A Dangerous Collaboration (Veronica Speedwell #4)(55)

“That was the summer you met her?”

His lips twisted. “‘Met.’ So tame a word for it. It was not a meeting, Veronica. I was introduced to her and it was like finding part of myself that had been somehow walking the earth without me. She was my other half when I had not realized I was incomplete.”

I said nothing; my throat was too tight for words.

He went on in a faraway voice, staring into the fire. “Malcolm had settled into comfortable bachelorhood, and I was much the same, content to indulge myself with what we shall call impermanent companionship. I believe you understand what I mean.”

I thought of my own eminently sensible indulgences of the flesh—there is no better remedy for low spirits and a poor complexion than a healthy and revivifying bout of copulation, I believe—and nodded.

“And yet I was occasionally conscious of a flicker of dissatisfaction. I enjoyed my dissipations thoroughly. I made a practice of them that would have put the most jaded and accomplished reprobate to the blush. But there were times when I was aware of a certain envy beginning to gnaw at me.”

“Envy?”

“Not a word you might immediately associate with the likes of me, I know. I do not inspire pity, as you have so astutely pointed out,” he said, making a sweeping gesture with his arm. “I am wealthy and titled and I am not uncomely. I have been dreadfully indulged and have got my way in almost every situation.”

“You are thoroughly spoilt, you mean.”

“Ah, that touch of asperity! You are the only one of my acquaintance who is unafraid to spice her conversation with that particular pepper. It is one of the things I adore most about you.”

“You are proving my point,” I warned him.

He smiled lazily. “Did you know that if you rub a cat’s fur the wrong way with a piece of silk, you can make sparks? Little flickers of electricity conjured from your bare fingertips. It is the nearest thing to being a god. That is how I feel when I spar with you.”

“I am glad it amuses you.”

“Amuses! My delectable Veronica, ‘amusement’ does not begin to plumb the depths of my regard.”

“You were telling me about how you fell in love with another woman,” I reminded him.

“Yes, I was. I have always thought it a ridiculous expression, to say that one falls in love, and yet that is precisely how it was. One moment I was myself, as I had ever been. The next, I was over the precipice and into the abyss.”

“And she felt the same?”

“She did,” he said, a sudden fierceness in his tone. His knuckles whitened on the glass. “I know she did. She resisted and she pretended. She prevaricated and she lied. But she loved me.”

“Why resist at all?” I asked. “As you say, you are everything a woman could want in a husband. You are titled and rich and handsome and charming.”

“I never claimed to be charming.”

“No, that is my personal assessment.”

A fingertip reached out to touch my cheek, light as a feather. “Why, Veronica. Perhaps you do care after all.”

I turned my head and gave a sharp snap of the teeth. “Careful, your lordship. I am no tame kitten for playing with.”

He drew back his hand. “No indeed. You are fully a tigress.” He settled into his chair. “She resisted me because she wanted Malcolm.”

I nodded thoughtfully and he turned an outraged face to mine. “Are you not going to protest? Will you not demand how any woman could prefer Malcolm Romilly to me?”

I shrugged. “But I understand it perfectly. Malcolm is handsome in his own pleasant country squire fashion. There is something quite jolly olde England and roast beef about him. One could well imagine him in Tudor velvets or perhaps in plate armor, carrying a lance at the side of the Conqueror.”

“That is the most appalling, sentimental rubbish—”

I broke in. “And of course, he has this,” I added, sweeping an arm to indicate the castle. “I am sure your country seat is impressive, but it isn’t a castle, is it? And you only inherited it last year. You didn’t even have a title when Rosamund met you. Besides, I seem to recall that your father kept you on rather limited purse strings.”

“I managed,” he said through clenched teeth. He rose and refilled his glass.

“But your father was not in ill health,” I persisted. “He was the head of the family and there was no indication he would leave you to inherit for another twenty years. What woman would care to wait for her husband to step into dead man’s shoes when she could be mistress of this castle right at the beginning?”

“You think she wanted him for his castle?” he demanded.

“Oh, not entirely. I meant what I said about his personal attractions. Granted, he is a bit careworn at present, but I suspect he is capable of quite pleasurable wooing. And there is something gravely sweet about him, old-fashioned, as you say. Courtly.”

“Courtly!” He fairly spat the word. “You think Rosamund preferred courtliness?”

I shrugged. “I did not know her. But I can tell you that it is easy to see why a woman would rather throw her lot in with a pleasant and easy gentleman of wealth like Malcolm Romilly instead of gambling her happiness on you. It is the difference between walking a paddock with a pony and galloping barebacked over the Downs in a lightning storm with a stallion between your thighs.”