Page 102 of Harpy of the Ton
“That brooch was in a locked drawer.”
“Oh, Iknow,” she said. “Hidden away like a dirty secret.”
Guilt flickered across his expression. “What were you doing in my study?”
“I didn’t go there!”
“Then who did?” His eyes narrowed. “I’ll wager it was Jonathan—I’ve told him not to disturb my papers, the little—”
“Don’t you accuse him!” she cried. “It doesn’t matter who found the brooch—what matters is that it was there, and whom it belongs to.” She held it out. “Take it.”
“But…”
“Just take it,” she said. “I don’t want it.”
“Then whatdoyou want?”
“I want you to admit what you’ve done, Lawrence. You owe me that, if nothing else.”
He curled his fingers around the brooch. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
He closed his eyes for a moment, before opening them and meeting her gaze. The guilt and sorrow in his eyes threatened to crush her heart—this strong, virile man crumbling before her.
But no matter how pitiful he looked, he had betrayed her. He deserved neither compassion nor forgiveness.
“Is that all you have to say?” she asked.
“What morecanI say?”
“You can tell me her name.”
He frowned. “Whose name?”
Bella gestured toward the brooch. “The woman whose brooch that is.”
“I-I don’t understand.”
“The…” She hesitated, unwilling to speak the truth, for in voicing it, there was no returning to hope that her husband’s desire for another was merely the product of her imagination. “The doxy.”
“What doxy?”
“Must I write it down for you? The doxy you’ve been carrying on with—the one at the inn! Amelia!”
“Amelia?” He glanced at the brooch, his eyes widening in surprise. “You think the A is forAmelia?” He let out a sigh, almost as if in relief. “I don’t know an Amelia.”
“Millie, then.”
“Millie?” he said. “Surely you don’t think she and I…”
The recognition in his voice was admission enough.
“I don’t think,” Bella said. “Iknow. I saw you at the inn. You embraced her, Lawrence. Can you say in truth that you’ve never desired her, never”—she drew in a sharp breath to fight the sob swelling in her throat—“never lain with her?”
For a moment, he stared at her, then his cheeks reddened and he nodded. “I did lie with her.”
The air left Bella’s lungs, and her limbs shook, as if her body had been waiting for the final admission before succumbing to despair.
He approached her, arms outstretched. “Bella, I—”
