“By your maid,” he said.
She smiled at him.
“But it must all have been done impulsively,” he said. “It must have been hard for you, Isabella, to lose your parents at a young age, to see my father and us come to the house and take over the property and possessions that you had grown to believe were yours. But they can be yours again, and your children’s.”
“Our children’s,” she said. “Are you really serious about marrying me, then, Matthew?”
“I love you,” he said. “You cannot imagine how I have suffered in the last two and a half months, Isabella, not knowing if I would ever see you again. You must marry me.”
“Must being the key word, I take it,” she said.
“I would never have forced you,” he said. “You must know that you were wrong about that.”
“My answer is no,” she said.
“You will change your mind,” he said.
“No, I will not.” She smiled at him. “When you leave here, you will leave alone, Matthew.”
He raised his hands and set them loosely about her neck. He lifted them to her chin, tightened them slightly, and jerked upward.
“I have heard that very skilled hangmen can do their job in such a way that death is instantaneous and painless,” he said. “Unfortunately, not all are skilled.”
Her smile faded. “Thank you,” she said. “I have finally had my answer. I marry you, then, Matthew, or I hang. How long do I have to decide?”
But he had no chance to answer. The doors at the end of the long gallery opened to admit the Duke of Ridgeway.
“You are still here,” he said. “It is easy to lose track of time amid so many paintings, is it not? But my daughter’s governess needs her sleep, Brocklehurst. Perhaps you can continue the viewing some other time. You may return to your room, Miss Hamilton.”
But Matthew walked along the gallery with her so that all three of them soon stood in the doorway. And the duke looked assessingly at Matthew and held out his arm to her.
“I will escort you upstairs,” he said.
She placed her hand on his arm and did not look back to see what Matthew did. She removed her hand as soon as they had passed through the archway to the staircase. She ascended the stairs as close to the inside wall as possible.
He did not turn back at the top of the stairs as she had expected, but walked along the corridor to her room. And he set his hand on the doorknob. She watched it, the long-fingered, beautiful hand that she so feared.
“I’m sorry, Miss Hamilton,” he said quietly.
“Sorry?” She raised her eyes to his face, dark, harsh, and angular in the dim light of the hallway.
“For all this,” he said. “For getting you from your bed. For allowing you to be made into a pawn. I will not let it happen again.”
She would not lower her eyes from his.
“Did he hurt you?” he asked. “Or harass you in any way?”
“He is not the one who hurt me,” she said.
He opened his mouth as if to say something, and closed it again. He looked at her with set lips and tightly clenched jaw. And she wondered, too weary to feel instant terror, if he would open the door soon, usher her inside, and order her to remove her clothes again.
And she wondered if she would obey.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, and she watched in horror and fascination as his eyes dropped to her lips and his head drew closer.
He opened the door suddenly and motioned her inside.
“No!” She stood where she was and shook her head slowly from side to side. “No. Please, no. Ah, please, no.”
“My God!” He stepped into the doorway and took both her shoulders in a bruising grip. “What do you think of me? Did you think I intended to come inside with you? Did you imagine that I could apologize to you in one breath and seduce you with the next?”
She bit down on her lip and stared at him.
“Fleur.” His hands gentled. “Fleur, I did not take you against your will that one time. I would never take you against your will. And I would never again take you with your will, either. I am a married man who has had one lapse in fidelity in five and a half years of marriage. I will not have you afraid for your safety with me.”
She was drawing blood from the inside of her upper lip.
He looked into her face, into her tense, horror-filled eyes, made an impatient sound, and drew her into his arms. He held her hard against him until she stopped shuddering and sagged forward. And she turned her head and set it against his steadily beating heart, and closed her eyes.
“You must not fear for your safety with me.” His voice was low against her ear. Those fingers were stroking lightly over the back of her neck. “You are the very last person on this earth whom I would want to hurt, Fleur. My God, tell me you no longer believe what you just believed.”