Page 90 of Bookshop Cinderella

“Evie, you haven’t thought this through. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Yes, I do. As I said, I’ve always had a great deal of fondness for you. But that’s all. I don’t love you.”

“But you love him? Is that it?” He made an exasperated sound through his teeth. “You love your fancy man, is that it?”

She stiffened at the insult. “Please don’t say things to taint my fondness for you.”

Rory ignored that. “He won’t marry you, you know, if that’s what you’re hoping for. Oh, he’ll put you up in a hotel and come to you at night. He’ll buy you pretty clothes and hire a hotel maid to dress you in ’em, but that’s all.”

She frowned. “How would you know he—”

She broke off as Max’s words from five days ago about the missing note passed through her mind.

Your maid would be my guess. She may have taken it for money, or been an innocent dupe...

“How would I know?” Rory echoed, scowling. “A toff like that, marry you? Why would he when he got all he wanted from you already?” He raked a hand through his blonde hair, his sky-blue eyes flashing with anger.

Hair like gold, he’s got, and the bluest eyes...I’ve never had a suitor in my life until a few weeks ago.

“Oh, my God!” she burst out. “It was you!”

His anger faltered. Uncertainty flickered across his face, then vanished. “What are you rattling on about?” he asked, assuming an air of bafflement that didn’t fool her for a second.

“You’re Liza’s suitor. That’s how my letter from the duke went missing. You got Liza to let you into my room. Or,” she added as he shook his head with a scoffing sound, “you somehow persuaded Liza to take it for you and you gave it to the papers. There’s no other way you could know the duke hired a maid from the Savoy to attend me.”

“Don’t be stupid. I read it in the papers.”

A plausible explanation, and one she couldn’t refute, since she hadn’t read all the stories, and yet, she felt certain he was lying. “Poor Liza. You seduced her, pumped her for information. She saw the coronet on the duke’s note to me—she probably told you about it, you got it and gave it toTalk of the Town. Don’t try to deny it, Rory. I know you did it. But what I don’t know is, why? Why would you do that to me?”

“You ask me why?” he countered and made a sound of disdain. “Men like him only want one thing from girls like you. I had to get you away from him.”

She gave a laugh. “You ruined me to save me, is that it?”

“He ruined you, not me. And I only did what I did to bring you back here, where you belong.”

Having her very own reasoning about her place in the world thrown at her gave Evie the odd desire to argue against it. “Oh, really? Who are you to decide where I belong?”

“It’s not me who decides these things! It’s the way things are. He might bed you, but to him, you’re dirt under his feet.”

“You have no idea what he thinks of me,” she said coldly.

“At least I’m prepared to marry you. He’s not.”

“If you’re so sure of that, then why didn’t you just wait, bide your time until he grew tired of me and set me aside, then come and propose? You didn’t want to wait, is that it? After all, you might have had to wait years. Or,” she added, another explanation coming to her, “you weren’t absolutely sure I would marry you after he hypothetically left me, so you hedged your bets. By ruining me so publicly, you thought I’d have no choice but to demand he marry me, and when he inevitably refused, you’d come riding to the rescue like my white knight and save me?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. She watched his chin jut out, making him look just as he had when he was a little boy and got caught doing something naughty.

“Well, it didn’t work,” she said in the wake of his silence. “Ruined or not, I’d never marry you. Not in a thousand years.”

“Still holding out, waiting for him, are you? Well, you’ll wait in vain, my girl. He’ll never marry you.”

She smiled, wondering what he’d say if she told him how wrong he was about Max. “You think not?”

“Why would he? He’s a duke. And you’re skinny and freckled and plain as mud.”

That was a brutal assessment, but not, she realized suddenly, all that much harsher than her own view of herself had always been. Until Max had come along.

I know a beautiful woman when I see one.

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