Rising from the bed, he buttoned up his drawers before she could glimpse the worst of his disfigurement.
“Wait, I wanted to see—”
“What? The scars that make me unsuitable for marriage to a duke’s daughter? So you can pity the poor cripple?”
The look of shock on her face made him instantly regret the harsh words.
“Don’t call yourself that!” she cried.
“Why not? It’s what I am.”
“You are so much more than that, if you could only see it.” Her brow furrowed as she rose. She found her shift and put it on. “But before we can marry and have any kind of meaningful future together, I should think you wouldwantto share yourself with me, so I could know you fully, in every aspect of your life.”
In other words, she wanted him to bare his soul, to relive all the painful moments with her. No, thank you.
But when people edge too close, you always start pushing them away, and then, of course, you end up alone.
Damn Beatrice. She was wrong. He had a perfectly legitimate reason not to let Gwyn see his scars. After all, at least one woman had already recoiled from them. The very idea of Gwyn recoiling . . .
No, he wasn’t ready for that.
“Joshua,” she said softly, “you can trust me.”
“The way you trustedme?” he shot back. “Sneaking around, amassing your blackmail money, sending notes to ‘Lionel,’ and arranging secret meetings with him? You could have confided in me, but instead—”
“How did you know I sent Lionel a note?”
One look at her pale face and he groaned. A body would think he’d have learned by now not to speak when he was in a temper. Because this was what happened. He said things he shouldn’t.
He shrugged and started trying to dig himself out of the hole. “Well . . . you did send him a note, didn’t you?”
Her expression hardened. “The only way you could have known that was by spying on me. Following me. You say I don’t trust you? You’re as bad as Thorn. Neither of you trustsme.”
“With good reason, apparently,” he said, having learned in the marines that the best defense of one’s actions was to attack.
But perhaps not so much with ladies, judging from the cold glint in her eyes.
Hastily, he seized on something else Gwyn had said. “You said, ‘Before we can marry.’ Does that mean you’re agreeing to my offer?”
“What offer?” She ducked her head to tie her shift with angry jerks of her fingers. “You haven’t actually made an offer of marriage.” Now she was concentrating on wriggling into her stays, but it was clear she couldn’t tighten them herself.
He went over to help her. “Haven’t I?” he said, though he knew he really hadn’t. He finished with her stays, then waited while she pulled on her gown. That would need buttoning up, too. “I could have sworn I did.”
“You did not. We talked around it, about it, over it.” When he buttoned up her gown, she added, “You told Lionel that if he revealed anything about my past, you would announce our engagement. But you never actually asked.”
“Perhaps not, but you knew what I meant. What I wanted.”
She whirled to face him, her eyes those deep forest pools he could drown in.Wasdrowning in.
“Because now I read your mind?” she said in a clipped voice. “You offering to announce our engagement was a threat that was conditional upon Lionel’s bad behavior. It didn’t involve actuallyaskingme. Or are you having second thoughts about marrying me now that you’ve bedded me?” She picked up her mobcap and stuffed her hair up inside it. “Is that why you’re choosing to fight with me?”
“I am not choosing to fight with you. I am merely pointing out—”
“And in case you were wondering,” she went on, “the only person pitying you, Joshua, isyou.”
She marched toward the door.
He followed her, his temper rising. “Even if I did offer for you in the exact way you wish me to, you wouldn’t accept me, would you?”
