Page 117 of Courting Scandal With The Duke
Her father’s face reddened. ‘I used it to better our lot in life. It is expensive being a diplomat.’
‘Your lot in life,’ she muttered. ‘You never gave a fig about me.’
What was she to do now? Take in washing, as her aunt had suggested?
She stared at Charles. ‘You actually believe my claim to be legitimate.’
His mouth hardened. ‘I did not say that.’
‘If it is not, why would we need to marry? You could take me to court and get them back.’
He glanced over at her father. ‘I am sorry, this is the safest way. The best way.’
‘Well, I won’t marry you and that is final.’
A woman walked in, followed by the footman who had let them in. This was the woman who had been sitting with her father at the theatre.Shewas Lady Wells?
Barbara’s stomach dipped. There would be no help coming from that direction. How dare Father plot against her in this way!
‘I am leaving.’
‘I think not,’ Father said.
‘Let me show you to your room,’ Lady Wells said in an infuriatingly patronising voice. ‘You can freshen up while you await the vicar.’
‘You cannot force me to wed,’ Barbara said.
The young footman took her arm in a hard grasp. ‘This way, miss,’ he said.
Where on earth had they found such an awful man? ‘Countess,’ she said,glaring at him.
Glaring did no good. He pulled her out of the room and up the stairs.
‘Go with her, darling,’ she heard her father say. ‘She might as well wear the jewels so Charles knows he is getting what he wants.’
The sound of Charles’s crack of a laugh was like a slap across the face.
Chapter Nineteen
As Xavier left Miss Lowell’s presence, he could not rid himself of the feeling that something was wrong. Yet why would it be? Lady Wells was the woman with March at the theatre, he recalled, and must be a family friend.
Damn Barbara for making such a spectacle of herself and then running away without giving him a chance to talk to her!
It was partly his own fault. He should have known she’d balk at all those rules and conditions. Rules and conditions he hadn’t a hope of enforcing.
Well, he couldn’t force her to talk to him any more than he could force her marry him. And if she needed his help, surely she would have asked?
In his gut—no, in his heart, if the tightness in his chest was anything to go by—he knew he’d been dishonest with himself and, worse, dishonest with Barbara. He had been too cowardly to tell her that he didn’t simply want to marry her out of duty. He wanted to marry her because she made him…happy.
Happier than he could ever remember feeling.
Had his idiotic proposal really led to her extraordinary appearance at Jackson’s earlier today?
The expression he’d glimpsed on her face, guilt tinged with desperation, haunted him.
And now she was gone?
And she had gone with the Count. For some reason, the longer Xavier knew the Count, the less he trusted him. It was he who seemed to lead Barbara from one scrape to the next.
