Treacherous Temptations(55)

“Hadley, have you…have you been with so very many women?”

He groaned a muffled oath and his eyes jerked open. Determined to nip a pointless interrogation in the bud, he took her firmly by the chin. “Let it rest, Mary. The past is inconsequential. To dwell on it only brings destruction. But know from this moment on, there is only you. You are the one I have wed, the only one who occupies my bed and in at least this aspect of our union, I have promised you no regrets.”

“I believe you.” She smiled dreamily.

“Good then,” he kissed the corner of her mouth, rolled onto his back, and closed his eyes. He had nearly drifted off again when another question jarred into his consciousness.

“What happens now?” she asked.

He made an exasperated sound. “My dear Mary, you must learn to give a man sufficient time to recover his wits after extensive lovemaking. It is a prodigiously draining experience.”

“Oh,” she replied.

He cracked his lids again and found her plucking at the counterpane.

“What is it now?” he fought to keep the growl out of his voice.

“It is done, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It is done. Irrevocably.” His eyes narrowed. “You are suffering remorse?”

“No…yes,” she sighed.

“Which is it, Mary?” he demanded.

“It’s just that I’m frightened, you see. I have lived the most peaceful and predictable life until these past months and I was content with that. It suits me, Hadley. How are we ever to make this work between us?”

“You worry too much. I asked you to trust me.” His conscience prodded him again for he was a bastard to demand something he would never give to another—blind faith. Moreover, he’d done absolutely nothing to deserve it.

“I cannot give my trust like some blank check. You must tell me more, Hadley. You said we must go away. How? When? And for how long? You have told me nothing and I don’t like being in the dark.”

Realizing the futility of slumber, he pulled her close and pillowed her head on his shoulder. “Then, my dearest, I shall try to illuminate the darkness. Yes, we must go abroad. I am in the process of making such arrangements. It must also be soon as Sir Richard has plans for you that certainly do not include me. You understand that there lies no small amount of antipathy between us?”

“Yes, I do, now that you’ve shared some of your history.”

“Your guardian is an exceedingly wily and treacherous man,” Hadley said. “He is also powerfully connected, and should he get wind of what we have done, it will not bode well for me.”

“But no one knows about us…except…” Her voice dropped off. “You said when you entered my room that the countess had sent you to me. It was she who gave you the key?”

“Yes, but Barbara has no loyalty to Sir Richard for she had designs on your money from the start. That is why she called me from Rome, in hope that I would woo you for my wife. She will not stand in our way as long as she believes she has something to gain.” He wondered how a man of his vast experience of the dark side of human nature could have been so oblivious to Barbara’s full intentions.

“By your re-claiming your estate and good name?” she asked.

“Something like that,” Hadley answered, purposefully vague.

“Hadley, you truly didn’t know who I was that first day in the music room? When you tried to teach me to dance?”

“I more than tried, you were actually doing quite well before you ran away from me. But to answer your question, I did not yet know you were Sir Richard’s ward. I was only just arrived from Italy and had not yet seen Barbara, nor had she revealed any details of you in her letters to me.”

“But once you knew, you set out to seduce me for my money?”

“I had designs on your fortune as a means of revenge,” he replied with brutal honesty.

Mary winced, yet she continued to press him. “If that is true, why didn’t you…when we were at Bushy Park, I was certain that you would…” Her brows drew together. “What stopped you, Hadley?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “It was not my overdeveloped scruples, I assure you.”

“I can’t believe you are as black as you would paint yourself,” she replied.

“I am very black indeed.” He gave her a dark look. “But perhaps that awareness is what stopped me.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“You, my dear Mary, are the only thing in my life that is untainted. I think I could not bear to be the one to defile you.”

“Untainted?” she laughed. “You are quite mistaken in me, I assure you.”

There was no humor in his smile. “Compared to the company I have kept these past seven years, you are a veritable angel come to earth.” His tone softened. “And now I wonder if you came just to save me.”

Their eyes met for another long searching moment.

“Why do you need to be saved?” she asked.

“Because I have done some unspeakable things.” An understatement indeed.

Following his father’s death, Hadley had sunk to depths of depravity that had nearly killed him. Gaming to his ruin, nightly drunken orgies with countless faceless lovers, he’d exercised neither moderation nor discrimination in his relentless need to fill the bottomless, black void. He’d reached rock bottom when Barbara had come to him with Sir Richard’s proposition.