Chelsea ran into her room, slammed the door behind her, marched straight to her bedpost and shook it. She was imagining that she was strangling her mother.
She was so angry she wanted to scream!
Pacing around the room, she bit back a number of oaths and debated what she was going to do. This whole situation had spiraled out of control—not just the state of her emotions, but her mother’s ideas as well. The woman was determined to be the grandmother of the next Earl Neufeld, no matter what the cost. Now, it seemed that she was doing her mother’s bidding instead of her own, and would not have the freedom to change her mind.
Well, she would if she wanted to. Damn right, she would.
Just then she heard her doorknob turn.
God help her. If her mother was walking in here again without knocking, she didn’t trust herself not to strangle the woman for real.
But it was not her mother. It was Jack.
He entered the room and slammed the door shut behind him—just as she had a few seconds ago—and with fists clenched, glared at her like a devil wolf.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her heart suddenly pounding with fear. This was not the Jack she knew. This was a wild creature. “I thought you’d gone to bed.”
A muscle flicked at his jaw. “Hoped, you mean.”
She said nothing, for she seemed to have lost her voice. He took a few steps closer, and she backed up until she bumped into her chest of drawers.
Immediately she put two and two together. “Did you see what just happened between my mother and me?”
“I did.”
He continued to glare at her until she could barely breathe. “It’s not what you think.”
“No? How do you know what I think?”
“I can see it in your eyes,” she said. “You think I’ve been coming to your bed because she has been forcing me to.”
“Isn’t that’s what’s been going on? I heard what she said. She told you that you had a duty to perform for your family.”
“Yes, but—”
He glanced up at the ceiling. “I remember you saying something like that to me once. You said, ‘If I am going to be forced to be miserable while I do my duty for this family…’”
He paced back and forth in front of her like a lion in a cage.
“What a fool I was,” he ground out. “I didn’t realize that I was the miserable duty. Does your cousin, Lord Jerome, even exist? Or was that part of your plot to get me to do what you wanted? You really are a very good writer, Chelsea, a grand weaver of lies. You have a most promising future ahead of you, contriving elaborate fictions. Or perhaps you would do better on the stage, for clearly you are a gifted actress as well. You could write your own productions.”
“It wasn’t a story,” she insisted. “I was being forced to marry my cousin. I still am. I would show you the letter he wrote, but…”
“But what?”
“I threw it into the sea.”
His voice deepened. “How very convenient.”
She sucked in a breath. “Please, Jack.”
“Please what? Forgive you? Or lift your skirts one more time?” He gestured behind him. “Up against the door? Would that be sufficient? Or would you prefer to be on your back? I suppose it’s all the same to you, as long as you can get me to take my pleasure on the inside.”
Feeling a sharp, piercing stab of panic, she stepped forward. “Let me explain.”
“I am not a character in one of your stories,” he said. “My life is not a fiction. I may have washed up onto your beach like a fish and remember nothing about my life, but damn you, Chelsea, I am a man, and I am real. I exist!”
She comprehended the anxiety in his voice and the rage burning in his eyes.
“I know that,” she tried to tell him. “You are a real man who has been through a terrible ordeal, and I have not been completely honest with you.”
She had lied to him from the beginning and used him.
But she’d also fallen in love with him.
There was a hard rap on her door and she jumped.
God, was it her mother? Please, not now…
“Who is it?” she shouted irritably.
“It’s Sebastian.”
Jack turned and glared at the door, then his fierce gaze shot back to her face. “Does he know what’s been going on here?” he asked. “Does he know that you’ve been screwing your invalid guest, who has no identity and nowhere to go? That you’ve been trying to provide this house with an heir, because he cannot fulfill that duty?”
“Yes,” she replied plainly.
He stared at her long and hard, then turned around and strode to the door. He opened it, took one look at Sebastian, then swung back and punched him in the jaw.
“What are you doing!” Chelsea shouted, dashing across the room. She pushed past Jack to tend to her brother, who had been knocked clear across the hall, where he sank down to the floor.
Chelsea dropped to her knees beside him. “Are you all right?”
She was acutely aware of Jack standing over them with both fists still clenched, as if waiting for Sebastian to get up so he could hit him again.
She looked up at him. “You caught him completely off guard.”
Sebastian pressed the back of his hand to his split lip, which was already swelling like a grape, then inspected the blood on his knuckle.
“I take it our guest knows what we’ve been up to,” he said.
She sat back on her heels. “Yes, but there was no call for that.” She stood up and faced Jack. “It was my idea, not his.”
Jack looked down at Sebastian, who was rising slowly to his feet.
“But your brother agreed to it,” Jack said. “Honestly, man,” he said with disgust. “Your own sister.”
“I deserved that,” Sebastian replied, straightening at last. “This was an idiotic plan, and I should never have agreed to it. I should have put a stop to it.”
“No, Sebastian,” she said. “I wanted to be with him. You know I did. And Lord knows, I deserved, for once, to do what I wanted.” Chelsea met Jack’s eyes and spoke with bite. “You told me that was what you liked best about me—that I was a rebel.”
“It doesn’t change the fact that what I now like least about you is your self-seeking interest, your ability to use and deceive an injured man who has no means of escape from your venomous attentions.”
“I seem to recall,” she said, striding back into her room while Jack followed, “that you quite enjoyed those attentions, sir, especially when you knew there would be no consequences. I told you I was promised to another man, yet you went ahead and took your pleasure with me regardless. You could have said no. And all along there has existed the distinct possibility that you are already married or in love with someone else. So I will not hear your self-righteous babble about my self-seeking intentions. You were acting selfishly, too, using me because you felt alone and needed to prove your existence and value in the world. You cannot deny that.”
Sebastian walked into the room and raised a hand, as if he were a referee in the middle of a boxing ring.
“Stop,” he said. “There is a reason I am here, and it’s not to break up your quarrel.”
They both looked at him with impatience.
“What is it?” Chelsea asked.
He wiped his lip again. “We have visitors downstairs,” he said. “They arrived a few minutes ago, after a rough journey across the Channel. I think you both might want to go downstairs and speak to them.”
Chelsea shook her head. “Who would be arriving at this hour?”
Sebastian straightened his posture. “We have the honor of receiving Devon Sinclair, Marquess of Hawthorne, and heir to the Duke of Pembroke, and his wife, Lady Hawthorne, who happens to be a peeress in her own right. She is also the Countess of Creighton.”
“Why are they here?” Chelsea asked as a shiver of apprehension moved up her spine.
Sebastian looked intently at Jack. “For good reason, it seems. The Duke of Pembroke’s heir has come to collect his brother.”