Despairingly he reached out, then realized that his touch was the last thing she wanted. In a low voice, he made one last plea. “Trust me, beloved.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Helplessly Nell stared into Leath’s face. He shredded her heart into bloody gobbets. He looked so hurt. He looked so sincere. He looked as if her merest word could devastate him. Yet how could a humble creature like Eleanor Trim hold such power over this great lord?
She’d imagined when she found those letters that he’d never again be a danger to her. But her love, she discovered, was tenacious. And stupid.
Her love insisted that he hadn’t lied. Her love urged her to fling herself into his arms and beg him to forgive her for doubting him.
That same stupid, immovable love made her ache to assuage his exhaustion and unhappiness. If he’d been home to receive Sedgemoor’s message, he must have ridden all those miles from the cottage to Alloway Chase the same day she’d left. Then he must have turned around and headed for Fentonwyck. The timing made no sense otherwise. Was he so eager to see her? Or eager to stop her revealing what she knew?
Everything, everything had two conflicting sides. Nell felt ripped apart. Either the marquess was the good man she’d once thought. Or his transgressions condemned him to the lowest circle of hell.
Right now, looking into his strained features, she could almost believe him. Except that the man who had seduced those women must have been a convincing liar.
His story was plausible. Lord Neville Fairbrother had irrefutably been a villain. Was the nephew another rotten apple from the same tree? After tumbling headlong in love with Leath, she knew his ability to charm the most virtuous woman.
“Eleanor?” Her name in that resonant baritone contained every beautiful note in the world.
Nell squared her shoulders against a shiver of awareness and tilted her chin, battling to look defiant, when every atom wanted to stop fighting. How she wished he’d never come to Fentonwyck. Hating Leath from a distance was so much easier.
“I can’t…” She tried to sound strong and dismissive, but her voice emerged as a whisper. “I can’t decide now.”
“Yes, you can,” he said implacably, jaw hardening.
“Don’t bully me,” she snapped, welcoming anger. If Leath continued to stare at her with such yearning, she’d burst into tears. And that weakness would invite every other weakness home to roost, including the one that would make her forgive him, whatever he’d done.
Confusion left her dizzy. She shook her head and stumbled toward the door. She could no longer bear to be in the same room as Leath. Wanting him. Loathing him. Verging on trusting him. Not trusting her instincts. This was like wrestling with an enemy in a mirror.
“I can’t let you go.” His desperation scraped across her skin.
“I must,” she said brokenly.
As she passed, he caught her arm. “Do you believe me?”
“Release me.” She meant to demand, but instead she begged. It was so unfair that even now, his touch made her blood churn with desire.
“Do you believe me?” he repeated in an urgent voice that vibrated through her.
He looked pushed to the edge of endurance. Two days ago, before she’d found the letters, she’d have followed her heart. But those letters hadn’t only destroyed her certainty in him, but also her certainty in herself. How could she be sure that desire didn’t fool her into seeing honesty and need—and something that looked like love, God save her—in his silvery eyes? How could she be sure of anything, now that the Marquess of Leath proved false?
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
She jerked without breaking away. “Stop saying that. My sister died speaking your name.”
“But without my child in her belly,” he said harshly.
“How can I believe you?”
She saw his expression change to anger and purpose—and flaring passion. A snarl bared straight white teeth. “Perhaps this will convince you.”
Fear engulfed her like a rush of icy water and she parted her lips to call for Sedgemoor’s footman. But before she could make a sound—at least so she told herself as she hung from his grip—Leath’s mouth crashed into hers.
The kiss was all about dominance. She felt none of the heartbreaking tenderness, familiar from the cottage. She should be glad. That tenderness had been a lie.
Although even now, she had diffic