Page 63 of After the Abduction

Rosalind scrutinized her. “Then perhaps you should make it up with him.”

“Why?”

“Because you like the man, admit it. And God knows he likes you.”

She swallowed, wishing she could confide all her confused feelings to her sister. But Rosalind wouldn’t understand. She didn’t even believe Sebastian to be Morgan.

Still, Juliet couldn’t let her go on thinking these foolish things about him. “Lord Templemore doesn’t like me, not the way you mean. He’s merely being polite, to make up for what his brother did to me.”

With a shake of her head, Rosalind returned to sit beside Juliet. “When a man’s being polite, he doesn’t follow a woman’s every move with his eyes, nor disrupt his entire household on behalf of her sister. He doesn’t drive out at dawn in the snow just to be with her, and he certainly doesn’t make her blush over talk of checkmates.”

She glanced up, startled.

“Griff told me about finding the two of you alone in the drawing room. From what he said and what Lord Templemore mentioned the next day about chess, I’d wager that the two of you were not merely moving pieces about on a board.”

To Juliet’s annoyance, she colored right up to the roots of her hair.

Rosalind chuckled. “He’s courting you, you ninny. Surely you figured that out.”

Juliet gaped at her. “No, he’s not.”

“He most certainly is. Why else would he do all those things?”

Because he wanted to unnerve her and distract her from finding out the truth.

Then again, he could do that better by avoiding her, couldn’t he? Yet he’d readily agreed to her proposal that he give her lessons. Until this week, he’d spent time with her at every opportunity. As Morgan, he ought to have stayed far away from her—as he’d started out to do. Instead, he’d kissed her and willingly walked into all her traps.

“You don’t mind that he’s courting you, do you?” Rosalind asked.

“I…I…don’t know. Until this very moment, I didn’t think he was.”

“I assumed that you felt some attraction to him as well. I’ve never seen you respond to a man as you do to him. With all the others, you seemed bored or faintly annoyed, but he makes you…well, glow. You do like him, don’t you?”

She’d been so busy trying to resist his sensual pull that she hadn’t bothered to think about whether she liked him. “I don’t dislike him,” she evaded. “But he often infuriates me.”

“Then you do like him,” Rosalind said with a sly smile. “That’s how it starts.”

You don’t understand, she wanted to say. He denies our entire past together.

Yet knowing that, she still missed him. She still longed to see him.

“I must go.” Rosalind patted her knee. “Polly’s waiting, so don’t be too long.”

After Rosalind left, Juliet dressed with particular care in her green velvet riding habit ornamented with gold cord and a small matching hat with gold tassels. She was probably being foolish. He probably wasn’t even there. Rosalind was surely mistaken.

And if Rosalind was right?

She paused in drawing on the matching half boots fringed in green. What if Rosalind was right about all of it? What if Sebastian really wanted to marry her? The warm thought seeped through her, insidious and seductive.

Then she shook her head sternly. She mustn’t let idle speculation tempt her from her purpose. If he’d been courting her, it was for a treacherous reason—to ensure that she kept quiet about his identity, for example. He couldn’t possibly have feelings for her. Beyond desire, of course. He admitted that he desired her, although that, too, was probably only because she’d pricked his pride by criticizing his seduction skills.

You’re more heartless than I realized, Juliet.

His words thundered through her memory, lacerating her conscience. What had seemed an unfair accusation now rang true in light of what Rosalind had said. That wasn’t the statement of a man who wanted only to prove his skills.

With a coil of anxiety tightening in her belly, she fled her bedchamber prison. Was it possible that she’d actually hurt him? For one moment in the conservatory—when the meaning of her accusations had dawned on him—she’d glimpsed pain in his face. At the time, her own hurt had been too great to acknowledge his, but now she had to wonder…

Spurred on by that thought, she hurried down the stairs and furtively threaded her way through the empty halls to the side door Rosalind had spoken of. Polly was waiting for her as Rosalind had promised, and in moments Juliet was mounted and away, without Polly. She didn’t need the servant witnessing this confrontation, to be sure.