The frown deepened. The accusation of dishonesty troubled her. “I hated lying to your mother.”
She didn’t say that she’d hated lying to him. He had so far to go before she’d give him a chance. For a man who spent his life coaxing people in directions they didn’t want to take, he was depressingly unsure whether he’d win her over. “She doesn’t know you did.”
“She will.”
Yes, bugger it. If Eleanor’s plot succeeded and those infernal letters became public, his mother would indeed know that she’d fostered a traitor. “Sedgemoor told me everything. I know why you joined my household. You wanted proof of my crimes.”
“I found it,” she muttered, looking down at hands clasped so tightly in her lap that the knuckles shone white.
He ignored that. “Finally I understand so many things. Not least your night wanderings and why I found you in my bedroom.”
She’d been worryingly pale, but now pink colored her cheeks. “I nearly died when you came in.”
Bitterness edged his tone. “I’m sure.”
Eleanor cast him a searching glance. “I thought that you’d be furious.”
“You also thought that you’d be far away and safe from retribution,” he said in that same grim voice. “Under bloody Sedgemoor’s protection.”
Her eyes widened. “Not in… that way.”
He almost smiled. “No, not in that way. Sedgemoor’s notoriously devoted to his wife.”
“I’d heard you were enemies. I thought he’d welcome the chance to destroy you.”
Leath arched his eyebrows, beating back barely contained outrage. How could she range herself against him like this? “When you’re basing a fiendish plot on gossip, you should make sure it’s up to date, my dear.”
She glared. “Don’t call me that.”
For all her composure, she was no closer to relenting. His voice lowered, although he could barely hide his hurt disbelief. “You came to my house, convinced I’d defiled women up and down the country. You inveigled yourself into my mother’s life, my life, under false pretenses.”
A hunted expression entered her eyes. “Given your sins, deceit is justified.”
“What about your kisses? Were they justified?”
She flinched so violently that her back slammed into the chair. “You can’t—”
“Can’t what?” He couldn’t restrain his anguish. “Can’t remind you that two nights ago, you lay in my arms?”
She raised a shaking hand to cover her face. He wondered if she hid from her seducer or from the truth inside herself. “Don’t.”
“Why did you give yourself to me?”
She lowered her hand to reveal eyes dull with misery. “Because I’m foolish and weak, and I convinced myself that you weren’t the man I knew you to be.”
“Or perhaps you discovered that you were mistaken about me in the beginning.”
She winced. “Those letters show the truth. You behave as if I’ve wronged you, when your misdeeds reach to the sky.”
“I’m sorry about your sister.”
“You should be sorry,” she retorted, cutting as a whip. “You killed her.”
He rose, fruitlessly wishing he could ease her grief. “No wonder you hated me.”
She stumbled to her feet and glared at him. “Don’t pretend this is news to you. Dorothy’s in your diary, the one that man Greengrass has. I know you were in Kent when she was ruined.”
“I—” He stopped. “Good Lord, so I was that summer. I was at a strategy meeting at Penshurst.”