The Unexpected Wife - Jess Michaels Page 0,85

for her. The gun in her back and the smirk on Rosie’s face tempered that reaction.

“I had to pretend to push her aside,” Erasmus continued. “And we convinced my father that I’d seen the end to my foolish notion. I married Abigail and lived two very happy lives.”

“More than two,” Abigail said softly. “There were other lovers.”

“He only wanted you to think that,” Rosie said, her face twisting with rage. “There was only ever me.”

Abigail held Erasmus’s stare evenly. “So you say.”

He smirked at her. “One lover, ten lovers, what does it matter? It worked out fine and dandy until my bastard of a brother took the title. He started looking into my dealings. He didn’t find Rosie, of course, but other debts and what he liked to judge as foolery. He cut me off.” His nostrils flared. “Lord High and Mighty always wanted to do it. Our mums weren’t the same, you see. His was buried in the ground hardly a year before our father married mine. If she didn’t treat Rhys right, how was it my fault? But he punished me for it.”

Pippa shook her head. “If Leighton wished to protect his name and fortune from your machinations, one can see how and why he would do so. Considering you are standing in a parlor with at minimum three wives, a gun in the back of one of them. You sound like a villain from a book, you know. I despise you.”

“But you didn’t always, did you, Pip?” he said, holding her gaze. “You liked me well enough for a very long time. Practically begged for me every night I was in your bed.”

Pippa pushed out a breath of disgust. “And all while the supposed love of your life was below my stairs. What do you think of that, Rachel…Rosie?”

Rosie was staring at Erasmus even as she answered Pippa. “I had his heart. His body was something else.”

She didn’t sound entirely certain of that statement, though, and Celeste caught her breath. Rosie might be the escape route for all of them. If they could turn her to their side. That, it seemed, was the next step.

“Still, it wasn’t enough,” Celeste said. “Because I came a year later. Why?”

“Life is expensive,” Erasmus growled, pressing the gun harder. “And you were a way to bridge the gap. Nothing more, Celeste. You know that, don’t you?”

“Clearly. You had some affection for Abigail, it seems. And desire for Pippa. Both of them have spoken at length about your time together. How much it meant to them.”

Abigail shot her a look, and Celeste slid her eyes toward Rosie. The understanding dawned, and Abigail nodded. “Yes, that is true. We were happy together, weren’t we, Ras? Do you remember that afternoon at Bridgely? Your brother had some errand to attend to, and you and I stayed in bed all day making love and talking.”

Erasmus stared at her. “I remember.”

Pippa had a harder time hiding her disgust, but she seemed to understand what was happening here as well. What Celeste was trying to orchestrate from the increasingly red-faced Rosie. “We had a similar day. Less than a year ago, right around the time Rosie was giving birth, I suppose.”

“I’ve had my fun. Why shouldn’t I?” Erasmus said with a shrug. “And I would have had my fun with Ophelia, as well. Extra fun since it would have shattered Gilmore. Toff prick that he was, my brother’s ‘true’ brother. It would have been nice to see him squirm and watch their friendship disintegrate.”

Celeste caught her breath. “You…you made a mistake out of emotion.”

“Suppose I did,” he admitted. “I shouldn’t have shit so close to where I lived. Once it was clear the duke was investigating, that the truth would come out, my goose was cooked. I had to think fast. And what better way for a man to start over, to get out, than to die?”

“So you faked your death,” Pippa whispered.

“Indeed,” Erasmus said with another shrug. As if he hadn’t torn the world to shreds.

“How?” Celeste asked.

He smiled and she could see how proud he was of his actions. How smart he thought himself to be. “Found an herb in Abigail’s book of potions that slowed the heart, paid off an undertaker to claim I was dead, clutched a label from a bottle of poison. It doesn’t take many clues to lead people down the path.”

“You bastard,” Pippa whispered. “Do you know what you’ve put your brother through? What you’ve put us all through?”

“It keeps