“You are sensible and steady,” she said.
“My love, we are right now aboard a borrowed merchant ship on our way to elope in Scotland. I’m not sure how many people would call that sensible or steady.” He scoffed slightly. “So perhaps no matter how I’ve tried to be different, I’m exactly who I always was.”
“I love who you are.”
“It’s a good thing—” he tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear “—because we are in this together from here on out.” Greg shook his head. “But the way you look at me as though I’m a noble knight errant, it simply isn’t true. And it isn’t fair to let you believe it is.”
“What could you possibly have done that is so awful, Greg?”
He heaved a sigh. “I told you I loved a woman before.”
He had told her that, and he’d told Bella he didn’t want to talk about the woman. And now, after having made love to him, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to think about him ever having loved anyone else. But Bella nodded, as he had told her and he expected an answer. “She died,” she echoed one of the few things Greg had said about the mysterious woman.
He nodded slowly, his gaze steady on her. “She and our daughter both died in childbirth.”
“She was your wife.” Goodness! He was married before. How did Bella not know that?
“She was someone else’s wife,” he admitted, his brow furrowing a bit.
Someone else’s wife? Oh, good heavens. Had the child lived, Greg would have sired a bastard, just like Bella was. She swallowed, a bit stunned by that revelation. Was that why the circumstances of her birth didn’t seem to bother him?
“Marina,” he continued. “Clayworth’s wife, in fact. His first one.”
Goodness! She’d overhead Cordie and Phoebe Avery discussing Clayworth’s first wife, hadn’t she? An unhappy union from the sound of it.
“Everyone in my family knows the truth of it, and I’d hate for you to find out through someone else. Better for you to hear it from me.”
“Clayworth?” she breathed out, still slightly stunned. And then the earl had married Greg’s sister? “It’s no wonder the two of you don’t care for each other.”
“We never have.” He shook his head again. “We always seem to be on the opposite side of any given situation. You could tell that? I thought we hid it fairly well most of the time.”
“The day we went to the museum. You both seemed a little strained.”
A self-deprecating smile settled on his lips. “We both do love my sister and would do nearly anything for her. Even suffer each other’s company from time to time.”
That earlier conversation in Cordie’s sitting room came rushing back to Bella. “You said you’d learned the woman you loved wasn’t who you thought she was.”
“Marina was older than me by a few years. The dearest friend of my sister Eleanor. I’d known her most of my life and thought myself in love with her nearly all of that time, but she’d never given me a second look. And why would she? I was her friend’s little brother. But when she found herself in an unfortunate marriage to Clayworth, she ended up visiting Ellie often as a means of escape, and—” he heaved a sigh “—and then she started visiting Rufford Hall for me.” He shrugged against the pillows and it seemed his mind was far away, on an earlier time, perhaps. “I thought she was the most beautiful and brilliant woman in the world and when she told me she had a plan to extricate herself from her marriage, I suppose I thought she meant to beg Clayworth to petition for a divorce. That would have been scandalous enough, but…”
“But?” Bella asked.
“That wasn’t her plan at all. Apparently, she’d devised a plot that would have ended with Clayworth’s death. But she died herself before she was able to carry out her plan to fruition.”
“She meant to kill him.”
“She meant to have him hanged as a traitor.” Greg heaved another sigh. “And while I don’t particularly care for the man, Clayworth was never a traitor.”
Bella’s hand fluttered to her heart. “Good heavens,” she breathed out.
“Evil and duplicitous.” Greg shook his head. “And I never saw it. All those years with her, and I never saw her true nature. If she’d tired of me at some point, I’ve often wondered, if she would have devised a plan to discard of me in a similar fashion.”
“And that’s why you don’t trust your own judgment,” Bella said, remembering the rest of his words that day in his sister’s sitting room. How awful to think that the person you love could do something so awful while you never suspected them capable of such a thing. Goodness. Was he telling her all of this because he didn’t trust his love for Bella? Did he think she might do something just as awful as Marina had done? Bella’s heart twisted at the thought. “Greg, I would never—”
He sat up, cupping her face with both of his hands. “You are the exact opposite of her in every way.” And the intensity of his stare made his words seem so sincere. “When you learned the truth about yourself, you could have said nothing to me. You could have run off with me and either hoped I’d never find out the truth or that once I did it would be too late for me to reverse things.” He shook his head once more. “But you didn’t do that, Bella. You told me the truth nearly as soon as you learned it. I may not trust my judgment in all things, but I have complete faith in you.”
She released a breath she didn’t know she was holding and she threw her arms around his neck. “I love you, Greg,” she whispered against his skin. “And you are my noble knight errant. I don’t care who you were before me or what you’ve done in the past. You have saved me at every turn and that is all I care about.”
He held her close, and Bella reveled that their breathing was so synchronized, almost as though they were one. “I will love and protect you all of my days,” he whispered back.