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“I do! Really, I do. It is not that I don’t realize how you feel or that I don’t think you are right. I do. It is outrageous to ask you to marry him in order to save us. To save me.” He jumped to his feet and walked across the room and back, jingling his watch chain nervously. Finally he stopped in front of her and said in a tight, quiet voice, “It is simply that my need is so pressing, I had to try again. Angela, please, reconsider. It is wrong of me, I know, but I am begging you.”
Sympathy and frustration swelled painfully in Angela’s chest. “Oh, Jeremy, if it were anything else … but I cannot marry again.”
“I—I am sure Cam would not be a husband like Dunstan was. He—he seems a decent sort, even if he is, well, what he is. But, you know, if we lived in another place, like the United States, say, his rank would not even matter.”
“It is not his rank! You know that.”
“Of course. I mean, I understand perfectly that even if he were a duke, you would not wish to marry again. The thing is, you see, I—I’m in a rather desperate situation.”
“I know!” Angela clasped her hands tightly together in her lap, fighting against the tears that sprang into her eyes. She could not bear Jeremy’s obvious agony, yet she was horribly certain that she would always regret it if she gave in and did what he wanted. “I want to help. I wish I were brave enough to do it for you. But when I think of marrying again, of being subject to my husband’s moods and whims. And, Jeremy … it would be worse, I fear, because Cam already hates me. He thinks I was lying to him, back then, when Grandpapa caught us. He thinks that I never really cared for him, that I was only toying with him. He thinks that I married Dunstan because Dunstan was rich.”
“Tell him the truth, then.”
“I have tried! He will not listen to me. He doesn’t believe me. He just wants his revenge.”
“Yes, and he will have it, one way or another,” Jeremy agreed bitterly. He looked away, unable to meet her eyes, and said, “Angela, I am begging you. It isn’t just the money, though God knows that is bad enough. It—There is more. If you do not marry him, he has threatened to reveal … Well, he knows something about me, and if he tells everyone, I will be ruined. Not just me, either. Rosemary will be destroyed. The children, too. The whole family will be tainted by the scandal.”
Guilt gnawed at Angela. She knew that whatever scandal might come would be that much worse because of the scandal her own divorce had caused four years ago. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, tears welling from her eyes and beginning to course down her cheeks. “I am so sorry.”
“He will tell everyone,” her brother went on grimly, “what his investigators discovered about me. You see, he had men poking into everything, looking everywhere, finding all the family’s weak spots. I was the weakest.” Jeremy closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “They—they followed me to a club I sometimes frequent and … and they followed some of my friends from the club, also. They tracked me down to a flat where, uh, someone I know lives, and they questioned all the people who live around there. Oh, God, Angela, he knows that I have desires that are … not normal. Lascivious, sinful. Illegal. Ever since Eton, I—Well, there was a boy in the upper form, and we—”
He broke off, and Angela stared at him. “I don’t understand. Jeremy, what are you talking about?”
“I loved him!” he cried out fiercely. “He was a boy, but I loved him. I let him—We lay together. We had carnal knowledge of each other.”
Angela gaped. “Of a man?”
“Yes. I tried to stop. I really did. After school, I tried to keep away. Then, when I met Rosemary, I thought it was actually over. I loved her. I really did. I still do. I thought that a miracle had happened, that God had answered my prayers. I was attracted to her. I was able to … to bed her.” He blushed fierily. “Oh, God, I cannot believe that I am discussing this with you. You must hate me.”
“No! Oh, Jeremy, no, I could never hate you.”
“Well, I hate myself. I haven’t any will. I cannot stay away from that life. Despite my love for Rosemary, despite the children we conceived, I keep going back there. And Monroe knows. So will everyone, if you do not marry him.”
He heaved a sigh and sank down into the chair. “Forgive me. I’ve made such a mess of everything. Now our entire lives are at Cam Monroe’s mercy.”
“You have had some help with that.” Angela’s eyes flashed, and she clenched her hands. “Damn him to hell for this!”
She whirled and stalked to her door, rage building in her. She flung open her door with a crash and charged out.
“Angela!” Belatedly Jeremy jumped to his feet. “No, wait! Where are you going? Come back.”
He started after her, but by the time he reached the doorway, she was already down the hall and pounding on Monroe’s door. Before Cam could even get out an “Enter,” she had turned the knob and thrown the door open.
Cameron was sitting at his desk, and he turned at the noise of her entry. His eyebrows lifted when he saw her, and he rose slowly to his feet, watching her. “Angela …”
This, he thought, was much more the woman he had known. Her hair was no longer up and restrained, but flowing like a copper fire down her back. The color was high in her face, and her eyes glittered with strong emotion. There was passion in her once more, even if it was the passion of anger. She was dressed for bed, and though her dressing gown revealed nothing more than the dresses she wore during the day, it carried the suggestion of intimacy. No man but a family member or husband would see a woman in this attire. Desire stirred in Cam as he faced her, awaiting almost with eagerness the storm she obviously carried inside herself.
“How could you?” she raged, slamming the door shut behind her and striding across the room toward him. “What kind of a monster have you turned into? I never would have believed that you would stoop to something like this! That you were the kind of low, conniving, heartless bastard who would ruin a man and his family just to get what you want!”
Angela was furious, too angry to think or to fear him. Her hand itched to slap him, to wipe the smug look from his face.
“You might as well give up, Angela,” Cam replied, in an almost bored voice guaranteed to raise the level of her fury. “I have become accustomed to getting what I want. This time it is you.”
“Well, you are not getting me! I’ll be damned if I will marry a man like you. You have no conscience, no principles. I hate you! There must be ice water in your veins, not blood! How could you have changed so? How could you have turned into this … this vile creature?”
His eyes narrowed. “Your family had a little to do with it, my lady.”
“Oh, no, don’t blame us for what you are. Your soul must always have been black for you to have turned out as cruel a man as you are.”
“An odd thing for you to say, a woman who married a man she did not love for the money he could give her. A woman who was divorced by him because she slept with three of his friends—or, I should say, three that are known. For three of them to testify, there must have been others who would not. How many men did you sleep with altogether, Angela?”
Angela trembled, aflame with anger and hurt, hating him, and yet cut to her heart by his obvious disgust of her. “What does it matter to you?” she hissed. “If nothing else, the price you want to pay for me should be less, shouldn’t it, since I am damaged goods?”
His mouth twisted, and his eyes lit dangerously. It galled him that she would not deny the charges, would not explain why she had done what she had or express even the slightest regret. Yet, at the same time, he could not look at her snapping eyes and flushed face, her breasts heaving with the rapid rush of fury, and not feel a stab of desire pierce his loins. She was beautiful and wild, enticing in her rage. He wanted suddenly to touch her, to pull her to him and feel her lips beneath his again. He wanted to blot out the memory of her husband and all the others from her mind with his kisses, his caresses. He took a step toward her, his hand going out to touch her cheek.
Angela gasped, ice-cold fear rushing through her and dousing the fury that had propelled her. She took a quick step backward, flinching away. He stopped, his hand in midair, and his brows rushed together in a scowl.
“My, God, Angela, do you despise me that much?” he growled. “Have you become so aristocratic that my mere touch would debase you?”
She braced herself, suddenly aware of how vulnerable she was here, of Cam’s power and her lack of it. The old familiar fear gripped her, turning her bowels to ice. She loathed herself for that fear, for the desire to turn and run, to give in to whatever he demanded. She could not back down, could not let her fear show.
“You debase yourself. What you do to people, the cold, selfish calculation in you—that is what I despise.”
“I see.” Cam crossed his arms over his chest, watching the color disappear from her face and the light from her eyes, replaced by the ice that had been there this morning. He regretted the transformation. “Well, that is what I am now.” He turned away and strolled back to the desk, saying casually, “Tell me, do you plan to despise me as a stranger or as my wife?”
His words surprised a brief burst of laughter from her. “God, can you really be this callous? Do you not even care that you marry a woman who hates you?”
He shrugged as he sat back down in his chair. He gestured with his hand toward another chair, but Angela shook her head, remaining where she was. The moment of fear had pierced the hot bubble of her anger, letting it drain away and leaving her feeling sick and wrung out. She wanted to get away, to go back to her bed and pull the covers over her head like a child. Yet something in her made her stay.
Cam looked at her, steepling his fingers together. “A willing wife is certainly easier,” he said, as unconcerned as if they were talking about the weather. “However, it is not one of my conditions.”
“What are your conditions?”
“Then you are ready to negotiate?”
“I did not say that,” she replied carefully.
“You have let me know what a low and filthy soul I am, and I have acknowledged it. Now we can get down to bargaining. My condition is that you marry me as soon as possible. In return, I will tear up your brother’s personal notes. I will invest money in the mines and the land so that both can be restored to their former profitability. I will take over their running—only in actuality, of course, not in title. For the time being, we will live here, as I will have some work to do to bring the mine and lands back into shape. The castle will need restoring, as well. There is dry rot in the Elizabethan gallery, I understand.”
“And what about the report on my brother? What about the threat you hold over his head?”
“I would have little reason to besmirch the reputation of my own brother-in-law, now, would I? I will toss the report on the fire, and I have paid the investigators enough to ensure their silence. No one will know of it.” He paused, then added, “You shall have your own fund, of course, for your pocket money. Jeremy should be all right without the interest of all his debts weighing him down and without the expenses of this house. But if it’s necessary, I shall give him an allowance until the farm and mines start to yield better profits.”
“So … on the one hand, destruction—on the other, beneficence. How easily you play God.”
“Not God. Merely a man who knows what he wants.”
“I see. And what other people want does not matter.”
He shrugged. “We are negotiating, are we not? If you want something, say so.”
Angela started to remind him that she was not negotiating terms with him, that she had no intention of accepting his offer, but it seemed too much effort at the moment.
“Come, come, Angela, surely there is something you want from me.”
“All I want is my freedom.”
“You shall have plenty of freedom—more freedom than you have now, in fact, since you will be a married woman, and one with money. Money creates a great deal of freedom. I have proven that.”
“No wife is free,” Angela replied flatly. “She is always subject to her husband’s whims.”
“I am a man of few whims.” The faint smile on his face goaded her.
“I do not wish to share your bed,” she told him bluntly.
Her words seemed to hang in the air. Angela flushed. Suddenly she was very aware of the fact that she wore only a nightgown and robe and that Cam was very casually dressed, his coat and tie off, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and the top two buttons of his shirt undone, exposing a vee of browned chest, lightly dotted with black hairs. Angela swallowed and looked away. There was a strange sensation in her stomach, the flicker of some long-ago feeling. She remembered how it had been when she and Cam were in love, the way they had rushed together at every opportunity. They would ride out behind the ruins of an old shepherd’s hut, to a copse of trees there, and she would dismount, sliding down into Cam’s arms.
Angela knew that she would never forget the look in his eyes, so dark they were almost black, yet leaping with a flame, or the way his mouth widened sensually as he smiled up at her. He would let her slide slowly down through his strong hands, and then he would pull her to him and kiss her. Angela shifted and cleared her throat. Her stomach was jumping wildly around.
“Indeed?” Cam said coolly. “An odd request, coming from you.”
Angela stiffened at the implied insult and whirled to stalk out of the room. Cam was up and after her in an instant. His hand lashed out and curled around her wrist, pulling her to a stop.
“Why?” he growled. “Just tell me that! Why did you sleep with those others, yet you would rather let your brother sink into ruin than sleep with me? Is it because of who I am? Because the blood in my veins isn’t pure enough? Is my skin too dirty to touch yours?”
Angela started to deny his words hotly, but reason stopped her. Let him think what he would, as long as it gave him a disgust of her. Then he would no longer desire to marry her. She raised her chin a little and stared straight back into his face, forcing herself to hold her gaze steady.
“I am a Stanhope,” she told him proudly. “Perhaps when I was young I was foolish enough to think birth did not matter, but I know better now. Money will never make you a gentleman. I cannot lie with a man who is anything else.”
Ostentatiously Cam dropped her wrist and walked away. Angela braced herself, prepared for a loud and angry condemnation of her shallowness. She was surprised when, after a moment, he turned and said in a clipped voice, “Are those your terms? Not to sleep in my bed? If I agree to that, you are willing to marry me?”
Angela stared at him, flabbergasted. “What? You still want to marry me? Knowing how I feel about you?”
His face was as impassive as stone. “I told you, I expect no love match. ‘Tis more a … a business arrangement on both sides. I did not ask to marry you in order to get between your sheets. If you think that I could live with a cold wife and not keep a warm and willing mistress stashed away for comfort, then you are very much mistaken.”
Angela’s lip curled. “Of course. You would have to have a mistress.”
“What do you think? That I should live a celibate because you are too fine a lady to let a common man into your bed?”
“No. I think only that you should leave me in peace.”
“However, if I agreed to such terms, it would eliminate the possibility of heirs, now, wouldn’t it? I had wanted to have children with the Stanhope blood, the Stanhope place in Society. I had wanted to see my children acknowledged by families such as yours.”
“You think that our children would have any place in Society?” Angela retorted sarcastically. “The offspring of a servant and a divorcée? There isn’t a chance in hell. You would do better if you married a genteel maiden, even if her parentage were lower. Better yet, go back to the United States. It is where you belong.”
“No.” His voice was quiet. “I have found that I do not belong anywhere.” He paused, then went on, “Again I ask, what if I agree to your terms? If I agreed that sharing a bed would not be part of our arrangement, would you marry me then?”
She gazed at him stormily, hating the roil of emotions inside her, hating his unflappable calm. Jeremy desperately needed her help, and she owed him for the way he had helped her during and after her divorce. She felt very guilty about refusing to do what was necessary to save him; it seemed horribly selfish. If Cam remained true to his word, perhaps it would not be so bad. Cam had never been mean or violent with her when they were young, and he seemed not to have enough emotions about her now to get enraged enough to hit her. If he kept to his promise not to make her sleep with him.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I would have no way of being sure that the terms would be fulfilled. ‘Twould be easy to say that you would not take me, but after we were married, my body would be yours, not mine.”
Cam’s eyes darkened at her words, and his mouth softened subtly. “A curious way to put it,” he murmured.
“A truthful way.”
“If I gave you my word, you must realize that I would not break it. Surely you know me well enough to know that.”
“I don’t know you at all anymore.” Angela took a step back, glancing around her uncertainly. “I don’t know what to do.” She turned and ran from the room.
Angela sat on the bench in the arbor, sketching a stand of irises that had just come into bloom. She had spent most of the past three days, ever since her confrontation with Cam, out on the moors, so that she could avoid having to talk to him. Her plan had worked well so far, but she was getting tired of having to escape from her own home, and when she saw the purplish irises, she had given in to an urge to draw them.
Her usual companions were sprawled around her. The sun was pleasantly warm on her face, and she felt lazy and contented. It was almost the way it was normally, the way it had been before Cam and Mr. Pettigrew came. The way it would be again, if only they would leave. She let out a little groan at the fact that she had allowed him to intrude upon her thoughts.
She closed her eyes and turned sideways on the bench, leaning back against the arched trellis that formed the arbor, and tried to recapture the feeling of content she had had earlier. She told herself that everything would be better later—except that Jeremy was going to be ruined financially, as well as socially. Firmly she pushed that thought from her mind. But she could not make it stay away. Angela knew that she could not let Jeremy be destroyed on her account. It was entirely within her power to save him. She hated that fact. She hated Cam for having put her in such a position. She wondered what marriage to Cam might be like, whether he would keep his promise not to seek her bed.
Years ago, she would have trusted him with her life, she knew. He had been her god, her idol; she had loved him with a child’s worshiping heart long before they fell in love as adults. Her father had died when she was young, and her mother had usually been sick, which had left her in the company of her grandparents, who were too old and not of the disposition, anyway, to enjoy talking to or playing with a child. She had been left primarily in the charge of her governess after she got old enough to leave Nurse’s care, and that prim woman had provided little affection or attention to a girl hungry for it. But Cam had had time for her. He had listened to her, talked to her, been her friend.
Hot tears welled in Angela’s eyes, surprising her, and seeped out beneath her lids.
“Crying at the prospect of your wedding, my dear?” a familiar voice drawled, not three feet away from her. “Can’t say that I blame you.”
Angela gasped, her eyes flying open, her entire body suddenly chilled to the marrow. Lord Dunstan was standing on the narrow dirt pathway that led to the arbor.
CHAPTER FOUR
SHE HAD NOT seen him in four years. She had thought—hoped and prayed—never to see him again. It was such a shock to have him there in front of her, without warning, that for a moment she felt as if she could not breathe. She simply stared at him, unable to move or to speak, her insides turned to ice.
“Ah, I can tell that you are surprised to see me,” he continued coolly. He looked much the same. Dissipation had yet to mar his well-proportioned face. He looked cold and perfect, as if he had been carved out of marble, and his clothes were in the height of fashion and of the best material. Lord Dunstan allowed nothing but the finest around him.
Angela forced herself to stand up and face him. She could not let him see that she still feared him; nothing would please him more. “What are you doing here?”
She was pleased that her voice did not tremble. She clenched her fists at her side. Her entire body was rigid. Would anyone hear her inside the house if she screamed? The walls of Bridbury Castle had been built to withstand sieges. Beside her, Wellington lumbered to his feet, eyeing their visitor distrustfully.
“I came because I was concerned about you,” Dunstan told her, his voice mockingly sympathetic. “I could not believe the rumors I heard. I had to see for myself.”
“I can’t see why. Nothing about me is any longer of your concern.”
“But you are my wife! Of course what you do is my concern.”
“Was,” Angela pointed out firmly. “I was your wife.”
“Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but, though the legal bonds between us may be broken, I still feel that you belong to me.” His pale green eyes swept down her body knowingly. Angela shivered; it was as if a snake had slithered across her path. “You see, I am very familiar with every inch of you.”
“Go away, Dunstan. You have no right to be here.”
“I cannot leave until I learn what I came here for. I heard that your brother, not the most discriminating of men, as we both know—” again there was a knowing leer in his eyes, and Angela was certain that he, too, knew about Jeremy’s sexual habits “—that Jeremy was entertaining your former stable boy in his home. Odd, I thought. It couldn’t be true, but I heard it so frequently, I decided I must drop by and see if it was true.”
“Cameron Monroe is visiting here, if that is what you mean.” Angela tried for a haughty tone, but the icy amusement in Dunstan’s eyes told her that he saw right through her pose.
