“For heaven’s sake, I’m not going to say or do anything untoward. I was merely going to say that we were hoping for a private conversation. That is why I said we were going out for art supplies. I don’t wish for everyone to be privy to our conversation. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“You wish for me to . . . give the pair of you some privacy?”
“Yes, that’s it exactly. If you wouldn’t mind reading in the back room, I would very much appreciate it.” She might as well use the betrothal card while she still had it. Heaven knew where things would stand after this conversation.
“Yes, my lady.”
“Thank you,” she said, offering the best smile she could muster. Turning toward the door, she drew a deep, bracing breath, lifted her hand, and knocked.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Finally.
Colin exhaled the breath he had been holding since he heard quiet footsteps on the stairs, waiting for Beatrice to knock. Counting to three, he whisked open the door. God, but she was beautiful. In her own special Beatrice way, but absolutely beautiful nonetheless.
“Beatrice.” He should have probably said something much more eloquent, but for the life of him he could barely breathe, let alone make a proper sentence. He wanted to snag an arm around her waist, pull her to him, and kiss her until they were both gasping for air.
“Colin,” she returned, her eyes giving away nothing as to what exactly she was thinking. She turned and nodded to her maid, and the girl scurried past her, headed for the back room.
Well, that worked out rather better than he had hoped. The moment she was out of view, he turned to Beatrice, ready to do exactly what he had just imagined.
As if sensing his intention, she held up both hands. “I’m here only to talk.” Even as she said the words, her gaze traveled over him, burning a path everywhere it touched. Her lips were parted, her pupils so large as to make her eyes seem fathomless. But he knew the significance of her words. She hadn’t softened in his absence.
He pressed his lips together and nodded, inviting her in. She walked past him, maintaining an arm’s distance between them. The air stirred around him, chilled from outside and flavored with the faintest hint of lilac. It didn’t last nearly long enough as it carried past him and mixed with the warmth from the fire he’d lit when he arrived almost an hour earlier.
Her eyes flitted around the room, tripping past the easel that held the primed, blank canvas from his father’s cabin—another gift for her. His gaze lingered for a second on the object hidden beneath an inconspicuous white sheet, waiting for the perfect moment to reveal it with all the pomp and circumstance due the painting that would save a marriage.
Closing the door, he turned to face her, not even trying to hide the emotion from his eyes. “I missed you.” The words were quiet. Sincere.
She swallowed, accepting them without comment. She met his gaze, but with the wariness of a woman meeting a strange man on the street. Reluctance was one thing, but why the hell did she look so blasted wary? All he could think about was wrapping his arms around her and kissing her senseless, and she looked like judge and jury at a case he knew nothing about.
“Is something amiss? More than the obvious, I mean?” Damn it, now he was wary. He sensed something significant had shifted since he left.
Her eyes flared with the spark he knew so well, but she held the rest of herself in icy, rigid control. His stomach dropped as if he’d walked off an unexpected step. “That depends,” she said, her voice too tight to be called neutral.
“On?”
She tilted her head, watching him through slightly narrowed eyes, as if trying to peer into his soul. He left himself as open as possible to her scrutiny—he had nothing to hide.
“On how well you know Mr. Godfrey, for starters.”
“Mr. Godfrey?” What the hell did that jackass have to do with anything? “You’ve been with me both times I have encountered the man. I’d say I know him not at all, other than his status as a wastrel.”
“You know he’s a gambler?”
“Vaguely.”
She started pacing, slowly, but with pent-up energy that bespoke agitation. “Could ‘vaguely’ be used to encompass something as quickly done as, say, making a wager?”
“I beg your pardon?” His impatience with this line of questioning made his voice sharper than he intended, but what the bloody hell was she getting at?
She stopped abruptly, turning to face him straight-on. “A wager. As in, did you make a wager with Mr. Godfrey?”
“Of course not! Why would you think such a fool thing?”
She was not happy with his wording, but he wasn’t happy with the insinuation he was somehow colluding with Godfrey. “Because he said as much.”
“And you believed that?” He shook his head, at a loss for what to even think, let alone say. “You couldn’a believe that I loved you, or that my intentions were toward you and not your dowry, but you believed that rat’s tale? And what were you even doing talking to the man?”
Her spine went as stiff as mortar. “I didn’t believe him—not straight out. That’s why I’m asking. How else is one to know?”
“Oh, I don’t know, by not thinking me some sort of conniving scoundrel who would fraternize with a man who tried to force your hand in marrying him?” The joy of only moments earlier faded to black. Was he so bloody untrustworthy in her eyes? “And what sort of bet am I supposed to have made, exactly?”
For the first time, she looked uncomfortable, twisting her hands together. “He said you had a wager to see who could win my hand in marriage. I should point out, by the way, that he knew all about your financial situation. How would he have known that if you didn’t tell him?”
He was speechless, utterly speechless. He stared at her for a good three seconds before gathering his wits enough to respond. “I never hid the truth of my situation—I merely didn’t speak of it. If anyone had made serious inquiries into me, they might have stumbled across it. You did, did you not?”
“I stumbled upon it because I was going to marry you. Why on earth would he be making inquiries into you? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Perhaps because you publicly shamed him, and he set out to find a way to exact revenge.”
“Don’t put this back on my shoulders. If you had been honest with me, I wouldn’t have had reason to doubt anything about you. Now I can’t help but question everything!” Her cheeks were fiercely pink. Good—then he wasn’t the only one fighting against a rising tide of emotions.
“I couldn’t tell you everything.”
Her lip curled in derision. “Of course you could—you chose not to.”
“I would have, but—” He slammed his mouth shut. This wasn’t about her brother, damn it.
“But what?”
“Do you want the truth? Here it is: You wouldn’a have given me half a chance if you had known about the debt. You would have seen me as the enemy, no matter what.”
“So you are admitting that you purposely withheld that information in a bid to secure my affection.”
He growled in frustration, raking both hands through his hair. “You are so blasted blind. You doona see that a man without money can be just as fine a person as a wealthy man—or better, for that matter. You decided fortune hunters were the devil, no matter who he was. Well, you know what? That’s wrong.”
Her eyes became hooded, and she crossed her arms protectively over her chest. “You’ll say anything to—”
“I’ll say the truth.” He stalked closer to her, forcing her to look up at him, to witness the truth of his words. “You cannot judge a man—or his passions—by his coffers. Am I a bad person for not wanting my grandmother, sister, and brother to be tossed on the streets? For wanting to preserve my father’s legacy and give my siblings a future? Does being relieved that I fell in love with a woman whose dowry would save my family make me an evil person?”
He lifted a hand and trailed a finger down her cheek.
She didn’t move, didn’t even blink. “Because, as God is my witness, I would have fallen for you either way. The difference, my dear, is that I wouldn’a have been able to marry you, were you poor.”
Still she didn’t move, but he heard her intake of air, saw the darkening of her eyes. He dropped his hand from her cheek, seeking instead her gloved hand. “That doesn’a mean that I would stop loving you.” He tugged on the buttery kid leather, sliding it from her fingers. “It would mean that I would be miserable for the rest of my life because I would have had to sacrifice you in order to marry a woman who could save my family.”
With her hand bared, he lifted it to his lips, turning it over to kiss the soft, sensitive skin of her palm. Her lips parted as his touched her, her eyes riveted on their point of contact. Finally, he was getting through to her. His gaze flitted to the painting, ready to tell her exactly what he had found in Scotland, but the moment their eye contact was broken, she yanked her hand from his grasp, taking a quick step backward.
“No, I know what you are doing,” she said, taking yet another step back, putting more than just distance between them. Her walls were up, their connection of moments ago severed. “You are trained in the art of debate. Who better to convince a person of anything than a barrister? A successful barrister can make any jury believe his client’s innocence—whether it is true or not.”
“Beatrice—”
“No,” she exclaimed, darting around the easel. “You know full well the effect you have on me. You know that you’ve only to touch me and my defenses are weakened. So tell me now. Please look me straight in the eye and without manipulation or exploitation of my weaknesses, tell me: Do you have any real proof of your claims?”
He stared at her, taking in the huge blue eyes that had haunted his dreams, the lips that had always been so quick to smile, and her slender frame that had fit so perfectly in his arms. He had agonized about how to prove his love to her, only now to realize the cold, harsh truth.
He couldn’t.
So long as she was so damn eager to believe the worst of him, he could never truly win her over. And that wasn’t the only truth reverberating around inside his skull, cracking the foundations of their relationship.
The painting had seemed like such a lifesaver—something tangible to point to and prove that he was willing to turn over his family’s single most valuable possession to her. How could she doubt him?
But he knew now that it was all wrong. She would see it as a bribe—as a manipulation of her appreciation of his father. One look at her stricken features and glittering eyes and he just knew that the painting would solve nothing. If she didn’t believe him on the merit of his word, on the fierceness of his passion and the strength of his affection, then no tangible object was going to change things.
And, honestly, perhaps it would have been a manipulation, however unintended. He’d been so damned happy to have something of worth to offer her, it never occurred to him that his gifts to her—the studio time, the gallery tour, the paintbrushes—may have reduced him to little more than her idol’s son. At this point, how could he even know if she had any true affection for him?
His heart ached brutally, his body unable to accept what his mind was coming to realize. He shook his head slowly, breathing in the last hints of lilac. “If you doona already have the proof you need, then nothing I say will change anything.”
* * *
It was exactly what she had been expecting.
So why did she feel as though she’d been kicked in the chest by one of Papa’s best stallions? Beatrice clenched her jaw against the disappointment that flooded through her, washing away the last vestiges of hope.
“So . . . that’s it?” The flood receded, and she was left with a huge, yawning emptiness inside her. How could she be so utterly unprepared for an eventuality that she had predicted?
He spread his hands. “The decision is in your hands, Bea. Either you trust what we have between us, or you do not.” The angles of his face had never looked more severe, more harsh. More beautiful.
She closed her eyes, and immediately Godfrey’s face came to mind, his sneering eyes and self-satisfied smirk as clear as if he were standing before her. Had he been so smug because she had been duped by a fortune hunter, or because he could cast doubt on an already-shaky relationship? Wreaking havoc for the point of wreaking havoc?
She pushed Godfrey from her mind only to have him replaced by Diana, the way she had looked the night she had discovered her husband’s betrayal. She was shattered, broken in a way that could never be fixed by a fortune-hunting scumbag.
She opened her eyes and looked to her betrothed, helpless to know what to say. Her traitorous body sang for him, wanting nothing more than to curl up in his arms and be lost in his embrace. Her palm still burned from his kiss, a delicious, tempting heat that proved that she couldn’t trust herself around him. She needed time to think, away from the siren call of his gaze. She wanted to believe him, but if she relented and married him and discovered he had been lying, there was no turning back.
“I don’t know,” she said, raising her shoulders in a helpless shrug. “There is no separating the money and the marriage. I don’t want to make the wrong decision and regret it for the rest of my life.”
A muscle in his cheek jumped as though he were grinding steel with his teeth. “If the answer isn’a yes, then it’s a no. Period. You canna have it both ways.”
“I need more time.”
“What are you going to learn with more time that your heart hasn’a already told you?”
For once in her life the pieces just wouldn’t fall into place for her. All of her normal powers of reason seemed to be completely abandoning her, leaving her vulnerable and unsure—two things she absolutely hated. “You can’t just expect me to choose right here and now. Colin, don’t be unreasonable.”
He crossed his arms, his muscles flexing against the sturdy wool of his jacket. “Of the two of us, I am not the unreasonable one.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“No, you don’t actually. You’ve insulted my integrity, called into question my sincerity, and doubted the depth of my emotion for you. But the one thing you have not done is begged my pardon.” He stalked to the door and pulled it open. “So, I doona see the point of us hashing this out again and again.”
“Colin—”
“No,” he said with a decisive sweep of his hand. “I have put everything on the table for you, and you canna even see your way to accepting the sentiment, let alone returning it.”
She pressed her lips together, frustration and anger boiling up. She had every right to be cautious—they had agreed that he was the one who had to prove himself. “Who are you to judge me—”
“Your betrothed, remember?”
The statement fell flat on the floor between them, stopping the argument dead in its tracks.
“As if could I forget.”
Colin’s flint-colored eyes ignited, and he took a step back as if physically attacked. She hadn’t intended the bitterness burning in her battered heart to so vividly color her words, but she couldn’t take it back now.
“I see.” He scrubbed a weary hand over his face. “Well, I guess we know where you stand now.”
Panic welled up within her, but she refused to speak when she couldn’t be at all sure of what she would say. If only she had employed the tactic before she opened her mouth last time.
“Fine. I canna force you to see reason, clearly. Just know that if you wish for the marriage contract to be broken, then you’ll have to be the one to do it. As much as I doona wish to be yoked to a wife who finds my every word suspicious, I won’t open myself up to legal ramifications.”
Her stomach pitched like a storm-tossed ship. How had things come to this? But in that moment, something else occurred to her. If she broke the betrothal, then he would be entitled to sue for the promised dowry. Blast it all, she would drive herself mad, second-guessing herself like this. She had to talk
to someone; otherwise she’d have herself tied up in knots in no time.
She had to get out of there, the sooner the better. “Rose,” she called, her voice shaking the tiniest bit. The maid quickly appeared, her book in her hand. “We’re leaving.”
She had thought Colin’s features couldn’t grow any harder, but before her eyes he seemed to turn to stone. His eyes frosted over, and he stared straight ahead as if she weren’t even in the room.
Beatrice motioned for her maid to go ahead of her; then, straightening her spine, she headed for the door, steeling herself to pass by him. She could have stopped. She could have wrapped her arms around him and begged his pardon.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she pushed forward, each tap of her boots on the wood stairs underscoring the chasm opening up between them. She had either just made the best decision in her life . . . or the absolute worst.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Five days.
It had been five torturous days of misery, where Beatrice had done nothing but second-guess herself. But no matter how she looked at it, it always came back to trust. Once compromised, things could never be the same. Naïveté couldn’t be reclaimed; innocence could never be rebuilt.
And she had yet to tell a soul about her decision. Her parents and younger sisters had returned to the country, and Evie and Benedict were spending some time with his brother before the rest of them returned home next week. With so much of her family out of touch, she wasn’t prepared to make an announcement that drastic in the form of a letter. No, when they all returned to the Hall for Christmas, she would do it then. In the scheme of things, a couple of weeks really didn’t matter. Colin knew the truth, and that’s what counted at that point.
A sound caught her attention, and she put down her useless paintbrush and looked to the door. The footsteps were long-strided and sure—Benedict was here.
Seconds later, he appeared in the doorway. “Do you have a moment?”
It was not the greeting of a man simply visiting family. His features were neutral, his tone bordering on official. Beatrice came around from the unused easel and pulled off her apron. “Yes, of course, Benedict. I wasn’t expecting to see you here. Is something the matter?”
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