Wicked Temptation (Regency Sinners 6)(34)

Pru sat down before she fell down, too shocked for several minutes to do any more than try to steady her breathing. “You knew him personally?” she finally managed to speak.

“Yes.”

“He was a friend?”

“We served in the army together.”

And that friend and comrade in arms was now dead. Because, if she had read the report correctly, Titus had instructed him to follow a man he believed to be connected to the traitor to the Crown.

What had she done?

Not only had she ruined their lovemaking with her accusations and name-calling, but Titus had suffered the loss of yet another of his friends to this madness.





Chapter 12


“He despises me,” Pru told her mother flatly.

The countess, reclining on a couch in her private sitting room, now looked up from the book she was reading. “Who does, darling?”

“Titus. Viscount Romney,” she added heavily as she dropped down onto the second couch.

She and Titus had parted badly, something which seemed to happen on a regular basis when it came to the two of them. She had behaved badly and had made accusations that could never be taken back. Not only that, but she had turned their lovemaking into something ugly instead of the most exciting and beautiful experience of her life.

Quickly making her excuses, before Titus could voice his disgust with her behavior, she had left Romney House and instructed her groom to take the carriage about the park in order that she might attempt to clear her head before returning to Germaine House. Searching but not succeeding in trying to find a way in which she might salvage her relationship with Titus.

Her mother now placed the closed book on the table beside her before sitting up. “I believe I know who Titus is, my darling.”

“Yes. Well.” Pru avoided looking at her mother directly. “I made a complete idiot of myself when I was with him earlier.”

“And now he despises you?”

“Oh yes.” Pru sprang restlessly back to her feet with the intention of pacing the room. Something she then decided against as she immediately became aware of the soreness between her legs from lovemaking with Titus. “I made dreadful accusations and then—and then I learned that another of his friends has been killed.”

A frowned creased her mother’s brow. “Another of The Sinners?”

She shook her head. “Someone he served with in the army.”

“What sort of accusations did you make, darling?”

Pru could not explain all to her mother without betraying Titus’s confidence, something she would never do. She had already caused enough harm without adding indiscretion to her crimes. “Dreadful ones,” she repeated dully. “Titus will never forgive me.”

“Oh I think that he will,” her mother mused.

A frowned creased Pru’s brow. “You are not taking this seriously, Mama.”

“Of course I am.”

“Then why are you smiling?” she accused indignantly. “I have told you I wronged Titus dreadfully earlier today. That he can never forgive me for the things I said to him. That my heart is breaking—”

“You said nothing of your heart breaking,” her mother gently reproved.

“Well, it is.” Pru’s cheeks burned. “I love him, Mama. I love him so much, my heart hurts at the thought of not seeing and being with him again.”

“And I have a feeling you will be seeing much more of him in future rather than less.”

Pru glared her frustration with her mother’s calm. “I am not in the mood for riddles, Mama!”

The countess rose gracefully to her feet. “Your viscount is even now downstairs with your father in his study.”

“What?” Pru gaped at her mother.

She nodded. “I believe, from the wording of the letter your father received requesting the appointment, that Romney is currently asking for your hand in marriage— Pru?”

Pru ignored her mother’s puzzled cry as she hurried from the sitting room and down the stairs to where her father’s study was situated.

If Titus was offering to marry her, then he was doing so out of a sense of obligation and duty because of their lovemaking earlier. Much as just the thought of becoming Titus’s wife might thrill her, Pru could not allow him to make such a sacrifice because of her own forwardness in going to his home and seducing him.

Titus raised his brows as Pru burst into her father’s study without knocking. “Your daughter seems to have developed a habit of doing this,” he drawled as Winchester rose to his feet at the intrusion. “Pru, you will apologize to your father for your rudeness,” he added sternly.

“Sorry, Papa,” she dismissed distractedly as she strode across the room. “I came to tell you that you must not accept the viscount’s proposal of marriage on my behalf.”

“But—”

“He already did,” Titus informed her evenly.

She gave him a startled glance before shaking her head. “Then he can take it back again.”

Titus rose to his feet, in no mood to deal with Pru’s rebelliousness again today. Indeed, if her father was not in the room, he would not have hesitated to spank her bare backside to emphasize that point. “It is for your father and I to decide—”