Page 79 of A Match Made in London
“By the looks of you I should have never left.”
Her lips quirked in a ghost of a smile. “Look that hideous, do I?”
“Quite,” he teased softly. But the small smile left his face as quickly as it had come. “Are you ill?”
“Only in heart.” She let out a sigh before pushing herself to sitting. “I have been a fool, Tristan, though my darling Rosalind tells me otherwise.”
“Tell me everything,” he demanded.
“I shall not.” She raised her chin, a bit of her typical fire returning. “There are some things a woman must keep, secrets of her heart that cannot be told, even to the dearest cousin. Suffice it to say, I did something incredibly stupid. I fell in love.” A look of acute pain crossed her face. “Though I wanted something permanent from it, he had other ideas.”
Heat raced under his skin. Stunned, it took him a moment to recognize it for what it was: fury. Toward the unknown man, yes, for hurting his cousin, for breaking her heart.
But also toward himself. How had he missed the signs? How had he completely overlooked this important thing that had been going on in his cousin’s life? He hated himself then for the bastard he was, to be so wrapped up in his own troubles and pleasures that he had abandoned Grace to the machinations of a libertine.
He understood then some of the desperate hate Rosalind had felt for rakes. And he could understand more fully her refusal to open her heart to him, to use him as her sister had been used. The pitiful hope he’d unknowingly harbored in his breast that Rosalind had been lying, that she might truly love him and he might have a future with her, was snuffed out in an instant.
Rage crashed through him then, for all he had been deprived of in his childhood, for all he had lost after being foolish enough to believe he might find his place with Rosalind. He focused it on the faceless man who had caused his cousin pain, until it was all he felt. “Tell me who it is,” he growled.
“I most certainly shall not. For I won’t have you doing anything idiotic for my mistake.”
“Tell me, Grace,” he ordered again.
“No.”
He let out a frustrated breath, rising, running his hand through his hair as he went to the window. “Why? Why can’t I know?”
“Because, dearest cousin, I happen to like you and don’t wish you to leave this world with a bullet lodged in your skull.”
He let out a harsh bark of laughter. “You think I would lose?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But it is not something I wish to chance. Besides, I am not some innocent, that you need to protect my honor. My heart shall be the only casualty of this fiasco.”
He ground his teeth together, looking out over the back of the house and the garden below it. Dawn was lighting the sky in faint oranges and pinks, but the garden remained in shadow. Even so, he could just make out the edge of the bench where he had first kissed Rosalind.
It seemed a lifetime ago. Things had changed so much between them, first for the better, then for the worst. Did she truly not care for him? Had she truly used him? He could not believe it, not after the way she had opened to him, had given of herself, had trusted him.
Yet he could not put from his mind the cold look in her eyes when she had turned him away, the cruel certainty of her words. His own father had thought little of him; was it such a stretch to believe Rosalind did too?
“She stayed with you all night.”
“Rosalind?” Grace’s voice grew soft. “Yes, she did.”
“And she knows who broke your heart?”
There was a pause. “She will not tell you, you know. She will keep my secret.”
He snorted. “That I believe. Rosalind does not do anything she does not wish to do.”
“You have had a falling out.”
It was not a question. It did not deserve an answer, not after Grace’s own secretive manner. Yet he answered it all the same. “Yes.”
“Would you like to talk about it?”
He turned to look at her. “Men have secrets as well,” he murmured, unable to keep the sorrow from his voice.
She held out her hand. He went to her, took it in his, pressed a kiss to it.
