Two Lady Scoundrels and a Duke - Tessa Candle Page 0,12

single egg. As you have noted, I am poor.”

He was on the verge of begging her to take his money, but he knew there was no point. Until he could prove his love to her, prove that what she believed of him was false, she would never accept anything from him. But he would not watch her starve and be evicted, simply because of her pride and Marie’s malicious half-truths and lies. He swallowed and gave Katherine a look that he hoped conveyed how deeply he cared. “I am not hungry. I have business to attend to in town.”

With that, he strode back out of the cottage to retrieve his horse. There was no point in further talk. Now was the time for action. It was good that his ex-mistress was not before him at the moment, for he was seething with a beastly rage.

Chapter 9 Despair

Katherine was miserable. She cursed under her breath and swept the worn stone floor of the cottage, needing to be active with something or she would go mad. She might as well clean up before she spread out the straw that Foxleigh had been sleeping on. It was humiliating that floor straw had been the only bed she had to offer, but there was no chance he would need it now. He would never return to such a mean dwelling, especially after she had acted like such a fishwife.

Why had she been so terrible to Fox? Maybe he did not express himself quite as delicately as he could have, but he was trying to be kind. Being accosted by Atherton had not put her in the best frame of mind, but that was not a good enough reason to be so ungrateful.

She winced as she recalled the look he gave her when she accused him of treating her like a whore—it was as though she had slapped him in mouth. And he was incensed when he left. She could see it in his smoldering dark eyes. He could not get away from her fast enough.

Was he angry that she had believed Marie’s story without first asking him? Well, that much was unfair. Perhaps she should not have accepted Marie’s version of events as completely as she had done, but would it have mattered? If Marie bore his child, whomever Foxleigh married would suffer that woman and her offspring as a constant source of misery, for the rest of her life. Surely he could see that Katherine could never continue with the engagement under such circumstances.

But she had said too much, been too easily nettled by her smarting pride. It did no good to dredge up all the pain in their past and hurl it at his head. Things were as they were, and there was no undoing them. And yet, what if his denial was true? What if the child really was not his, and Marie was out of his life forever? Could Katherine let it go? Could she learn to trust him again?

She snorted at her own romantic fancy and began to spread the straw over the cold part of the floor near the entrance. As if it mattered. He was not coming back. What did she have to offer him now? She was all coarse and thin from too much work and too little food. What did she have that could possibly attract a man like Foxleigh? He was a duke and now he apparently had more money than he could spend. And he was handsome. Still so insufferably handsome. And he smelled irresistible. She bent to sniff the straw. It still held the ever-so-slight fragrance of leather and oranges. Or was it her imagination?

Stop it, Kat. There was no point in indulging these pathetic fancies now. He was gone. She had lost him all over again. She felt the tears trickling across her cheeks before she realized she was crying. So apparently she had not quite cried herself dry, after all. That was some sort of ironic comfort. Dog licked her hand consolingly.

His mournful look of compassion made her come completely undone, and she dissolved into a blubbering mass on the floor, hugging her hound for dear life. “What in the world will I do to keep us from losing our home and starving?”

Chapter 10 Foxleigh’s Plan

Foxleigh arrived at the village banker’s private home for his last item of business and was conveyed into a brightly lit parlor that was filled with the smell of baked sweets. He inhaled the warm