“You wish for me to . . . give the pair of you some privacy?”
“Yes, that’s it exactly. If you wouldn’t mind reading in the back room, I would very much appreciate it.” She might as well use the betrothal card while she still had it. Heaven knew where things would stand after this conversation.
“Yes, my lady.”
“Thank you,” she said, offering the best smile she could muster. Turning toward the door, she drew a deep, bracing breath, lifted her hand, and knocked.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Finally.
Colin exhaled the breath he had been holding since he heard quiet footsteps on the stairs, waiting for Beatrice to knock. Counting to three, he whisked open the door. God, but she was beautiful. In her own special Beatrice way, but absolutely beautiful nonetheless.
“Beatrice.” He should have probably said something much more eloquent, but for the life of him he could barely breathe, let alone make a proper sentence. He wanted to snag an arm around her waist, pull her to him, and kiss her until they were both gasping for air.
“Colin,” she returned, her eyes giving away nothing as to what exactly she was thinking. She turned and nodded to her maid, and the girl scurried past her, headed for the back room.
Well, that worked out rather better than he had hoped. The moment she was out of view, he turned to Beatrice, ready to do exactly what he had just imagined.
As if sensing his intention, she held up both hands. “I’m here only to talk.” Even as she said the words, her gaze traveled over him, burning a path everywhere it touched. Her lips were parted, her pupils so large as to make her eyes seem fathomless. But he knew the significance of her words. She hadn’t softened in his absence.
He pressed his lips together and nodded, inviting her in. She walked past him, maintaining an arm’s distance between them. The air stirred around him, chilled from outside and flavored with the faintest hint of lilac. It didn’t last nearly long enough as it carried past him and mixed with the warmth from the fire he’d lit when he arrived almost an hour earlier.
Her eyes flitted around the room, tripping past the easel that held the primed, blank canvas from his father’s cabin—another gift for her. His gaze lingered for a second on the object hidden beneath an inconspicuous white sheet, waiting for the perfect moment to reveal it with all the pomp and circumstance due the painting that would save a marriage.
Closing the door, he turned to face her, not even trying to hide the emotion from his eyes. “I missed you.” The words were quiet. Sincere.
She swallowed, accepting them without comment. She met his gaze, but with the wariness of a woman meeting a strange man on the street. Reluctance was one thing, but why the hell did she look so blasted wary? All he could think about was wrapping his arms around her and kissing her senseless, and she looked like judge and jury at a case he knew nothing about.
“Is something amiss? More than the obvious, I mean?” Damn it, now he was wary. He sensed something significant had shifted since he left.
Her eyes flared with the spark he knew so well, but she held the rest of herself in icy, rigid control. His stomach dropped as if he’d walked off an unexpected step. “That depends,” she said, her voice too tight to be called neutral.
“On?”
She tilted her head, watching him through slightly narrowed eyes, as if trying to peer into his soul. He left himself as open as possible to her scrutiny—he had nothing to hide.
“On how well you know Mr. Godfrey, for starters.”
“Mr. Godfrey?” What the hell did that jackass have to do with anything? “You’ve been with me both times I have encountered the man. I’d say I know him not at all, other than his status as a wastrel.”
“You know he’s a gambler?”
“Vaguely.”
She started pacing, slowly, but with pent-up energy that bespoke agitation. “Could ‘vaguely’ be used to encompass something as quickly done as, say, making a wager?”
“I beg your pardon?” His impatience with this line of questioning made his voice sharper than he intended, but what the bloody hell was she getting at?
She stopped abruptly, turning to face him straight-on. “A wager. As in, did you make a wager with Mr. Godfrey?”
“Of course not! Why would you think such a fool thing?”
She was not happy with his wording, but he wasn’t happy with the insinuation he was somehow colluding with Godfrey. “Because he said as much.”
“And you believed that?” He shook his head, at a loss for what to even think, let alone say. “You couldn’a believe that I loved you, or that my intentions were toward you and not your dowry, but you believed that rat’s tale? And what were you even doing talking to the man?”
Her spine went as stiff as mortar. “I didn’t believe him—not straight out. That’s why I’m asking. How else is one to know?”
“Oh, I don’t know, by not thinking me some sort of conniving scoundrel who would fraternize with a man who tried to force your hand in marrying him?” The joy of only moments earlier faded to black. Was he so bloody untrustworthy in her eyes? “And what sort of bet am I supposed to have made, exactly?”
For the first time, she looked uncomfortable, twisting her hands together. “He said you had a wager to see who could win my hand in marriage. I should point out, by the way, that he knew all about your financial situation. How would he have known that if you didn’t tell him?”
He was speechless, utterly speechless. He stared at her for a good three seconds before gathering his wits enough to respond. “I never hid the truth of my situation—I merely didn’t speak of it. If anyone had made serious inquiries into me, they might have stumbled across it. You did, did you not?”
“I stumbled upon it because I was going to marry you. Why on earth would he be making inquiries into you? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Perhaps because you publicly shamed him, and he set out to find a way to exact revenge.”
“Don’t put this back on my shoulders. If you had been honest with me, I wouldn’t have had reason to doubt anything about you. Now I can’t help but question everything!” Her cheeks were fiercely pink. Good—then he wasn’t the only one fighting against a rising tide of emotions.
“I couldn’t tell you everything.”
Her lip curled in derision. “Of course you could—you chose not to.”
“I would have, but—” He slammed his mouth shut. This wasn’t about her brother, damn it.
“But what?”
“Do you want the truth? Here it is: You wouldn’a have given me half a chance if you had known about the debt. You would have seen me as the enemy, no matter what.”
“So you are admitting that you purposely withheld that information in a bid to secure my affection.”
He growled in frustration, raking both hands through his hair. “You are so blasted blind. You doona see that a man without money can be just as fine a person as a wealthy man—or better, for that matter. You decided fortune hunters were the devil, no matter who he was. Well, you know what? That’s wrong.”
Her eyes became hooded, and she crossed her arms protectively over her chest. “You’ll say anything to—”
“I’ll say the truth.” He stalked closer to her, forcing her to look up at him, to witness the truth of his words. “You cannot judge a man—or his passions—by his coffers. Am I a bad person for not wanting my grandmother, sister, and brother to be tossed on the streets? For wanting to preserve my father’s legacy and give my siblings a future? Does being relieved that I fell in love with a woman whose dowry would save my family make me an evil person?”