Page 34 of When the Rogue Returns
Eyes alight, he stalked up to her. “I waited years because I didn’t know where the hell you were.” He seemed oddly sincere. “Your note said you were leaving me. You didn’t bother to mention where you were going. So how the devil was I supposed to—”
“Note?” she broke in. “What note?”
He glowered at her. “The note you left for me in our apartment that night you were sick. The note that said our marriage was a mistake, and you wanted something else out of life than being my wife.”
He’d muttered the same sort of accusations the night of the play. “Victor,” she whispered, “I never left you any note.”
Shock lit his face. Then his eyes narrowed. “Don’t lie to me. It was written in your hand.”
“It’s not possible, I tell you!” Her mind whirled. “I would never have written such a note, I swear.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “It was sitting on our bed. Jacoba fetched me at the shop in the middle of the night. She said you’d left her house to return to our lodgings while she was asleep. When she woke to find you gone, she went there but you wouldn’t let her in. She said she was worried about you, afraid you might be delirious from the fever. So I hurried back to our apartment. But you weren’t there. And that’s when I found it.”
“A note saying I’dleftyou?” she asked incredulously. What he was suggesting was unbelievable. Who would have written—
“Jacoba...” she whispered. Could Jacoba have forged such a note? Could she have feigned Isa’s hand well enough to persuade Victor?
Her distress seemed to sink in, for he stiffened. “Stay here,” he ordered and headed for the door to the bedchamber.
“Where are you going?”
“To get the note.”
“You... you kept it?”
“Of course.” His eyes darkened to a smoky brown. “Did you think I would have thrown the evidence away? I kept it so I would remember,” he growled, “and learn from my mistake in ever trusting you.”
With those harsh words, he went into the other room. She sank onto a nearby settee, her hands shaking. His words pounded in her ears.It was sitting on our bed... Jacoba fetched me... you wouldn’t let her in...
Would her sister, her own sister, have lied to her face about him? Torn her purposely from her husband without a whit of remorse?
When Victor reentered, Isa shot to her feet. “No,” she said firmly. “I don’t believe you. You’re lying! This is just a ruse to get you back into my good graces so you can use me again.” She fisted her hands against her stomach.
“Useyou? The way you used me?” He thrust a sheet of paper at her.
She took it with shaking hands. Yellowed with age, the paper had clearly once been crumpled, then flattened out. The cruel words written on it, though faint, were still readable.
They just weren’t hers.
“I didn’t write this.” She lifted her gaze to him. “It’s not my handwriting, I swear!”
“It damned well looks like yours,” he ground out.
“I know. It’s a close approximation. But not mine.”
She hurried over to a writing table with a quill and inkwell atop it. Finding some paper, she scribbled the same words as in the note. Then she returned to hand the two sheets to him.
When he stared down at them, the blood drained from his face. “You’re toying with me. You made your writing different.”
“You know it’s not that easy.” She stared at him. “Think, Victor—how often had you seen my penmanship when you got this? Once? Maybe twice? It’s not as if we were writing notes and letters to each other. When we weren’t working, we were in each other’s pockets. And you only courted me a few weeks before we married. We were... hasty.”
“True,” he clipped out.
“I’ve never seen this note before today. I most certainly didn’t write it.” When his eyes still smoldered with suspicion, she added, “I swear it on my father’s grave.”
That, at least, had some impact. A muscle jumped in his jaw. “Someonewrote it. If not you, then who?”
“Jacoba, probably.” The thought of her sister betraying her so horribly stopped the breath in her throat. “She used to imitate Papa’s hand, too, so we didn’t have to bother him while he was working. He hated being interrupted for what he called ‘silly things’ like paying bills.”
