That Despicable Rogue (19 page)

‘To the best of my knowledge,’ he said carefully, ‘I am not aware of ever deflowering even one. I think I would have remembered.’

If he carried on making her feel quite so wanton and wicked as he was right this minute, that might well change, she mused—and quite soon. She did not have the capacity to resist him tonight. Not any more.

‘I also read that you have ravaged a few of the wives of the aristocracy.’

He struggled to meet her eye. ‘I might have done that,’ he conceded. ‘Once or twice. But I was invited to do so by the wives in question and they were very happy about it.’

His lips found her neck again and she sighed happily.

‘We already know that you win things in card games—this house and that ship you bragged to me about—but the newspapers say that you cheat. How do you plead, sir?’

‘I do not cheat. I just have a talent for remembering numbers. I see patterns...track the probability of things. It keeps my mind sharp—although to be honest it is much more of a challenge to lose.’ He was looking quite pleased with himself.

‘You expect me to believe that somebody who has such a talent with numbers
deliberately
goes out of their way to lose? I won’t believe it.’ She snuggled against him.

‘That is the fun of it. I know exactly how to win—but to
lose
takes real skill. You have no idea how hard it is to lose a game when your hand is infinitely better than your opponent’s. It takes a great deal of strategy. You have to throw away all your good cards at just the right moment or it becomes obvious. Also, you have to save enough atrocious cards to lay down when your opponent has nothing better than mediocre. It is the very best feeling in the world to see a man sitting smugly in front of you, gloating at his skill and good fortune, when secretly you know that
you
created it for him. I promise you I lose as much as I win—not that I ever let on, of course.’

He was so handsome when he was grinning—it made her feel quite dizzy.

‘Where would be the fun in that?’ she said sarcastically. ‘Remind me never to play cards with you.’

She knew he was no cheat. She would not have given her heart to a scoundrel.

‘One newspaper even said that you surrendered your own father to the authorities for a reward!’ She giggled against his chest but he had stiffened instantly.

‘There was no reward,’ he said bluntly, and allowed her to push him away.

‘I’m sorry...?’ Hannah was both outraged and horrified at his admission. Deep down, she had believed that those rumours were as ridiculous as all the others. She had to have misheard. ‘You are not denying the validity of the story, then?’

When he shook his head, she stalked across the room with her arms wrapped around her, suddenly chilled to the very bone.

‘What difference does the lack of reward make?’

He regarded her calmly, his eyes for once inscrutable and cold. ‘I think it makes the world of difference. To suggest that I did it for financial gain makes me appear mercenary.’

It was as if the ground had been cruelly ripped from under her. ‘But you
did
do it? You surrendered your own father to the authorities?’

What was that if it was not mercenary?

He nodded.

‘And he died as a result?’

He nodded curtly again.

‘Do you feel no guilt whatsoever?’ Hannah spat, not caring how disgusted she sounded at this revelation.

Just when she had finally started to see him as a decent person—had harboured some faint hope that they might have a future together—he had decided to show her his true colours. It was a crushing blow. He was no better than her treacherous brother after all. Everything had been a sham.

‘How do you sleep at night?’

Ross regarded her coldly, then shrugged his shoulders. He raised his eyes to the ceiling, shaking his head with disappointment at her reaction, and then regarded her levelly.

‘I sleep surprisingly well. True blackguards always do.’

His green eyes had frozen to ice and his lips had thinned into a flat line of disdain. It shocked her that he had the audacity to be angry at
her
when he had been the one to bring his own father’s life to an abrupt end.

‘What sort of person does that to their own flesh and blood? Why did you do such a terrible thing?’ she cried, desperately wanting him to make it all right. There
had
to be a good reason.

‘That is none of your business, Prim,’ he answered flatly.

Then he turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

Chapter Twenty-One

R
oss had little appetite and toyed with his breakfast. He had often heard people claim that words had cut them to the quick, but had not fully realised exactly what that phrase meant. Until today. Hannah’s complete disgust, and her harsh judgement without first asking him for the facts or his side of the story, had almost literally cut him to the quick. There was now a tiny ache somewhere close to his heart that simply would not go away, no matter how much he willed it to.

One minute she had been all giggly and compliant, exactly as he imagined a siren who swam naked would be, and the next she had recoiled from him as if he were something nasty that had attached itself to her shoe. Even after he had told her he was prepared to risk his heart she had still chosen to believe all the rot written about him.

What hurt most of all—although he realised that he was more devastated than hurt—was the fact that she had been so quick to judge him. After everything. She had not given him the benefit of the doubt.

There was no way in hell he was going to beg and plead with her to trust him now. He deserved better than that.

John snapped his fingers directly in front of his nose and it shocked him. ‘Sorry. I did not get enough sleep last night.’ That was almost the truth anyway. ‘You were saying...?’

Ross turned his full attention back to his friend, determined not to think about his naked siren and his bruised, aching heart. He was a fool for ever letting his guard down.

‘I was saying,’ John said wearily, ‘that I am beginning to think that your Miss Prim is not a spy after all. I have left all manner of interesting documents lying around to tempt her, and despite my best efforts she does not pay any of them a blind bit of notice. What sort of a spy does that?’

Ross idly glanced at the morning’s post on the table in front of him. He had not noticed anything funny about the seals on his letters recently either. ‘She’s not a spy,’ he agreed. She was judgemental, changeable and callous, but he was certain that she was not working for the East India Company.

Ross had obviously said the wrong thing, because his friend scowled at him. ‘Then how do you explain the fact that all her references are false and nobody has ever heard of her?’

Ross sighed. ‘Perhaps she did it to get this job? We have certainly told a few white lies in order to get contracts that might otherwise have gone elsewhere. You used to claim to be commodore of a fleet of merchant ships, when in actual fact you only had the one—and we would not have had that if I had not won it in a card game.’

‘Yes,’ John spluttered, ‘but we managed to do the job well enough.’

‘And Prim has proved herself to be an excellent housekeeper despite her lies.’

How pathetic was he that even now he could not help giving her the benefit of the doubt?

John grunted and attacked his eggs. ‘Are you saying that we should give up?’

Ross nodded. He could hardly condemn the woman for being enterprising when he was guilty of the same. If only she had been so benevolent last night...

* * *

Hannah found herself spending the entire morning alone with Captain Carstairs, sorting through the study. Ross was nowhere to be seen and Captain Carstairs was not really much help in telling her where he had gone. The man had been waffling on about ‘the thieving East India Company’ for the better part of an hour now, and her ears were ringing.

In a way, she was glad that she did not have to face Ross just yet. She was bitterly disappointed in him, and in herself for letting her guard down. A man who would betray his own father was capable of anything—and she would do well to remember that fact. He was no better than her idiot brother in that regard. Both of them prepared to betray their own kin.

She had not slept after she had finally gone to bed. Her mind had been swirling with so many contradicting thoughts that she had not known quite what to make of it all. In the end, it all boiled down to one simple truth. Ross could be kind, thoughtful and charming when it suited him—and hard, cold and manipulative when he needed to be. He was not a man she could entrust her heart to.

The very fact that she almost had... Well, frankly that made her livid. She should have trusted her instincts. She had known he had a talent for charming people for his own gain and yet had still allowed it to happen to
her
. She had to give him credit for being persuasive. He had known exactly what to say to weaken her resistance—and like an idiot she had fallen into his honeyed trap.

You have lost your confidence. Open yourself up to possibilities. You are a beautiful and desirable woman. Who will put flowers on your grave?

Ugh! Just thinking about it made her realise how contrived it had all been. And she had almost succumbed. Silly, stupid, needy fool that she was.

A stray letter had slipped inside the pile of bills that she was going through and she snatched it up in annoyance. They had finished all the correspondence days ago. With an air of frustrated resignation she opened it, to see if it was worth keeping or one of Reggie’s ‘specials’—the name as she had come to use for all the rubbish. Why Ross had entrusted all his filing to an illiterate man she had long since ceased to find amusing.

To begin with it appeared to be a brief thank-you letter, but something made her look at it twice.

It was her brother’s name.

Automatically she slipped the letter into the pocket of her apron. It was probably a coincidence, but it would not hurt to read it later.

When Carstairs toddled off in search of tea she finally had her chance. The letter had come from their old family solicitor. She remembered Mr Compton-Lewis as being a humourless and forthright man who had visited Barchester Hall occasionally when she had been growing up. Once her father had died she had not seen him again, but she had received correspondence from him after her brother’s death. George had left everything in such a muddle that the solicitor had struggled to unravel it all.

The last time she had heard from him had been several months ago, when he had informed her of the unexpected five thousand pounds. He’d told her he had placed the bequest in a London bank, on her behalf, and had wished her well now that her brother’s estate was finally settled.

She had assumed the solicitor had transferred funds from the trust set up by her father. It was the one and only thing that she was truly grateful to her father for. He had kept that safe from George, at least.

This missive was brief.

Dear Mr Jameson,

Thank you for your recent and very generous offer to my clients. Unfortunately I must decline it on their behalf. The remaining family of the late Earl of Runcorn are not in a financial position to take over the enormous burden of Barchester Hall at present, nor are they likely to be in the foreseeable future. As I am sure you are aware, such a great house requires significant investment and good stewardship.

The three Steers spinsters are quite content to stay in Yorkshire, and are not up to the enormous task that such a benevolent bequest would require.

Yours sincerely

G.J. Compton-Lewis Esquire

The dreadful words made her feel light-headed. Captain Carstairs had been telling the truth. Ross
had
offered the house back to the family but their solicitor had taken it upon himself to keep that pertinent fact from her. Why would he do that?

Hannah should have felt anger, and she supposed that would come soon enough, but instead all she could think about was her own shame. All this time she had been so convinced that her family had been wronged—and they had. But not by the person she had originally thought.

She had been so quick to see the worst in Ross again last night. He was not a thief. Nor even a particularly ruthless opportunist, if this letter was to be believed. In the eyes of the law he was the legal owner of Barchester hall, and yet it now appeared he had been quite happy to give it away after all, because it was the right thing to do.

Why was she always so quick to blame him for her predicament?

Ross was not malicious or cruel. In actual fact she knew in her heart that he was not capable of being either of those things, and bitterly regretted thinking the very worst.
Again.
There had to be a good reason why he had betrayed his own father. She owed him an apology. And the truth.

* * *

Ross had taken the ledger up to his bedchamber because he wanted to be able to work on it undisturbed. That was the lie he was trying desperately to believe. The truth was even more pathetic. He could not face Prim when he was this upset. He needed time to harden his heart and hide his wounded feelings before he faced the woman again.

With any luck Carstairs would miraculously catch her in some form of espionage and throw her out unceremoniously on her dimpled arse, and then he would never have to face her again. That thought made the little ache close to his heart throb again, and he rubbed it in irritation.

As if he had conjured her, Prim burst through his bedroom door and stared at him dolefully with her blasted big blue eyes.

‘What do you want?’ he said harshly, and then remembered his pride and pretended to work on the ledger.

‘I know that you have refused to see me but I have to apologise,’ she whispered. ‘I am so very sorry for the way I behaved towards you. It was unforgivable.’

Ross scratched a total in one of the columns and forced his features to appear neutral. ‘I have come to expect it from you, Prim. You are a constant source of disappointment to me.’

She recoiled as if he had slapped her, and fat tears gathered in her limpid eyes. ‘You are right.’ She sounded completely despondent. ‘Would you like me to leave?’

‘No!’ That blasted ache spread under his ribs and filled his chest with pain. ‘I should like you to stay. At least until the renovations are complete. That is the one thing you are good for.’ He hated the fact that he was being spiteful and looked back down at his numbers. ‘If that is all, then we are done.’

She stood rooted to the spot for a moment, then turned and quietly closed his bedroom door behind her.

Hannah stumbled down the stairs blindly. She deserved that, she knew. He had every right to be angry at her. Every right to dislike her.

When she got to the bottom she collided with Captain Carstairs. He took one look at her and his eyes widened in alarm.

‘Are you quite all right, Miss Preston?’

‘Oh, Captain Carstairs,’ she wailed, ‘I have been such an idiot!’ Then she promptly burst into tears.