Page 26 of Bad Luck Bride (Scandal at the Savoy #3)

“And I thought my father was right about you, that you’d allowed yourself to be bought off, and your lack of letters seemed to prove it.

When he showed me the bank draft, he said if you loved me you wouldn’t have taken the money.

You’d have stayed and courted me in proper fashion.

And that, he said, was why he didn’t want you for a son-in-law.

You had your eye on the main chance and taking the money proved it.

I was angry with my father for testing you that way, but I hated you far more because you had proved him right. ”

“While I blamed you for abandoning me, for choosing your rich cousin instead of me.”

“So—” She broke off, overcome by the emotions engulfing her—disbelief, disillusionment, bitterness, and rage.

Rage, most of all. She tried to tell herself that she had no reason to believe Devlin over her own parents, and yet, now, in this moment, she knew that Devlin was telling her the truth.

She didn’t know how or why she knew. She just did.

“So all this time,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around her ribs to hold in the onslaught of feelings that threatened to overwhelm her, “all this time, when we were both thinking we’d been betrayed and abandoned by the other, it was just a big misunderstanding engineered by my parents to drive us apart. ”

“I guess it was.” He laughed suddenly, a harsh sound that made her wince.

“I knew your father didn’t approve of me, but I really couldn’t blame him.

I knew he had you under his thumb, but God help me, I never thought he’d sink so low as to deceive us both.

And I certainly didn’t think your mother, who seemed merely an amiable nitwit, was capable of such duplicity. ”

“Blame her talent for drama.” Kay rubbed a hand over her forehead, feeling suddenly tired. “It enables her to tell very convincing lies. Sometimes, I think even she believes them.”

“Evidently. But from my point of view, the news of your engagement shredded me. I felt as if you’d reached across three thousand miles and stuck a knife in my chest. It hurt like hell,” he added pensively. “It hurt for a long, long time.”

“I was feeling pretty much the same. Oh, we ought to have known!” She looked at him, anguished. “Why didn’t we know? Why didn’t we see?”

He thought about that for a moment. “Well, we were both terribly young. You can be damned stupid when you’re young. And speaking for myself,” he added slowly, “it wasn’t that hard to believe I’d be abandoned, since my own father had pretty much done that the day I was born.”

She nodded in commiseration. “And I was a social failure, chubby and plain, so—”

“You were never plain,” he interrupted. “Or chubby. Damn it, Kay, don’t denigrate yourself that way. I hate that.”

That made her almost want to smile. “You always hated that.” She paused, then laughed a little, shaking her head.

“What fools we were, to be so quick to lose faith in each other. Although perhaps it’s not that surprising,” she added thoughtfully, “for we didn’t know each other all that well when we decided to run off. ”

“No, I don’t suppose we did, but—” He broke off and gave a laugh. “The odd thing is, from the moment we met, I felt as if I’d known you all my life. That made the news of your engagement that much worse.”

She bit her lip, for she’d once had similar feelings. “By the time I got engaged to Giles,” she said after a moment, “I didn’t even think you’d care.”

He nodded, accepting that. “In any case, I don’t suppose any of it matters now. Not after all this time.”

“No,” she agreed. “It doesn’t matter now.”

With that, an odd sense of anticlimax seemed to come over the room.

They stared at each other, neither of them seeming to know what to say next.

They both knew the true facts now, and that was all well and good, but as he’d said, it didn’t matter anymore.

Too much time had passed. Too many years to think and blame, too much believing the worst and hating each other, too many tears of heartbreak, too much pride and hardening of hearts.

“Well,” he said at last, “now that we’ve got all that sorted, how about you answer my question?”

She shook her head, bewildered, unable to remember what they’d been talking about before. “What question was that?”

“Your father spent your whole life controlling you.”

She couldn’t argue with that, especially now. “He always did like being the master of his universe. But that was only because he was so sure he knew what was best for me.”

He groaned. “Oh, Kay.”

“What?”

“Please don’t tell me everything your father did was out of love.”

“Perhaps my father was a bastard. And there’s no doubt that he was controlling and domineering. But he was my father, and—” She broke off, lifting her chin proudly. “And though it may be a flaw in my character, I loved him. I still do. I shouldn’t, I suppose, but I do.”

“He had a damned poor way of showing his love for you.”

“Even so…” She paused, thinking of herself as a little girl and of her father opening his arms to her, catching her up, spinning her around and laughing with her.

Of all the times he’d read her bedtime stories, and taught her games like backgammon and chess, and dried her girlish tears.

“However flawed his actions, I do believe he thought he was doing what was best. To him, marrying Giles was the best way to secure my future. Besides,” she added before he could argue the point, “you said the past doesn’t matter anymore. ”

“No, except that one ought to learn from the past, don’t you think, and not keep making the same mistakes?”

Kay stiffened, suddenly wary. “I assume there is some specific mistake on my part that you’re referring to?”

“You assume correctly.” He took a step toward her, closing the distance between them. “Your father’s gone, Kay,” he said, his voice gentler than she’d heard it for a long time. “So why are you now deciding to let history repeat itself?”

“What?” She stepped back, staring at him, aghast. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“Isn’t it? Whether he loved you or not, whether his actions were motivated by that love for you or by his own self-interest, it doesn’t alter the fact that he was a bully, and you spent your entire life giving in to him.

The one and only time you ever rebelled—by throwing in your lot with me—you lost your nerve because you were sick at the idea of losing his good will. ”

“That wasn’t why I changed my mind about eloping with you. At least,” she amended when he raised a skeptical eyebrow, “that wasn’t the only reason.”

“I don’t know if you’re right about your father,” he went on as if she hadn’t spoken, “but even if you are, that fact made him no less determined to get his way. So do you really want to spend the future repeating the past? Do you really want to live your life letting a second man dictate to you where you’ll go and what you’ll do?

Do you really want to marry a man who will decide for you what friends you’ll have and what parties you’ll go to? ”

“Says the man who tried to spirit me off to Africa in a clandestine manner and was angry as hell when I changed my mind about letting him do it!”

“Of course I was angry. You were throwing away your chance at happiness and mine and running back to what was safe, familiar, and had never made you happy. What man wouldn’t be angry?”

“Thank you for proving my point. Only a man trying to control me would conclude that he knows better than I do what I need to be happy. Deciding my happiness wasn’t your office then, and it certainly isn’t your office now.”

“But it’s Rycroft’s?”

The disdain in his voice was more than she could bear. She whirled around, stalked to her writing desk, and yanked open a drawer. “You want to know my reasons for giving in to Wilson’s request?”

“Request? Or command?”

She ignored that. “You want to know my reasons for being compliant and obedient?” she asked as she pulled out a fat sheaf of papers and retraced her steps. “Here are my reasons. All four thousand nine hundred and eighty-two of them.”

She slapped the sheaf of papers against his chest. When his hand came up to take them, she drew her own hand away.

“What’s all this?” he asked.

“Bills,” she told him. “Nearly five thousand pounds’ worth.

And that’s only about half of what we owe,” she added as he glanced down at the papers in his grasp.

“When Papa died, I learned the estate was bankrupt. Giles got anything that was entailed to the estate, of course, and creditors took the rest.”

“Wasn’t your cousin able to help you?”

“Not much. He had money, but his first obligation was to the estate, and that took nearly every cent of his fortune. He provides us with a small income of a hundred pounds a year and a dress allowance.”

“That’s all?”

“Creditors didn’t take our jewels, but only because Mama and I sold them before the creditors could get their hands on them.

If you see me or Mama wearing any baubles this season, don’t look too closely, because the pearls are Roman pearls and the diamonds are zircons.

Sadly, however, the money we got from selling our jewels is gone now, and as you can see, the debts are piling up.

To put it bluntly, Devlin, we are destitute. ”

“So, then, why—” He stopped, but his glance around told her what he hadn’t said.

“Why the Savoy?” she said, finishing his question for him. “Why stay at London’s most luxurious hotel when you’re broke? Is that what you were going to ask?”

“There are less expensive lodgings to be had in London, even at this time of year.”