Page 20 of The Spinster's Secret Scoundrel
Her money was now safely in the hands of Lord Tobias Prescott. Before he’d come here, he’d visited the viscount to pay a deposit. In a few weeks, the cottage would be his. And she would be—
Homeless.
Suddenly, his plan to double-cross the woman who had helped him felt small and petty. Beneath his dignity as a man. Thierry didn’t mind breaking the law, or ladies’ hearts, but those were games where everyone who played knew the rules.
He’d done wrong by her, and he didn’t know how to fix it.
“The cargo is on its way to London,” he called out. Or it would be tomorrow morning, in the trunk of Prescott’s own coach. No mere Excise Officer would dare to search a viscount.
“Where is my money?”
Her voice was high and strained. Thierry’s chest tightened. Miss Naughton needed this cottage as badly as he did—but they couldn’t both have it.
Unless...
He could marry her. The spark of attraction was there. But could he trust her?
“Is your uncle about to pop out of a darkened corner?” he demanded, sidestepping a question he had no good answer for.
Miss Naughton froze, standing straight-backed with her broom still between her feet. Fear stabbed through him.
“Ada, what have you done?”
“Nothing,” she said, wearily, and resumed sweeping, at a slower speed. “Nothing at all, Thierry. If I’d done what I should, I might yet have a home six weeks from now. I might be able to cobble together a payment, if Prescott is willing to accept installments and my father releases my dowry to me…”
“What should you have done, Miss Naughton?”
He wanted to hear it from her own lips.
“Reported you,” she declared, brow pleating. She resumed her furious sweeping of the stone stoop. “Turned you over to him.”
It was the answer he expected. Still, Thierry’s stomach sank. She’d covered for him, at great risk to her own future, and he’d yanked her hopes and dreams away.
She probably couldn’t afford to buy it anyway.
“Why didn’t you?” he asked.
Her shoulder rose and fell in a resentful shrug. She kept her gaze downcast.
“Ada.” He moved closer, boots scuffing on the flagstone as he approached. Heart hammering against his ribs. “Why didn’t you turn me in to your uncle?” From the moment he’d laid eyes on this woman, everything she’d done surprised him. Never in his life had he met anyone who fascinated him the way she did.
Brown eyes like the finest silk velvet, shining with a hint of vulnerability, found his, sending a jolt of desire through his midsection.
“I couldn’t,” she whispered. “I’m one of you.”
ADA
ONE NIGHT OF NO REGRETS
Thierry had every right not to trust her. She hadn’t been forthcoming at first, and now that she’d confessed, she didn’t expect him to believe her.
His blue eyes flashed with emotion she couldn’t read.
This was always the problem for Ada—she trusted people when she shouldn’t. Warning signs that were obvious to everyone else only became clear to her in retrospect.
Yet, she did trust Thierry, and she wanted him to trust her in return. She was tired of being lonely and feeling used. He’d blown into her life like a passing storm, and Ada wasn’t yet ready to see him gone.
In sharing the truth, perhaps she could convince him that she’d kept his secret.
