An Infamous Marriage by Susanna Fraser Page B

want her. I would have taken her to bed, but she didn’t wish it.” He had tried, sweeping her into his arms and kissing her the instant they’d reached his quarters safely. She had responded, kissing him back and winding her arms around his neck, but something had felt off. He’d broken the kiss, looked into her eyes and seen only fear and resignation where he’d expected desire. So he’d stopped, assured her she had nothing to fear from him, and given her his bed while he slept on the floor. “After what her husband did, she was terrified to have a man come near her,” he said. “So no, I didn’t bed her. You see, I am no more a rapist than I am a liar.”
    Elizabeth blinked, digesting this. The faintest hint of an inward-turned smile flickered across her face. Jack would’ve missed it if he hadn’t been watching her so intently. He’d seen that look before, on card players who knew they’d been dealt an unbeatable hand. What the devil?
    Her calm mask resumed. “Very well. Now that we are speaking the truth, what of your other women?”
    “What do you know of them?” he asked nervously. Surely Selina Dryden’s cousin didn’t know all that had passed in Canada, and it was impossible she could know anything of Bella Liddicott.
    “A great deal.”
    “But...how?”
    She shook her head. “Lady Dryden’s Cousin Kitty is a marvelous correspondent when she has gossip to share. I know all about how you were nursed back to health from your dreadful wounds by the most beautiful half-breed woman in all Upper Canada, and how everyone whispered you might have returned to the fray far sooner had it not been for the charms of the lovely Mrs. Boyd—”
    “That’s a lie!”
    “There was no Mrs. Boyd?” Elizabeth asked sweetly.
    Jack ground his teeth. Sarah Boyd had indeed kept him entertained during his long convalescence after Hannah Mackenzie had left him to marry a trapper who’d caught her fancy, but the idea that he’d shirked his duty simply to stay in her bed! “There was,” he admitted. “But from the day I could walk and sit a horse again, I tried to go back. There were those who didn’t want me to return, lest I take away their commands, and I wouldn’t put it past some of them to have encouraged the rumor that I was malingering.”
    She sighed. “Do you think it matters to me, whether you were fit for duty or not, when you were cavorting with that woman?”
    “It matters a great deal to me. I have always done my duty. I am a soldier, not a voluptuary. And I am never a coward.”
    “No. You’re merely an adulterer.”
    “What do you want?” he cried, exasperated at last beyond bearing. “Did you expect me to be celibate for the past five years?”
    Her eyes flashed.“ I have.” Before he could point out it was different for a woman—which would undoubtedly have been the wrong thing to say—she spoke again. “No, I didn’t expect celibacy. I only expected decency. Respect. A measure of discretion, enough to avoid making yourself fodder for common gossip.”
    “I didn’t know.”
    She stood and walked away from him, staring out the window. A new dusting of snow was beginning to fall. “Everywhere I go, I am the object of pity and mockery.”
    He approached her and dared to lay a hand on her shoulder. “That cannot be so.”
    She spun about like an unbroken colt and shoved his hand away. “It is. Even on Sundays at church I’ve heard the titters of the cruel and seen the pity in the eyes of the kind. I’m not sure which pains me more.”
    She blinked and swallowed hard. Jack all at once saw how much misery lay beneath her cool, brittle exterior, and how much he had to answer for in her eyes. He hadn’t thought he behaved differently from other men in his position, but now that he saw it from her perspective, he realized he was more extravagant and prone to public display than most. He had been proud to have a woman of Hannah’s beauty and vivacity in his keeping, and bewitched by