Page 69 of The Viscount's Promise
“I don’t think we were,” Sir Tristan said thoughtfully. He stepped forward. “You cannot mean to tell me you felt nothing for him.”
She couldn’t look him in the eye. “It matters not,” she replied, bitterness coating her words though she strived to keep them as neutral as she could. “For, if you have not noticed, he has left, like a thief in the night, without even a farewell. I would not say those are the actions of a man who cares.”
“Actually, as we are talking of Morley, I would say that is exactly what that man would do if he were falling in love.”
She looked at him in disbelief. “Love? You cannot mean that, sir. We are too different, he and I. We will never suit. And besides, his affections are still engaged, with Lady Morley.”
“Lady Morley?” He laughed. “You must be joking. He doesn’t give a whit about her.”
She shook her head sharply. “No, you don’t know, you didn’t see. He was too gentlemanly to tell me outright, but the second he spied her, his manners toward me changed. He was quite cold, would hardly look at me. Are those the actions of a man in love?”
“If it is Morley we are talking about, then yes,” Sir Tristan answered quietly.
Stunned by his blind certainty in Malcolm, she stared mutely at him.
“Please trust me, Lady Emily,” he continued, his eyes boring down into hers. “For I know Morley. And I knew Lydia. She is a selfish woman who causes mischief when she feels slighted. And she was ever so jealous of you.”
“You must be inebriated, to think such a thing,” she whispered.
“I’m sober as a vicar. Yes, Morley was a pigheaded idiot for staying away from you while Lydia was around. And I told him so. But he did it to protect you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.” He smiled gently. “He feared what Lydia might do to you if she saw how he cared for you. And so he did what he could to protect you. It was done in his own fumbling, stupid way. But his heart was in the right place.”
She shook her head. He would not stop trying to convince her. She had to lay her full shame at his feet then, so he would know how hopeless this all was. “But they kissed, Sir Tristan. You cannot explain away that.”
He did not so much as flinch at her revelation, instead tilting his head. “Did he kiss her? Or did Lydia do the kissing?”
Malcolm’s words swirled in her head then:She is nothing to me now, I swear it.
But Lady Morley’s appearance after leaving Malcolm in the study. And Malcolm’s own rumpled appearance.She had seen the proof with her own eyes.
Proof of what?her mind whispered.You never confronted him, never allowed him to defend himself.
She felt it then, the crumbling of her defenses. Desperate to hold onto her hurt—for without it she knew she would break—she shook her head. “You may think well of your friend, Sir Tristan, but it is more than his coldness, more than the kiss. He confided something to Lady Morley, something I told him and no one else. There could have been no one she could have learned it from. And so Malcolm betrayed me in the worst way. Can you possibly defend him now?”
But his calm expression did not change. “Yes. For I know how mercenary Lydia is. And I also know that Morley is an honorable man. If you told him something in secret, he would not have told another. I swear it.”
Just like that, he laid waste to her every argument. She looked deep into Sir Tristan’s eyes, searching for some hint of uncertainty. But the surprisingly warm blue of his eyes stayed steady. He smiled in encouragement.
Her breath escaped her.
“What the devil is going on?” Caleb demanded, his voice explosive, echoing about the far reaches of the cavernous room.
“I do believe,” Imogen said, a smile lighting her tone, “that our Emily and Lord Morley have formed an attachment.”
“Oh, no,” he groaned.
All eyes turned his way. Caleb, Emily noticed, was looking at her in horror.
“No, you mistake the matter,” he rasped. “And I can lay the blame at my own feet.”
Imogen took a step toward her husband. “What are you talking about, Caleb?”
He cast her a guilty glance before returning it to Emily. “You believed Morley’s attentions to Emily meant he cared for her. The reason he stayed close to her, however, had nothing to do with romantic intentions toward Emily, and everything to do with a promise he made to me.”
“What promise?” Imogen demanded, her brows lowering.
