“James!” Tessa was quick to take up the conversational slack. “Darling! This is astonishing. Why on earth would Mr. Netherly try to kill you?”
“I’ve no idea. I can only assume he hoped to persuade you to marry him and thought I would be an impediment.”
“But I would never have married him!” Tessa said, astounded. “I assure you, I gave him no encouragement to think so.”
“It’s puzzling, but the evidence was clear.”
Tessa continued to chatter, and Walter was full of questions. James shifted impatiently. All he wanted was to get Laura away from everyone so that he could talk to her in private. Annoyingly, Laura continued to regard him in that assessing way . . . which could not possibly be a good sign.
“Laura, I want to talk to you,” he said abruptly, abandoning any attempt at subtlety, and took her arm.
As he did so, his mother exclaimed, “Of course you do. Laura was such a heroine! I could scarcely believe the way she pulled away from that man.”
“Yes, and it was a damned foolish thing to do.” James scowled at Laura. “You could have been killed.”
Laura’s brows shot up. “That is what you wanted to say to me?”
She jerked her arm away and whirled, rushing from the room.
chapter 43
Cursing under his breath, James hurried after her, catching up with Laura in the hallway. He grabbed her arm and pulled her into the nearest room, locking the door behind him. “Damn it, you are going to listen to me.”
Laura pulled her arm from his hand and pointedly walked away. She faced him, straight as an arrow, chin high and her face bright with challenge. Just the sight of her was like a punch in the chest to him. James wanted to kiss her, to shake her, to beg her to forgive him. All the rage and terror of the past hours surged up in him, mingling with love and lust in a potent mix that momentarily robbed him of speech.
Laura apparently did not have the same problem. “After all this time, after all that’s happened, after abandoning me and running off to London, not bothering to write a single time, not even to let me know Claude hadn’t murdered you en route—”
“I didn’t abandon you!”
“No? I don’t know what else you would call leaving me here, not even considering taking me with you. You obviously didn’t want my company.”
“That’s mad.” How had his attempt to apologize turned into this? “Of course I—I always want—damn it, you had plenty of company.”
“Much as I appreciate Demosthenes, a dog is not a substitute for a husband.”
“You have Graeme! You run over there all the time anyway. I just gave you more time to spend with him.”
Laura gaped at him. “Graeme! I don’t spend time with Graeme.”
“Oh. My mistake.” His voice dripped sarcasm. “No doubt you visit Lydcombe all the time because you’re bosom friends with the woman he married instead of you.”
“I cannot understand why you are jealous of Graeme when I am of so little importance to you.”
He stared at her. “So little importance! Good God, do you really think that I—”
“I know”—she cut through his words, taking a step forward, arms stiff at her side and hands clenched—“that you are indifferent to me. That you don’t love me. You told me yourself.”
“And you believed me?” He gave a short, bitter laugh.
“It’s what you said.”
“I lied!” James flung his arms wide. “You know I lied. You knew it even then.”
“No,” she said quietly, her eyes steady on his. “I only hoped.”
“Then you got what you wanted.” James swung away. He couldn’t bear to look at her face. The emptiness that had been gnawing at him for the past week flooded out, consuming him. He gripped the mantel with one hand, as if it would help hold down the storm inside him. “Of course I love you. When I saw you almost killed, it terrified me. I am hopelessly, idiotically in love with you. As big a fool as my father ever was. Worse. I’m eaten up with you, and I spend every day dreading that you will—”
He broke off with a growl of disgust. “Damn it!” James lifted a porcelain dog from the mantel and hurled it onto the hearth, where it shattered. “Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.” He followed the first statue with its mate on the other end and finished with a heavy stone elephant that did not smash but only chipped its tail and put a crack in the slate hearth.
Laura stood, openmouthed, watching him. James refused to look at her, crossing his arms over his chest, hands tucked beneath them, and set his jaw. It had gone from bad to worse; now he’d made a perfect idiot of himself in front of her. Again.