Page 43 of Bad Luck Bride

“That was probably true,” she conceded. “Defying my father,” she added in whisper, “was never an easy thing for me.”

“I know that. I decided that the only chance I had was to prove I could support you. As I said, I tried my father first, but he wasn’t obliging. When your father offered to stake me a loan, I thought it was the perfect solution.”

“Oh, yes, perfect,” she murmured, sick at how skillfully her father had manipulated both of them.

“But when I didn’t receive any letters from you,” he continued, “I began to fear that your time to think had made you go off me altogether. I didn’t want to believe that, but given that you never replied to any of my letters, it was hard not to. And then…” He paused and swallowed hard. “Then I read you’d gotten engaged to Giles, and that confirmed all my worst fears. It rather putfinisto the whole thing.”

“And I thought my father was right about you, that you’d allowed yourself to be bought off, and your lack of letters seemed to prove it. When he showed me the bank draft, he said if you loved me you wouldn’t have taken the money. You’d have stayed and courted me in proper fashion. And that, he said, was why he didn’t want you for a son-in-law. You had your eye on the main chance and taking the money proved it. I was angry with my father for testing you that way, but I hated you far more because you had proved him right.”

“While I blamed you for abandoning me, for choosing your rich cousin instead of me.”

“So—” She broke off, overcome by the emotions engulfing her—disbelief, disillusionment, bitterness, and rage. Rage, most of all. She tried to tell herself that she had no reason to believe Devlin over her own parents, and yet, now, in this moment, she knew that Devlin was telling her the truth. She didn’t know how or why she knew. She just did.

“So all this time,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around her ribs to hold in the onslaught of feelings that threatened to overwhelm her, “all this time, when we were both thinking we’d been betrayed and abandoned by the other, it was just a big misunderstanding engineered by my parents to drive us apart.”

“I guess it was.” He laughed suddenly, a harsh sound that made her wince. “I knew your father didn’t approve of me, but I really couldn’t blame him. I knew he had you under his thumb, but God help me, I never thought he’d sink so low as to deceive us both. And I certainly didn’t think your mother, who seemed merely an amiable nitwit, was capable of such duplicity.”

“Blame her talent for drama.” Kay rubbed a hand over her forehead, feeling suddenly tired. “It enables her to tell very convincing lies. Sometimes, I think even she believes them.”

“Evidently. But from my point of view, the news of your engagement shredded me. I felt as if you’d reached across three thousand miles and stuck a knife in my chest. It hurt like hell,” he added pensively. “It hurt for a long, long time.”

“I was feeling pretty much the same. Oh, we ought to have known!” She looked at him, anguished. “Why didn’t we know? Why didn’t we see?”

He thought about that for a moment. “Well, we were both terribly young. You can be damned stupid when you’re young. Andspeaking for myself,” he added slowly, “it wasn’t that hard to believe I’d be abandoned, since my own father had pretty much done that the day I was born.”

She nodded in commiseration. “And I was a social failure, chubby and plain, so—”

“You were never plain,” he interrupted. “Or chubby. Damn it, Kay, don’t denigrate yourself that way. I hate that.”

That made her almost want to smile. “You always hated that.” She paused, then laughed a little, shaking her head. “What fools we were, to be so quick to lose faith in each other. Although perhaps it’s not that surprising,” she added thoughtfully, “for we didn’t know each other all that well when we decided to run off.”

“No, I don’t suppose we did, but—” He broke off and gave a laugh. “The odd thing is, from the moment we met, I felt as if I’d known you all my life. That made the news of your engagement that much worse.”

She bit her lip, for she’d once had similar feelings. “By the time I got engaged to Giles,” she said after a moment, “I didn’t even think you’d care.”

He nodded, accepting that. “In any case, I don’t suppose any of it matters now. Not after all this time.”

“No,” she agreed. “It doesn’t matter now.”

With that, an odd sense of anticlimax seemed to come over the room. They stared at each other, neither of them seeming to know what to say next. They both knew the true facts now, and that was all well and good, but as he’d said, it didn’t matter anymore. Too much time had passed. Too many years to think and blame, too much believing the worst and hating each other, too many tears of heartbreak, too much pride and hardening of hearts.

“Well,” he said at last, “now that we’ve got all that sorted, how about you answer my question?”

She shook her head, bewildered, unable to remember what they’d been talking about before. “What question was that?”

“Your father spent your whole life controlling you.”

She couldn’t argue with that, especially now. “He always did like being the master of his universe. But that was only because he was so sure he knew what was best for me.”

He groaned. “Oh, Kay.”

“What?”

“Please don’t tell me everything your father did was out of love.”

“Perhaps my father was a bastard. And there’s no doubt that he was controlling and domineering. But he was my father, and—” She broke off, lifting her chin proudly. “And though it may be a flaw in my character, I loved him. I still do. I shouldn’t, I suppose, but I do.”

“He had a damned poor way of showing his love for you.”

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