Page 73 of Almost a Bride
But he hadn’t meant that at all.Last year?
“I’ve just been so busy with the war and my estates. It befuddles the mind, you know.”
He sounded so perfectly normal that it made her skin crawl.
“You’ve been too busy for your many mistresses?” she asked faintly, wishing she knew the truth from the lies. Her throat seemed too tight to swallow as she scrambled to her feet and wrapped the blanket tightly around her.
“This last month has been—”
She shot him a heated glance and he stopped talking.
Using the stones of the fireplace for leverage, Spencer got to his feet and stood there naked before her. She wished he’d cover himself, so she wouldn’t have to see his magnificent body or remember how he’d made her feel special.
But she wasn’t special—he treated her as he treated every other woman. He lied.
“I cannot discuss this now,” she suddenly said, and to her horror, tears spilled from her eyes. She felt cold and wet and too devastated by what he’d made her feel out there in the rain.
“Rose—”
“No!” She didn’t want to face the reality that she’d given her body to a man she couldn’t trust. At least with Philip, she’d thought she could trust him. “We can talk in the morning. I’m tired.”
She brushed past him and climbed into the loft. He said nothing to stop her, which only made her weep harder as she collapsed onto her pallet.
Stunned, Spencer stood before the fire and listened to Roselyn’s sobs. After a year and a half of watching every word that left his mouth, he couldn’t believe that an hour of intimacy with her had him making the most basic of mistakes.
He’d thought he could keep his secrets from harming her—but instead she’d been attacked by a Spaniard following him, and he himself had seduced her while withholding all the important truths.
He pulled on a dry pair of breeches, then sat before the fire, awash in guilt and despair. How could he have allowed himself to forget—even for these most incredible moments with Roselyn—that he was a hunted man?
Somehow they’d begun to care for each other, something he never could have predicted. And then he’d allowed lust to rule him, the biggest mistake of all. He’d given bedding her more thought than he had to the dead Spaniard washed ashore, or the rumors of strangers asking questions.
He had to leave her—right now—before she was ensnared any further in his deceptions. And how would she feel to see his head mounted on a pike? She’d think him worse than a seducer—a betrayer.
He allowed fragile hope to fill him: Rodney Shaw might not have left the armada alive. But such thoughts were foolish. Strangers were asking questions on the island, a Spaniard had been sent for him—and his own Spanish heritage practically ensured that no one would believe the truth without proof. And perhaps Shaw had already created his own proof.
He had to go back to London and finish what he’d begun, before anyone else was hurt.
For just one moment he considered telling Roselyn the truth, but he knew that would only be selfish. It was better for her to hate him for his sins than to agonize over his fate.
He silently dressed, trying not to feel the overwhelming ache in his chest, which was surely because of her tears. In an old trunk he found Philip’s cloak, and after looking at the meager food stored in her cupboards, knew he could take nothing else from her. He would go to Francis Heywood for supplies and a horse.
For another hour Spencer waited, staring into the fire as if the flames could sear his guilt away. When he was certain Roselyn was asleep, he pulled the cloak about him and strode to the door.
He stopped with his hand on the latch, then grimly limped back to the ladder. Setting his cane aside, he pulled himself up a few rope steps, until he could see her tear-stained face pillowed on her bare arm. He stared at her for a moment, feasting one last time on the sweet sight of her.
“Be safe,” he whispered.
He descended the stairs, wrote her a note on a torn scrap of parchment, then left the cottage.
~oOo~
Roselyn awoke slowly with dreams of Spencer’s gentle hands caressing her clinging to her consciousness. She lay between the dream world and reality, puzzled by her reluctance to fully awaken—
And then she remembered. She had allowed him to make love to her—no, she’d begged him. She was repeating her worst mistakes all over again, with the impulsiveness she thought she’d put behind her.
And to make matters worse, she’d caught him in another lie. How could she have been so foolish?
She lay still, fighting tears, trying to find the courage to descend the ladder. What would she say to him? Could he think she would now willingly satisfy his needs whenever the urge overtook him?
