Enticing Eve: Scandalous Secrets, Book 2 (36 page)

“Trust you?” Eve snorted. “Why should I trust you when you don’t trust me enough to be honest with me?

“Eve, don’t—”

“No,” Eve shook her head with vehemence, anger flashing in her green eyes. “My ignorance is no longer acceptable. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Eve—”

“Damn it, Colin, tell me the truth!”

He felt like a caged animal, wanting desperately to be freed from its confines. Colin knew his bride would never relent, that he had no choice but to confess.
 

At this moment, he hated losing his tight-knit control.

“Fine!” His temper flared. “You want the truth?”

“Yes!”

“The notes are correct. I am not who I claim to be. I’m an imposter, claiming an inheritance that doesn’t belong to me.”

Eve felt sick, her heart slamming into her ribcage. “I- I don’t understand.”

“I am the illegitimate son of the Duke of Davenport, raised by Lachlan MacAlistair because my pregnant mother tricked him into marrying her to save herself from scandal. I don’t deserve his inheritance or anyone else’s. I’m not the first-born, I’m not well-bred. I am someone’s bastard.”

Eve felt her knees go weak. Dear God, she never expected this.
 

“Yes, that’s right,” he snapped at her, fury clouding his azure eyes. “Do you understand now?”

“How?” It was all she could manage.

“When a man and woman have sex they—”
 

“That’s not what I meant, Colin, and you know it.” Her tone was icy, and so was her body. She felt weak, certain all the color had drained from her face. “When did you discover the truth?”

“After our first betrothal. Lachlan was thrilled to share that I wasn’t fit to clean your boots, let alone marry you. He was prepared to announce it to everyone in polite society, overjoyed at the prospect that your family would find me unworthy of marrying you.”

“Colin, I’m sorry,” Eve’s heart ached for him. She reached for him, but he jerked away as if repelled by her very touch.
 

“I don’t want your pity. I never have.”

“I don’t pity you,” her eyes welled with tears.

“Who’s lying now?” His tone was steely-edged.

She didn’t know how to convince him that it didn’t matter to her, shock rendering her mute. This was the last thing she ever expected.

Like a bolt of lightning crashing in a violent storm, Eve was reminded of Colin’s intimacy with Victoria. It was because they were siblings, she realized, despising herself even more for the terrible manner in which she treated her friend.

“Get out!” he muttered.

She’d never heard his tone so cold or menacing towards her. Though Eve cringed, she was unable to move. It was as if she were rooted to the very spot.

“I said get out,” he exploded again before grabbing her arm and marching her to the door.

Tears were threatening to fall. She swallowed hard before muttering, “Colin, I- I don’t understand.”

“I expected that. I have wanted to tell you the truth, I even wrote to you, spilling my heart out. I never sent the letters because I always suspected you wouldn’t understand.”

“Why are you so angry with
me
?” She raked her hands through her hair.

“Because it didn’t have to be this way! You forced this. You wanted the truth. Now …”

“What?”

“I would rather you divorce me tomorrow than spend one more minute pitying me.”

“Divorce?” her voice was scarcely above a faint whisper.

Colin loathed himself for uttering those words. Especially seeing how they wounded her – the sorrow in her eyes, the desperation behind their watery depths broke his heart. He shouldn’t have said it, yet he couldn’t very well take it back. Nor could he reverse time and remove the sunken, haunted look from her eyes as she studied him, waiting for an answer that he was unable to voice.

He turned his back on her, unable to endure Eve’s wounded expression. Colin had feared that she would never see him in the same light once she learned the truth.
 

Now, he was certain of it.

He expected a reproof, but Eve remained silent, staring at him. Even though he was no longer facing her, he could feel her eyes boring a hole into his back as the air crackled with tension.

When Eve did speak, her voice was faint. “It appears that you have no faith in me – to think that this would matter to me, that it would make me love you any less.”

The pain in Eve’s tone made him certain that her heart was breaking into a million sharp, jagged pieces. “Look at me.”

Colin didn’t heed her command.

“Look at me,” she marched over to him and whirled him around to face her. “The man who sired you makes no difference to me. I was never the problem – you were. Your pride kept you from confiding in me, from trusting me.”

His mind was reeling. How did everything turn upside down? The earth was still spinning, of that he was certain, yet he felt as if his life had violently lurched off kilter.

“What did you do with the letters you wrote me?” she asked, her tone nonchalant, as if she hadn’t changed the subject from A to Z in a matter of seconds.

It was his turn to be dumbfounded. “What?” Colin was aware that he was blinking rapidly in an attempt to keep up.

She steeled her shoulders. “I want my letters. Since you kept my betrothal ring in your pocket for over a year, I assume that you brought the letters with you. My guess is that you never parted with them.”

“Why do you want them?” Her request made no sense to him whatsoever.

“Consider it part of our divorce settlement,” Eve retorted, her eyes remarkably cold.

It was as he suspected … over. He’d pushed her too far, called her bluff, and burned his marriage to the ground.

Colin walked across the room and opened the mahogany door to his wardrobe then bent down and removed a medium-sized oak box. He picked it up and nearly bumped into his wife as he turned, unaware that Eve had silently followed him. Before he could offer it to her, she had already grabbed the box and marched towards the door.

She paused, as if she wanted to say something but thought better of it. Instead, she reached for the knob and turned it, jerking the door open with force before slamming it behind her.

At that moment, Colin knew from the gaping hole where his heart once lay that he had ruined everything.
 

He hadn’t trusted her. If he’d given Eve a modicum of credit, the outcome would have been much different.

Instead, Colin reacted like an animal under attack and did the one thing he knew best, retaliated by offering her an out – divorce. He couldn’t blame her for taking it, scandalous or not.

For one brief shining moment in time, his life had been perfect. Perhaps that was why he had turned soft, underestimating the person behind the bloody notes. He thought he could control everything, even the stranger hell-bent on destroying him.
 

Colin had sorely miscalculated.

Damn it to hell, he should have known his happiness would never last. Men like Colin MacAlistair don’t get second chances.
 

Why had he failed to see it sooner?

* * *

Eve was furious. No, rage didn’t begin to describe her feelings. Her heart was racing so violently, beating so erratically, that she thought it might explode as she paced the span of her suite.
 

Damn him!

She marched to the door that separated her
bedchamber from Colin’s and turned the lock. Not that Colin would ever attempt to enter her bedchamber again. No, he was willing to sacrifice his wife, shove her out of his life, in an attempt to salvage his pride.

Damn his pride.

Just as she was finding comfort in her rage – for it was far better than the heartache she experienced when he first blamed her for everything and mentioned divorce – the pain again seeped into her chest.

He mentioned divorce.
She was certain the mere memory would kill her.

As she crossed the room, tears again began to blur her vision, and the box she was carrying fell to the floor. She glanced down at the mess … the latch had opened, and several envelopes had fallen out.

Eve sank to her knees then placed her head in her hands and sobbed. She wasn’t certain how much time had passed, nor did she care. Tonight, her world as she knew it had ended.
 

All because of Colin MacAlistair’s damned secret.
 

Wiping her eyes with the back of her hands, she ordered herself to stop this madness. She survived him once. Of course, she would do so again. Who cared that her meddling inner voice told her that she was lying to herself.
 

What did it know, anyway?
 

She reached for one of the sealed missives. There must have been at least fifty letters, maybe more.

After turning one in her hand, she broke the seal and unfolded a three-page missive. She noted the dates as she skimmed the pages.
Extremely hot
…
elephants
… what was he writing, a travel advisory? Then she reached the part that would forever change her life.

I know it was cowardly of me to leave with a note, but I wanted to make more of myself for you. You’d think I wouldn’t want a relationship let alone a marriage after learning the sordid truth about my parents, but I do. I still do. I love you more today than I did when I first proposed.
 

The more notes she read, the more she cried, not for herself but for Colin. His heart, battered and bruised, lay open on these pages. So too did his feelings of shame and inadequacy, as if he could control the family he had been born into or the circumstances by which he had been conceived.
 

As Eve reached the last of the letters, she noticed that he had written her even after he’d returned home. The last one she read was dated the night of their wedding.

As I wrote to you of the many secrets, the silent misery my parents evoked in their children, I felt I should end these writings with happiness.

I never thought you’d love me the way you do. The fact that you believe me capable of such goodness almost makes me believe that I am worthy of you.

That was the crux of it, wasn’t it? Colin didn’t believe himself worthy of love, happiness, or understanding. Could she really blame him for not trusting her? He had discovered that his parents, the very people who were supposed to love their children unconditionally, who were to protect them, had lied to him.

In truth, they had forsaken him.

Eve sobbed for him, the boy who was so lonely that he spent his evenings with his servants because his father didn’t love him or want him. She sobbed for herself, because she loved him even more with each minute that passed, with each horrible secret revealed.

It was then that she noticed the latest of the intruder’s missives, leaning against the crystal clock on the fireplace mantel.

You’re married to a murderer.

When Colin admitted the truth about India to her in their glen, she understood why he had to kill; he was protecting others. With this latest missive, a memory of Colin’s expression earlier flashed across her line of vision.
 

The pulsating vein in his neck, clenched jaw, and his eyes emanating a rage she never before had witnessed or even knew he was capable of.

What else was he hiding?
 

At first, the notion of Colin committing murder sounded as farfetched as a summer snowfall yet, in the wake of Colin’s latest response, a queasy wave of uncertainty washed over her. It could be true. Then again, of course, it was true. He had gone to war. War begets death.
 

Colin was haunted by something he had done or seen. Eve racked her brain, trying to remember what she had learned of the Sikh War. Her friendship with and subsequent betrothal to Tristan aided her in this as his professional contacts made him aware of incidents many were not. He shared some of it with his family and Eve.
 

As if the pieces of a puzzle were being shuffled neatly into place, Colin’s guilt and desperation for secrecy made sense.

Colin had withheld so much from her, but she knew something he did not. He wasn’t the sum of his parents’ sins, nor was he to be measured by the acts he committed during a time of war.
 

How would she ever make him see that?

If Eve was to break through the barriers Colin had erected, she must prove to him that she didn’t find him inferior, whether it be due to his parentage or any other reason.
 

Another piece of the puzzle righted into place, as Eve knew precisely what her next move must be. After glancing at the clock on the mantel, Eve noted the time.
 

One o’clock in the morning.
 

It was time to face her fate … and face her husband.

* * *

Eve stood outside the door adjoining her suite and her husband’s for several minutes, dreading the inevitable. She had to face him. He was her husband, after all. Besides, waiting would only make it worse. The bright light of day might further shame him.