Page 21 of The Rebellious Countess (The Ruined Duchess #2)

The color drained from her face as Máira thought of the implication of his words. “You mean alive or…or dead?”

“Yes. I would prefer it if he were alive, but if he is dead, I will return his body to English soil.”

Máira began pacing the tavern back and forth across the dark gloomy room. She stopped. “How will you find him?”

“Máira, I can’t tell you everything.”

“I could help.”

“You can’t. Not in this.”

“But I?—”

“Are you willing to sell your body?” She needed to understand what was at stake.

She hesitated and then lifted her chin. “If that’s what it takes to save him—yes.”

“Like hell,” he ground out between his teeth as he walked to her and grabbed hold of her upper arms. He gazed down into her expressive eyes and wished they were upstairs in bed.

He wished he were a different man, a gentleman she could truly love and that this was a real honeymoon trip.

But he wasn’t, this wasn’t, and they didn’t have the time to pretend it was anything but a deadly mission.

“I will not let you sacrifice your body and soul for a mission you did not undertake.”

“Simon is a family friend,” she argued.

For a moment he didn’t care much for Astley if his wife was willing to sacrifice herself for the man. “Do you love him?”

She pulled back, but he refused to release her as she searched his face…for what, he didn’t know.

“You’re jealous,” she accused, as if the thought popped into her head without her realizing it.

He laughed and pushed her away. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You are!” She grinned and he wanted to punch the wall.

Yes, he was jealous. He shouldn’t be, but he was. No one had ever wanted to sacrifice their body for him, yet her willingness to do so for Astley—was unthinkable—unless she knew him intimately. Unless Astley was the one to show her how to handle a man’s cock as she’d done upstairs.

Damnation. He needed to gain the upper hand once more. “My point being, unless you are willing to lie on your back and spread your legs, you cannot help.”

“That’s what you planned to do with me, is it not?”

“No! It was nothing like that.”

She folded her arms across her chest once more, and he couldn’t help but be drawn to the taut, thin fabric of her borrowed wrapper and shift pulling tightly across her perfect breasts and pert nipples. “Then explain to me how different it is, because I’d truly like to know.”

He returned his gaze to hers and tried to stay focused. “I did not intend to bed you. You were to be returned to England yesterday morning on the Confiance .”

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh.” He repeated. “I arranged for your transportation back to England with the captain, and my superior was to meet you at the docks on English soil. When you don’t arrive, there will be hell to pay.”

“I see.” She rubbed her hand across her eyes, fatigue evident in her posture.

“You weren’t supposed to be here in the first place,” he continued. “You were supposed to be back at Caerlaverock.”

“You planned on leaving without me?” The wounded sound to her voice made him want to puke.

“Yes.”

“So why didn’t you?”

He saw the hope in her eyes and vowed to extinguish it then and there. “I told you, the man I bought the Scotch from would only sell to a member of the ton who was wedded to a Scottish bride.”

“That explains the wedding, not why I’m here.”

“The smuggler wanted to see you, and then he made certain I left the docks with my bride in tow.”

Suspicion began to cloud her face. “Why don’t I remember any of this?”

He debated on lying once more. He was good at lying, but Máira deserved better than what he’d done. “I made certain you over-imbibed at our wedding supper.”

“You what?” Shock and disbelief masked her anger—momentarily. Once she accepted that she hadn’t just made bad choices, she would be furious.

“The seller demanded to see my Scottish bride before he would turn over the merchandise.”

She snorted. “Let me get this straight. You met me, wooed me, married me, and then got me drunk to get a man to give you some Scotch?”

“He didn’t give me anything. I bought it.”

“Oh, forgive me for getting that one little detail wrong.” Her cheeks were turning pink as her anger grew. “How did you get me there?”

“I carried you.”

“Like a sack of potatoes?”

He nodded. It didn’t matter how she pictured it, from her perspective he supposed her description was close enough.

“Why didn’t you just leave me there?”

It was the hundred-pound question. “I didn’t trust him.”

She laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “You didn’t trust him? Are you certain that you’re more trustworthy than he?”

He winced but remained silent as she began stalking the room once more, her feet pounding the floorboards as if she were a man twice her size with boots on, instead of her bare feet that were as tiny as he’d ever seen.

“How about Peter? Is he more trustworthy? After all, he did abandon me on land with no money and no direction except to go to The Happy Hag and seek out a woman who cold-bloodedly killed a man in front of me. Is she trustworthy?”

Her voice had risen to the point where he feared someone might hear what she was ranting on about. Yet still he kept his mouth closed.

“No,” she laughed. “It seems I would have been better off with the smuggler in England?—”

“Scotland,” he corrected.

“Oh, yes. Forgive me. The Scots are less trustworthy than any of the Englishmen out there.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Wasn’t it?” She walked toward him, her bare feet slapping the floor once more as she approached.

“No,” he said, as he looked down into her eyes that were as cold as any Scottish loch. She was half English and half Scot, but he suspected she identified more with her father’s Highland ancestry than her mother’s British blue blood.

“I would not lie to you about that.”

“You would just lie about loving me?” Behind the anger freezing her blue eyes to ice, he saw the cracks of pain in the surface.

“I did not lie.” Her breath hitched, but he continued so as not to give her false hope. “I told you I never wanted to marry before I met you. My feelings toward marriage have never changed. I don’t wish to be married. Ever.”

“You don’t want children?”

He pictured little versions of Máira running across the meadow—the very place he’d asked Máira to marry him.

If marriage were possible for a man like him, he would have chosen a woman such as her, but that was not in his future.

He would not force her into making the same mistake his mother had made. No woman deserved that.

He shook his head. “No.”

She searched his face once more. “You’re lying. I saw it in your eyes. You want children just as much as anyone else, so why won’t you let yourself?”

“I chose the life I plan to live. I will not subject a family to my choices.”

“Isn’t that your wife’s choice to make?”

“Not when she didn’t know what she was getting into when she married me, no. Máira, you are a wonderful woman?—”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t say if you could choose a wife, you would have chosen me.”

“Even if it’s true?”

“But it’s not. From the moment we met, you had a plan in place. Meet me, marry me, use me. How could that possibly involve you wanting to marry me, when you were scheming our marriage from the very start?”

“Because I grew to know the woman you are.”

“Really? In the short time you’ve known me, you believe you could have fallen in love?”

“Didn’t you?”

She shrank away with his cruel words. He hadn’t meant for them to sound callous or diminishing, and yet that is exactly how it came out. He had in essence told her that her feelings couldn’t be lasting. She felt infatuation, nothing more. It had never been love, nor would it ever be.

“You are cruel.”

He nodded once in agreement.

“Is that why they chose you for this job.”

“In part.”

“Why else?”

It was the one question he couldn’t answer. Wouldn’t. It would put the only person he cared about in danger, and for that, he would hold his silence at any cost.

Hag’s voice fractured the stillness like lightening splintering a deep stormy sky. “Because he’s my son and he’s a French citizen.”