Nervousness stirred. A nervousness unconnected to the possibility of scandal. Her hands settled on his forearms with a naturalness she hardly noticed. He kept a firm hold of her waist.
“What is it?”
She stared into his dark face. Something was definitely wrong. A muscle jerked in his lean cheek and his voice was harsh.
“John Benton just arrived.”
Chapter Seventeen
Ranelaw’s hands tightened as Antonia staggered. Until this moment, he still hadn’t been completely sure Benton had been her lover. He was sure now. She made a choked sound of distress in her throat and her face turned paper white. Even her lips turned pale.
For one fraught moment, he wondered whether she’d faint.
She was stronger than that. After a moment’s horrified silence, her chin tilted with false bravado. But nothing stopped her voice emerging in an unsteady whisper. “You know.”
It wasn’t a question.
“I guessed.” His chest constricted with rage and a helpless ache to take away her pain.
Under his hands, she felt as fragile as a blade of grass. He had a sudden piercing memory of their first meeting, when he’d vowed to humble her haughtiness. Now he watched her pride crumble to dust, and he counted himself the lowest creature in existence. Her naked suffering made him want to flay Benton alive.
She continued to stare at him through those ugly spectacles. For once, he was glad they obscured her eyes.
“How?” She sounded as if forcing out even one word tested her.
“I met Benton in an inn. He spoke of you.”
“Oh, God.” She shuddered and sagged at the waist as if she suffered a blow. “Did you know before . . .”
“No,” he said quickly. “No, not then.”
“Of course you knew afterward,” she said almost soundlessly, straightening with a jerk. Her lips were still that frightening color and there was no blood in her face at all. “A man of your experience would know he wasn’t making love to a virgin.”
“Antonia, stop it.” He abhorred her desolation and the corroding shame beneath it. With sudden violence, he ripped off her spectacles and flung them onto the desk. “I don’t care that you’ve had a lover.”
“If that’s true, you’re the only person in Creation who doesn’t,” she said bitterly. Her eyes were glazed with betrayal and misery. “Now Johnny’s tossing my name around a common tavern.”
He grabbed her shoulders and fought the urge to shake some spirit back into her. Dear God, why couldn’t she be angry? He couldn’t endure this biting sorrow. “I met him when I rode back from Surrey. Nobody except me would recognize you from the description. And that he said you were unforgettable.”
“How cozy.” Her sarcasm did nothing to mask her crushing h
umiliation. “I imagine you compared notes. His recollections, of course, are ten years out of date, but you could offer something more recent.”
He didn’t bother gracing that with a rebuttal. “Antonia, he thinks you’re dead.”
“The woman he knows is dead.” She stared at Ranelaw as if he was a stranger. Under his hands, she remained as pliant as a cloth doll. He loathed this. Loathed it more than he’d loathed anything since watching Eloise’s life disintegrate when he was eleven.
“No, she’s not dead,” he said sharply, desperate to spark a response other than this terrifying blankness. “She’s more alive than anyone I’ve ever met.”
She hardly seemed to hear. “Do you know everything?” She closed her eyes and sucked in a quivering breath. “How you must have laughed.”
His hands dug into her shoulders. She felt so brittle, he was afraid she’d shatter. “Not everything. I don’t know who you are.”
At last, the unnatural control cracked. Her mouth trembled and when she opened her eyes, they glittered with tears. “What does it matter? You know the most important fact. That I’m a whore.”
“Antonia, my darling,” he groaned, and dragged her against him, lifting one hand to press her head into his shoulder. His gut coiled with crippling grief. Her suffering shredded him to ribbons. The protectiveness he’d always refused to acknowledge surged like a boiling wave. He’d rather cut off his own arm than hear her denigrate herself. “Don’t do this.”
Briefly she resisted his embrace. Then she slumped on a shuddering exhalation. She threaded her arms around his waist, muffling her broken sobs in his coat.