Sins of a Ruthless Rogue

She pressed her fist to her mouth instead. “When my father came back from the courthouse that day, he told me you’d been hanged.

The news shattered me. I told him I didn’t want to live. I went to my room. When I wouldn’t get up the next day, he ordered me out of

bed. When I refused, he lost control again. I’d never really disobeyed him before, you see. I was his little pet he paraded in front of

his friends. He’d have none of it. You may be no better than a whore, but I’ll be damned if I let anyone know it.”

He’d gut the old man. Clayton’s hand brushed her cheek, caught the tears. But she pulled away, her back colliding with the shelves

of earthenware pots behind her.

“He grabbed me to pull me from the bed, and his face just went slack. He fell to the floor. The doctors said he’d suffered an

apoplexy.”

She said she had secrets. He’d readied himself for them. He loved her. He could look past them. “It’s not your fault—”

“He didn’t recover.” Her voice had firmed and her eyes finally met his.

“Wait. What are you saying?” A wary chill slithered up his spine. What precisely had she hidden?

“Despite all the doctors who promised to cure him, he’s never recovered the ability to speak or interact. He can swallow and

breathe, but that is all.”

“Where is he?”

“At my home by the mill.”

“But I was there the night you were kidnapped. Your maid said he and the servants were out.”

“I told my staff to lie about his condition. And there weren’t any more servants than what you saw. I told them to lie about that, too.”

Clayton stepped back now. His body rigid. His lungs solid blocks of iron. He couldn’t draw air. Her revelations shattered inside him,

fracturing and slicing deep as they rearranged into an ugly truth. He didn’t care about her father, at least not as he had. It appeared

the universe had dealt him its own form of justice. He cared what the revelation meant about Olivia. “What about the mill?” His voice

was soft. It was the only way he could keep his true emotions—desperation, anguish—from showing.

“I told everyone my father had recovered enough to give orders. But it was only me. My father had nothing to do with the rebuilding of

the mill.”

“The Bank of England?” That was why he’d become involved. To keep England from being cheated again.

He never thought she’d be the one behind it.

“I hired a man to pretend to be my father when the representatives came.” She clenched her hands tightly in front of her.

“Lies and manipulations, all of it?”

“Yes. I told myself I had to do what I must to save the mill. That saving the mill—that helping those people—would outweigh any lies I

had to tell. But it didn’t. I’m so sorry.” She took a deep breath. Her lips had gone white around the edges, as had her knuckles.

His shock and his hurt crystallized, piercing his chest. He’d been a fool. He’d wanted her so much that he’d convinced himself that

he could accept her secrets. But he couldn’t. Not when his mother uttered those words. And his father had listened. I’m sorry I

abandoned you to tup the baker. The traveling actor meant nothing to me.

He’d hated his father for taking her back even as he’d hated himself for believing her, too.

Now he was no better. He’d almost been willing to look past anything to have another chance with Olivia.

Olivia wasn’t his mother. He knew this. Olivia probably had intended to help the people in her town. But this pain was too familiar. A

pain he refused to suffer again.

“Why not sell the mill? Why the deception?”

“Our solicitor knows my father. I wouldn’t be able to fool him with the actor. The mill and the house are both in my father’s name. I can

’t sell them while my father still lives. I will just have to give the mill up.”

The words were ones he’d hoped to hear. But now they meant little.

Yes, she might give up the mill, but how long until the next betrayal came?

Clayton had been willing to overlook her original betrayal of him to her father. He’d been ready to marry her. All the time she’d had

this lying in wait for him. She’d warned him, yes, but he’d been wrong to think he could forgive.

Not when it would do nothing but weaken him.

“What other lies are you keeping from me? What other manipulations do you have in store?” His own breathing was loud in his ears,

mingling with the pounding of his heart, until he could hear almost nothing at all.

“I—”

Hell, there were more. His stomach churned. And even though it made him look like a weak fool, he had to brace his hand on the

shelves as any remaining hope shriveled.

“The money I used to buy the machinery for the mill.” She pressed both her hands to her cheeks. “I found them in my father’s things.

They were all fifty-pound notes. Fresh. Never used.”

“The banknotes he’d printed illegally?”

“I—I don’t know.” She wrapped her arms around her waist. “But they could have been.”

Good. This was what he needed. More proof so he’d never be fool enough to open himself to her again.

Her tears deepened to sobs, horrible little sounds she tried to hide behind clenched lips.

Why is she telling you these things?

Because perhaps if he was a different man—a better man—he would have been able to move past these revelations. But with the

past that already lay between them, it was simply too much.

For him, that would never be possible.

He clenched the hand that had already started to lift toward her and drew it away.

Clayton strode from the room.





chapter Twenty-nine

“You really are a coldhearted bastard, aren’t you?”

Clayton didn’t turn away from the window in the empty bedroom. “Shut up, Ian.” His breath obscured the glass with white. A person

watching below would know someone was in this room, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He clenched the windowsill, digging

his fingers against the wood. No new snow had fallen during the day, leaving the remaining snow scarred and muddy.

“Oh, wait, no. You’re tender when a woman trusts you with her darkest secrets.”

“I said, shut the hell up.”

“She’s crying in her room in case you can’t hear her. She’s crying into her pillow to try to muffle the sound. So considerate.”

Clayton whirled around. Ian stood less than a foot away.

“Leave now.”

Ian’s eyes glittered with a genuine anger Clayton could only ever recall seeing twice. “She loves you.”

“So I’m supposed to let her lie? Deceive everyone around her? Make a fool of me?”

“We lied all the time. Why do you hold it against her?”

Clayton clenched and unclenched his damaged hand, finding solace in the pain it caused. “I don’t. But I cannot look past it. How

could she expect that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Because you forgive those you love?”