LITMIR.BIZ

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blundered in. Any man who shows an interest in you, you hold at arm’s length until there is the promise of a ring on your finger.’

      ‘Including you, Henry,’ his brother-in-law said sharply in an attempt to silence him on seeing the young woman’s shocked expression and how she had paled beneath the force of his attack.

      Henry lifted his arrogant brows, drawling, ‘Including me. I wanted her—rather badly, as it happens—and was prepared to go to any lengths to possess her.’

      ‘Even to commit bigamy. You have failed, Henry, which is why you are so ready to point out Miss Brook’s faults to anyone who will listen.’

      ‘Indeed, I confess to having been afflicted by a strong desire to possess her, but perish the thought that I would actually marry a woman of such low character and without a penny to her name.’

      ‘Your failure to seduce her will do nothing for your self-esteem when you are back in town and you have to face your acquaintances and admit your failure to win the wager and have to part with the five hundred guineas.’

      Lydia stood like a pillar of stone, her mind numb. Her senses and emotions would return when she realised the nightmare she was experiencing now was no nightmare at all, but an extension of reality that would affect the whole of her life. But at the moment she was too traumatised to feel or see beyond it. Henry’s insulting words and the stranger’s revelation hung in the air like a rotten smell. No one had insulted her as much as this and it was more than her pride could bear. She saw it all now.

      Dazed and unable to form any coherent thought, she backed away as the implication of what she’d heard rammed home. Her heart began to beat hard with humiliation and wrath. She was appalled and outraged—there was no possible way to deny the awful truth.

      Henry had made a wager with his friends to seduce her and, should he win, he would be richer by the sum of five hundred guineas. It was more than her lacerated pride could withstand. Her face glazed with fury. Oh, the humiliation of it. Any tender feelings that might have remained for him were demolished. The discovery of his treachery had destroyed all her illusions.

      ‘How dare you?’ she said, her voice low and shaking with anger. ‘How dare you do that to me? I do not deserve being made sport of.’

      ‘Miss Brook,’ the stranger said. ‘Please believe me when I say I regret mentioning—’

      Her eyes flew to his. ‘What? The wager? Is that what you were about to say? Why should you regret it? Why—when you were telling the truth? I have a right to know the extent Henry went to in order to get me into his bed.’ She looked at Henry. ‘What you have done is despicable. From the very beginning you set out to degrade me in the most shameful way of all. I am not too proud to admit that in the beginning I was foolish enough to fall for your charms. You’re no doubt accustomed to that sort of feminine reaction wherever you go,’ she said scathingly, ‘even though you have a wife. It would give me great satisfaction to know that handing over five hundred guineas for your failed wager would ruin you, but I doubt it will.’

      Faced with such ferocity, Henry took a step towards her. ‘For heaven’s sake, Lydia, it was just a wager—a moment of madness. I never intended to hurt you,’ he said in an attempt to justify his actions, but Lydia was having none of it.

      ‘A moment of madness!’ she flared, her eyes blazing with turbulent animosity. ‘Is that what you call it? There is no excuse for what you have done. What is true of most scoundrels is doubly so of you. You would have ruined me, defiled me without any regard to my feelings and then cast me off as you would a common trull, you—you loathsome, despicable lech.’

      ‘Lydia, listen—’

      ‘I am not interested in anything further you have to say. But you listen to me, Henry Sturgis—Seymour—whoever you are,’ she said, her chilled contempt meeting his spluttering apologies head on. ‘I will never forgive you for this. From now on you will keep your distance from me.’ She turned from him and walked away. She couldn’t bear to look at him. The man and woman who had been brought in to witness their wedding stood side by side, rigid, their faces blank and expressionless as she brushed past them.

      What he had done to her and what it would mean for her in the future spooled before her like a long ribbon of anger and grief. She wanted to lash out at him, to claw his face and pound him with her fists. Hate, disgust, disappointment and a deep sense of humiliation and hurt throbbed inside her skull and tightened her chest until she thought she would choke.

      He had brought her all this way for a pretend wedding on the strength of a wager with his friends. She felt as if he’d taken a knife to her and sliced her into little pieces. Gripped by a terrible miasma of pain and deprivation—feelings she recognised, having grown up with them—she turned and ran unseeing out of the room which she had so recently walked into with a happiness she could not conceive. Now she saw nothing, heard nothing but the heavy pounding of her heart as she left the house and out into the street, hurrying to goodness knew where—anywhere, as long as she didn’t have to go back into that room and face them all, to confront the truth of what Henry was and what he had done to her.

      Rage, white-hot and fierce, coursed through her, bringing a suffering so excruciating as to be unsupportable. She felt cruelly betrayed, lost and abandoned, the immensity of it causing her intense pain.

      She knew she’d feel better if she could only get away. If she could escape from him. She didn’t want to stop because then she wouldn’t have to think about anything else. But eventually she would have to stop and when she did she would have to feel, which she didn’t want to face. She didn’t want to see Henry. She didn’t want to look in his eyes. She hadn’t loved him. She didn’t know what it meant to love anyone, but it did nothing to lessen her humiliation and the pain of such a public betrayal.

      She kept on heading out of the village. What she was planning to do when she stopped running she couldn’t say. The most important thing was to get away. She heard her name being called. She kept on going. Her heart was racing in her chest and she felt a sharp pain in her side.

      ‘Wait,’ someone called.

      She heard herself gasp and saw the road ahead of her blur. She kept hurrying on. She heard footsteps behind her and then another call of her name. Not until a hand grasped her arm did she halt, breathing hard. She turned, her mind and her senses disjointed, the people and carriages passing by in a maze of confused colours and muffled sounds. Her confusion was exacerbated by the colour of light blue eyes surrounded by thick black lashes, the sound of a deep, mellifluous voice and the pleasant aroma of a sharp cologne. Still holding her arm, Alexander Golding led her to the side of the road, out of harm’s way of passing carriages.

      The eyes that looked into hers were as transparent and as brilliant as sunlight on water. His sharp, sceptical gaze seemed to bore into her brain.

      ‘Are you all right? You are upset.’ He spoke evenly, without sympathy, seemingly uncaring of her plight or the cause. Her chest was rising and falling in rapid succession.

      ‘Of course I am upset,’ she replied irately, trying to pull herself together. ‘What Henry has done to me is unforgivable. What was I? Some tender titbit he decided to play with, a simpleton to fill his needs for a night or two. What amusement he must have had playing his sordid little game with me. And how disappointed he must now be feeling, knowing he has lost his wager.’

      Nothing moved in his face, but his eyes darkened. Quietly, he said, ‘I am sorry you had to find out like that.’

      ‘Yes—so am I, but thank goodness I found out before it was too late. Now would you please let go of my arm?’ He obliged at once.

      Her anger somewhat diminished, Lydia stared at the darkly handsome stranger. He possessed a haughty reserve that was not inviting. There was also an aggressive confidence and strength of purpose in his features, and he had the air of a man who succeeded in all he set out to achieve. From the arrogant lift of his dark head and casual stance, he was a man with many shades to his nature, a man with a sense of his own infallibility. With her mind on what Henry would have done to her

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