Scandal Meets Its Match (The May Flowers #7) - Merry Farmer Page 0,79

her around the dance floor. All it had taken to shift public opinion of her from wicked harlot to unfortunate maiden was for her lout of a husband to show up and offend everyone.

“Look, Bart, there has to be a way we can resolve this without anyone being hurt,” Lenore opened her desperate attempt to save herself, and her family back home, as quickly as she could. “Tell me what you really want.”

“I’ve already told you,” Bart replied, as unmovable as a mountain, but bristling with anxiety as well.

“I think there’s more you’re not telling me,” Lenore pushed on. “Why not come after me immediately? Why wait a year? Has something changed at home?”

“My need for a woman,” Bart snapped, giving Lenore the sense she was skating closer to the truth.

“What good does it do you to have a wife who doesn’t want to be married to you?” Lenore tried to make her case all the same.

Bart huffed an impatient breath as he jerked her through a half turn in order to avoid another dancing couple, though most of the other dancers were more focused on the drama unfolding in front of them than they were on the steps of the waltz. “I want the same thing I’ve wanted from the get-go—a rich wife with connections, or a corpse who will keep her yap shut.”

Lenore’s heart sank. He wasn’t going to slip up the way she needed him to. “I swear, I won’t tell a soul what I saw.” She’d promised the same thing a dozen times already to no avail, but there didn’t seem to be anything left she could do but make the offer again. “You can go back to Wyoming and continue on with whatever—”

“I’m not going back there,” Bart snapped so fast it blew Lenore’s thoughts right out of her mind. That was it. She’d hit on the deeper truth at last. There was a reason he couldn’t go home, a reason that meant he needed her, or possibly her money. Her heart sped up and her mind raced.

“Where do you plan to go if not home?” she asked.

“Maybe South America,” he started before clamping his mouth shut and glaring at her, as if she’d forced him into admitting something he shouldn’t have. “Never you mind about that,” he growled, the intensity of his viciousness increasing.

“Please, just let me go,” she breathed, trying desperately to hold herself together. “Perhaps I could arrange to pay you something for your trouble.”

Bart grinned at her, not a single ounce of compassion in his eyes. “You’re pretty when you’re desperate. I wonder what I can do to make you even prettier.”

Lenore swallowed. That was it, then. She wasn’t dealing with a rational man, she was dealing with someone who thrived on others’ pain. That didn’t bode well at all for what he’d do to her if he got his way.

She simply had to discover what had happened back home that motivated him now, even if it meant she had to do something insane to figure it out. The steps of their waltz turned her so that she faced Phin across the room. Phin looked ready to murder Bart with his bare hands. He also looked like a distinguished gentleman with a fine education in a fashionable suit. She loved him more than she thought it would ever be possible for her to love a man, but compared to Bart’s muscular toughness, there was no question who would win in a fight.

Which was why it would take something other than brawn to save her from the bed she’d made for herself.

“I’m ready to go with you,” she sighed, feigning defeat—although she didn’t feel particularly confident with the plan she’d come up with to discover the truth and save herself, her family, and her friends. “I’ve packed my things, and I’ll go back to Wyoming or to South America with you, if that’s what you want.”

A toothy smile split Bart’s face. A moment later, it shifted to an odd, hunted look. That look quickly changed to something Lenore could only describe as worry before flashing back to a grin of victory. The storm of emotions was the last response she expected from Bart, and it left her feeling even more off-balance than ever.

“I’m glad you see things that way, pumpkin,” he said, spinning her through a dizzying turn.

“We can leave tomorrow morning,” Lenore went on. “My things are already packed and—”

“We’re leaving now,” Bart told her. He shifted the way he held