That lofty, two-story chamber was easily eight times the size of Alban’s study. Lily took one look at the endless shelves and felt like weeping.
This would never do. She had to regain her spirits, had to do her share of this enormous task. Rand wasn’t giving up, and she couldn’t, either.
But after the excitement of the discovery and the disappointment that had followed, she couldn’t face starting over just yet. “I’m going to check on Rex,” she told the other two. “I’ll be right back.”
Downstairs, she hugged the huge mastiff around his neck, tightly, as though she could draw strength from his big, warm body. After all, he’d survived a harrowing ordeal and, from the looks of it, come out none the worse for wear. When he licked a slobbery path across her face, she laughed. “All right, then. I’m going to find that journal.”
Feeling immeasurably better, she rose, then froze, staring at the dog. “I wonder…” she whispered, then took off at a run, heading back to the library.
SIXTY-FOUR
ETTA IN TOW, Margery ran into Bennett’s study and smiled when he bolted up from his desk. “What are you doing here?” he gasped.
They met halfway, his mouth divine on hers, the kiss wild despite her old nurse’s presence. Her fingers twined into his long dark hair, and his arms went around her to clutch her close. When he finally came up for air, she was breathless. “I told you I’d come to you again, didn’t I?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“I’ve been combing the countryside for witnesses. Rand had promised to do that, but then he took off for Oxford and has yet to return.” She ran her hands up and down Bennett’s back, frantic to touch him, to feel the muscles beneath his thin shirt, to convince herself he was here, he was real, he wouldn’t die, that somehow they’d end up together. “I cannot just sit in my uncle’s house and pray anymore. I have to do something. I have to find someone who saw Alban come after you.”
His hands clenched on her waist. “I feel so helpless, stuck here in this prison. All I can do is write letters.” His gaze flicked to the papers littering his desk. “Letters and more letters,” he said, looking back to her, his green eyes laced with despair. “But I know no one with influence greater than the marquess’s. No one who can save me.”
“Did you get my letter? The one where I explained Uncle William’s promise to spare your life if I marry Rand?”
The look in his eyes—misery—told her he had. “Do you suppose you could come to love him?” he asked, his voice so harsh she pictured each word being forced through his throat.
“Not like this. He’s my brother—”
“Then you cannot do it. I won’t allow you to sacrifice your life for mine. You’ll be unhappy all your days.”
“Not as unhappy as I’d be if you were dead.” She wasn’t going to let him argue this point. “I’m going back out—I just stopped here to tell you what I’m doing. If God has heard my prayers, I’ll find someone able to vouch for your innocence. Either way, I’ll be back tonight.”
“Tonight?” She saw his shoulders tense. “Margery, no,” he said in a lower tone, darting a look at Etta. “We cannot take that risk. We lost our heads once, and look what happened. I ruined you, and now I can’t even—”
“You didn’t ruin me,” she cried.
Eyes widening in alarm, he cast another mortified glance at her old nurse.
“It’s all right, Bennett, she knows everything. Now, stop saying that you ruined me, because we both know the truth—if anything, I’m the one who ruined you.”
Margery had never thought of herself as a person driven by lust. Until she met Bennett. If meeting Bennett had turned her world upside down, their one night together had realigned it in the most perfect, awe-inspiring form imaginable. Though she felt remorse for her weakness and for tempting him to share in it, in truth, she couldn’t quite bring herself to regret that night. Not anymore. Because if the worst came to pass, it was all she’d have left of him: the memory of one precious night, and the piece of him now growing inside her.
She swallowed hard. “I’ll stay in a guest chamber with Etta if you wish. Uncle William thinks we’re staying overnight in Windsor to order a wedding gown—as though I would care what I wore to wed Rand. Sackcloth would do.” She snorted. “For all his power, my uncle can be staggeringly blind to a woman’s wiles.”
“He’s a man,” Etta put in with a nod of her curly gray head. “His wife could outwit him just as easily. A crafty woman she was, although she loved him too well to play him the fool very often.”
Margery had seen a loving side of Uncle William in the past, but right now she found it hard to summon loyalty. “Am I wrong, Bennett, for going behind his back?”
She’d warred with herself for days. Perhaps Rand’s mother had been the crafty sort, but Margery had always prided herself on her honesty.
Until Bennett.
Now she was hiding a pregnancy and sneaking off to meet her lover, and she couldn’t find it in herself to feel guilt for either dishonest action. But she was also contemplating ruining two other lives to save Bennett’s, dooming both Rand and Lily to loveless futures…and that sparked enough guilt to make her dive under the bedcovers and never come out.
One of her hands left Bennett’s body and went to her own belly as she prayed her child wouldn’t suffer for the sins of its mother.
“No, you’re not wrong,” he murmured in answer to Margery’s earlier question. “Hawkridge is behaving unreasonably. He claims to love you, yet he plots to deprive your child of its father.”
One of his hands slipped from her waist to cover her fingers. She wished
