If You Deceive - Cole Kresley (версия книг .txt) 📗

"Of course," she said, exhaling with disappointment. "I'm used to not seeing you until the night." She rose to leave, but at the doorway, she turned back. "I'll stay here ten days on the outside, Scot."

"What's that supposed to be? A threat?"

"No, just a statement of intent. Maybe I am selfish, but I need this security."

He narrowed his eyes. "You doona trust me."

She nodded, clearly surprising him. "You're right. I don't, not yet."

"So what does a man like me have to do to earn your trust?"

"Honestly, I don't know. I guess it just has to grow over time."

"You mean in ten days?" he said. "That's all the time Miss Van Rowen has allotted me."

The ship had seemed a different world.

Now Ethan was on his property, introducing Madeleine as his wife, to his own people. And the lie didn't bother him nearly so much as how easily the words slipped from his tongue.

Ethan's steward problems were very real, but at the same time, he was using the situation for his own ends. He could in fact advertise and have inquiries forwarded. And of course, he could simply marry Madeleine here.

He'd always abided by his decisions, stuck to his plans. Now, he began to feel like he was losing control—the reins slipping from his grasp.

He'd made a decision to keep several various estates because they'd been in the family for generations and because when run correctly, they paid for themselves or even produced a profit. He'd thought he'd hired the best land agents in his absence.

Instead, his tenants here had suffered, and he was becoming increasingly uneasy about the state of his other properties. When he went back to the Network, he wouldn't have time to check on each of them and right any wrongs.

Slip.

He'd made a decision to appease his anger on the only child of the Van Rowens. Now he wanted her more and more each day. Another slip.

Ethan was brutal, selfish. He knew this, had no wish to change. Yet now he'd caught himself wanting to put Madeleine's needs over his own. Slip.

He'd always held something of himself back in bed; her kisses could make him lose his mind….

I think I want her…for my own.Damn it, if a man consigned a woman to hell for ten years, he'd best not envision a cheery domestic future with her.

Ethan had always felt things too strongly. And if he allowed himself to feel something more for her, then lost her, he didn't think he'd ever be right again.

He found himself eyeing the whisky service.Another slip to come?

Chapter Thirty-two

"No, no, Ethan," Maddy muttered to herself, kicking a stone as she explored Carillon. "I can show myself around." For the last three days, she'd done just that.

On her first foray, she'd discovered an orangery, with walls of glazed glass and a glass dome roof. When she'd been about to exclaim with delight—citrus, there for the grabbing—she realized it was no longer in use and had only a couple of scraggly orange trees within. A great furnace with pipes leading under the floor had probably once supplied heating and steam, but now looked broken.

Another day, she'd come across a stair to a widow's walk high above the house, where wives had gazed out at the sea, spying for their husbands' return. She wondered if any woman before her had climbed this spot to gaze out—in the other direction….

Maddy endeavored to stay away each day, going for long strolls. But there was no coterie here. Sorcha was kind but content to keep her distance from the mistress of the house. Maddy was terribly lonely, missing Bea and Corrine so much that she ached.

If she ever did see Ethan during the days, his manner with her was brisk and unapproachable. But when he came to her in the nights…his body told a completely different story.

He'd nuzzle her neck and rumble how much she pleased him as they touched each other. If she kissed or stroked him in a way he liked, he made sure she knew it, lavishing praise. These idylls were so perfect and fulfilling that she'd actually begun to crave making love to him, often imagining what he would feel like inside her once more. Denying him that final step was becoming increasingly difficult with each encounter, even as he inexplicably pressed for it less and less.

After they were spent, he would cradle her face and kiss her so tenderly that she thought she might cry. Each night, he trapped her in his arms, making her sleep against him, but she was growing used to his strong, warm presence.

At night, she was adored, protected. In the days, she felt utterly alone.

The difference in his demeanor was enough to make her crazed. Was he so anxious about the property that he was behaving differently with her? With her determination to stay away, there was no way he could accuse her of being irritatingly "underfoot."

Maddy knew there were aspects about her that would be unattractive to a potential husband—much less to a rich, powerful peer. She was dowryless, uneducated, and, well, a former criminal. Ethan had known all that and had still pressed for her hand.

But perhaps revealing the wretched details of her family's past had tipped the balance out of her favor….

From his study window, Ethan watched Madeleine endeavor to tame a peacock with bread crumbs. When it fanned its tail feathers and chased her, she laughed all the way across the lawn.

Ethan wanted to be down there with her.

After just a week here, he was beginning to understand that it didn't matter if they weren't together. She was still in his thoughts constantly. He wasn't eating. His sleep was restless. Each day grew closer to inevitable pain, and he resented it.

He was never supposed to have wanted her like this.

With her bright smile and laughter, she was everything a soulless bastard like him would crave as a dying man does life—a feeling he well knew.

There was something more with her, fundamentally more. A connection, a yearning fulfilled, he didn't bloody know. He couldn't even explain it to himself. Sometimes, he felt like she was already a part of him—had always been.

The stronger his feelings became, the more he realized he would be destroyed when he and Madeleine parted.What if I just keep her? he asked himself again and again.

Sometimes he wondered what it would be like if he quit the Network and assumed the life that had always awaited in the background.

Take a wife, oversee his properties, look after his tenants. He'd discovered something deeply appealing about working so closely with his lands. Indeed, it seemed to call to him.

Yet the last time he'd had these thoughts had resulted in tragedy.

When he'd planned to marry Sarah MacReedy, it had been out of a sense of obligation to the title. Now Ethan found he mightneed that life—if Madeleine was part of the bargain.

But if he kept her, Ethan would just end up hurting her worse than he already had. It was inevitable. She would discover his involvement in her past and his present deceit, and it would devastate her.

To partially exonerate himself, would he tell Maddy her parents hadn't been as she'd believed? Would he tell her that her father, whom she spoke of so lovingly, had been a pathetic cuckold, and her mother hadn't been merely spoiled and selfish, as Madeleine seemed to believe, but out-and-out evil?

Did Madeleine need to know that her parents were responsible for a twenty-three-year-old man being strung up in their stables and tortured?

There could be no union more doomed than his and Madeleine's. If he did have children with her, they would beVan Rowen's grandchildren—Sylvie'sgrandchildren; Ethan had bloody made sure Madeleinestarved .

Doomed…

Damn it, he'd made a decision not to marry her, and he never wavered from his decisions. When had he lost sight of all he'd planned? His first impulse was to leave her. Give her money to see her happy and let her have one or—sod it all—allof his homes. The problem with that plan? He was already too attached to her to part from her willingly. Ethan was snared.