“He told you what you wanted to hear,” Ranelaw said grimly. The hand under hers was taut with anger.
“Yes, he did. I didn’t look beneath the surface. Someone that handsome had to be beautiful inside and out, surely.” Derision for young Antonia’s stupidity edged her words.
“You’re too hard on yourself,” Nicholas bit out. “I can guess how the cur pursued you.”
She released his hand and resumed playing with the sheet. “Of course you can guess. You’re another rake.”
He bared his teeth. “I doubt anyone believes I have a beautiful soul.”
Once she might have agreed. After the last days, she wasn’t so sure. The man who saved her from scandal, who took the care to show her such ecstasy, who fumed on her behalf now, was more heroic than he realized.
“I was a naïve little fool.” Her voice frayed with regret. “I thought I’d return in triumph from my adventures, the wife and inspiration to a literary lion.”
“I still don’t understand why he didn’t marry you.” Nicholas reached to still her fidgeting. More kindness although she knew he’d scoff if she expressed any gratitude. His touch soothed her restless movements even as rage sharpened his features. “Ten years ago, he wasn’t much more than a boy himself, although that’s no excuse for what he did. I still wouldn’t say that Benton’s hardened in evil.” Nicholas paused and she knew he struggled against adding, “Like I am.”
Again her foolish heart insisted Nicholas was a better man than he acknowledged. “No, Johnny’s not deliberately evil. He’s just selfish and weak and convinced the world owes him everything he wants because he’s beautiful.”
She paused. After all these years, she still cringed to revisit her greatest shame. She drew strength from the clasp of Nicholas’s hand. Longstanding humiliation roughened her voice. “He didn’t marry me because he retained at least that much honor. He was married already.”
Nicholas jerked upright. His grip clenched painfully hard. “The devil, you say. I had no idea.”
“Nor did anyone else.” She struggled to keep her voice even, although Nicholas must guess she hated revealing this final evidence of her gullibility. “He’d kept an actress as his mistress before going up to Oxford and he’d got a child on her. I’m surprised the woman got him to marry her—coercion must have been involved. Johnny wasn’t exactly brave when someone threatened his famous profile.”
She paused and moistened a dry mouth. Her idiocy when it came to Johnny’s lies still made her want to cringe away from the light. “I don’t know what happened to the child. Johnny always claimed ignorance.”
Nicholas growled low in his throat. Abruptly he released her and rolled out of bed. Even through her distress, she couldn’t help admiring his complete lack of self-consciousness. There was something breathtakingly animal about the marquess.
She watched him prowl in naked magnificence toward the mahogany chest of drawers. Excitement shivered through her when she noticed the bloody marks her nails had left on his back. For ten lonely years passion had been lost to her. For good or ill, she’d rediscovered passion with Nicholas. The experience was so rich, she couldn’t regret what they’d shared.
“When did you find out?” With restrained violence, he lifted a decanter of claret from the tray.
She tugged the sheet higher over her breasts and told herself she’d come this far, she was strong enough to complete her sordid story. However painful the last part of her confession.
“My father tracked us to Vicenza within about four weeks. We were living in utter penury.” Old humiliation choked her. Through a haze, she watched Nicholas pour two glasses of wine. She drew
a shuddering breath and forced herself to go on. “I didn’t see Rome by moonlight or the Bay of Naples. The idea that he needed funds before he eloped with his best friend’s sister never occurred to Johnny.”
Nicholas left his wine on the sideboard while he carried a glass across to her. Sightlessly she stared at it until he took one hand and curled it around the stem. She trembled so badly, the claret threatened to spill. She inhaled and strove for control as Nicholas returned for his glass.
“Useless clodpole.” Nicholas’s mouth thinned with anger even as she read unstinting compassion for her plight in his black eyes.
Her heart lurched against her chest. She didn’t deserve sympathy, but it was sinfully sweet to know he comprehended her grief and anger. She’d never imagined anyone would take her side, least of all this spectacular, profligate man. It was terrifying what his lack of condemnation meant to her.
“Johnny was more disappointed at the collapse of his romantical notions than I.” Again she tried to inject a note of sardonic humor into her voice. Again it rang completely false. “I was always a practical creature, or so I discovered when I had to exist on a pittance in a foreign country. I was lucky Johnny didn’t whore me to the highest bidder. Although it could have come to that if my father hadn’t settled our debts.”
Nicholas stood beside the bed and took a mouthful of his wine. Antonia feared she’d gag if she drank. She stared up at Nicholas. A muscle jerked in his cheek and he studied her with unfathomable black eyes.
“Your father wanted you back?”
A bitter laugh escaped. “Now who’s being romantical? No, he called me a filthy slut and said I was dead to him.” Just speaking the words felt like slicing her skin with razors. “As far as family and neighbors were concerned, I literally was dead. My father put it about that I caught a fever while visiting France with a cousin. When he disowned me, he informed me that my gallant lover was married.”
“The sod claims he still loves you.” Nicholas’s voice dripped disgust. “He went to your family home, but your brother told him you were dead.”
She was too inured to Johnny’s weakness to be either surprised or angry. How typical that after wrecking her life, he pined artistically for ten years.
“Johnny’s just wallowing in the drama.” She didn’t have to pretend ruthlessness. “No man treats a woman he loves as he treated me.”
Nicholas’s hands tightened on his glass until the knuckles shone white. “But do you love him?”