The Problem with Seduction - By Emma Locke Page 0,123

Not at all the partner she wanted to be. Her shame caused her to ramble, as if the reasons tumbling from her could ever explain how frightened she’d been, or how wrong she felt now. “I didn’t think you’d want to marry me. I didn’t think you’d stay. But when you did, I wanted to tell you. So that—this—wouldn’t happen. Then you were set upon, and Lord Bart told me not to upset you—”

“He knew?” The words ripped from Con. Anguish darkened his eyes.

“No! No, he just warned me to be good to you.” Even that sounded foolish to her ears. She tried again, realizing too late what Lord Bart had meant for her to do. “It was my own perverseness that confused what he meant. I thought he wanted me to keep you from any notion of my perfidious nature, but in retrospect it was a warning. He and Montborne…” She looked at Con. “They have a sense of who I was. If I’d done anything to wrong you, he wanted me to tell you so we could start anew, with no deceit between us. I should have. I’m not that person anymore, Constantine. I love you. I would never want to hurt you.”

He looked away.

She glanced around the holding area and saw nothing but gray stone and the despondent faces of the other prisoners. She turned back to Con, redoubling her efforts to convince him of her earnestness. “Even if Montborne had come into a fortune a week ago, he wouldn’t have wanted to give Lord Darius a shilling. You would still have been set upon. We would still be facing this trial, because my father has been ruthless in proving to me just how little he cares for me. If I’d have told you about the letter, it wouldn’t have changed anything.”

He slammed his fist on the table. His eyes were cold steel. “It would have changed me.”

The guard entered the bail dock. “Time.”

She looked back to her husband. Her empty fingers scrabbled at the rotted boards. She wouldn’t see him again for months. They couldn’t end things like this. She wasn’t even sure what this was. “I regret what I did. Constantine, look at me. I wanted to trust you, but I was scared. I would give anything to make it right. But I don’t regret our marriage. I can’t.” She reached toward him. Her fingers curled around air. “I love you. You are the only man I know who would have done what you just did.”

“Stupidity,” he ground out. His gaze stayed on her. He watched her hungrily, even as his body and his words kept her at arm’s length.

“Bravery. Kindness. You,” she stretched her hand toward him again, “you have become everything to me. Without you, I have nothing.”

He glared at her. “I wish you would have thought of that before you decided to turn my life into your own personal drama. We’re through, Elizabeth. I cannot be married to a woman who would so thoroughly use me for her own gain.”

Her stomach fell to the floor. She leaned forward, doubled over both by her belly cramping and by reaching for him at the same time. He couldn’t be serious. He was just angry—

“Our marriage is a lie.” He looked with disgust at her hand straining toward him. “It’s built on a lie. Any feelings you claim to have for me are a lie.”

She couldn’t help but cling to a thread of hope. He didn’t say his feelings for her were a lie.

“Time,” the guard said again, more forcefully. He tapped the glass face of his pocket watch for emphasis.

“Go home,” Constantine said. “There is nothing more you can do for me here.”

Elizabeth stared at him tearfully. Go home? Without her husband, or her son? To what end?

Con rose. Without a backward glance, he crossed the bail dock and sat down at a different table, his back to her. There was truly nothing more she could do here without distancing him even further.

How would she live with herself now?

Chapter Twenty-Four

ELIZABETH VOWED NOT TO GIVE UP, as she’d done with so many impossible-seeming situations before this one. Cutting her losses and walking away, pretending she wasn’t affected, wasn’t possible. Con was her husband, and she’d ruined him. She wouldn’t rest until she found a way to make it right.

She prayed she could make it right.

For two days, she haunted Lord Bart’s offices across from the Old Bailey. He refused to see her. Just as she’d