The Devil She Knows - By Diane Whiteside Page 0,50
seen each other in years?
“How do you know I wasn’t telling the truth? After all, you’re the one who said he was an unsatisfactory lover.”
Gareth harrumphed, as arrogantly sure of himself as any March gale clearing the way for spring.
“Remember who you’re talking to, Portia. I’m the fellow who had the gall to take the boss’s niece through the dens of iniquity along the Barbary Coast.”
“To see jugglers!” Nothing more scandalous, despite her adolescent hopes. But they’d had a splendid outing anyway, worth every bit of the penalties afterward.
He nodded, his silver eyes linking them in a net of shared memories.
“I can imagine you in a courtroom for murder, but not perjury, Portia. What happened?”
He’d always been able to read her like a marked deck of cards. She could either tell the truth or lie yet again.
“Publicly, the marriage was more or less a success.” Years of public deceit fell away all too easily.
“By those asinine British standards.” She raised an eyebrow at his aggravated tone and he clarified, “I saw photos.”
“Journalists.” She sniffed unhappily and Gareth tucked her comfortingly against his shoulder once again.
“St. Arles was a successful diplomat and I was an acceptable hostess—”
“A damn good one!” Gareth rapped out, as if he’d prefer to plunge the words into the hearts of those who’d denigrated her.
“Too young to claim that title, but thank you. We both enjoyed yachting and…” She paused, trying to think of something else she’d done with St. Arles.
Gareth’s silver gaze swept over her like a lantern, illuminating far too much.
“Hmm,” he said, dismissing those bygone facades from both their memories. “What else?”
“No matter what we tried, I remained barren,” she whispered, her face crimson with remembered humiliation. The long nights, the shouting, the pointed fingers from society…
“Son of a bitch!” Rage surged behind his eyes yet no fear leaped through her bones in response. Perhaps it was because his arms offered only protection for her and warmth. Perhaps she was hiding within a dream. Perhaps.
“Did he try to blame that on you, when he’d been married before and that wife had never had a baby?” Gareth asked more quietly but just as angrily.
Portia nodded, stunned he knew about St. Arles’s brief first marriage.
“Goddamn bastard should be carved up like the skunk he is,” Gareth muttered. “Doesn’t he realize the stallion must flourish before the mare can?”
“Truly?” Portia blinked at him, never having heard that explanation from a man before. The husband had to be fertile, too?
“Of course. What happened then?” he asked brusquely.
“He demanded a divorce so he could marry his mistress. He was certain she could breed”—Portia gulped over the painful word but went on—“because she’d borne so many children to her late husband.”
“And you agreed.” Gareth’s tone offered no hints to his thoughts.
“I wanted an end to the marriage.” Lord, how she’d hungered to have it over and done with.
“Why couldn’t he plead guilty? He was the adulterous rat dripping evidence through the backstreets.”
“They’d have to admit she was the other party—and she’d never be accepted again in society.”
“Mealy-mouthed bunch of hypocrites, the lot of them.” Gareth crumpled the sheet between his fingers, as if crushing an insect under his boot heel. “Could you have held out a little longer, just to see him squirm?”
She’d wanted to do exactly that.
“I’d been married to St. Arles for five years. I was certain that, sooner or later, he’d find some way to force me into swearing I was the one who’d committed adultery—the only workable grounds for divorce.”
Gareth grumbled something about stupid British laws.
She grabbed his strong wrist.
“If the divorce went through very quickly, I would be free by my twenty-fifth birthday—when I would inherit my mother’s trust fund.”
“A fortune?” Gareth’s gaze sharpened.
“Five million dollars, all of it from my grandmother.”
“Coming from that side of the family, your father wouldn’t think about it. He wouldn’t have informed that high-and-mighty Englishman.”
“No.” She released him, hoping, praying he’d understand.
“You turned the knife in St. Arles that day in court.”
“Yes.” By swearing to my fantasies when everybody thought I meant the greasy swine my husband had brought forward.
“And St. Arles didn’t realize it.” Gareth’s hand circled her back.
She shrugged, old ice crystals falling away from her bones.
“Very clever of you, my good girl.” He stretched underneath her, as if he offered his own body for her bed. “We should take some rest before we explore the city.”
How deliciously simple he made it sound, as if she was sixteen again.
“You’re very unusual, to calmly sleep with a perjurer.”