Page 48 of What a Lord Wants

Shecertainly thought so.

“Burn them,” she answered quietly, gesturing at the stove.

He ignored her command and tossed them onto the chaise beside her. With that challenging gesture, he turned once more into the Dom she knew. The man who belonged right here.

“You should keep them.” His deep voice rumbled through the shadows. “One day you might want to be reminded.”

“Of Burton Williams?” she half squeaked, stupefied at the idea.Never. She never again wanted to think about how humiliated she’d been when everyone in the room was laughing at her. Only her mother’s death had caused her more pain.

“Of how lucky you were to escape him.”

Her breath strangled in her throat. He didn’t know about Scotland—couldn’thave known.

“I heard he courted you.”

So he didn’t know. A soft breath of relief escaped her. “How did you discover that?”

“The Earl of Spalding. He was at the ball and heard about what Williams had been doing upstairs.”

Fresh humiliation pulsed through her.Of course. But the earl was also a Carlisle, and now that the two families were joined, she doubted any Winslow secret was safe. Her shoulders sagged. “Burton did a lot more than court me.”

He stiffened, so tightly that she felt the tension, even from the other side of the studio. “What did he do?”

“Abandoned me along the road to Scotland,” she breathed, so softly that she wasn’t certain he’d heard.

But he had, and he slowly stood, his eyes never leaving her. “Tell me.”

She dropped her gaze to the hem of the satin robe as it lay across the tops of her bare feet. “Lord Spalding is correct.” She plucked at a loose thread in the hem, fixing her gaze there. She couldn’t bear to look at him, afraid of the expression she’d see on his face. God help her if Dom pitied her for being so foolish! “Burton courted me last winter, and I wrote those letters to him because I thought…”

Her voice trailed off. In the silence that followed, she heard the rustle of fabric as he removed his jacket and tossed it over the chair with his overcoat.

“You thought he cared about you,” he finished for her.

“No.” She looked up, her eyes blurring. The haunted expression he must have seen on her face stilled his hand as he reached to unbutton his waistcoat. “I thought he loved me.”

He held her gaze for a moment, until the embarrassment of how she’d behaved grew so great that she lowered her gaze again, back to the thread. She couldn’t blink fast enough to clear her vision of tears.

“He wanted to marry you.” His voice held an odd tone.

“Yes.”

“So he went to your father and asked his permission.”

“No.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw him pause midway through rolling up his shirt sleeves. “I don’t understand.” He finished the left sleeve and started on the right. “He’s a gentleman. It’s what we do when we find a woman we want to marry.”

“A gentleman by fortune of birth.” She was barely able to say that without an ironic laugh. “But no fortune of any other kind.”

“So that’s why he courted you.” Said so matter-of-factly that he didn’t have to add that most gentlemen were fortune hunters. Just like most young ladies. “But why didn’t he ask for your hand? You cared for him, obviously.”

She stilled with the thread twisted around her finger and glanced up at him. “You don’t know my father, do you?”

“Not very well.”

“Henry Winslow is a self-made man who believes other men should also work for their fortunes the way that he worked for his. He thinks that if a man wants to get his hands on Winslow Shipping and Trade, then he should come to work at the company and not receive it simply through marriage.” She repeated the words she’d heard Papa say countless times, “‘Oil and water, business and sons-in-law…the two do not mix.’”

An amused glint shined in his eyes at her impersonation of her father. “But if a man wants to marry you because he loves you?”