arms into the sleeves, feeling raw, indignant, and vulnerable.
And hurt, drat him.
“You’re a beast! You don’t know anything about what I need or what will make me happy! How could you, Mister Spencer, excuse me, Mister Chester?”
Stone rolled over to face her, raising his arms and clasping his hands behind his neck. The tufts of hair under his arms looked soft in comparison to the sinewy muscles everywhere else. Why on earth should she notice something like that?
She forced her gaze up to his face, and seeing that his eye looked worse than it had the day before pierced her with a pang of guilt.
His hair was adorably mussed, and she almost forgot that she was angry with him.
Until he spoke.
“That’s right. Keeping you safe from an irate duke just isn’t the same as keeping you happy. My sincere apologies, My Lady.” The inflection he put on those last two words did not go unnoticed by her.
Things were not supposed to have gone this way! Didn’t he understand what she’d done? Why did he have to mock the things that were important to her?
Everything had gone horribly wrong, and he was the only person she could complain to. And wanting comfort from him didn’t make sense but…
“Argh!” She stomped her foot and then immediately regretted it when the pain in her head exploded. Wheeling around, she caught hold of the edge of the bureau, head bowed, doing her best to not burst into tears. “I’ve ruined everything!”
“What’s done is done.”
She sighed and slowly opened her eyes.
What’s done is done. Undoing what she’d done would be near impossible.
She stared unseeing but then focused on the grain of wood on the bureau. A single hairclip. The brush she’d purchased…
And a smudged but official-looking piece of parchment.
An ornate box framed the document, the top line reading Kingdom of Scotland. It was some sort of certificate. A certificate? She blinked, not quite believing her eyes.
County of Dumfries. Parish of Gretna.
These are to certify to all whom they may concern that Hedwig Buckley Spencer from the parish of…
“Who is Hedwig Buckley Spencer?” She frowned as she recognized her own signature. “What is this?”
“Where did you hear that name?” He eyed her suspiciously from where he was now sitting on the edge of the bed.
But her blood turned to ice as she went on to read the following lines: having declared to me that they are unmarried persons, have now been married after the manner of the laws…
Have now been married…
Have now been married…
The words echoed in her head like a cast iron pan landing on a kitchen floor.
The certificate was signed by two witnesses with the same last name as the man who’d signed as the priest.
“Who is Hedwig?” But she knew. He’d told her that Stone wasn’t his given name.
Gripping the document in panic, she spun back around to face him, shock and wrath thundering in her brain.
“Hedwig Buckley Spencer?” Her head nearly exploded. “And put on some clothes!” An unsettling glimpse of the contours of sinewy muscles and smooth skin only added to her confoundment. In addition to the perfect amount of hair sprinkled across his chest and trailing down until it disappeared beneath the counterpane.
If she wasn’t decently covered in a delightful pink but slightly too long night rail, her outrage might have had her imagining he’d ravished her.
Her astonishment was as much at her own behavior as at his near nakedness.
He had purchased the night rail for her, along with numerous other necessities from the mercantile. She glanced across the room where a handful of packages were stacked in the corner.
They’d not stopped at shopping when they’d gone out. More incredulity followed by an endless string of unspoken recriminations for both of them.
Unspoken because there were so many, they overwhelmed her ability to speak.
“What are you in such a state over?” Stone had stepped into his trousers and crept up behind her. Showing no manners whatsoever, he snatched the certificate out of her suddenly nerveless fingers.
“You did this on purpose!” she finally managed.
He’d plied her with whisky, and then pretty clothes, and shoes, and even a reticule to replace the one she’d lost… And then… he must have forced her to marry him. He had to have. Because she’d promised her father! She never would have…!
“Why in the hell would I do that?” But he was scratching his chin, which was hidden somewhere beneath his unruly beard. “Unless…”
She spun all the way around to glare up at him. “Unless…?” she prompted,