The Secret Pearl(69)

He sighed. “You make me appear so very uncivilized, Isabella,” he said. “Those were your suggestions, not mine.”

“Tell me, then,” she said, “and stop playing games with me.”

“I want you,” he said. “I have for a long, long time. Is that so reprehensible?”

“And for a long, long time I have told you that I am not interested in your protestations,” she said. “If you had loved me, as you always claimed to do, Matthew, you would have respected my feelings. You would not have interfered between me and Daniel.”

“Daniel Booth,” he said scornfully. “A smiling, gentle maid. He could not have made you happy, Isabella.”

“Perhaps not,” she said. “But the choice should have been mine. Why did you arrange things so?”

“So?” He raised his eyebrows in inquiry.

“Your mother and Amelia going away to London,” she said impatiently, “and leaving me alone with you. It was so very improper, and they must have known it, and would have done something about it too if they had had any feeling for me whatsoever. And then refusing to let me go to Daniel’s sister to stay when she asked me, and refusing to let me marry Daniel by special license. You planned it so, didn’t you? So that with no options open to me and no reputation left, I would have no choice but to become your mistress. So that you would have the chance to overpower me even if I refused.”

He stopped and took her hands in his even though she tried to pull them away.

“It was more than time for Amelia to go to town for her come-out,” he said. “And of course my mother wished to go with her. It would have seemed cruel to send you with them, Isabella. The three of you could never agree.”

“It is hard to agree or disagree with someone when you are almost totally ignored from the age of eight,” she said bitterly, “except when you are being criticized and scorned.”

“However it was,” he said, “I thought it kinder to keep you at home where you belonged, Isabella. And it was never my idea to be your guardian, you know. It was your father’s will and my father’s death that did that—until your marriage or until the age of twenty-five. I did not make those terms.”

“Until my marriage!” she said. “I could have been married to Daniel. You could have been free of such a burdensome responsibility.”

“It was not burdensome,” he said. “But I could not in all conscience consent to your marrying such a milksop, Isabella.”

“It was better to make me your mistress,” she said.

“You are the only one who has ever used that word,” he said.

She laughed. “I suppose you wanted to marry me,” she said.

“Wrong tense,” he said, holding her hands more tightly. “You are a lady. Isabella, daughter of a baron. How can you suggest that I was out to ruin you?”

She laughed again. “Strange that you never thought to mention the honorable nature of your intentions before,” she said. “How delighted your mother would be, Matthew. And I suppose the seduction that evening was to put the stamp of your possession on me before the ceremony.”

“Seduction?” he said.

“I was leaving the house,” she said, “despite the lateness of the hour and the coldness of the evening. My trunk was in the gig. Miriam was waiting for me at the rectory. But you would not let me leave and berated me for my disobedience. And you were not about to send me to my room, Matthew. You were about to take me to yours. Or perhaps not even that. Hobson was to hold me, wasn’t he, right there in the library, while you raped me.”

He released one of her hands in order to pass a hand over his forehead. “What strange notions you have, Isabella,” he said. “You were screaming at me and fighting like a demented creature because I would not allow you to elope with a man I had refused quite lawfully to allow you to marry. Hobson stepped up behind you to prevent you from tripping over the hearthstone and hurting yourself. And you turned and lashed out at him too and caught him off-balance. It was a crime of passion pure and simple.”

“Yes,” she said, “I suppose a judge would see it that way—once you had explained it to him.”

“It is a pity that the jewels made it seem all rather premeditated,” he said. “Though doubtless I was your intended victim.”

“The jewels?” She had gone very still.

“Those too costly for my mother to take to London,” he said. “They were found in your trunk after you had run away in a panic.”

She stared at him. “Found by someone other than you, I gather,” she said at last.