Treacherous Temptations(63)

“No!” he cried. “I know how it looks, but you have it all wrong!”

“What kind of fool do you think I am?” she cried. “Do you really expect me to blindly follow you when you and Barbara have designs on my life?”

“You can’t really believe that! You think me so vile and low to plot such a thing?”

“I think a man who would commit incest and drive his own father to self-murder is capable of just about anything!”

Hadley froze, except for a muscle working in his jaw. “Who told you such a thing? Who is spreading such filthy slander?”

“Does it matter who?” she asked. “I note that you fail to deny it.”

He clawed a hand through his hair with a wild look and a ragged curse. “Damn it all to bloody hell!”

“It is true. It’s all true, isn’t it!” she cried. “And to think I was already prepared to give you the benefit of doubt!” Mary emitted a hysterical laugh. It was too much—more than she could bear. “I’ve wed you! My God! What have I done?”

He grabbed her shoulders, his fingers digging into her flesh. “There are two sides to every story, Mary. You must hear me out on this! Barbara intended to use me for her purposes, just as Sir Richard intended to use you to achieve his political ends. In a sense, we are both pawns, but by leaving together we would flout them both.”

“Leave? I will not go anywhere with you. Ever! There is nothing you can ever say or do to make this right. I can never trust you again! Don’t you understand that?”

“God help me! How can I make you understand how it was? This maggot has been eating away at me for seven years. You must let me speak my piece, Mary.”

“Must I? I think not! The only thing I must do is get away from you!” She jerked out of his grip and crossed the room, giving him her back. “Please go. I need time to sort out this horrific mistake I have made.”

“Will you please only hear me out before you pass judgment?”

“It won’t make any difference, don’t you see that? You’ve betrayed my faith. You’ve sundered my heart, Hadley.” She stifled a sob. “It’s over.”

“I can’t believe that,” he said fiercely. “I refuse to let you go. I will carry you to France over my shoulder if I have to.”

“Don’t even think to try, for at the first opportunity I would escape you, or send word to Sir Richard. You cannot hope to keep me against my will, and you need my will to gain my fortune.”

“Damn the money to hell, Mary! This is no longer about your money. This is only about you and me.”

“And Barbara,” she said.

“Yes,” he audibly ground his teeth. “And Barbara. Will you please listen?”

“If I do, will you leave?”

He raised his palms in defeat. “You give me no choice.”

“Very well then. I will listen to what you have to say, and then you will leave and never beleaguer me again.”

…

Hadley’s heart pounded a desperate tattoo. How could this be happening? For almost ten years, guilt and bitterness had driven him to an endless pursuit of every excess and dissipation. With his sense of honor and self-worth destroyed, he had given up hope of anything good, but now that he had actually begun to hope for a new start, his sins had returned like some ravenous monster to devour it…to devour him.

“I must make you see how it was, Mary. Nothing is as black and white as it appears. Some of what you’ve heard is true, but I ask that you put aside prejudicial thinking to consider the man before you now. To base your decision on who I am at this very moment, not who I was.”

Mary sat in one of the pair of wooden chairs with her back ramrod straight, and her hands clasped in her lap, staring across the room. “Alright, Hadley. What do I have wrong?”

“To begin with, you don’t understand the circumstances. It was almost nine years ago. I was not the man I am now. I had yet seen nothing of the world, and unlike my peers who amused themselves with drink and debauchery, I cared for little beyond my studies.”

Hadley began pacing the room in erratic fits and starts. “I was only nineteen when my father sent for me from Oxford, insistent that I come to meet his new bride. It was shocking news, as I had not known that he had planned to wed, let alone take a wife only a few years my senior. Nevertheless, as a dutiful son, I came home to pay my respects, but arrived to the most disconcerting reception. At the places I was accustomed to habit, conversation would suddenly lull when I’d enter a room. Even more disconcerting were the sly looks that accompanied every wish of felicitations on my father’s union. It didn’t take long for me to realize that my new stepmother’s name was being bandied about in the grossest terms of innuendo. I would have drawn my sword for family honor, but there appeared to be no single culprit.”

“It sickened me but when I tried to broach the subject with my father, he would hear nothing against her, which only caused a greater divide in a relationship that was never warm to begin with. Finally, in a passion of righteous fury, I confronted Barbara herself, accusing her of being the veritable whore of Babylon. She laughed in my face. That same night I awoke from the most vivid and erotic dream…only to find that it wasn’t a dream at all.”

He paused to let her process what he had left unsaid.