Revenge Wears Rubies (33 page)

He wrapped her up in long Turkish towels and carried her back to the bedroom where his large bed awaited them.

“Galen?”

“Yes,” he said, kissing her forehead as they settled against the pillows.

“Before . . . when you spoke of the trick with the lines on my hand . . . you said it hadn’t worked.” She propped herself up on one elbow to look into his smoldering emerald eyes. “But it did. I had never known what it was to love before I met you.”

His expression was unreadable. “How is that possible? That I am the first . . . There must have been—there
was
someone else. You’re too beautiful not to have known love before now, Haley.”

“I know my own heart, Galen.” She laughed, playfully kissing the stubborn line of his jaw. Haley wondered briefly if it were possible for him to harbor any jealousy at all toward poor Mr. Trumble, but dismissed the idea as quickly as it came. “Why is this so difficult to believe?”

“I think you’re telling me that I’m the first to win your heart, because you suspect it will mean more . . . but you needn’t. If you admitted that you had loved someone else—”

“I haven’t!” She kissed his cheek again, then gently nipped his ear with her teeth. “My poor Galen. I can only guess that someone has hurt you to make you so wary even now. . . .”

He didn’t answer, instead reaching up his hand to gently draw his fingers over her cheek and down her throat, as if studying her features to memorize her in this moment. Haley took courage in the tender caress, amazed at his solemn approach to the topic, and spoke before her practical mind could rein in her tongue. “I love you, Galen.”

He kissed her, so tenderly and so thoroughly that she could feel her eyes overflowing with tears of joy, her emotions too close to the surface to hide from him. He drew her close, into the crook of his arm, to nest alongside him again, and Haley knew that all the happiness she had once disavowed had come to her a thousandfold with Galen’s love.

His breath evened out, and she sensed him sleeping soundly at last. She lingered in the warm pocket their bodies had created in the large, soft feather mattress, marveling that such simple comfort existed. To lie in his arms and know such peace, it had been beyond her imagination only weeks earlier.

He’d saved her life. Only hours ago, he’d stepped in front of a knife-wielding monster, as calmly as a man stepping forward to claim a carriage. It didn’t seem possible. More frightening than the strange-looking knife was Galen’s cavalier attitude toward his own safety—as if he valued himself as nothing.

A large clock somewhere in the house softly chimed the hour, and Haley realized with a start that it was three o’clock in the morning. She’d never intended to stay so late. Newly aware that the cook often arose around four, Haley knew that even with her key, she didn’t want to press her luck.

Still, it was hard to go. She carefully eased away from him, determined not to disturb his slumber. The moon was bright enough through the open curtains to illuminate the room in a cool wash of magical gray and ivory shadows. She slid her feet over the side of the bed and began to retrace her steps to the dressing room and adjoining bath to retrieve her clothes.

Behind the door, it was easy enough to reconstruct her clothes and put back on all the layers that Galen had so skillfully removed. Haley congratulated herself on wisely beginning to choose dresses that she could manage on her own without the aid of a second pair of hands. She stepped into her shoes and then rolled her still damp hair up into a simple chignon.

Walking back into the bedroom, she watched him sleep for a few moments, admiring his masculine beauty as he lay across the bed with the moonlight touching his back and showing off his physique.

She glanced at a small writing desk against the windows and decided to pen a small love note to excuse her lack of a farewell and reassure him that she would seek him again as soon as she could manage it.

She slid open the wide drawer underneath the leather pressed table and pulled out a sheath of paper, but as she lifted it to look for a blank sheet she could use, her heart began to pound out of control.

It was a caricature, like one saw in the
Times
, well drawn but deliberately crude and bawdy to catch the eye—and its subject was unmistakable. Like a nightmare, her initials appeared underneath the rendering of a dark-haired woman tossing up her skirts as she was climbing from one sorrel pony’s saddle to another sturdier-looking mount, even as another stallion pawed the ground in the background. The captions were horrifying—identifying each horse as another man she’d chosen “to ride to the bank,” and a man on the ground looking up the woman’s skirts no doubt in the guise of helping her to keep her balance proclaimed she was the “finest rider in all of England—or I’ve never seen a fortune-hunting gel!”

It was graphic and base, and—Haley stopped breathing for an instant as she saw that a note of submission to the
Times
was attached to it with Galen’s signature.

She dropped the papers to the floor, stunned by a pain so intense her knees buckled. Haley gripped the desk to maintain her balance and closed her eyes to try to shut out the image of the bright-cheeked whore laughing up at her from the floor.

A wave of nausea nearly overtook her, but it held no power against the icy wall of agony that had moved into her chest.

Her mind couldn’t fathom it. It was a betrayal so hateful and shocking that she wasn’t sure what to think or do. The ice began to numb her and Haley was grateful for it. She looked back where he was lying, still so breathtakingly handsome, and wondered why she wasn’t weeping.

Haley moved toward the bed, almost touching his hand, but she pulled her fingers back at the last instant. She stood absolutely still and waited for the strength she needed to leave him—and then she turned and walked out.

Galen sighed as the last blissful layer of sleep began to drift away, and he stretched out against the pillows trying to will himself back into the glorious dreamless rest he’d been having. But even that brought him closer to a state of consciousness as the realization of what had just happened slowly sank in.

I slept. Merciful gods, I slept! And not that restless soulwearying, nightmare-filled semblance of sleep!
His eyes flew open.
This was real! No dark dreams! No green tea with Bradley at four o’clock in the morning!

He sat up quickly, multiple questions hitting him at once. It was Haley who had done it, and he was seized with the need to tell her. Bright light streamed through the windows and he wondered how late he’d slept—and more importantly, where was Haley?

“Haley!” He called for her, grabbing his wrap to head for the dressing room and see if she was there. “Haley?”

There was no sign of her in either the dressing room or the bath, and he hurried over to the bellpull to summon Bradley, yanking it with a humorous vigor that was sure to send the poor man running. Galen smiled at the image, elated beyond words at his newfound sleep, but determined to share his joy with Haley as soon as possible.

Galen spotted the papers on the floor by his desk, and the world ground to a horrific stop. On wooden legs, he made his way over to the familiar pages and then had to remind himself to breathe.

The damning caricature lay on the carpet, and Galen knew it was over.

She was gone.

Chapter
20

Before noon, the front bell at Galen’s brownstone was ringing ferociously. Bradley sheepishly led Mrs. Shaw inside to the ground floor drawing room but hadn’t needed to inform Galen because he’d run down the stairs taking them two at a time in the wild, irrational hope that Haley had returned.

“Mrs. Shaw.” Disappointment tainted his words, but Galen knew that the time had passed for prevarication. Her appearance was a harbinger of the worst kind, and he tried to brace himself for the inevitable. “I can only imagine what you must think of me.”

“Oh, you’ll have no need for suppositions, young man,” she replied tartly. “I have every intention of telling you exactly what I think of you!”

“If you’d just give me a chance to explain, I’m sure—”

She held up a gloved hand, cutting him off as crisply as a general dismissing a raw recruit. “Explanations are always plentiful after a man has been caught in some wretched business or another! It’s a marvel to me that your sex doesn’t think about explaining themselves
before
your schemes are uncovered and you look like the worst and vilest creatures on the earth. Why is it that eloquence only comes when it’s too late?”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t say.” Galen winced at the inadvertent irony and almost groaned at the agony of knowing that he’d just made it so much worse than he’d ever thought possible by appearing glib.

Mrs. Shaw’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “You think I’m some elderly dupe? Did you think I was just blindly giggling at my lovely luck to be a small cog in the romantic machinations of your masculine plans?”

Galen could only shake his head, not trusting himself to answer without adding more fuel to the fire in her eyes.

“I’m not new to the game, Mr. Hawke. But I liked you, and I allowed you to insert yourself into my niece’s life because you seemed so . . .” She sighed in frustration before going on. “I had hoped that Haley would find the love she deserved and make a better life for herself. Frankly, I’d have done the same if you were a penniless tinker, but only because I thought I was dealing with an honorable man.”

“I never—”

“I have no interest in hearing your denials!” Her chin lifted an inch, and she marched up until he was forced to look down directly into her eyes. “What I am interested in, Mr. Hawke, is obtaining possession of every libel-covered page from that desk of yours!”

He nodded dutifully, a sick twist in his gut at the thought of Haley seeing them again. “Of course. If it’s any consolation, I wasn’t going to . . . no one has ever seen them, Mrs. Shaw. It was a misguided plan that my heart overruled weeks ago, and I never—”

“The papers, Mr. Hawke.” She poked him in the chest with one bony finger and then held out her hand. “I’ll take them now.”

He left her to retrieve them, overriding the instinct to hold the envelope like a snake in front of him.
I should have destroyed them when Michael came upon me that first night! And then later . . . but I was too stupid to even remember they were still in my desk!

He held it out to her. “Here, this is everything.”

She took the envelope from him and then glanced at the contents to assure herself that this was no trick. “Burn it. I want to watch you burn it,” she commanded.

Galen felt like a coward. It was easy enough to find matches and comply with her wishes. He threw the burning packet onto the fireplace grate and watched as the only evidence of his villainy disappeared into black leaves and embers.

“Are there any other copies? Is there anything else that she didn’t accidentally uncover?” Mrs. Shaw asked behind him.

“No, that was everything.”

“Good. Then I will bid you farewell, Mr. Hawke.”

“Mrs. Shaw, wait, I beg you.”

“Beg?” She halted her steps, giving him a look of astonishment. “Well, you don’t know the game at all, do you?”

“It’s no game, Mrs. Shaw.”

“Of course it is! Allow me to refresh you on your next few moves! You pretend to be angry at this misfortune of being misunderstood! You insist on your innocence! You even go so far as to make foolish threats to prevent us from saying anything about this matter in public, although you know full well we can’t without endangering poor Haley’s status! You huff and puff, and then you pick up your manly pride and decide what lovely girl will next have the honor of falling for your obvious charms and finding herself completely destroyed as an unhappy result. That, Mr. Hawke, is the game. And if you’re going to choose the black pieces on the board, then you’d better learn the rules!”