The Defiant Wife (The Three Mrs #2) - Jess Michaels Page 0,49

at that abrupt change of subject. “Upset me?”

She was playing innocent, but he could see she knew what he meant. Why he had asked. Still, she was trying to erect a wall between them, one he probably should just leave alone, because he knew she did it as a kindness to them both.

Except he couldn’t.

“When you returned from your outing yesterday, you were changed,” he pressed. “You have hardly spoken since and I see something in your eyes. Something so very sad. Are you unhappy about going to London? Is there something I can do?”

“Of course you would wish to,” she said with a shake of her head. “Because you are you. But you cannot, Rhys. There is nothing you can do.”

“Would telling me help?” he asked.

She worried her lip again and God, that was distracting, even in this moment when he was so focused on her heart. Then she let out a very long breath. “I did not have a very good experience at the shops in Bath yesterday,” she admitted. “And it made me realize, in a more complete way than I had allowed myself before, that this scandal has ruined me. Completely.”

“People were rude to you?” he asked, and heard the tremble in his voice.

She nodded. “Very. Including people I’ve known almost all my life. People I’ve had a very reasonable relationship with. They practically hissed me out of the bookshop. And then later I saw…I saw…”

He moved toward her then, knowing he shouldn’t, but he needed to touch her, to comfort her when tears filled her eyes. “Go on,” he whispered.

“I saw my mother.” Phillipa shrugged. “You haven’t met her. She is not like my father, you know. She can be very dramatic when it comes to these sorts of things. Yesterday she wasn’t. But she did make it very clear that any relationship we have had must be over. She does not even wish for me to write, I suppose because the association with me hurts their assembly hall.”

“Wretched creatures,” Rhys snapped.

She shook her head. “No. Well, yes. But the fact is that they are right.”

“They are not right. You are their child, they ought to move heaven and earth to stand by you and defend you, especially since you are not in the wrong in the situation, but the injured party.”

“And yet we are both well versed enough in the world to understand that fault rarely comes into play when scandal is discussed. I am linked to an infamous person and an even more notorious set of events.” She shivered. “I carry fault in the public eye at the same level as the man I so foolishly married. I should never have hoped for more from my parents because of that. But…”

She trailed off and walked away from him, deeper into the woods where the only sounds were the faint chirpings of birds settling in for when night would fall shortly.

He stared at her there, her blue pelisse bright against the dark background, her curls peeking out from around her bonnet as she stared up at the trees like they had some kind of answer for her.

“You wanted them to be what you deserved.” He felt every word like a stab to his own heart. “Not what they are.”

She faced him. “Yes, I suppose I did, quite foolishly, want that. How did you know?”

“Because I felt the same way…so many times,” he admitted.

She moved back toward him, her expression opening up a little. “How did you respond?”

“Badly,” he choked out as she reached him. He couldn’t resist touching her. He traced a gloved finger along her cheek and then wound a blonde curl around that same finger. “And eventually by turning to friends who knew my true value.”

“Like the Duke of Gilmore,” she said, but her breath was short now. She was as moved by being close to each other as he was.

He forced himself to think of his old friend rather than his ponderings of what he wanted to do to this woman in the quiet of the woods. “Yes,” he said. “Somehow he is still my friend despite Erasmus’s attempts to ruin his sister. He will offer nothing but support when I return to London, just as he always has.”

She smiled, but there was sadness tingeing it. “I’m so glad you have a friend like that. You deserve him.”

She moved to pull away, but he caught her hand and kept her there. “So do you. Phillipa. You deserve more than they’ve ever