Page 65 of Along Came a Rogue

“You’re wrong about us, Grey,” she told him, shaking her head adamantly. “What we shared was amazing. You made me feel so feminine, desirable…,” she admitted in a whisper. “You made me feel wanted.”

His eyes narrowed in white-hot anger as the niggling voice warning inside his head turned into a scream. This wasn’t a list of the reasons for why she wanted him; it was a rationale for rejection.

“But we’re not the same people we were five years ago. You have your career, your future plans—” She choked, and he thought he heard a sob in her voice. “We’re from different worlds.”

His heart stopped, and in that moment’s tiny death, he prayed he hadn’t heard her correctly. Surely, she didn’t mean…But she did. He wasn’t stupid enough to lie to himself. And when his heart started again, the pain of it stole his breath away.

He knew this woman better than anyone else in the world, yet for Emily to be so cruel as to say something like that, and directly to his face—the warmth inside him vanished instantly, replaced by an icy bitterness.

“Please understand. I have to think of my baby now.” Her hands slid down to her belly, but her eyes never lifted to meet his. “And no matter how much we care for each other, no matter if there’s love—” Another rasping choke as the words caught in her throat, another sob. She drew a deep breath and hurried on. “If we marry, you can’t protect me and my child, not from society. I’ll be cut direct at every opportunity, whispered and gossiped about in front of my face, no longer welcome anywhere in Mayfair…I’ve seen it happen to women for indiscretions far less serious than the lo—than the closeness you and I shared.”

Love. She was going to say love. His chest burned with betrayal, with the same pain as if she’d slapped him.

She shook her head. “I can’t allow that to happen, not when my baby’s future is so important.”

His eyes hardened on her. “So that’s it?” he drawled resentfully, his hands fisted at his sides to keep from shaking her. “You want me to believe that you’re refusing marriage so that you can keep waltzing at balls.”

A blush of guilt colored her otherwise pale face. “This isn’t as inconsequential as you make it out to be.”

“Damn you,” he said softly.

A soft gasp tore from her. “Grey!”

“Damn you for lying to me again.” He saw her flinch beneath his words— Good. She deserved to know the piercing pain she’d sent spiraling through him. “Even now, after all we’ve been through together.”

She swallowed. Hard enough that he could see the undulation of her throat even from so far away. “I-I’m not—”

“I know you, brat.” He took slow steps toward her, more to keep his own anger in check than from fear of chasing her away again. “You don’t give a damn what society thinks of you.”

Through tear-blurred eyes, she stared at him silently, her lips falling open—every inch of her so blatantly showing that she knew he’d caught her in her lie yet still desperately clinging to it. But the tears were real, and so was the anguish behind them. He’d come here, engagement ring in hand, because he wanted to protect her and stop her from ever crying again, only to end up putting her into tears himself. But he had no intention of leaving her unprotected, even if he had to toss her over his shoulder and drive away to Gretna Green.

“Why are you refusing me—the real reason?” he demanded. He cupped her face in his hands so she couldn’t retreat from him again. “What is it that you want? Tell me. I’ll make it happen.”

“I want you to do what you planned all along,” she forced out through trembling lips, “what you told me you would do that first day in the carriage…love me and leave me.”

His heart tore at the anguish he saw on her face. When he’d told her that, he’d believed it of himself. But she’d changed him, and he no longer wanted that life. What he wanted now was her. “I am not leaving you, do you understand? Not now, not ever.”

“I want you to go to Spain.”

“I am not leaving—”

“Just go!” she cried, tears streaming down her face. “Please, just leave!”

Pain surged through him, mixing with anger and rising betrayal. To blatantly lie to him once again, and to offer that, of all reasons, as her excuse— “I’m not going anywhere,” he ground out through clenched teeth.

Her hand darted up to swipe at her eyes as she whispered, “Then I will.”

Without a glance backward, she fled from the room.

* * *

Grey angrily slammed shut the front door of his rented town house, stopping his man Hulston in his tracks in the foyer as he scrambled to open the door for him.

“Major, you’re back,” Hulston said with flustered surprise, knowing the purpose of Grey’s afternoon mission and having put much care into dressing him for it. “And so soon.”

Muttering a string of curses, Grey yanked off his coat, hat, and gloves and shoved them all into Hulston’s waiting arms. Then he slapped the ring box down on top of the lot of them. “Get rid of this!”

“Sir?” Hulston blinked in surprise, not daring to press for more explanation.