he will not save you, princess.” He dared to nip her ear, just to show her which of them held all the power in this odd dynamic. “Dead men cannot play Sir Galahad. No one can save you now.”
She fought him harder. “I do not need anyone to save me. This is madness, my lord. I did nothing to provoke this.”
What a liar she was.
“Nothing indeed?” He spun her about so she faced him at last, careful to keep his hold upon her tight enough that she could not escape or strike him.
Her dark eyes met his. She was pale. Her lips were the red of summer roses in bloom. Parted. He thought about how soft they had been beneath his. And then he banished the notion.
“I did not write Confessions of a Sinful Earl,” she said.
But her eyes drifted to a point over his shoulder as she issued the denial.
He shook his head. “This is all fruitless, Lady Calliope. I know you wrote those bloody serials. Your publisher admitted it. I saw your mad scribblings on your writing desk in your chamber. You may as well acknowledge the truth.”
Her eyes returned to his, blazing with fury. Wild. “I wrote them. Every word. There. Is that what you want from me, Lord Sinclair? It matters not in the end who wrote those memoirs. The truth is, you murdered my brother, and then you murdered your wife.”
Now they were getting somewhere.
“That is the truth as you see it, is it not?” He searched her gaze. “You think it was perfectly acceptable to ruin me because I am guilty. You believe I hurt you, and so you sought to hurt me in return. But you went beyond hurt. You ruined me, utterly.”
Her jaw tightened. “You ruined yourself. If you were not such an insufferable ogre, your wife would never have gone to my brother for comfort.”
“My wife was a manipulative whore,” he bit out, fury vibrating through him.
Celeste had torn him apart. He had fancied himself in love with her, once. She had been the woman who had tamed London’s most notorious rake. A flaxen-haired siren come to tempt mere mortals into perdition. He had fallen for her. Fallen for her schemes. Believed she loved him. But when he had inherited the earldom, she had changed.
In the end, all she had done was lie to him, spend the little of his funds that remained upon her vast, ever-mounting gambling debts. And cuckold him. She had seduced him into marriage and turned into a monster, taking everything from him.
By the time he had realized the depths of his foolishness, it had been too late. They had been inextricably bound. After their daughter had been stillborn, she had only grown bolder. Collecting the hearts of men had been one of Celeste’s prized entertainments. The former Duke of Westmorland had merely made himself one more of her victims.
“My brother said she was a goddess among women,” Lady Calliope snarled, her lip curling.
“Your brother was duped by her the same way so many other poor sods were, myself included,” he ground out.
“I do not believe you.” Her eyes were wide, desperation making her voice quake.
She was afraid.
Very afraid.
The knowledge ought to please Sin, and yet, it did not.
“You do not have to believe me,” he told her. “It is the truth even if you refuse to acknowledge it.”
“You want me to think you so innocent in all this,” she spat. “But yet, you have abducted me. You have threatened me with a knife. You have bound my wrists. Put your hands on my throat. Your story speaks for itself.”
“And what of you, princess?” he asked, unwilling to allow her to continue playing the innocent. “Do you imagine I would have even noticed you, had you not meddled in my life? I was betrothed. Do you think I would have pursued a selfish, vainglorious chit such as yourself to this extent if you had not ruined me with your outlandish, false tales?”
“Prove to me they are outlandish and false!” Her voice rang through the empty kitchens, echoing off the stone walls.
Suddenly, thunder roared overhead, seemingly out of nowhere. One violent crack. The flash of lightning followed not long thereafter, brightening the room with a flash of light for an instant.
“Prove to me you did not write Confessions of a Sinful Earl,” he countered.
After all, she had not truly admitted she was the author of those infernal memoirs. Those vicious, insidious serials of utter tripe. The entirety of