Page 103 of The Devil in Her Bed
“I know!” She astonished him by agreeing. “I wanted to tell you from the beginning, but I—I didn’t know it was you at first, and then… I wasn’t sure whether or not you would turn me in to the Secret Services.”
He snatched his trousers from the floor at the foot of the bed and shoved his legs into them. “You were afraid that you’d, what, lose her title? Her fortune?” he demanded as he fumbled with the fastenings. “That’s so fucking diabolical.”
She pulled the sheet to her breasts as if it could shield her from his words. “How can you think that? I was afraid I’d lose her revenge.Ourrevenge. I was afraid I could lose my life! I did this for you most of all—”
He whirled and stabbed the air with his finger in her direction. “Don’t you fuckingdaresay that.”
“Why? It’s the truth.” She kept having to turn as he stalked around the bedroom, gathering his shirt, his shoes, his cravat. “You were dead, Chandler. Everyone was dead and your father stood in line to inherit everything. I couldn’t allow that. I didn’t think I’d hurt anyone by keeping it from him, so I reshaped my body with training and discipline, I dyed my hair, and…”
“And you fucking took Francesca’s fucking life?” He punched his arms into his shirt.
At that, her features lost some of their fear and replaced it with obstinacy. “No, I didn’t. Tuttle took her life, that bloody American, right in front of me. He slit her throat while I was still holding her hand. I have to live with that. I have to see that when I close my eyes.You don’t.” She crawled from the bed and wrapped the sheet around her. “Yes, I claimed Francesca’s identity, but only to go after the council.”
“And look what a disaster you made of that,” he said with a snide curl of his lips, doing up the cuff at his wrists.
This time she recoiled. “What the devil does that mean?”
“I told you to stay away from this. How many times did I tell you that you’re not a goddamned spy?” he demanded. “When people like you get involved, innocents get hurt. Just like they did tonight. A fucking officer was stabbed and more of the council escaped than were caught.”
Her hands went to her mouth. “Is he… did he live?”
“No thanks to you.”
“It isn’t fair to lay that at my feet!” she hissed, her advance impeded by the long sheet she began to gather into her arms to keep off the ground. “I would have been a help to you if you hadn’t left me out. You shouldn’t have taken my invitation. You should have informed me of the raid. You should have trusted me!”
“Trusted you?” he scoffed. “God, I can’t even look at you!” He retrieved his shoes and stalked to the door.
She chased him, dragging the sheet like a wedding train until she blocked his exit by throwing her body against the door. “Chandler. Chandler, listen to me.” Her pose was one of submission, supplication, and he’d be lying to himself if he didn’t admit the ice over his heart didn’t crack just a little at the pain and desperation in her eyes. “I love you. I love you and you love me. I know you do.”
He shook his head, searching for that love and finding nothing but a yawning well of numbness and humiliation. His father was listening to this. He hadn’t disconnected the fucking line. That reality was the last straw.
“Neither of us knows anything about the other, that’s blatantly obvious now.”
She swallowed and pressed on. “That isn’t true. I never was like Francesca, not then and not now. This entire time we’ve been together, you’ve been withme. You’ve spent time with me. We’ve laughed and worked together. We fought and we—made love—”
“We fucked, that’s all it was.”
Her head wrenched to the side as if he’d slapped her, but she took a deep breath and summoned that will he’d admired so much.
“I know tonight didn’t go how either of us would have wanted. But… Chandler, we have our revenge, despite everything. You said that you were half in love before you knew you were falling. And you fell forme. I am who I am right now. Francesca is just the name I go by. It is the woman who lives in this body you fell in love with, and that is not a lie. Please. Come and sit with me. Give me a chance to—”
Chandler shook his head and held up his hand, silencing her effectively. “It was hermemoryI was in love with. I see that now.”
“What?” She shook her head, denying his words.
“Now that she’s truly gone, I feel nothing. I suppose I should thank you for that.” Now he was the deceitful one. It was all there somewhere, locked in a vault down deep in the blackness of his soul. A vast chasm of painand loss and dark, dark despair. He’d feel it, eventually. When everything didn’t seem so very bleak, so very far away. He’d take her betrayal out of that vault and examine it. Before he threw it away.
“Nothing?” she echoed in a pained whisper. “After everything we shared, the sheer magnitude of it… how can it be so easily reduced to nothing?”
He shrugged as if there was nothing to be done. “I’m not even that angry anymore, which tells me everything I need to know.”
Her eyebrows slammed down, temper flaring in her emerald gaze, a green he didn’t remember or recognize, not even from their shared childhood. “I don’t know what right you have to be angry in the first place,” she said vehemently. “You lied about your father, your name, and your very origins. And I understand why you would. We both had reasons to hide who we really were… but I forgave you your falsehood. Why am I held to a different standard?”
It was everything he could do not to punch a fist through the door. Mostly because the truth of it flared a new, defensive ire. Rather than giving in to the urge, he backed away. “It wasn’t your forgiveness I wanted, Pippa. It washers.” He pointed out the window, as if Francesca’s ghost lingered there in the wisps of the draperies. “And you stole that from me. Stoleherfrom me. Again!”
She was a bundle of energy and emotion behind him, and he knew he had to escape her. Escape this house and this bedroom, and the impediment between them that could never be usurped.
“I understand your emotion, Chandler, you’re entitledto that. But I don’t understand your hypocrisy. How can you, the man with no name or identity, stand and call me a liar for claiming the identity of someone I loved? For helping to avenge her and Ferdinand both!”
