Impulse

“I do! Really, I do. It is not that I don’t realize how you feel or that I don’t think you are right. I do. It is outrageous to ask you to marry him in order to save us. To save me.” He jumped to his feet and walked across the room and back, jingling his watch chain nervously. Finally he stopped in front of her and said in a tight, quiet voice, “It is simply that my need is so pressing, I had to try again. Angela, please, reconsider. It is wrong of me, I know, but I am begging you.”

Sympathy and frustration swelled painfully in Angela’s chest. “Oh, Jeremy, if it were anything else … but I cannot marry again.”

“I—I am sure Cam would not be a husband like Dunstan was. He—he seems a decent sort, even if he is, well, what he is. But, you know, if we lived in another place, like the United States, say, his rank would not even matter.”

“It is not his rank! You know that.”

“Of course. I mean, I understand perfectly that even if he were a duke, you would not wish to marry again. The thing is, you see, I—I’m in a rather desperate situation.”

“I know!” Angela clasped her hands tightly together in her lap, fighting against the tears that sprang into her eyes. She could not bear Jeremy’s obvious agony, yet she was horribly certain that she would always regret it if she gave in and did what he wanted. “I want to help. I wish I were brave enough to do it for you. But when I think of marrying again, of being subject to my husband’s moods and whims. And, Jeremy … it would be worse, I fear, because Cam already hates me. He thinks I was lying to him, back then, when Grandpapa caught us. He thinks that I never really cared for him, that I was only toying with him. He thinks that I married Dunstan because Dunstan was rich.”

“Tell him the truth, then.”

“I have tried! He will not listen to me. He doesn’t believe me. He just wants his revenge.”

“Yes, and he will have it, one way or another,” Jeremy agreed bitterly. He looked away, unable to meet her eyes, and said, “Angela, I am begging you. It isn’t just the money, though God knows that is bad enough. It—There is more. If you do not marry him, he has threatened to reveal … Well, he knows something about me, and if he tells everyone, I will be ruined. Not just me, either. Rosemary will be destroyed. The children, too. The whole family will be tainted by the scandal.”

Guilt gnawed at Angela. She knew that whatever scandal might come would be that much worse because of the scandal her own divorce had caused four years ago. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, tears welling from her eyes and beginning to course down her cheeks. “I am so sorry.”

“He will tell everyone,” her brother went on grimly, “what his investigators discovered about me. You see, he had men poking into everything, looking everywhere, finding all the family’s weak spots. I was the weakest.” Jeremy closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “They—they followed me to a club I sometimes frequent and … and they followed some of my friends from the club, also. They tracked me down to a flat where, uh, someone I know lives, and they questioned all the people who live around there. Oh, God, Angela, he knows that I have desires that are … not normal. Lascivious, sinful. Illegal. Ever since Eton, I—Well, there was a boy in the upper form, and we—”

He broke off, and Angela stared at him. “I don’t understand. Jeremy, what are you talking about?”

“I loved him!” he cried out fiercely. “He was a boy, but I loved him. I let him—We lay together. We had carnal knowledge of each other.”

Angela gaped. “Of a man?”

“Yes. I tried to stop. I really did. After school, I tried to keep away. Then, when I met Rosemary, I thought it was actually over. I loved her. I really did. I still do. I thought that a miracle had happened, that God had answered my prayers. I was attracted to her. I was able to … to bed her.” He blushed fierily. “Oh, God, I cannot believe that I am discussing this with you. You must hate me.”

“No! Oh, Jeremy, no, I could never hate you.”

“Well, I hate myself. I haven’t any will. I cannot stay away from that life. Despite my love for Rosemary, despite the children we conceived, I keep going back there. And Monroe knows. So will everyone, if you do not marry him.”

He heaved a sigh and sank down into the chair. “Forgive me. I’ve made such a mess of everything. Now our entire lives are at Cam Monroe’s mercy.”

“You have had some help with that.” Angela’s eyes flashed, and she clenched her hands. “Damn him to hell for this!”

She whirled and stalked to her door, rage building in her. She flung open her door with a crash and charged out.

“Angela!” Belatedly Jeremy jumped to his feet. “No, wait! Where are you going? Come back.”

He started after her, but by the time he reached the doorway, she was already down the hall and pounding on Monroe’s door. Before Cam could even get out an “Enter,” she had turned the knob and thrown the door open.

Cameron was sitting at his desk, and he turned at the noise of her entry. His eyebrows lifted when he saw her, and he rose slowly to his feet, watching her. “Angela …”

This, he thought, was much more the woman he had known. Her hair was no longer up and restrained, but flowing like a copper fire down her back. The color was high in her face, and her eyes glittered with strong emotion. There was passion in her once more, even if it was the passion of anger. She was dressed for bed, and though her dressing gown revealed nothing more than the dresses she wore during the day, it carried the suggestion of intimacy. No man but a family member or husband would see a woman in this attire. Desire stirred in Cam as he faced her, awaiting almost with eagerness the storm she obviously carried inside herself.

“How could you?” she raged, slamming the door shut behind her and striding across the room toward him. “What kind of a monster have you turned into? I never would have believed that you would stoop to something like this! That you were the kind of low, conniving, heartless bastard who would ruin a man and his family just to get what you want!”

Angela was furious, too angry to think or to fear him. Her hand itched to slap him, to wipe the smug look from his face.

“You might as well give up, Angela,” Cam replied, in an almost bored voice guaranteed to raise the level of her fury. “I have become accustomed to getting what I want. This time it is you.”

“Well, you are not getting me! I’ll be damned if I will marry a man like you. You have no conscience, no principles. I hate you! There must be ice water in your veins, not blood! How could you have changed so? How could you have turned into this … this vile creature?”

His eyes narrowed. “Your family had a little to do with it, my lady.”

“Oh, no, don’t blame us for what you are. Your soul must always have been black for you to have turned out as cruel a man as you are.”

“An odd thing for you to say, a woman who married a man she did not love for the money he could give her. A woman who was divorced by him because she slept with three of his friends—or, I should say, three that are known. For three of them to testify, there must have been others who would not. How many men did you sleep with altogether, Angela?”

Angela trembled, aflame with anger and hurt, hating him, and yet cut to her heart by his obvious disgust of her. “What does it matter to you?” she hissed. “If nothing else, the price you want to pay for me should be less, shouldn’t it, since I am damaged goods?”

His mouth twisted, and his eyes lit dangerously. It galled him that she would not deny the charges, would not explain why she had done what she had or express even the slightest regret. Yet, at the same time, he could not look at her snapping eyes and flushed face, her breasts heaving with the rapid rush of fury, and not feel a stab of desire pierce his loins. She was beautiful and wild, enticing in her rage. He wanted suddenly to touch her, to pull her to him and feel her lips beneath his again. He wanted to blot out the memory of her husband and all the others from her mind with his kisses, his caresses. He took a step toward her, his hand going out to touch her cheek.

Angela gasped, ice-cold fear rushing through her and dousing the fury that had propelled her. She took a quick step backward, flinching away. He stopped, his hand in midair, and his brows rushed together in a scowl.

“My, God, Angela, do you despise me that much?” he growled. “Have you become so aristocratic that my mere touch would debase you?”

She braced herself, suddenly aware of how vulnerable she was here, of Cam’s power and her lack of it. The old familiar fear gripped her, turning her bowels to ice. She loathed herself for that fear, for the desire to turn and run, to give in to whatever he demanded. She could not back down, could not let her fear show.

“You debase yourself. What you do to people, the cold, selfish calculation in you—that is what I despise.”

“I see.” Cam crossed his arms over his chest, watching the color disappear from her face and the light from her eyes, replaced by the ice that had been there this morning. He regretted the transformation. “Well, that is what I am now.” He turned away and strolled back to the desk, saying casually, “Tell me, do you plan to despise me as a stranger or as my wife?”

His words surprised a brief burst of laughter from her. “God, can you really be this callous? Do you not even care that you marry a woman who hates you?”

He shrugged as he sat back down in his chair. He gestured with his hand toward another chair, but Angela shook her head, remaining where she was. The moment of fear had pierced the hot bubble of her anger, letting it drain away and leaving her feeling sick and wrung out. She wanted to get away, to go back to her bed and pull the covers over her head like a child. Yet something in her made her stay.

Cam looked at her, steepling his fingers together. “A willing wife is certainly easier,” he said, as unconcerned as if they were talking about the weather. “However, it is not one of my conditions.”

“What are your conditions?”

“Then you are ready to negotiate?”

“I did not say that,” she replied carefully.

“You have let me know what a low and filthy soul I am, and I have acknowledged it. Now we can get down to bargaining. My condition is that you marry me as soon as possible. In return, I will tear up your brother’s personal notes. I will invest money in the mines and the land so that both can be restored to their former profitability. I will take over their running—only in actuality, of course, not in title. For the time being, we will live here, as I will have some work to do to bring the mine and lands back into shape. The castle will need restoring, as well. There is dry rot in the Elizabethan gallery, I understand.”

“And what about the report on my brother? What about the threat you hold over his head?”

“I would have little reason to besmirch the reputation of my own brother-in-law, now, would I? I will toss the report on the fire, and I have paid the investigators enough to ensure their silence. No one will know of it.” He paused, then added, “You shall have your own fund, of course, for your pocket money. Jeremy should be all right without the interest of all his debts weighing him down and without the expenses of this house. But if it’s necessary, I shall give him an allowance until the farm and mines start to yield better profits.”

“So … on the one hand, destruction—on the other, beneficence. How easily you play God.”

“Not God. Merely a man who knows what he wants.”

“I see. And what other people want does not matter.”