it had peeled away from the soft white flesh of her fingers. Elsewhere, it had dried into darker, less crimson colors.
He draped the warm, wet cloth over them both and let it soak away the evidence.
“There are reasons to kill, Miss Goode.” His voice echoed softly from the stones around them, and he endeavored to keep his intonation gentle.
She blinked over at him and his heart wilted…or grew…he couldn’t exactly tell. He’d forgotten he had one for so long that these tremors inside of his chest could have meant any number of things.
“Perhaps Sutherland hurt or molested you?” he prompted. “Threatened you or… or the child?” He swallowed. A child. His child.
He’d have killed the man himself, were that the case.
She shook her head violently. “He was a cad, a liar, and a rogue, but George was never physically cruel. Despite my anger, I didn’t wish him dead.”
“You were jealous.” He took the soiled cloth and dipped it back into the bucket, before tending to only one hand, wiping between her small, elegant fingers and around her fingernails. It felt intimate, somehow, what he did for her. But he had no intention of that. He only wanted to be kind. “You were jealous enough to… to come to me that night. Perhaps that jealousy became hysteria after so long, a rage fed by the rigors of pregnancy.”
She tried to jerk her hand out of his grip, but he held fast.
“You’re seriously suggesting that I was hysterical enough on my wedding day to stab George with a relic in a church where I was certain to be found out?”
He pulled her forward, closer, capturing her gaze with his. “I’m trying to give you a defense.”
“I don’t need a defense,” she said through her teeth. “I need someone to believe me. And do you know what else I need? A husband. I needed George’s protection for the child you and I made together. Because you left me that night. You left me without even a name.”
Her accusation split him open like a blade. Left him raw and wounded.
Because she was right. Had she a way to contact him, she mightn’t have had to stay betrothed to Sutherland.
“That is counted among the many misdeeds I committed that night,” he acquiesced with a heavy breath as he released her one hand and reached for the other. For a moment, the only sounds in the dank room were the drops of water into the bucket and their uneven breaths.
“I know who you are.” Her whispered words fractured around him, barraging him from all sides.
He looked up at her sharply.
Her eyes stayed locked on where the skin of her hand emerged from beneath the blood.
“I worked it out while I was reading the paper some weeks past. You were no Stag of St. James. You told me you were a shadow. In fact, I believe you are the Knight of Shadows.”
“You’re clever,” was all he replied.
“I’ve been trying to figure all this time why the much-touted savior of the city, this moral vigilante with a reputation for protecting innocence, would relieve me of my own.”
She still wouldn’t look at him. And he didn’t blame her.
Her narrow nostrils flared with breath, and the hand in his trembled.
She was afraid.
“I only accepted what you freely offered.” It was the truth. Not a defense. He was a blackguard for doing so. A moral reprobate and a scoundrel and the worst kind of bastard. But he didn’t steal her virginity. He didn’t take her. He claimed the prize she handed him wrapped in such a lovely beribboned package. He’d given, too. He gave her pleasure. He gave her gentility and deference.
He gave her a child.
Shit.
“Under false pretenses.” She finally speared him with a wounded, accusatory gaze. “You let me think pleasure was your vocation. Everything about you that night was a lie, even your voice, your accent. God. I dishonored myself with a man known to my father. Did you know who I was?”
“No,” he stated firmly, dipping his cloth back into the bucket and running it between her fingers. “You know we’ve never met, and you’ll forgive me if I don’t keep up on society weddings, even that of my superior.”
“Then…why?”
Her question stilled his hand, and this time it was he that could not meet her gaze.
“Why did you make love to me?” she pressed.
He’d been asking himself the same question for weeks.
“I didn’t make love to you, I fucked you. I did it because you asked me to.”