He said nothing to that. He did believe her, but he wasn’t sure why. He knew he oughtn’t to trust a word she said.
She twisted her fingers together. “So what now, Gil?”
“The fact that you may be carrying the next Earl of Stanhope changes everything. You will understand that I cannot allow any speculation about the paternity of the child?”
“Yes, I see that,” she said miserably.
“We’ll put on a display of wedded bliss for a while,” he said. “Go to Town and let it be known that we’re been reconciled. Then Stanhope Abbey. I want my child to be born and raised there. You may live where you please once the babe is born.”
She went white. “I want to stay with the baby.”
Her voice was raw. It hurt to listen to it, but he made his own cold. “Is that so?”
“Yes, it is.” She firmed her jaw and looked him in the eye, but he could see her chest rising and falling with rapid, panicky breaths. It brought him no satisfaction to see her like this, a supplicant to his whims. It almost made everything worse.
He shrugged. “Well, that’s up to you,” he said, then despised himself for giving in to the need to offer her relief. When he next spoke, his voice was brusque and icy. “It’s time I bathed and dressed.”
She nodded. “I’ll arrange for your bedchamber to be prepared,” she said.
“No need,” he replied. “It’s being attended to. I asked Lennox to have one of the guest bedchambers made up. I gather you are in my rooms, and I have no wish to disturb you.”
She flushed. “I can easily remove—”
“No. I wish us to leave for Town as soon as possible. Moving rooms is entirely pointless in the circumstances.”
“Very well,” she said politely. “Is there anything else I can do for you, then? You must be hungry after the journey.”
“I’m perfectly capable of giving instructions to my servants directly, thank you,” he replied tautly, noting her flinch again. He strolled to the door but turned back to her, hand on the doorknob. “What about Harriet? Does she know?”
“She knows I went to London to see you. She doesn’t know what happened there—or about the baby.”
“Ah, well, we can practice the tale of our reconciliation upon Harriet at dinner tonight, can’t we?” he drawled, and he bowed with mocking courtesy before leaving the room.
He maintained his façade of calm control for the next half hour, until he was finally alone in his room, in his bath, scrubbing away the dust and dirt of the long ride here.
And then it hit him. He dropped his head into his hands. He felt scoured out and empty. Somehow, in these last months, Eve Adams had become a talisman of something, something important. He thought they had chosen each other. Now it turned out there had been no choice at all.
Neither for him nor her.
Chapter Thirteen
Rose sank into the chair behind the desk and looked down at the neat column of figures she’d been going through with Will when Gil had come in. There was a large black ink blot on the last entry where her pen had rested too long and a spatter of ink across the rest of the page. In a moment, the whole page had been ruined. It was irretrievable.
She had managed to stay largely dry-eyed throughout that awful interview with Gil, but somehow this stupid mess of ink brought a flood of tears to her eyes, and now she found herself crying, really crying. Tears streamed down her face, and her diaphragm was racked by sobs that came from deep inside her. It was horrible, ugly crying, the sounds that came out of her animal-like, her nose and eyes streaming. She pressed her fists up against her mouth to try to muffle the noise, but it did no good.
After a while, the sobs died down in intensity and frequency. She found a handkerchief in the desk drawer and blew her nose. She couldn’t yet stop the slow slide of tears from her eyes, but the worst of it was over.
There was a soft knock at the door.
“Who is it?” she called out, her voice wavery.
“It’s Will. May I come in?”
She hesitated, then wiped her face again. “Yes, all right.”
The door opened, and he stepped inside, his handsome face worried.
“Rose,” he said, walking slowly toward her, as though to avoid alarming her. “Is everything all right?”
He had never called her Rose before, and she was oddly touched by his lapse. He was such a proud, formal man.
She tried to smile but knew somehow the result of her efforts was tragic. “I’m fine.”
He sat down in his usual chair. “I heard Lord Stanhope shouting. And then he left, and you were crying.” He swallowed. “I was worried. I shouldn’t have left you.”