Lady Guinevere and the Rogue with a Brogue - Julie Johnstone Page 0,71
she replied, allowing the sarcasm she felt to drip from every word.
“I do not lie, Guinevere.”
There was an accusation in his words, and a flood of uncontrollable fury overcame her. “You!” She poked him in his infuriatingly hard chest once again. “You!” She clenched her teeth, but it was no good. She could not hold the tide of pent-up hurt and rage back. “You stand here and act as if I am the deceiver! You led me to believe you cared for me five years ago, and then I discovered you used me to spite your father and then lied about it again in the garden because you still wanted to best Kilgore.”
“I already told ye I did not pursue ye to spite my father. Not completely. Hell, only for a moment.”
She tried to tug away from him, but he held firm. “Damn it, Guin.”
“Damn you!” she said, flushing from head to toe at the foul words he’d drawn from her lips. “I know the truth! You can quit the game!”
“What game?” he asked, frowning.
There was that seeming befuddlement again. She would not have believed him to be such a fine actor, but it seemed she was wrong. “Don’t bother denying it! I know the truth! Kilgore told me.”
“Kilgore,” he said, his lethal tone making her shiver. “Kilgore would say anything to seduce ye, Guin, and ye seem only too willing to let him.”
She knew exactly of what he was speaking, or at least she thought she did. “The skit was just an act, and the kiss in the garden, well, Kilgore kissed me.”
“Ye didn’t push him away.”
It was an accusation. And it sounded like a jealous one. The possibility that he was jealous because he cared made her suddenly less angry. “If you had but stayed, you would have seen me slap him.”
Asher’s eyes widened. “A hard slap?”
“Stinging. And a shove, too.”
The corners of Asher’s mouth tugged into a smile, and he said, “There was a wager made five years ago at White’s. Kilgore wagered an enormous sum with an anonymous lord that he could seduce ye and three other ladies. The time limit is up in one month. Kilgore is trying not to lose, so he lied to ye.”
Anger burned in her gut at Kilgore. Had he really wagered he could seduce her? Snippets of things he’d said came to her now. Things that had been startling or odd or contradicting of other things he’d said. And things that seemed to confirm what Asher was saying. I tire of my life, and you are the one woman who has failed to succumb to my charms. And she had asked him if he wished her to succumb, and he’d said, I pray you don’t succumb and prove me wrong.
She clenched her teeth as suspicion rose and more of Kilgore’s words came to her. I am every bit as debauched as you believe me to be. Have you forgotten the terrace five years ago?
He’d said he was a man at war with himself. He’d said he did not want to compromise her, and yet at every turn his actions belied his words. He’d admitted that someone else had set him on his path. And he’d tensed, visibly tensed, when she’d made mention that most men went to war to protect another. He’d also said he would offer for her if she wanted, then was visibly relieved when she had declined. And when she’d pointedly stated that it had never been about her, but about protecting someone, he had not agreed or disagreed, but she had known she was right. It was a gut feeling.
“Guin?”
She blinked. Kilgore did not want to seduce her, but he had felt he had to do so. She may have been a fool, but she did not think it was simply because he would lose an enormous amount of money. She vowed it had something to do with Lady Constantine.
He had tried to warn her in his own way, even as he had tried to destroy her chance with Asher. She wanted to hate him, yet she could not. She felt he had tried as best he could to be honorable, though that did not excuse what he had done. Why had Kilgore lied to her?
“It was never simply about me with Kilgore,” she said.
“Guinevere, I vow on my mother’s grave, I am not lying.”
Her eyes met Asher’s, and she could swear concern burned there. Asher’s mother had meant the world to him, but even without