“What?”

“Look so innocent when you’re not?”

She closed her eyes in a slow blink. When she opened them again, she stared at him through a shimmer of tears. He bit back a curse. “I know I was wrong not to tell you. I was going to tell you everything. I had already decided—”

“When?” he snapped. “In ten years? Fifty? On our golden anniversary? You’ve had plenty of opportunities. In the carriage ride here. Could you not tell me then?” He gestured wildly. “Or how about upstairs? In your bedchamber?”

She nodded. “You are right. I could have told you. Any of those times.” She shook her head. A honey-brown strand of hair fell, brushing her pale cheek. “I was scared of this!”

His chest tightened, the air in his lungs trapped. “Did you even know Ian? Did you ever meet him?”

She hesitated before answering. “No.”

He cursed and flung away from her. “I thought I was marrying Linnie—”

“She’s dead, Spencer!” She stomped after him, pulling him around by the arm to face her. Her breath puffed from her lips like clouds of smoke. “You needed something to cling to during the war because you didn’t have anything . . . no one back home gave a damn whether you survived or not.”

Her words hit their mark as effectively as a well-aimed arrow. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“You fell in love with a fantasy of Linnie,” she accused, nodding doggedly. “You would still rather love that fantasy than the reality of me.”

He inhaled deeply, feeling as if he had been flayed alive, as though her words stripped him bare, leaving him raw and bleeding before her in the cold kiss of winter.

“You’re right about one point at least,” he snarled. “I don’t love you.”

Moisture gleamed suspiciously in her eyes, but she blinked until her eyes looked normal again. “Only because you won’t let yourself.”

“No. Simply because I don’t. Is that so difficult to believe? That you are undesirable to my heart?”

She shook her head fiercely. “Who’s lying now?”

He laughed, the sound hollow. “I married you because I believed you were Linnie. Because I thought I was correcting my cousin’s mistake.”

“You married her because she was Ian’s,” she snapped, and God help her if she didn’t sound angry. With him. The gall! “I’m not.” Her chest heaved with rapid breaths. “But I could be yours.”

It took him awhile to respond, to sort through the burn of emotions. He found the one that still stung hottest. Betrayal. “You’re not, though.”

She flinched, dropping her hand from his arm. “That’s it, then?”

“I don’t know you at all.”

She nodded. “Why don’t you admit what really troubles you in all of this.”

He cocked his head, lips curling back from his teeth. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“You fell in love with Linnie. With all of Ian’s stories about her. With the idea of her. You put her up on some grand pedestal and now you’re angry to find out that I’m not her. That your cousin’s death did not grant you your opportunity after all.”

He seized her with both hands and brought them nose to nose. “You go too far.”

She winced and took a deep, shuddering breath, her chest lifting high as though she drew the words from someplace deep inside her. “You’ve practically said so yourself.”

“I think your deception is more than enough to trouble me,” he ground out. “Nothing out of your lips has been true.”

“What I felt for you is true. Real. What we have—”

“What we have . . .” He snorted, dropping his hands from her. He dragged a hand through his hair and released a hissing breath. He stared up at the settling night, at the tangled latticework of branches canopying them. After a moment, he looked down at her, at her blue gaze, her lush mouth. His stomach tightened. “I don’t know that we have anything.”

“We do.” She moistened her lips.

He watched the smooth glide of her tongue over her bottom lip . . . felt the familiar pull. Apparently she could still rouse him.

“We have something,” she insisted. “Something special. Don’t let this ruin it.”

“I won’t. You already did that.” With an inward curse, he advanced on her and backed her against a tree. “Tell me this . . . since we’re finally being honest with each other.”

She nodded once, her eyes scanning his face, wide and wild as a moth dancing near flame.

“That night in the cellar . . .” He paused, his jaw clenched so tightly that it ached. A nagging thought had been there since he’d overheard her stepmother in the parlor. One of the many thoughts tangling inside his head. “Were you a virgin?”

Her lips parted on a small, breathy gasp. She dropped her gaze and he knew. She didn’t need to admit it.

“Yes,” she replied.

He supposed a small part of himself delighted in this—the primitive in him that thrilled in knowing he was her first. And yet she had lied, faked knowledge, let him use her as though she’d been a more experienced woman, accustomed to a man between her thighs.

“So was the whole purpose in getting locked in the cellar a ploy? The darkness a way to distract me from noticing your maidenhead?”

She sucked in a breath. “You know I had no part in that. I wouldn’t have wished myself down there for anything. I spent the entire day down there, terrified.”

“Yes. A convenient fear, that.”

Hurt flashed across her face. “Will you believe nothing I say anymore?” A certain bleakness entered her voice. “You won’t let me make this right, will you?”

“Make it right?” he sneered, hating the ugly feeling coiling through him but unable to suppress it. “You want to make it right?”

She nodded slowly, her eyes uncertain, afraid. As she should be.

His gaze dropped, assessing her slender form shivering against the tree. “And what will you do to make it right? You’ve already shown how far you’ll go to cover your lies.” His blood thickened as he remembered those moments in the cellar. He ran his thumb over her bottom lip and felt a curl of satisfaction when the flesh quivered against his touch. “You took me between these pretty lips to distract me, didn’t you? Drive me wild so that I wouldn’t even notice the rending of your maidenhead. Did it hurt?”

Fire filled her pale cheeks.

“Hmm. I think it did.” He slipped his thumb inside her mouth, touched it to the tip of her tongue. “Yes, indeed. You’ll go far,” he murmured. “So what shall you do to make amends?”

She said nothing, merely watched him with those wide, wounded eyes. He found that he hated that particular expression. He preferred her mad and fighting.

Her tongue started to move against his thumb, her moist lips pulling, sucking. “Will you beg?” he asked hoarsely.

She released his thumb. Her blue eyes glittered as her chin firmed, tilting at that proud, obstinate angle he was coming to recognize as distinctively Evie. “Is that what I must do?”

He angled his head, still assessing her. He pushed his body flush with hers, savoring the sensation of her every line and soft curve that he had come to worship these last few days. It was more than he could take.

“Begging isn’t necessary. I much prefer action to words.”

She arched a brow.

Stepping back from her, he crossed his arms and commanded in a cold voice, “Take off your clothes.”

Chapter 26

In the shadow of the woods, her face paled. She glanced around them, her gaze darting wildly over their surroundings. “Here? It’s cold. Anyone could come upon—”

“I thought you wanted to make everything right,” he challenged. A voice whispered across his mind, telling him he was being harsh, cruel even. But he couldn’t stop himself. His sense of betrayal ran too strong. He had thought that, of all things, Evie was a woman he could trust. Sweet. Honorable.

His jaw tightened, teeth aching where they clenched together. Perhaps honor did not exist among women. God knew he’d seen little evidence of it in the females to cross his path. “Prove it.”

For an interminable moment, she didn’t move. Cold wind stirred the branches in the trees, whipping a loose strand across her cheek. In the gloom of the woods, it looked almost black against her pale skin.

Then, her hands moved to the front of her dress. She unfastened the ties of her cloak. It fell in a hush to the snow-dusted ground. He watched, his breath coming harder as her fingers crawled over each of the tiny buttons. She shrugged free of the dress, letting it drop in a whisper at her feet. Her shoulders gleamed in the twilight like glistening marble, and his mouth watered.

She loosened the strings of her petticoat until it, too, dropped. The rest of her clothes followed: corset, drawers, garters, stockings. Until she stood n**ed before him. Her gaze held his, defiant and proud. “I trust you will warm me?” She cocked a brow in challenge.

In the deepening dusk, he noticed the burn in her cheeks. Her hands shook at her sides, her body shivering against the bite of cold.

With a curse, he stepped forward. Even in his fury with her, he hated to see her tremble from cold and would stop her suffering if he could. His anger turned on himself.

He crowded her. Shrugging out of his jacket, he forced her into it. Next he shielded her from the wind with his body, backing her into the tree again.

She said nothing, offered no protest as he took her shoulders in his hands and stared down at her.

Her gaze remained fastened on his face as his hands dropped, slid inside his jacket to circle her waist. His palms brushed up her ribs—took each breast in his hand.

A sharp little gasp escaped her. He grasped the mounds firmly, his thumbs stroking her pebbled nipples, stroking the cold tips into burning peaks.

As her breath fell faster, so did his movements, until he plucked rapidly at the turgid little crests. A satisfied growl erupted from his chest as her expression altered. Her eyelids dropped to half-mast. She watched him through those partially closed eyes, her arousal a lush, palpable thing.

He released her br**sts and jerked her pelvis against him, loving the feel of her n**ed body. Vulnerable and exposed. Ready for him.

He ground his arousal into her in fierce, angry thrusts that made her head arch back against the tree. She moaned. All his anger spiraled then, swung into a dark desire to have her, to dominate and possess . . . punish her with his body. Make her want him.

He nudged her legs apart with his knee.

A quick hand between her thighs found her ready, wet for him.

Her cry ripped sharply in his ear, the wild sound merging and vanishing into the woods. Her fingers curled around his arms, digging into his biceps through his jacket, drawing him closer.

With a growl, he grabbed her hands, positioned them back against the tree. “You don’t touch.”

She blinked, nodding.

He moved his hands to his trousers, gazing starkly into her face, hating this need for her, this want that coursed through him like a spreading poison.

Hiking one of her thighs up around his hip, he penetrated her in one hard thrust.

Her gurgled cry filled his ear.

Clutching her bottom in both hands, he lifted her higher, spread her wide for his every driving plunge.

She dipped her head, her mouth seeking his.

He dodged her lips, not allowing her that pleasure. Or himself.

He pumped harder, reveling in her clinging heat. He pounded her against the tree, seeking his release, taking his pleasure and crying out his deep satisfaction when it arrived.

The night swallowed up his guttural shout as he spent himself inside her warmth.

He collapsed against her, pushing her deeper into the tree. The wind rustled the leaves, and he grew aware of the cold again, aware of the shivering woman against him.