinked rapidly and put her hand on the high mattress to keep her balance. “Annabelle Hunt?” She couldn’t help but say it again.
He was angled to look at her, sitting on the other side of the mattress, and when she repeated the name he said, “You and she were rivals, were you not? Though I’d have chosen you over Annabelle any day had circumstances not put you out of my reach.” He finished on a bitter note though his feelings could not have been as bitter as Hope’s.
In a flash, she understood the reasons behind Wilfred’s game of revenge and wondered why she had not before.
“You wrote your apology to Annabelle because you wanted to avoid marriage to her?”
Felix rose slowly from the bed. “I was on the point of proposing. In fact, she was expecting it, when I received a note from your sister six months ago saying she believed she knew where you were.”
Hope put her hand to her mouth, but he gave a harsh laugh. “Oh, she was clearly wrong. However, she believed you’d been unable to communicate from your position in Leipzig. It went without saying you were in a respectable position, Miss Merriweather; however, she feared you’d been detained against your will. After all, what else could account for your silence?” He looked accusingly at Hope. “When your sister contacted me, I told Miss Hunt that this new information changed everything. That I had to find you. At all costs. I was quite honest with her. I told her that you and your well-being would always be my first priority. I thought you needed rescuing. That I could be your saviour…”
He let the sentence trail away in the heavy silence so Hope could assimilate his meaning. He’d kept a flame burning for her all this time. Since their separation.
But Hope knew what Felix did not. And could not, now. Not if she were to protect her sister’s future.
So Annabelle was the reason Wilfred had sent Hope on this mission to reveal herself as being far from the gilded object of Felix’s dreams. Wilfred wanted Felix to resume his courtship of his sister, and the only way to do that was to destroy his regard for Hope.
Felix treasured purity. He’d held Hope up on a pedestal.
Well, look at her now. A degraded creature destined for hell.