Page 34 of The Heiress in Disguise
He nodded. “Very well,” he said. “As you wish—I won’t say it. But please don’t ask me to call you by that other name, because we know it doesn’t belong to you.”
“I won’t ask it,” she agreed breathlessly. How could he have understood how little she liked hearing the nameElladay in and day out—and yet he did seem to understand it somehow.
“What happened to you?” he asked. At least he was keeping his voice down now, and she was thankful for that. “What happened after your parents died? This was never the life they wanted for you—working as a servant, posing as someone you’re not. I didn’t know your parents well, but I feel confident in saying they wouldn’t have wanted this. How did it go this way?”
“I don’t understand,” Angelique admitted. “You say you didn’t know my parentswell. Did you know them at all?”
“We’d met.”
“You’re a friend of my parents?”
“I wouldn’t have said we were friends,” he said. “But as I say, we had met, and I respected them.”
“And how is it you come to know who I am?”
“I’m really just a curious passerby, nothing more,” he said.
“That doesn’t explain this at all,” she returned, deeply unsettled. “There are dozens of people in the house today, and none of them are thinking about me at all. But you seem to be thinking about nothing else! Did someonetellyou who I was?”
He shook his head. “No one told me anything.”
“Then how is it you know? You told me that you would answer my questions if I answered yours.”
“You haven’t answered any of my questions,” he informed her.
“I did. I told you who I was.”
“But that was never a question. I wanted you to admit it aloud, but it was never the case that I didn’t know what the answer would be. I’ve known who you were all this time. That isn’t my question.”
“Then for heaven’s sake, what is?”
“Why are you pretending to be someone you’re not?”
Angelique felt her anxiety beginning to mount. Why was he asking her these things? “What difference does it make to you why I do what I do?”
“I told you—think of me as an interested party.”
“Well, think of me as someone who isn’t here to indulge your curiosity about my life,” she said. “The name I go by is Ella. That’s what I’d like you to call me, if you have any respect for me—or for my parents.”
“That’s not what your parents called you. How can you say it’s a sign of respect for them to call you by another name?”
“My parents cared less for my name than they did for my happiness, and I tell you that the best way to help me live a peaceful life is to forget what you know, my lord.”
It was true, but it killed her to say it to him, because she didn’t want to be forgotten. She loved the fact that someone had finally discovered who she was. She wanted to run from this house with him, to tell him everything and to hear everything he could offer to tell her. But that wouldn’t happen, and she knew it. The only thing she could do was to pull away from this as quickly as she possibly could.
“I’ve got to go,” she told him. “I appreciate your finding me and talking to me, but I’ll be missed if I stay here too long. And every minute we stand here talking, we risk being discovered.”
She turned and started away.
He caught her by the wrist and pulled her back. His grip wasn’t painful, but it was firm enough that she wasn’t able to pull free. It should have frightened her—nobody knew where she was, and this gentleman was unknown to her, bigger and stronger than she was, and very capable of restraining her against her will. But when she looked up into his eyes, she found that she wasn’t frightened of him at all.
“Remember who you are,” he told her quietly. “You are Lady Angelique de Bourbon-Spencer, only daughter of Lord and LadySomerset. Remember that, no matter what anyone else should try to tell you.”
Angelique felt her jaw drop. He knew somuch.It was as if he had read the story of her life in a book. How could he know all this, and how could he possibly have figured out that Ella the servant girl was Lady Angelique? There should be no sign of that anywhere. The last time she had gone by her true name, she had been a child. It was unfathomable that she could even be recognized now. No one knew Lady Angelique as an adult.
The gentleman lifted a hand, paused a moment as if giving her a chance to pull away, and then tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.
It was such a tender, familiar gesture. No one had done something like that for her in such a long time. And in that moment, she was reminded powerfully of her childhood friend Antoine, who had brushed her hair back from her face in just the same way on more than one occasion.
