Lady Beauchamp's Proposal (28 page)

James’s voice was soft and low. “My love…”
He gathered her into his arms, and placed a gentle kiss at the side
of her trembling mouth. “You’re exhausted. And you shouldn’t be on
your feet. Let me take you to bed—”

“No!” Elizabeth couldn’t bear the thought of
being intimate with James right now. Not if it led to a confession
of love. She placed her hands against his chest without thinking,
to push him away, but her cut palm protested. She tried to bite
back a gasp of pain, but she wasn’t fast enough.

James noticed. He lifted her chin, studying
her face, his dark eyes grave. “It’s all right, Beth. I only meant
that you need to rest. Please don’t mistake my motives. After what
happened this afternoon, I certainly don’t expect…I mean I wouldn’t
press you…”

For sex...

Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe sex was the
answer. She could use sex to distract James, to destroy this
poignant, agonizing tenderness between them. If she asked him to
take her to his bed. If she pleasured him until he couldn’t see
straight. Remind him that she
was
nothing more than his
mistress. His plaything. A whore. Then surely he wouldn’t want to
tell her…

She reached up and kissed him, hard,
desperately. Swept her tongue into his mouth and wrapped her
forearms around his neck to drag him closer. To stop him talking.
She didn’t want his words. She just wanted him. She would always
want him.

And she needed to take what she could
because tomorrow she would be gone from here.

She’d stayed too long already
.

James yielded at once and he kissed her back
with equal fervor, his hands tangling in her hair. He tasted of
whisky and passion and everything she’d ever wanted. She wanted to
tear at his shirt, at his breeches. Wanted to touch all of the hot,
hard planes and contours of his body. But her bound, clumsy,
painful hands were useless as she slid them down to the fastenings
at the neck of his shirt. She moaned in frustration.

He immediately broke the kiss and pulled
away. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this, Beth. You’re hurt—”

“No. I’m fine. Really. I want this, James. I
want you.” She was mortified to hear the desperation in her voice,
but she was beyond suppressing it. She reached down to place her
hand over his erection; she had felt it pressing against her belly
as soon as she’d started to kiss him, but again her cuts pained
her. She winced and bit her lip, blinking away the hot tears that
threatened to spill.

This isn’t working.

“I want you too, my love. But not like this.
I can wait. You mean so much more to me than this…”

Oh no. Don’t say it.

“Haven’t you guessed how I feel, Beth?”
James’s voice was husky with emotion. He caressed her cheek with
the back of his fingers before cupping her jaw so she couldn’t
escape his gaze. The tender light in his eyes was unmistakable. “I
love you. And I don’t want you to be my mistress. I want you to be
my wife.”

What?

A confession of love was bad enough…but a
proposal?

A choked sound of distress caught in
Elizabeth’s throat. She couldn’t breathe.

She wrenched herself away and ignoring the
pain in her knee, stumbled a few steps across the room toward the
open window. She could clearly hear the waves pounding futilely
against the cliffs below, and a biting, icy wind pulled at her
nightrail and hair.

This was worse, so much worse than she’d
ever anticipated. The man she loved was laying his heart at her
feet, offering her heaven. And she had to say no.

She was in hell and God help her—although a
sinner like her truly had no right to call on heaven’s help—she was
dragging James down with her.

And it was all her fault.

“Beth.” James took a step toward her, his
hand outstretched, stark bewilderment in his eyes. “I don’t
understand…”

She wrapped her arms around herself and
tried to swallow past the anguish that tightened her throat and
constricted her chest. If nothing else, she could at least give him
an answer. Her voice when it emerged was ragged, hoarse. “I’m
sorry, James…I can’t marry you.”

“But...” He broke off, dropping his hand,
his forehead creasing into a confused frown. “I thought…” He shook
his head as if attempting to knock his thoughts into order. His
chest swelled as he dragged in a breath. “I’ve surprised you,
shocked you even. I can see that. I know it hasn’t been that long
since you lost your husband but…if you need time to think on this,
Beth—”

Elizabeth shook her head. “No. It won’t make
any difference.” She had to convince him. She didn’t want him to
harbor false hope.

James paled, his skin pulling tight across
the angular planes of his strikingly handsome face as he suddenly
seemed to recognize her implacability. “Could you at least tell me
why?” The rawness in his voice sliced her to the bone.

Her vision blurred with tears. She shook her
head again, incapable of speech and closed her eyes. Her throat
ached with the effort it took not to sob. She should leave. Go back
to the servants’ quarters. Her trunk was still there. Pack.

The moment had come. This was over.

“Beth. This doesn’t make sense…”

“I know…I’m sorry…” Her voice was no more
than a ragged whisper. She couldn’t manage any more. She turned
away from him, toward the door.

But James wasn’t going to let her off so
easily. Within the space of a heartbeat, he closed the distance
between them and seized her by the shoulders, his fingers digging
into her like talons. “Beth, look at me. Tell me what’s the matter.
After all we’ve shared, can’t you at least tell me why you are
rejecting me.”

She bit her bottom lip, hard enough to draw
blood, and tried to tear herself away. But she was no match for
James’s strength. Desperation made him rough, but she welcomed the
pain.

He grasped her chin and tipped her head up,
forcing her to look at him. His eyes were black and turbulent. Like
storm clouds. Like the crashing sea below. “Don’t go, Beth. I beg
you…not like this. I love you. Do you understand me? I need you.
More than air, more than anything…I thought you felt the same way…”
His voice cracked.

“I…Please…you have to let me go. I’m not
worth it.”

“Of course you are. Just because you agreed
to become my mistress doesn’t mean you can’t be my wife. Nobody
will know, and besides, I don’t give a toss about what anyone
thinks—”

“That’s not the reason.”

“Then what is it?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but halted.
She didn’t want to confess her crimes. Her duplicity. But maybe it
was the only way he would let her go. And didn’t he deserve the
truth? The man that she loved. Her voice was a mere whisper. “I’m
not widowed.”

James’s frown was almost a scowl as he
struggled to make sense of what she’d said. “What, you mean you’ve
never been married?”

“No. Just the opposite…”

* * * *

No. Just the opposite.

Comprehension crashed over Rothsburgh like a
tidal wave. He dropped his hands away from Beth. “What? Do you mean
that you…” He couldn’t complete the horrendous thought.

Beth’s already pale face became ashen.
“Yes…I’m married.”

“No…” Surely she must be joking. But she
wasn’t. He could see it in her very expression—the way her bottom
lip trembled and her slender throat worked as if she was trying to
stop herself from sobbing. The tears in her eyes.

Jesus Christ.

His beautiful, sweet, angelic Beth. The
woman he loved beyond all understanding was married.

Rothsburgh shook his head, backing away from
her, trying to deny the shocking truth. His mind was reeling. His
world had been blown apart. Fragments of thought and half-formed
questions lodged in his brain like shrapnel.

Why? Why would Beth do this? Pretend to be
free when she wasn’t?

He’d known she had secrets. He’d known she
was troubled. But never in his wildest imaginings had he thought
that she hid something as awful, as shocking, as damning as this.
He had to make sense of it. Heaven help him, even though she was
splitting his heart in two, tearing his world asunder, he still
loved her.

He dragged in a shaky breath and desperately
fought to marshal his chaotic thoughts. “Your husband…you said he
died at Waterloo, but obviously he didn’t. Was he even at
Waterloo?”

Beth met his gaze. “Yes…he was at
Waterloo.”

Something true at last. Insane hope flared
within him for an instant. What if Beth was not quite a widow?
Perhaps Lieutenant Eliott had been presumed dead because there had
been no evidence left after the battle—no body. Dead, but not
officially declared dead. He’d seen men blown to pieces… “Is he…is
he missing in action then?”

“No. He came home…” Beth was shivering, a
pale ghost in her nightgown, but he couldn’t afford to feel a shred
of pity for her. Not when she was shredding his soul.

“So where is he now?” he demanded.

“James.” Beth’s voice cracked. “I can’t do
this…Please…It won’t do either of us any good…”

“Christ, Beth. I’m trying to understand. You
turn up here, professing you’re a widow…You become my lover. I
just—after everything we’ve shared, don’t you think that you owe me
an explanation, now that you’ve ripped out my heart?”

Her whole body flinched as if he’d struck
her, and her face paled to the color of parchment.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered then took a step
backward. Away from him. And another. She retreated behind a wing
chair.

He didn’t know whether he wanted to drag her
back into his arms, or order her to go. Either way she wasn’t his.
Had never been his.

And there was virtually nothing on earth,
nothing in heaven or hell that could excuse what she had done.

Beth was as deceitful as Isabelle. In fact
she was no different to Isabelle.

He’d fallen in love with another faithless,
lying whore
.

An adulteress.

A sickening combination of black despair and
bitter anger started to churn in his gut. Even though he felt as if
he was being flayed alive, he still needed to know why, why Beth
had pretended to be something that she wasn’t. Christ, did she even
care for him at all, or was everything an act? Was she that good an
actress?

He pushed his hands through his hair to stop
himself reaching for her—to shake the truth from her, or to take
her to his bed. Pound into her, possess her until…until what? It
didn’t matter what he did—railed, cried, pleaded—it wouldn’t change
the irrefutable fact that she was married.

Above all, right at this moment, all he
could fairly demand from her was the truth. She at least owed him
that much.

“Sorry isn’t good enough, Beth. You still
haven’t told me why. Why did you leave him? Why did you come here?
Why did you lie about being a widow?”

Why did you come here and break my
heart?
“You must have a bloody good reason.”

Beth shook her head, tears glazing her grey
eyes then spilling unheeded onto her cheeks. If she was acting he
should applaud her stricken expression. Despite his own burning
anguish, his stupid, foolish heart contracted with pain at seeing
her apparent devastation. Why wouldn’t she answer him?

Her nightmares
. Did it have something
to do with her nightmares? He suddenly felt like a drowning man
reaching for something to hold onto, to save himself and save her.
To absolve her of the heinous, treacherous act she had
committed.

“Your husband. Did he abuse you? Neglect
you? Abandon you?”

“No…no, he didn’t.” Her voice was thick with
tears. He could barely make out what she was saying. “We grew
apart…and then…It’s complicated…” She used her wrists to roughly
dash the tears from her cheeks, swallowed, and looked directly at
him. Her beautiful eyes were as bleak as a winter’s day at Eilean
Tor. “It doesn’t matter why…it won’t change what I’ve done. How
wrongly, how badly I’ve deceived you…I should go…”

Beth abandoned her defensive position behind
the wing chair and headed for the door. She was limping, but he
didn’t follow to assist her. Neither did he go to her aid when she
had trouble turning the doorknob with her bandaged hands. He didn’t
think he could bear to look at her. And he certainly didn’t have
the right to touch her.

Would he ever touch her again?

Even though dark, angry despair penetrated
his heart, he couldn’t quite stem the futile longing to go after
her, seize her, take her.

But he wouldn’t.

She belonged with her husband, Lieutenant
George Eliott.
Poor bloody cuckold
.

Rothsburgh turned away. The door clicked
shut.

His broken voice was barely a whisper in the
empty room. “Yes…go…It’s probably for the best.”

Elizabeth wasn’t sure what the hour was when
she eventually rose from the narrow bed in her freezing room. It
was fully night judging by the unrelenting blackness outside the
high narrow window—the only one in this tiny servant’s chamber. The
light of her single candle did nothing to relieve the pervading
gloom. Neither did the squalls of rain constantly battering at the
window pane. But the atmosphere perfectly matched her own state,
and indeed what her future would be—cold and dark
.

Bereft
.

And it was no less than she deserved given
the sins she had committed.

Now that her initial grief had ebbed, an odd
numbness had begun to steal over her. If nothing else, at least she
could think and function a little again. However her mind still
reeled with incredulity at the thought that James had actually
proposed to her. It was the last thing she had expected him to do.
Her heart would bleed forever at the memory of his devastated face,
at the very moment she had rejected him.