Page 71 of The Truth About Lord Stoneville
He looked as if he were about to speak, but the drawing had just finished, and everyone was being told to take their partners to the floor.
When they found their spot, he said, “You’re absolutely right.” His gaze locked with hers, full of regret. “It was appallingly bad form. And it will never happen again.”
“Is that supposed to be an apology?” she snapped.
“No,” he said in a low, intense voice. “This is. I’m sorry I embarrassed you in front of my servants. I’m sorry I treated your feelings so cavalierly. Most of all, I’m sorry I made you feel as if you were worth so little to me. Because you’re not.”
She dropped her gaze, afraid that he might see how deeply his words had affected her. “It doesn’t matter.”
He took her hand and seized her by the waist, drawing her scandalously close. “It matters,” he said, echoing her words to him at Mr. Pinter’s office.
The music began, and he swept her into the waltz with the expert ease of a man who’d clearly danced it many times. Yet in his arms, she didn’t feel like just another of his women. His gaze never left hers, and his hand held her with a possessiveness that made her pulse jump.
“If it’s any consolation,” he murmured, “I had a miserable time last night.”
“Good. You deserved to.” She smiled. “Not that I care one way or the other.”
“Stop pretending that you don’t care,” he said hoarsely. “We both care, and you know it. I care more than you can possibly imagine.”
She wanted to believe him, but how could she? “You say that only to coax me into your bed.”
He smiled mirthlessly. “I don’t need to coax women into my bed, my dear. They usually leap there of their own accord.” His smile faded. “This is the first time I’ve apologized to a woman. I’ve never given a damn what any woman thought of me, though plenty of them tried tomake me do so. So please forgive me if I’m not handling this to your satisfaction. It’s not a situation I’m accustomed to.”
He was holding her so tenderly, it made her want to weep. Every move they made was a seduction—his leg advancing as hers went back, his hand gripping her waist, the waltz beating a rhythm that made her want to whirl around the ballroom with him forever. Her mind told her she should resist him, but her heart didn’t want to listen.
Her heart was a fool.
She gazed past his shoulder. “My father used to go to a brothel. He never remarried, so he went there to . . . er . . . feed his needs. I had to go fetch him a few times when my cousins were working and my aunt was looking after my grandmother, who lived nearby.”
She didn’t know why she was telling him this, but it was a relief to speak of it to someone. Even her aunt and cousins preferred to pretend it never happened. “It was mortifying. He would . . . forget to come home, and we would need money for something, so I would have to go after him.”
“Good God.”
Her gaze locked with his. “I swore I’d never let myself be put in such a position again.” She tipped up her chin. “That’s why I’m happy to have Nathan as my fiancé. He’s genteel and proper. He would never frequent a brothel.”
Oliver’s eyes glittered darkly at her. “No. He would just abandon you to the tender mercies of men who do.”
She forced a smile. “There’s more than one way to be abandoned. If a woman’s husband is forever at a brothel,he might as well be halfway across the sea. The result is the same.”
A stricken expression crossed his face as he stared at her. Then he glanced away. “My mother never fetched my father from the brothel,” he said in a curiously emotionless voice. “But she knew he went there. In the early years, they would argue over it when he returned. Then she would cry for hours after he stormed off.”
“How did she know where he’d gone?” she whispered, her heart breaking for the small boy forced to watch his parents fight over such things. It was the first she’d ever heard him mention his parents’ life together.
“Because he came home stinking of cheap perfume and woman. It’s a smell you don’t forget.”
Maria stared at him. Early this morning, when he’d come to her door, he’d reeked of liquor but not perfume. It was a small detail, yet coupled with what Betty had said, it comforted her.
“I used to wish I could make him stop,” he went on in a bitter voice. “In the end, she took care of that herself.”
Was he implying that his mother had deliberately murdered his father? He’d claimed it was a tragic accident.
“We make quite a pair, don’t we?” he said, and glanced at the couples swirling around them. “Here we are, dancing to the silliest music ever written, surrounded by hundreds making small talk, yet all we can speak of is brothels and death.”
“It’s better than never speaking of it at all, wouldn’t you say?”
His gaze darkened on her. “You sound like Gran.”
“I don’t mind. I’m beginning to like her.”
