Page 105 of Scandalous Heiress
He shook his head, weary.
She sank to her knees before him.“I have a right to know.”
He examined her as if he did not know her.
“Victor, I bought papers.I know what they say.You cannot hide this from me.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“Then…then come to bed.Why are you here?You belong with me.”
He hauled her close, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her upper arms, her knees sliding on the silk of her nightgown across the rough carpet.“Go to bed.Stay there.Do not come here because I cannot have you.Not tonight.Not…perhaps ever.”
“What?”Her head spun with his rejection.
“Listen to me.I have had a hellish day.I must make sense of it.And I must deal with all the loss—” He gulped and his eyes burned red with sorrow.
Loss?Because of Richard?“No!You must not say that.You have us.Your family.Me.”
“Go to bed, Ada.”He untangled himself from her and padded away in his stocking feet.
She struggled to stand.“I know what Richard’s done.I read it all everywhere.Dear god.No one can escape reading it!”
His brother had declared that she had enticed him, promising him an affair, a few evenings alone.That he’d taken her to his estate and that his brother had intervened, drugged her and carried her off.Then subdued and confused as she was by chloroform and laudanum, Victor had violated her.When she came to her senses, she blackmailed him into marrying him.But Richard would see his brother vindicated and the vicious little American taken to task.Richard declared that his younger brother did not need to honor a marriage made under duress.He would help his brother get the union annulled.
His shoulders sagged.“Then you see what must be done.”
“Yes!We’ll fight him with the truth!”
“We can but it will bring us nothing.”
“Don’t be absurd!”She flung out the words but hated how he recoiled at the insult.
“I’m not,” he said and in his anger, it was as if he grew in breadth and stature.“This—this fiasco brings us to an impasse.”
“I—I do not understand.What impasse?”
In two swift strides, he was before her.Looming, a mighty Samson wounded by love, he clasped her to him.“All is lost here, Ada.The possibility of a political career for me is dead.My reputation once more falls to pieces.”
“Explain that to me.”
“My major investor in Cole and Company threatens to withdraw.My business, profitable as it is, will then be half as rich as yesterday.I might be able to go on.But we would live on substantially less.And I had hoped to leave your dowry intact for any of our daughters to inherit.Now I am blocked even in that.”
She wanted to object and soothe him but with a wild shake of his head he warned her from speaking.
“The final blow is that members of my party will not have me.Even with my father’s blessing, I am too much a scoundrel in the public’s view to hold any office.”
This hollowed her out.Her urge to fight all odds and to argue with him died in her throat.
“I had a wife who wanted more than I could give her.More status, more money, more attention.She went looking for what she could not get from me.And in her search, she found her own erotic perversions and her ruin.I had to leave England, Ada, to save my own face.To be able to walk among my peers and hold my head up, I had to find a new life and earn a new respect.When she died, I did not grieve.I felt relief.Freedom.I vowed never to marry again.Never to want to please another spouse.Never to be required to care for her.”
That made her step backward.What was he saying?
“I must return to Shanghai.There is no future for me here.And you have never wished to go abroad.Nor will I force you.I had hoped to make us both happy here, you with your family around you and me with the career I so desperately wanted.But that is not to be.So I will prepare to return to China and I will take my daughters with me.”
“And me?”
“I leave you here with my name, my houses, my servants, my parents and with your own family.I would never persuade you to live in any way you do not want to.”
“But you love me.”
Regret lived in his expression.“I do.”
“But—”
“I will go and you will stay.Because love is not enough to change the world.”
Then he left her where she stood.At the door, he swung it wide and stepped aside for her to leave him.
