“You searched for Ginny, you pined for her, because she made you feel something that you’d been missing. Because she fulfilled your needs and became someone you desired. Because maybe for a moment, she made you happy. But did you ever once stop to consider her happiness? Her needs? Her desires?”
“Stop talking about her like she’s dead,” he growled. “You are one and the same.”
“That’s just it, Cole, we’re nothing alike, she and I.” Imogen stepped closer to the lamplight, convincing herself it was not a retreat, but an illumination. She let the lamp spin her hair into gold and shimmer across shoulders and curves so different from what they’d once been. “You remember a starving woman in a black wig with a painted face and a false name. She was pliant and afraid. Helpless and desperate. Don’t you see, Cole, I am not she.” Taking a trembling step forward, Imogen raised her fingers to shape over his rough, clenched jaw, hoping that her touch would soften the hard truths she spoke. “You can’t know how sorry I am that you suffered on my account. But just because you bought Ginny for one night, doesn’t mean that you own me. Doesn’t mean that I owe you anything, least of all an explanation.”
His jaw turned to iron beneath her grip the moment before he seized her wrist and ripped it away from his skin as though it had burned him. “Like hell you didn’t. You owed me the truth, you cruel, selfish—”
“And what would have happened had I come to you? Would you have made me your mistress? Your official whore?” She wrenched her wrist away from his grasp, and to his credit, he allowed it. “You, a high-and-mighty duke, would deign to lower yourself to elevate a common prostitute? Stash her in some frilly rooms to consort with at your leisure until you tired of her, and she’d be cast off as your shameful leavings? Who would dare deny—”
“I would have made you my wife!” The admission seemed to startle even himself.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” A harsh laugh burst from her.
His expression landed somewhere between confounded and murderous.
“Consider how you’ve behaved toward me since you’ve known me as the countess Anstruther.” This time it was she who advanced upon him, and though he nearly doubled her in size, she felt a stab of victory permeate her ire when he took a step back. “Tell me, exactly, when I should have revealed my tender secret to you? When you hurled your teacup at me? Or perhaps when you publicly humiliated me in front of my investors? Or threatened to ruin me in the garden, vowing to thwart my life’s work at every turn. You of all people know what kind of weapon our night together could be in the hands of my enemies. You’re the Duke of bloody Trenwyth,” she cursed. “You’ve treated me as if I were beneath you since the day you woke after I saved. Your. Life. What could possibly make you think I’d give you the fodder to ruin mine as you’d so ardently promised to do?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, his expression losing some of its heat.
“Furthermore, I’m insulted by the arrogant assumption that I’d even consider your hand,” she continued. “I, too, yearned for the man who stole my heart three years ago. I’ve searched for him inside of you a thousand times. I gave you every chance to be that man, and sometimes, I thought I glimpsed him in your eyes. In your smile. Or in a kind gesture…” Her voice broke, and she had to struggle for composure before she said, “I would have revealed myself to him.” Imogen didn’t know which made her angrier, the man in front of her or the tears escaping down her cheeks despite her valiant fight against them. “But now I know that, just like Ginny, he exists no longer.”
Cole opened his mouth, but an ominous metallic sound broke their silence.
“Make a move and you die.” The impossibly deep voice identified the moment’s intruder as imposing, African, and authoritarian even before Inspector Rathbone materialized, a pistol expertly trained on the duke. “Step back,” he ordered.
Deadly as a plague, dexterous as a lion, and dusky as a shadow, that was Roman Rathbone. He’d obviously dressed in a hurry, as his shirt draped open, revealing a broad chest of gleaming teak.
His dishabille made Imogen marginally less mortified over her own state of undress, though words eluded her as she realized how close he’d come to catching them doing what they’d done against that trunk only minutes beforehand.
“Your Grace?” Rathbone’s swarthy features contorted with indecision as he inched his pistol toward the ground, but not completely. His eyes, a striking gray, quickly assessed the casually dressed duke, the crying countess, the nude portrait, and the trunk in disarray. It was enough for him to keep the gun pointed at the other dangerous man in the room.
Imogen wondered if it was possible to die of humiliation.
“You are to be commended, Inspector.” Cole sneered, though he had the presence of mind to turn slowly to face the armed man. “Were I the murderer, I’d only have killed her and everyone else before you deigned to stir yourself from your comfortable suite.”
“It was O’Mara’s turn to take watch,” the inspector explained, bemusement turning into concern.
“Then where is he?” Cole bit from between clenched teeth.
The blithe Irishman in question was still in the process of tucking his shirt into his trousers as he all but skidded around the doorway, his brutish features a bit flushed and his expression sheepish.
“Trenwyth?” he sang with delighted recognition. “I was … tucking one of the maids in when I thought I heard a crash—” The tableau finally had a chance to register in almost comical degrees of expression. “What in the name of the saints is going on here? Did he hurt you, Lady Anstruther?”
Imogen didn’t recognize the bitterness in her caustic sound as her own. Of course she was hurting, and he was the cause, but not in the way O’Mara suspected. She’d let him inside her. Hoped he’d taken her body to lay claim to her, not to shame or castigate her.
She and hope had not often been friends. Especially not when it came to him.
“Pull that trigger and make sure you don’t miss. Because if you do it’ll be the end of you,” Cole warned Rathbone, not one to be held or threatened by any means, even by a lawman.
Gathering the vestiges of her strength and the last of her tattered dignity, Imogen stepped forward. “There’s no need for violence, Inspectors. He didn’t … this isn’t what it looks like.”
Rathbone finally lowered his weapon, his gaze bouncing back and forth with shrewd curiosity. “You want us to … leave you two alone?”
Imogen didn’t dare look at Cole. Couldn’t bring herself to meet whatever terrible censure she’d see in his eyes. “Perhaps you can escort His Grace out,” she whispered, suddenly exhausted.
“Don’t bother.” Cole’s imperious tone froze whatever warmth she had left for him. “I’m already gone.”
And in a few furious strides, he was, leaving her alone with two very uncomfortable men.
“Begging your pardon, Countess, but … is there someone you’d like me to be fetching for you? Your sister, perhaps, or your ma?” O’Mara asked.
“No, thank you, Inspector. I just … need to go to bed. This will all be sorted in the morning.”