Page 38 of After the Abduction

She lifted one delicate brow. “Oh? So he truly thought me the ‘perfect woman’? How odd then that he left me behind so easily after helping me escape Crouch.”

Her words stunned him. Last night, she’d implied that she’d been happy to be free of a man who wasn’t suitable husband material. He rose abruptly from the settee to approach her. Startled, she backed up a step.

“Did you really want Morgan to take you with him? After what he’d done? After the danger he’d put you and your family in?”

She colored, then dropped her gaze from his. “No, indeed. Don’t be absurd.”

But devil take it, she had. He could see it in her face. Which meant Lady Rosalind had been right about her after all. The young Juliet had apparently nursed romantic notions even after she’d learned that he wasn’t what he seemed.

That thought tightened the knot of guilt in his gut. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to wound your feelings by leaving you, Juliet. He probably thought you better off without him. No doubt you’d made it clear that you found him despicable for his betrayal of you.”

Her head came up, eyes blazing. “He did not wound my feelings. I was merely explaining why his compliments were insincere.”

“Even if he didn’t marry you, that doesn’t mean his time with you was all a lie.”

“Doesn’t it?” She looked at him a long moment, and then a mask came down over her generally open features. “Oh, you wouldn’t understand. Not an honest man like you.”

He could swear he heard sarcasm in her voice.

She went on quickly. “Compliments that sound perfectly natural and unstudied don’t trip off your tongue as they did off your brother’s.”

“I thought my compliments tripped off my tongue very well just now,” he snapped.

“Yes, but not when compared to your brother. You’re too honest to comprehend how a deceitful man can flatter so sincerely that a woman can’t help but trust him. You rely on stock phrases like ‘your hair is the color of spun gold’ and ‘your skin is soft as swansdown,’ which is natural for a man whose experience with women is so limited.”

By thunder, the woman knew how to prick a man’s pride. Stock phrases, indeed. “See here, those weren’t my compliments—they were examples of what other men might say. And ‘limited experience’ doesn’t mean I’ve spent the past thirty years in a monastery, for God’s sake. It merely means I haven’t run after every woman in petticoats.”

“Of course,” she said with a dainty wave of her hand. “And I’m sure the women you meet out here don’t mind if your compliments aren’t smooth or clever—”

“So now I’m an imbecile, am I?” he growled.

She whirled away, but just before she did, he could have sworn she smiled. “I’m merely saying you’re not adept at deceiving women with flattery the way your brother was. It takes a certain sort of man to manage that—”

“A clever man, I suppose,” he ground out.

“A man of the world. You wouldn’t aspire to that sort of cleverness, would you?”

“Devil if I know.” He rubbed his temples. This entire conversation was giving him a headache. Why was it whenever she started comparing his two selves, Sebastian came off as a boring provincial idiot and “Morgan” as an unfeeling Continental blackguard? Neither of his incarnations escaped unscathed. And she did it so casually, too, as if oblivious to how she left him licking his wounds.

He’d think she was doing it on purpose, except that Juliet could never be that wily. Could she?

She stopped at the checkered marble table that held his grandfather’s onyx and silver chess pieces and began to move them about, reminding him of how well she’d played chess two years ago in the cottage. Hmm.

His eyes narrowed. “Let me see if I have this straight. You find me to be a proper, respectable imbecile—”

“I didn’t call you an imbecile. You said that, my lord.”

“Forgive me. A proper, respectable gentleman so lacking in cleverness that he spouts only clichés, and so inexperienced with women that he kisses very dull indeed—”

“Nor did I call your kisses dull.” She faced him warily, apparently beginning to sense the dangerous shift in his mood.

He stalked closer. “You called them ‘adequate,’ which is only one step above ‘dull’ as far as I’m concerned.”

She backed up a step. “I didn’t mean to insult you—”

“The devil you didn’t.” When she half stumbled over the chess table, he hauled her into his arms. “It’s only fair, madam, that you give me another chance to show you I’m not the inept idiot you take me for.”

Her cheeks reddened, and alarm spread over her pretty face. “Really, my lord, there’s nothing for you to prove.”