Page 29 of A Gentleman Never Surrenders
Owen showed his teeth like a cornered wolf. “I’m not going to be a scapegoat for Scarlett. I never bedded her. Do not put that lie on my doorstep.”
Brandon stepped back, but his voice was icy. “I hope your new wife learns what sort of man you are so she doesn’t end up with child and alone.” Then he stormed around Owen and exited the bookshop. Milly tried to duck behind the bookcase, but Owen glanced around and caught sight of her. The emotions racing across his features were wiped clean and he met her stare with a cold, blank expression.
“Milly, have you found any books you like?” he asked.
She was still clutching Ivanhoe and Emma to her chest. She nodded mutely and walked past him to the small shopkeeper’s desk to pay for the books. Owen lingered by the doorway, restlessly pacing. Once she paid for her items, she tucked them in a small satchel and followed Owen out of the shop. Neither of them spoke on the ride back to Wesden Heath. Milly couldn’t get the words out of her head.
Scarlett. A child…
When they reached the house, she was so numb inside that she didn’t flinch when he helped her down from her horse.
“Milly,” he began, then paused when she refused to meet his gaze.
“I think I’ll take some tea in my chambers.” She skirted around him and rushed to the house.
“Mistress,” Mrs. Nelson greeted, but Milly fled past her, up the stairs to her room.
“Milady?” Constance leapt up from the seat by the fire, a pair of boots and a polish cloth in her hands.
“Oh, please sit, Constance,” she all but gasped out. Why did she feel like she was going to cry? She shouldn’t, but the tears were there, ready to fall. She would never forget what she’d overheard, that Owen was the seducer she’d always feared he was. A coldhearted man who took what he wanted and left devastation behind him. This is why I refuse to fall in love. I’m not in love with him. I’m not. Then why did it hurt so much? Why did the thought of him getting another woman with child feel like a knife to her heart? He’d seduced that woman just like he had seduced her and he’d abandoned that woman…just as he would abandon her. It was too much to bear, her heart shattering into a thousand glittering shards.
The door to her room crashed open as Owen strode in, a thunderous expression on his face.
“Excuse us, Constance.” He cleared his throat and jerked his head toward the door.
“No, Constance, stay,” Milly begged. Her poor maid looked between the two of them.
Owen crossed his arms over his chest. “I won’t bother you much longer, Milly, but we will talk.”
Constance bolted for the door and left them completely and utterly alone. Owen closed the door and leaned back against it, preventing any means of escaping him.
“Owen, I have no interest in talking to you.” She sat down in a chair by the fire and opened her satchel of books, pulling one out, not that she could actually read at a time like this.
Owen took the second chair by the fire and leaned forward, angling her chair toward his. He snatched the book and her satchel out of her hands, tossing them onto the bed.
“Listen to me. What you witnessed today doesn’t have anything to do with what lies between us.”
That lit a fury inside her to match his. “It clearly has nothing to do with us. You loved another woman, got her with child, then cried off. Thank heavens you never dared to love me. I should hate to think how I would have fared being a woman in such esteem in your affections.”
Owen’s eyes narrowed to dangerous slits.
“Scarlett was a woman I once cared deeply for. But I never loved her. Would I have married her? Yes. But she didn’t love me. There was a young man who came through the village that summer, and she set her cap for him. She threw me over for the other man, and I let her. There was no reason to keep a woman trapped when she did not love me.”
Milly almost scoffed. It wasn’t as though he could have set her free; they were past the point of no return.
“We never made love. Not once. We shared a kiss or two, but I swear to you, Milly, it was not my child she bore and lost.” His voice dropped and turned rough. “I swear to you on this house, on these lands that give me a reason to draw breath, that is the honest truth.”
Her throat was squeezed so tight, she couldn’t get a breath into her lungs for several long seconds. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream, to hit him, to show him the pain that was tearing her up inside. Even if what he said was true, she was already cut and bleeding.
He stood, his lips parted as though to speak, when an urgent knock came at the door.
“Enter,” he said.
Mr. Boyd came in, holding a piece of paper. “Telegram for you, sir. It was delivered just now from town. Urgent.”
Owen didn’t immediately take the telegram. He continued to watch Milly for a long moment before he accepted the slip of paper. When he unfolded it and read the words, he growled and crushed the paper in his palm before striding over to the fire and tossing it in the flames.
“I have to go to London tonight. I’ll hire a cab from town and leave as soon as it arrives.”
