Wicked Surrender (Regency Sinners)(40)

Last night, they had seemed so happy together. Their lovemaking had been every bit as miraculous as the previous occasion. They had been like two naughty children hours later, laughing softly as they dressed and snuck up the wide staircase side by side.

He should never have allowed Bella to sleep alone, to give her time to think. He should have remained with her during the night, made love to her again this morning, have imprinted his possession of her time and time again until she had no desire to leave him.

It only added to his agony to watch how graciously she moved confidently among the guests, giving a word of comfort here, a light brushing of her hand against an arm there. Bella was everything that was elegant and beautiful. A woman any man would be proud to have on his arm.

Her avoidance of being alone with him today showed she did not wish it to be Dante’s arm.

Dante managed to keep his guests for as long as was politely possible, and so delaying the conversation Bella wished to have with him. Delaying the moment when he would hear her say she would shortly be leaving him.

But finally the vicar and his wife, the last guests to depart, were gone home in their carriage, and only Dante and Bella remained in the drawing room.

He avoided Bella’s gaze as he strode toward the doorway. “I have some estate business in need of my attention—”

“Dante!” Bella called out sharply. Her chin was tilted in challenge as he stopped and slowly turned to face her. “I believe you have avoided talking to me for quite long enough today.”

His heart sank as he knew the moment of truth had arrived. “I have avoided you?” He decided to attack rather than defend. “You were the one who remained in her bedchamber all morning. You did not even deign to come down for your breakfast or luncheon.”

A guilty blush colored her cheeks. “I slept through the former and was busy through the latter.”

“Doing what? Packing?” he challenged. “You have been here such a short time, I do not believe you can have unpacked enough to have needed to spend four hours repacking it.”

“That is true,” she allowed.

Dante could see Bella’s nervousness in the way she clutched her hands together in front of her and the agitated sweep of her tongue across her lips. Lips he had kissed and devoured the previous night. Lips that belonged to him, damn it, as Bella belonged to him. As he belonged to her. They belonged to each other.

“I need a drink.” He ignored the decanter of sherry that had been served to their guests in favor of pouring a glass of the brandy. If he drank enough of it, he knew it would at least dull the pain of parting from Bella. If only for a short time.

“Might I have one too?”

Dante turned to see Bella now stood beside him, her cheeks having taken on a pale hue. Good. Because he did not intend to make their parting easy for her. “Is it so difficult for you to say to me what you feel you need to say?” he mocked as he handed her the second glass of brandy he had poured.

She swallowed some of the fiery liquid before answering him. “I would give anything not to have this conversation with you.”

“Then don’t,” he rasped. “We can leave here together, find somewhere we can spend rest of the summer, and forget about the rest of the world and its cursed demands upon us and our time.”

Bella was tempted. Oh, so very tempted. But what she had to say to Dante could change everything. Could change him.

“That will not do, I am afraid.” She stepped away from him and the burning intensity of his gaze, her fingers curled tightly about the glass in her hand to prevent her from reaching out and touching him. As she so longed to do. “I spent the morning reading the dowager’s journals.”

“Good God.” Dante stared at her in disbelief. “That is how you spent your morning, wasting it on reading the ramblings of a bitter old woman?”

“She was not always a bitter old woman,” Bella chided gently. “She was young once. A bride. A wife. A mother.”

“And now she lies in her crypt and will become nothing but withered flesh and bone.” Dante threw the last of his brandy to the back of his throat before refilling his glass.

“You hate her.”

“Yes.”

“No more than she hated you.” Bella sighed.

“I was a young child when I came to live here,” Dante defended harshly. “An innocent child. I had just lost both my parents, and she—she treated me like an interloper. An unwanted responsibility which she instructed the servants she did not even wish to know was alive, let alone see.”

“I know.”

“She sent me away to school when I was eight,” Dante continued forcefully. “Did not even like me to be with Hal, the only person here even remotely my age. The loneliness was excruciating. If not for the support and friendship of The Sinners, I believe I might have withered away completely.”

Bella was also grateful he had the friendship of those seven gentlemen. She believed he would have need of that friendship again once their own conversation was over.

Tears blurred Bella’s vision in the knowledge she was about to send Dante’s world into complete turmoil for the second time in his life. And he would not thank her for doing so. No one ever thanked the messenger of bad news. “The dowager did not like me and my mother either. Did not like anything which threatened the…the stability of her family. But she had her reasons, Dante,” Bella added imploringly.