Tempting the Bride - By Sherry Thomas Page 0,56

Martin is married?”

“Very much so.”

“When did he marry?”

“February of ’ninety-two, six months after you first met.”

She felt as if she’d been shoved to the ground. “And until just before my accident, I was still in love with him?”

“You never took to any other suitor. He and his wife had little to do with each other. In time you persuaded him to have an affair with you.”

She wasn’t just lying on the ground, she was being trampled by a stampede of wildebeests. “What? When?”

A shadow of pain crossed Hastings’s face. “The two of you would be the only ones to know when it started. All I can tell you is that I discovered you in January of this year. Your sister and sister-in-law immediately took you out of the country.”

As well they should—she’d have done the exact same thing.

“Unfortunately the strength of your feelings for him was such that when you returned to London, you sidestepped the surveillance your family put into place, and met him at the Savoy Hotel. That meeting, however, had not been set up by either of you, but by his sister-in-law, intending on exposing wrongdoing on his part.”

Her skeleton felt as if it would rattle apart with the force of her shock. She stared at Hastings, wishing his words would stop. But he went on, his tiding of evil news relentless, inexorable.

“I happen to know the sister-in-law’s husband, who’d said she was up to something. I also happened to intercept the message she’d sent to Mr. Martin, pretending to be you. I followed Mr. Martin from our club to the hotel. When I realized what was happening, I ran up the stairs to warn you, with his sister-in-law coming up the lift at roughly the same time. There wasn’t enough time to get Mr. Martin to safety, so we hid him in the bath and pretended that we had eloped and were enjoying our honeymoon.”

A part of her still hoped he’d shout, “April Fool!” at any moment. But deep in her heart she recognized the inescapability of truth.

She swallowed. “How much time elapsed between the incident at the Savoy Hotel and my accident?”

“Your accident happened the next morning.”

What had Mr. Martin said when he called on her? If anyone should apologize, it is I. I believe you were coming after me the day of your accident—probably concerning a matter having to do with my latest manuscript.

Whatever she’d wanted to speak to him about, it would not have concerned his latest manuscript. She flushed. She could not imagine herself chasing him in broad daylight, so intent that she’d very nearly forfeited her life to that carriage.

“You still don’t remember, do you?” Hastings asked quietly.

She shook her head. Perhaps it was for the best. She was beyond mortified—a married man, and she pursuing him in the streets as if he’d made off with her reticule.

“What did I see in him?” she asked no one in particular. She could not imagine herself breaking all rules of propriety for someone who inspired as little feeling in her as Mr. Martin.

“He was a sweet, openhearted man. You trusted him utterly.”

“My judgment was obviously impaired. I set myself at the risk of ruin, and my family at the risk of utter humiliation and heartache. They would never have been able to acknowledge me again. And my God, Venetia’s baby. I’d never have been able to see my nephew or niece.”

“This is your family we are talking about. They let you become a publisher with little more than a raised brow or two. They would have let you see Venetia’s child, but you would have needed to be extremely discreet.”

She could scarcely breathe for her searing aversion to this reckless, selfish woman who had been described to her.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he said gently. “You are judging your action—and Mr. Martin’s—without context. He was a winsome young man, very well liked for his bright smiles and good nature. Caving in to his mother’s insistence on the matter of his marriage turned him more timid, more doubtful, and, ultimately, less joyful. But you’d fallen in love with someone who had not yet made that terrible mistake, who was full of hopes, dreams, and a sincere idealism.

“You lost him when you loved him the most, a difficult blow that never quite softened with time. When you met Mr. Martin in subsequent years, you saw not the man he became, but only the one he’d been, the one you’d have gladly married if only