Unforgivable(43)

“Eve?”

For a brief moment, he felt the sharpest, brightest joy he’d ever known. His heart clenched almost painfully in his chest, and he took a step toward her. It was Eve Adams sitting at his father’s library desk; Eve pouring over the accounts of Weartham.

In the same instant, comprehension dawned.

“Eve.” His hand dropped to his side as he said it again, realising simultaneously that that was not her name at all.

She looked stricken, her grey eyes anxious, her face blanched. Her lips formed his name, but no sound came out. And in that moment, before the full horror of it dawned on him, he wanted nothing more than to go to her and take her in his arms; smooth out the furrow between her brows with his fingertips. Tell her it would be all right.

It was the flicker of her eyes to her left that distracted him from that thought; that drew his attention to the fact that the room had another occupant, a man, standing at the window holding a sheaf of papers in his hand. A man whose keen blue eyes had narrowed upon Gil.

“What do you mean, bursting in here upon Lady Stanhope?” the man said, frowning. He was shorter than Gil and more slender but there was an air about him of quiet authority.

“Get out,” Gil replied flatly. And then his eyes returned to the woman at the desk, not sparing his interrogator another glance.

Rose spoke then, her words addressed to the other man but her gaze fastened on Gil. “Will, this is my husband, Lord Stanhope. Would you be good enough to leave us?”

The man—Will—didn’t move. He was staring at Rose with a concerned expression. “Are you quite sure you wouldn’t prefer me to stay?”

Rose turned her head and sent him a strained smile. “Quite sure. Thank you, Will.”

Her companion frowned, but he protested no further, turning on his heel and walking out without another word.

Gil ignored the sounds of his departure. His whole attention was fixed on the woman who sat at the desk before him.

“Am I falling in love with you?”

The memory of him speaking those words to her flashed, unwanted, into his mind, and a wave of shame washed through him, thick and hot. She must have been laughing herself sick as he said those words, the wife he’d refused to see for five years. And all along she’d known exactly who and what he was. Christ, he’d almost convinced himself that she’d returned his feelings; that it was just that she couldn’t say the actual words.

He half turned from her and ran a hand roughly over his face. Reaction was beginning to set in. A building anger fed from the pain and bewilderment within him.

“Why did you do it?” he asked from between clenched teeth. He thought it was a remarkably restrained opening gambit in the circumstances, but he saw that she flinched at his tone.

“I wanted our marriage to be real,” she said, “but you refused. You rejected every overture I made. Since you wouldn’t come to me, I decided to go to London.”

He gave a mirthless laugh. “And pretended to be someone else entirely. What a marvellous joke, Rose!”

She flushed. “I did not intend to deceive you.”

“Really? So when you introduced yourself as Eve Adams, you were being honest with me?” His voice dripped sarcasm, but he thanked God for his anger, because he knew that after this first blaze of rage, there was something far worse to come.

She looked away from him. “I only wanted to speak with you for a little while before revealing who I was. I thought that when I unmasked myself, you would recognise me. When you did not—” She broke off, looking at him with a pleading expression.

“You decided to lie,” he completed for her.

“I meant to tell you who I was, eventually.”

“Then why didn’t you?” he cried, a raw plea that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside him.

She stared at him with wide, shocked eyes that held a hint of fear. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Why, Rose?”

He saw her swallow, saw her nervous fear of him, and he wished he could take any kind of satisfaction from it, but he couldn’t.

“The things you told me about the circumstances of our marriage shocked me. I hadn’t known about your father’s gaming debt to mine. I had thought my father had provided a real dowry. Rather than just foregoing his winnings, I mean.”

He fixed her with an unforgiving look. “I see. You didn’t realise that your father blackmailed me into marrying you against my will. “

Rose’s flush deepened, but her eyes glittered. “In fairness, I doubt he’d have seen it like that. To my father, a gaming debt is a debt of honour. And I am quite sure he did not know you were so reluctant. I do not think he would have wished to marry me to a man who was unwilling.”