Worth Any Price (Bow Street Runners #3)(90)

Radnor hauled her to the library, locked the door shut, and shoved Lottie into a chair. Holding one hand to her bruised throat, she crumpled into the seat. A few moments later, she felt something hard and cold prod against her temple, while one of his hands pulled her head to the back of the chair.

Lottie's heart stopped beating as she understood the reason that Lord Radnor had brought her here. Since he could not have her, he intended to destroy her.

"I loved you," Radnor said quietly, sounding perfectly sane, even as the end of the pistol barrel trembled against her head. "I would have given you everything."

Strangely, Lottie found that she was able to answer in just as rational a tone, as though they were having an ordinary conversation and her life was not about to end with the pull of his finger on the trigger. "You never loved me." It hurt her throat to speak, but she forced herself to continue. "You don't know the meaning of the word."

The pistol shook harder. "How can you say that after all that I have sacrificed for you? Are you really so ignorant?"

"In all the years that we've known each other, you've demonstrated domination, obsession, and desire...but those things aren't love."

"Then tell me what love is." His voice was thick with scorn.

"Respect. Acceptance. Selflessness. All the things my husband has shown me in just a few short weeks. My flaws don't matter to him. He loves me without conditions. And I love him the same way."

"You owe your love tome," he said harshly.

"Perhaps I could have felt something for you had you ever tried to be kind." Lottie paused, closing her eyes as she felt the pistol nudge harder into her temple. "Strange, but I've never thought it mattered to you, whether I cared for you or not."

"It does," Radnor said furiously. "I deserve that much from you, at least!"

"How ironic." A humorless smile tugged at her dry lips. "You demanded perfection from me-something I could never attain. And yet the one thing I might have given you-affection-you never seemed to want."

"I want it now," Radnor stunned Lottie by saying. Keeping the pistol pressed to her head, he moved in front of her and knelt until their faces were level. His face was ruddy with color that burned not on the surface of his skin but from deep underneath. His eyes were black with rage, or perhaps despair, and his thin mouth was contorted by some powerful emotion. Lottie had never seen him like this. She did not understand what moved him, why he should seem so ravaged by loss, when she knew to the bottom of her soul that he was not capable of love.

His clawlike hand took hers, brought her resisting fingers to his perspiring cheek. She realized with amazement that he was trying to make her caress him...here, like this, with a gun held to her head. "Touch me," he muttered feverishly. "Tell me that you love me."

Lottie kept her fingers still and lifeless in his. "I love my husband."

Radnor flushed with baffled anger. "You cannot!"

She almost pitied him as she stared into his uncomprehending eyes. "I'm sorry for you," she said. "You can't conceive of loving anyone who is less than perfect. What a lonely fate that must be."

"Idid love you," he shouted, his voice striated with rage. "I did, damn your cheating soul!"

"Then you loved someone who never existed. You loved an impossible ideal. Not me." She licked at the beads of sweat on her upper lip. "You don't know anything about me, my lord."

"I know you better than anyone," he said vehemently. "You would be nothing without me.You belong to me ."

"No. I am Lord Sydney's wife." She hesitated before giving voice to the thought that had occurred to her more than once in the past few days. "And I am fairly certain that by now I am carrying his child."

Lord Radnor's eyes became two wells of utter darkness in a face that was skull white. She perceived that she had shocked him deeply, that the thought of her being pregnant with another man's child had never even occurred to him.

Delicately Radnor's fingers withdrew from hers, and he stood. The cold barrel of the gun never left Lottie's temple as he moved behind her once more. She felt the perspiring flat of his palm catch slightly on her hair as he caressed it. "You've ruined everything," he said in a curiously flat tone. The pistol cocked, the heavy click reverberating against her skin. "There's nothing left for me. You'll never be what I wanted."

"No," Lottie agreed softly. "It was always futile." Cold sweat trickled down her face as she waited for him to pull the trigger. In the face of such absolute defeat, Radnor would surely kill her. But she was not going to spend the last moments of her life cowering in fear. She closed her eyes and thought of Nick...his kisses, his smiles, the warmth of his arms around her. Tears of regret and gladness prickled behind her lids. If only she could have had a little more time with him...if only she could have made him understand what he meant to her. A slow sigh escaped her, and she waited almost peacefully for Radnor to act.

At the sound of her exhalation, the barrel of the pistol lifted from her head. In the weighty silence that followed, Lottie opened her eyes, perplexed by the absolute stillness. Had she not heard the faint rasp of Radnor's breathing, she would have thought that he had left the room. As she began to turn, she was suddenly assaulted with an explosive sound that made her ears ring. She fell backward, her backside hitting the floor, while a curious hot splatter landed on her skirts and arms.