A Week to Be Wicked (Spindle Cove #2)(86)

She sifted through the papers.

He crossed his arms. “What, are you snooping now?”

“No,” she protested. “Well, maybe. Goodness, he writes a great many letters to his stewards.”

“Listen, I have a well to dig, and—”

“Wait.” She plucked a paper from the stack. “What’s this?” She read aloud. “ ‘Millicent . . . Madeira . . . Michaela . . . Marilyn . . .’ And this is written in his hand.”

“So? It’s a list of names.”

“Yes. A list of women’s names, all of them beginning with M.” A flush rose on her throat. “The letter means nothing, but this . . . this is proof. Don’t you see?”

“No, I don’t. Not at all.”

“Lord Payne always acted as though he couldn’t remember Minerva’s name. Calling her Melissa and Miranda and every other ‘M’ name under the sun. But he must have done it on purpose, don’t you see? Just to tease her. He even went to the trouble of writing out this list.”

“That proves him even more of an blackguard, to my mind.”

She clucked her tongue impatiently. “Corporal Thorne. You really don’t understand a thing about romance.”

Thorne shrugged. She was right. He understood desire. He understood wanting. He understood loyalty and bone-deep devotion that stretched back to a time before this woman’s earliest memories.

But he didn’t know a damn thing about romance.

She ought to thank God for it.

There she went, right now—flashing him a fearless smile. No one smiled like that at Thorne. But she’d always been this way. Cheerful, in the face of everything. Singing like a little angel, even when she stood at the very gates of hell.

“Don’t you know?” she said. “Apparent dislike often masks a hidden attraction.”

He felt his face go hot. “Not in this case.”

“Oh, yes. This list doesn’t prove Lord Payne’s a blackguard.” She tapped the paper against Thorne’s chest. “It proves he was smitten.”

Chapter Twenty-six

“I demand to know what was in this letter.” Wearing a devilish grin, Colin chased her up the coaching inn staircase.

Minerva cringed. She never should have mentioned it. “Can we move past this, please? You plagued me all through dinner. I’ve told you, I don’t recall.”

“And I told you, I don’t believe you.”

“It doesn’t matter whether or not you believe me.”

She opened the door to their chambers. While they’d been eating downstairs, a manservant had been dispatched to fetch a few gentlemen’s necessities for Colin. And the finest secondhand gown three pounds could purchase had been laid out by the maid. A surprisingly lovely muslin frock—ivory, block-printed with tiny pink sprigs.

A banked fire smoldered in the hearth. And the bed, heaped with pillows and quilts . . . oh, how Minerva’s road-weary body yearned to sink into that bed and stay there for days.

“I’m going to change before our post-chaise is ready.” She ducked behind a dressing screen in hopes of hiding from this conversation.

“Then I’ll have a shave.” She heard him cross to the washstand. “But I’m going to keep on deviling you, until you confess everything. Did I compose pages of description? Compare your eyes to Brighton diamonds?”

“They’re Bristol diamonds. And no, you did not.”

“Aha. So you do remember the contents.”

She huffed out a breath. “Very well. Yes. I do remember. I remember that letter word for word.”

Water splashed in the basin, and she heard the scratch of his shaving brush against his stubbled jaw. The familiar scent of his shaving soap filled the air. It smelled of cloves.

“I’m listening,” he prompted.

Behind the screen, she picked at a ragged fingernail. “You wrote that you’d been studying me, when I wasn’t aware of it. Stealing glances when I was lost in thought, or when my head was bent over a book. Admiring the way my dark, wild hair always manages to escapes its pins, tumbling down my neck. Noting the warm glow of my skin, where the sun has kissed it. You wrote that you’re consumed by a savage, visceral passion for an enchantress with raven’s-wing hair and sultry lips. That you see in me a rare, wild beauty that’s been overlooked by other men. Sound familiar?”

“Oh, you didn’t.” He muttered a curse and tapped his razor on the washbasin. “You couldn’t have remembered everything I said that night.”

“Certainly I could. And what better words to fill a forged letter from you? They were all yours, after all.” She sniffed. “You wrote that I was the true reason you’d remained in Spindle Cove all those months. And the letter ended with the sweetest words. ‘It’s simply you, Minerva. It’s always been you.’ ”

He was quiet for a long time. For as long as it took her to undo fourteen hooks at the back of her abused blue silk gown and pick loose the knots of her corset laces and unbutton all the tiny closures of her shift. For as long as it took for him to finish shaving and cross the room in slow, measured footfalls.

She heard a creak as he flung himself on the bed. “God, I was such an ass.”

She didn’t offer any argument to the contrary.