Page 22 of A Deal with the Rebellious Marquess
However, in the interim, Orion had slipped through his fingers. His brother was gone, leaving only a note that said he was lying low until the scandal blew over. Which meant Orion was avoiding not only the scandal, but also him and the reckoning. That was concerning. Jasper felt compelled to see his brother’s action as a sign that Orion had something to hide, something he did not want to confess any more than Jasper wanted to hear that confession. Once he knew, he’d have to act one way or the other. But what kind of action could he justify? Baconian logic was of no help here.
He scanned the shelves of Meltham House’s well-stocked library until he found what he was looking for, his worn copy of Bentham’s collected works. It was easy to spot with its faded red cover amid the sleek, smooth spines of lesser read books. Perhaps he’d find comfort in the familiar pages outlining utilitarianism as a political moral compass. If not comfort, perhaps direction, a prompt for what he ought to do when the reckoning came not only for Orion, but himself as well. He did not delude himself in thinking the scandal would not touch them all if it picked up enough momentum.
Jasper poured himself a brandy and settled in his favourite chair beside the empty fire. He took a moment to appreciate the quiet of the house. It seemed he hadn’t had quiet for days between putting together the offer to buy the papers and evenings out escorting his mother to balls, sometimes two or three a night. But tonight, he’d been firm. He was staying in. No balls, no visits to his clubs to talk politics. Tonight was for him, to settle his thoughts and perhaps to come to grips with them.
He was halfway through his glass of brandy and Chapter One when the commotion reached him. He sighed. Perhaps an evening of peace and quiet had been too much to hope for. He set aside his book, listening to the brisk clack of heels and the rustle of skirts in the corridor. If his mother thought to cajole him into going out, she was going to be disappointed.
Strident tones sounded in the hallway. ‘I will not be kept waiting so that you can come back with an excuse as to why he will not receive me.’Thatwas not his mother. That was... Fleur. His reckoning washerein Meltham House. Which meant... She kneweverything. Umberton. Wincastle. Meltham. He had nowhere left to shelter. Like the old elk of his childhood, he was flushed into the open.
He barely had time to rise and brace for battle before Fleur Griffiths blew into the library, disrupting his calm with the force of a spring storm. ‘You are a bastard of the first order!’ Her eyes blazed with green fire as she made the accusation.
His butler stumbled in her wake. ‘My lord, I am sorry. I asked her to wait.’
Jasper waved a hand. ‘It’s all right, Phillips. I will see her.’ He would face his reckoning like a man. It’s what he deserved, but he would also face her with the hope that from argument arises a new truth. That was what Aristotle believed anyway. He wasn’t sure Fleur Griffiths shared those beliefs. The higher truth was that, despite their differences, they needed each other in order to get to the bottom of this business with Orion. Tonight would test that hypothesis.
Phillips left them and Jasper took a moment before speaking to drink her in: the flashing eyes, the flush of her cheeks, the heave of her breasts, her breath coming fast in her anger. She wore a plain blue skirt and a high-necked white blouse trimmed in lace, her hair done in her usual sensible chignon. She’d come straight from work. His offer must have arrived and all else had unravelled from there. It had always been a risk. Perhaps he’d wanted her to find out, wanted to end the pretence between them.
‘Please, come and sit and you can tell me why I’m a bastard.’ He used his coolness to calm her storm. He’d learned many things about her during their short time together. One of them was that she liked to fight, liked the heat of argument. Undermining that heat was his best chance of having a logical conversation with her.
‘I prefer to stand,’ she snapped, taking up a position near the sideboard with the decanters, dangerously near breakable items. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He resumed his seat, wanting to juxtapose his outer calm with her obvious turmoil. In truth, he had his own turmoil to contend with. In spite of their contentious circumstances, she was the loveliest woman he’d ever seen. His body roused to her anger as much as it had roused to her passion. Challenge was a heady aphrodisiac to a man with power.
‘This is not a social call, Lord Meltham.’ She nearly growled when she said his title.
‘I did not think it was. You are angry because you feel lied to.’ Validating anger often took away the fuel for that anger. Fleur’s anger thrived on opposition. Just as fire thrived on oxygen. He would take her anger’s oxygen from her.
Her eyes blazed. ‘Don’t do that. Donotpander to me by explaining my anger to me. I know damn well why I am mad. You misrepresented yourself in order to inveigle yourself into my good graces.’ He didn’t usually hold with women using profanity, but it wasdamnedsexy on her. It stirred him, made him want to get up from his chair and fight fire with fire. He held on to his composure a little longer. Perhaps she was counting on that. Perhaps she was trying to melt his ice even as he tried to cool her heat.
‘IamLord Umberton. I did not lie about my identity. I will own that it is not my highest-ranking title. But it’s right there inDebrett’sfor anyone to find. You could have looked it up.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘That’s ironic advice from a man who claims he wants to be known for himself.Now, you want your titles to speak for you. As it happens, I prefer to let people prove themselves. I did not look you up because I wanted to form my own impressions.’
‘You liked those impressions. You liked the man you saw,’ he reminded her, even as his body reminded him that he liked her, too, differences aside.
‘I did,’ she confessed bluntly. ‘My instincts are not usually so wrong.’
There was condemnation in her eyes. Not all of it was for him. There was plenty for her as well. She blamed him for misleading her, but she also blamed herself for being taken in and he hated that. He also disliked, that she saw this as a personal failure at a time when she shouldered so many other burdens. He had inadvertently added to those burdens and he’d put a chink in the armour of her confidence when she could not afford it. That was not an intended consequence. He wished he could erase that. Since he could not, he could perhaps explain it.
‘I am all those things. Iaminterested in dam legislation. Iaminterested in preventing accidents like the Bilberry Dam in the future. I am also interested in you—just you—although I am not sure how we separate that interest from our circumstances.’ He softened his tone and allowed himself the luxury of letting his eyes rest on her. ‘Nothing I did with you, nothing Ifeltabout being with you, was a lie.’ Those few days were some of the most vibrant he could recall in recent history.
‘That does not change the fact that you betrayed me!’ Fleur railed. His attempt to steal the fuel for her fire was failing. ‘You used how I felt about you, you manipulated my trust and then—’ she reached for one of the crystal tumblers next to the decanters ‘—you broke it!’ Glass shattered against the hardwood floor. Her eyes blazed.
‘Fleur!’ He was out of his seat, but she was faster. She grabbed another tumbler and smashed it.
‘How do you like that? How does it feel to have something broken?’ she raged, smashing another. ‘You lied to me, you had sex with me, you pretended to care about me! You are a cad of the highest order. You betrayed me on all levels.’
The hell he had. His self-control was gone now. He gripped her by the forearms, wresting the last tumbler from her and dancing her back to the wall, out of reach of shattered glass and things that could be converted into shattered glass. ‘Stop it, Fleur!’
‘You didn’t betray me?’
‘Be fair, you betrayed me that night at Harefield’s,’ he growled. ‘Youusedme,youpretended I was Adam.’ The gloves were off now. ‘No man likes being a stand-in for a dead husband.’
‘Maybe I did use you,’ she sneered. ‘It doesn’t mean I deserved to have you lie to me.’
They were pressed against one another, his body trapping her, keeping her from the rest of his glassware, their chests heaving with the exertion of their anger.
He seized her mouth in a hard, bruising kiss, to stop her words, to stop the anger, to make a different argument, to prove to her...something. He shouldn’t have done it, but he wasn’t thinking clearly.
She bit down hard on his lip. ‘Ouch!’ He drew back, wiping his hand across his mouth and coming away with blood. ‘What the hell?’
