Jessica Howerty fell for her brother's best friend when she was a young girl, and never quite recovered. Now, all grown-up, she knows that a disreputable rake like Jacob Hurst is the last thing she should want. After two seasons in London, she's tir...
She looked surprised. Good. "That's what I've heard," she said hesitantly.
With a sigh, he walked up to the bed and sat down on the edge where he could look at her. "I know. It's the story prevalent in all gossip. I told no one the truth. Well," he amended. "I told my father, and he refused to believe me."
"No one else?"
"Your brother and Gowthorpe. They know."
She shuffled over in the bed to sit next to him. "Tell me," she pleaded, and the earnest expression in her dark blue eyes went straight to his heart. He supposed he had to trust his wife if they were going to live together. It was just such a difficult thing to do. Throughout most of his life people had expected the worst of him, not entirely without reason. He'd raised hell as a boy, mostly to get his father's attention—he could admit that much—but people had also blamed him for a lot of things he hadn't done.
His life was a reverse version of the boy who cried wolf. He was blamed for doing things even when he hadn't. No one believed him when he claimed his innocence, since they were so used to his guilt. It had been the same in London. Since he was a rake, people found it easy to place the blame on him, even if he had been nowhere near the woman in question.
"Jacob." Jessica's voice brought him back from his reverie. "Please tell me what happened between you and Lady Hearn."
He gave her a quick look. He hated this. What if she didn't believe him? She put her hand on his thigh, and he looked at it, rather than her face. "I think Merilyn grew tired of waiting for me," he said, the words coming quickly. "Maybe she was afraid I wouldn't marry her after all. One day, her father called on me and told me we needed to hurry things along, and I wasn't much inclined to do so. When he insisted that considering the circumstances we had little choice I didn't understand at first."
"She was with child?" she ventured a guess.
"Yes." He looked up to meet her eyes, worried about what she might think of him since it was exactly what had happened with her. "Only it wasn't mine, because I never touched her. I've done many things, Jessica, but I've never seduced an innocent that would require marrying." He made a wry face. "Well, except you."
She smiled a little at his comment but said nothing, so he continued. "I was angry. Furious, actually. I had expected better from Merilyn. It wasn't that she was with child, I wasn't faithful to her, so I didn't expect her to be faithful to me. But that she would try to pass it off as mine to secure a marriage. So I refused."
"You really never touched her?"
Meeting her eyes squarely, he replied earnestly, "Never."
"Then what happened?"
"Well," he hedged as he remembered those days several years ago. "Merilyn was nothing if not devilishly intelligent. She let the news leak, and soon all of London knew of my presumed seduction of her. I suppose she thought the peer pressure would make me fold and marry her. My father even came to town, insisting that I do the right thing. I still refused. In fact, I left London for two months since I didn't want to deal with neither my father nor hers."
Jessica was moving her hand up and down his thigh, probably without even realising it, and he was finding it somewhat distracting.
"I must admit that I'm surprised a woman would do that. It's so... devious."
Smiling, he put his hand on hers to stop it from moving. He didn't think he could take much more, especially since it had been dangerously close to his crotch a few times. "You'd be surprised," he said. "Desperation drives people to do terrible things."
"Did you tell anyone your side of the story at the time?"
He made a face. He should have known she would ask. "No."
She stared at him. "Why not?"
Shrugging, he brought her hand up to his lips and placed a soft kiss on her knuckles. "I didn't feel it was right. It was bad enough in society's eyes that she'd let me seduce her, but at least I was a rake of some repute. If I were to deny having bedded her, it would have made things even worse for her."
"You did that, even though she'd just lied to everyone about you?"
"Well, yes." He felt like a fool now that he was telling her, but there really was nothing else he could have done. Despite everything, he was a gentleman. Or well, occasionally he was a gentleman. Rarely.
She was smiling now. "Jacob Hurst," she said softly. "You really do surprise me sometimes."
"Because I'm not a complete deviate?" he said with wry humour.
"Something like that."
"So you believe me?" She certainly seemed to, and yet his shoulders tensed, waiting for her reply.
"I do. You are many things, Jacob, but you are not a liar." She leaned in closer and when she pressed her soft lips against his, the tension left his body like grime washed away in a summer rain. Suddenly he felt glad he'd told her the truth. For once in his life, he seemed to have done the right thing. As he hauled her into his lap so he could kiss her properly, he realised he didn't want to lose her. She was the one good thing in his life. There was no other woman he'd rather have as his wife. And that scared the hell out of him.
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