Pursuing Lord Pascal (Dashing Widows 4)
Resisting the urge to have another brandy, he crossed to sit beside her. No amount of brandy was going to soothe this pain. She shot him a warning glance, but he didn’t need any reminder that his touch was no longer welcome.
A heavy silence crashed down. Pascal stared sightlessly at the carpet and fisted his hands on his thighs. There was a clock on the mantel, and its heavy ticking threatened to send him mad. The lilting music from the ballroom seemed to come from another world.
“Please put me out of my misery,” Amy said, in a low voice that would have broken his heart, if it wasn’t broken already. “Was it all a pretense? Every bit of it? Right from the very beginning?”
There was little he could say to defend himself, but he couldn’t bear to let her go, believing that his seduction had been cold and calculated. “No. No, it wasn’t like that. On my honor, I swear it wasn’t.”
He looked up and met her eyes. The bright hazel turned a dull, muddy brown. He loathed that he’d made this vivid creature so wretched.
“You speak of honor?”
His mouth curved down in corrosive self-hatred. “You have every right to despise me.”
“Gervaise, I can take it. Whatever the full story is.” She still spoke in that calm voice. He’d feel better if she shouted and wept. “Just tell me. And don’t lie.”
Sucking in a shuddering breath, he went back to studying the carpet. He couldn’t endure seeing her regard turn to contempt. In recent days he’d imagined—hoped—he looked into her eyes and saw love.
“The Compton-Browne chit is right.” His flat voice masked the acrid desolation eating at him. “I badly need money to repair the damage to my estate. We had a hurricane through last winter. I believe the place will recover and become profitable again. It’s good land, and the tenants are hardworking.”
“But right now it’s a mess,” she said, and he recalled that she’d been a farmer most of her life. At least he didn’t need to describe the toll on life and property the storm had taken. “I understand.”
He tensed his fists against rising despair. He could sink into the mire of his sins once she’d left him. Now he needed to concentrate on giving her an explanation, however badly he emerged from the tale. “So I came to Town, se
eking a rich wife. I’m thirty. It was time to set up my nursery anyway.”
“Very pragmatic.”
He ignored her acerbic response. “I’m not saying I wanted to marry. You know I’ve been a libertine.”
“I know,” she said, in a hollow tone that crushed his heart to the size of a walnut. He ached to offer her comfort, but what comfort could she accept from the man who’d hurt her so unforgivably?
He forced himself to continue, although every word of his confession made his skin crawl. “I started my hunt with the current crop of debutantes, but, Lord above, they’re a henwitted bunch. Silliest gaggle of chits to arrive on the marriage mart in ten years. The night I met you, I was trying to choose between offering for Cissie Veivers, or going home and cutting my throat. When I saw you across that ballroom, you were the answer to a prayer.”
“Plump in the pocket, and too naïve to question your sudden unlikely interest?”
His self-loathing sharpened to agony. She’d be better off if he had cut his throat after the Raynor ball. Over the last weeks, he’d loved watching as her confidence blossomed. Now he’d destroyed it. What a bastard he was.
And still he had to finish this deuced excruciating account. “I remember saying to myself, after yet another soporific conversation with Miss Veivers, that I’d sell my soul for a sensible woman past first youth who had the money to restore my lands.”
“And your prayers were answered,” she said bitterly. “Although I wouldn’t describe my recent behavior as sensible.”
He sighed. “It’s my damned selfishness. All my life, what I’ve wanted has dropped into my lap. Often I haven’t even taken the trouble to ask for it. When I saw you, and you were so exactly the right wife for me, I assumed ever-reliable fate operated once more to my advantage.”
“Lucky you.”
He winced at her sarcasm. “No. All that good fortune made me shallow.”
Her restive hands pleated her skirts. Part of him wished she’d just hit him. She’d feel better if she unleashed the turmoil roiling beneath her unnatural composure.
“Not…shallow,” she said slowly. “Thoughtless perhaps.”
“That’s not much better.” The need to take her hand in his was torture. Hell, everything right now was torture.
She was still pale as rice paper. He beat back the memory of how she’d looked after he’d taken her. Rosy with satisfaction. Brilliant with happiness. He couldn’t endure the contrast with this sad woman beside him now.
“So your plan came to fruition. You saw me, and lured me in, and had your way with me.” Vinegar crept into her voice. “I should have guessed a man like you wouldn’t pursue a woman like me without some underlying motive.”
“Amy, no,” he protested, and this time he couldn’t resist seizing her fretful hand. “One of the reasons I delayed telling you is that I knew this is what you’d think. But you’re wrong.”