Chapter 5
Miss Fairbanks’s impassioned cry coated the air with a perilous tension. She glared at him, daring him to refuse her demands. Yet there was a hint of vulnerability in that defiant stare. “Would you believe me if I gave such a promise?” he snapped. “What methods do you have to ensure my compliance. Keeping me tied to this damn peg for the duration, hmm?”
Surely, she must plan for deception on his part. He could easily give the promise now and walk away when he was freed.
Her eyes flashed. “Yes, my lord, I would believe your promise once you gave it.”
Remarkable. His anger deflated and he stared at her. “Why?”
“You’ve only lied to me once. You are also a man of honor who dislikes dishonesty. I do not think that has changed about you, Simon, so I believe if you make a vow to me, you will honor it.”
He set his teeth. “When did I lie to you?”
She closed her eyes briefly. “When you promised to come back to me safe and whole.”
The agony in her voice almost robbed him of breath. “Were you my mistress, Miss Fairbanks?”
She made an incredulous noise in her throat. “No.”
How mortified and offended she sounded. Simon turned his head and stared at the chaise longue flush against the wall under the small window. When he looked back at her, he was deliberately crude when he said, “I have a dream…a memory of you over there, naked, and wild and wanton, begging me to take you as I lick your wet quim with my tongue. It does not feel like a dream but a memory, even as I tell myself it is impossible. Who else but my mistress would I be so free and carnal with?”
Amazement filled him when red blossomed up her throat, over her cheeks, up to her hairline. She blushed. He frowned. She looked away. “Miss Fairbanks—”
“I was your lover for a night…and your friend always,” she whispered, bringing back her gaze to his.
How fierce she looked…and pretty and mortified. Perhaps not a very bad Fairbanks after all.
“You asked me to marry you, Simon, and I said yes, for I loved you with everything inside of me.”
Loved.
The world once again shattered. This woman claimed to be his fiancée. “I asked you to marry me?”
“Yes.”
“I would not have done so were I engaged to another.”
A sad smile touched her mouth. “Precisely, my lord. I offer that you were only affianced to me.”
The implication that his family lied to him filled him with icy anger. “Yet I have been told you were my mistress. Nothing more. My mother and sister would not conspire and lie to me, Miss Fairbanks, about this serious matter. Nor would Lady Katherine be a part of such a scheme. To even suggest it is outlandish and not in fine form at all.”
“You asked me to marry you only a few days before you left for the war.”
“And how long ago was this?”
“Almost three years ago, Simon.”
He was uncertain how to react. Still, a rough, mocking laugh escaped him. The block of time missing from his memory was where she conveniently fitted. “Did I bring you to my family and make the proper introductions? Did I approach your brother and ask to court you?”
Surely his mother or Vanessa would not keep something so important from him. There was a long, tense silence in which she wrestled with herself. Finally, Miss Fairbanks said, “No.”
“Why not?”
“Your family would not have approved of our match, for they wanted you to marry someone else,” she whispered.
“Then we are not at all engaged, are we?” he asked, for Simon did not know if he could believe her. He knew nothing about this woman, other than she did not care enough about society's rules of conduct and that she would drug and kidnap a gentleman with the aid of her family. They were a scandalous and disreputable lot.
“Simon—”