It was grim. All color had drained from Lucie’s face. Her lips were white as bone.

He took a step toward her, and she immediately stepped back.

“I see,” she said quietly. “Congratulations.” Her gaze became unfocused, began to stray into the crowd. “I . . . I am needed back on my post,” she said. “Congratulations. Good evening.”

He watched her walk away, holding herself terribly still.

“My lord?”

He shook off Cecily’s grasping hands and glared down at her. “What possessed you to do this?” He barely recognized his voice. His heart was pounding. Go after her. Go after her.

Cecily’s eyes were wide. “But . . . she’s family. . . .” she stammered. “Surely, there’s no harm in her knowing before it’s official?”

“It won’t be official,” he said. Enough of this farce.

Cecily’s chin quivered with alarm. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Is anyone going to shoot?” cried McMahon. “Half a penny for five shots!”

Lucie had vanished into the crowd; she would, she was short and she was fast.

No, she had not been fast just now. She had walked like a woman injured.

“My lord?” Cecily made it sound like a sob.

He shook his head and went after his heart.

Chapter 32

It took her a quarter of an hour to reach home, and her breathing was still a distant, labored sawing noise in her ears. She knew she had a heartbeat, rattling around in the cavern of her chest, but she did not feel it; there was a disconnect, she was a cold, disembodied mind floating aimlessly from room to room.

Tristan had lied to her.

Tristan was engaged to Cecily.

Tristan had lied to her.

He broke into her kitchen not ten minutes later.

The familiar sight of him, his face handsome and guilty, when in truth she did not know him at all, slid sharp like a blade between her ribs. She realized she stood with her hands pressed over her heart.

He crossed the kitchen with three long strides and stood too close.

“Lucie—”

She slapped him so hard, the force of the blow turned his head to the side.

When he looked at her, his eyes glittered bright like fool’s gold. “Allow me to explain.”

Her hand had left a red mark on his cheekbone.

“I’d rather slap you again,” she said.

He raised his hands in a shrug. “If you must.”

She flexed her smarting fingers. “I want you to leave.”

At least she wasn’t railing and screeching. Her voice was as frozen as she felt inside.

He shook his head, making to say something, but she held up her hand.

“All I asked for was honesty. But honesty is an impossibly tall order for someone like you, isn’t it? I might as well have asked a tiger not to kill—he can’t help himself. More fool me.”

He gritted his teeth. “You are not a fool, and I did not lie.”

She crossed her arms. “Are you, or are you not, engaged to my cousin?”

“I am not,” he said, his gaze so direct, so lucid, it felt genuine. A treacherous tendril of hope fluttered in her chest. She quashed it.

“Why would she make such claims if there were nothing to it?”

His eyes narrowed. “The little—” He shook his head. “It’s not entirely her fault. It’s Rochester.”

A terrible fatigue came over her at his words, urging her to retreat, to go curl up in a black hole, safe from the sight of him.

“It’s always someone else’s fault, is it not.” She turned away, because he wasn’t leaving.

He followed her down the corridor, and she sensed his urgency on her skin like a touch.

“Leave,” she said, her voice rising.

“Not as long as you are feeling like a fool,” came his cold voice. “This is my fault entirely.”

“So you admit it.”

“Of course—but I hope you will accept mitigating circumstances.”

She gave a hollow laugh.

“Rochester is blackmailing me and holding my mother hostage.” He said it quickly.

She stopped.

When she turned back, he met her gaze evenly, but he looked unsettled and his hands were clenching by his side as though he were suffering a bout of nerves.

A crack ran through the icy shell holding her together; she could feel it. Still, she flinched when he made to take her arm, and he withdrew his hand with a scowl.

“Very well,” she said. “You may explain yourself.”

She guided him into the drawing room and settled on the old settee, hands folded, her back stiff as a board. He stood before her with the reluctance of an outlaw in the dock.

“Rochester is hell-bent on seeing the Ballentine line secured,” he began. “He was alarmed when I made clear that I had no interest in marriage in the foreseeable future.”

A sudden, leaden feeling pulled her back into her body. It should not have bothered her, his reluctance to marry, but hearing him say it with such certainty grated on some layer of her soul.

“Your main duty at this point in your life is to provide an heir,” she said coolly. “Your father is hardly making unreasonable demands.”

He inclined his head in agreement. “It is, however, unreasonable that he will stop at nothing short of murder to see the Ballentines hold on to the Rochester title. He was in the process of arranging a match with your cousin and gave me a few months to rehabilitate my reputation to allow her to accept me without causing talk about your family. To ensure my cooperation, he threatened to put my mother into an asylum. And one thing you must know about Rochester is that I have never seen him make an idle threat.”

Gooseflesh rose on her arms. His tale was straight out of a gothic novel.

But his mother had always been deemed erratic and different. Inconvenient noblewomen were sometimes quietly locked away at private asylums . . . and she had seen the marks Rochester had left on Tristan’s back—she wouldn’t put such sordid behavior beyond him.

“This is why you need money,” she said slowly. “The passive income from London Print.”

He nodded. “I would have been cut off from any family accounts until my father’s death. And life for two people in India requires deep pockets.”

India.

She swallowed hard. “I see.”

His eyes darkened with regret.

“My dear—”

She shook her head. “When were you going to leave?” Her voice was unsteady.

He ran a hand over his face. “In a few weeks.”

“So soon,” she said softly.

“I made a mistake, not to tell you sooner. I should have told you the moment I read all those letters—it was when I knew you would at least have understood the absurdity of the situation.”

Sad, she felt so very sad. “Why didn’t you—tell me?”

He was on his knees before her, looking up at her with a sincerity in his eyes that cut her to the bone. “Because at first, it was my own affair, and mine alone to solve. For what it’s worth, I had not expected mutual feelings and esteem to grow between us. But they have, and fast, and I came to feel reluctant to share my failings as a man with you—it is shameful enough that I could not protect my mother while I still lived at Ashdown. As you might imagine, Rochester has always been a bully. Above all, I suspected if I told you it would come to precisely this.”

Feelings and esteem. But evidently, no trust.

She glanced down into his flushed, handsome face. “So you were a coward.”

He went very pale. “I was, yes.”

How would he have told her in the end? To her face? In a letter, to be read when he was already on his way to the subcontinent, not to return for years and years? He was still going to leave her, in fact, and something vital splintered apart deep inside her chest.

“It’s why you took the loan from Blackstone, isn’t it,” she said tonelessly. “An even greater criminal than your father.”

He nodded. “Rochester cannot touch him. However, there is a twist in the plot: my mother recently disappeared, and Rochester is not behind it. And as long as I have no clue regarding her whereabouts, my hands are somewhat bound—I must find her before my father does.”

Her mind whirled, from the feel of his hands clutching her skirts, from breathing in his warm scent. She shook her head in a bid for clarity. “All of this sounds . . . utterly outlandish.”

His brows rose. “Does it? After everything you know about the plight of wives trapped behind closed doors?”

His tan had returned, and his features had softened. He looked like a man unburdened after carrying an impossible weight for too long, and it erased the last of her doubts—he was telling her the truth.

“And yet,” she murmured, “and yet you came to my bed, when it threatened your solvency and thus your plan.”

He gave her a dark look. “What can I say. You were naked.”

She covered her eyes with her hand. As she had suspected all along, he hadn’t meant to bed her. He had simply lost control over his urges.

She breathed through another jab of pain. “I understand your silence on the matter of your mother,” she said. “I would have felt protective of such circumstances myself—it is hardly acceptable to speak about unpleasantness within one’s own family. And yet, I still wish you had.”