Iris let out a harsh laugh. Dear God, nothing could be further from the truth.
“You find this funny?” Richard demanded.
She wrapped her arms around her body, trying to contain the painful bubble of hysteria ballooning within her. Turning around so that she could look straight at his face, she replied, “Not even one bit.”
He had the good sense not to ask for further clarification. Iris could only imagine the wild look in her eyes.
After a few moments, Richard cleared his throat, and said, “I realize that you have been put in a difficult situation . . .”
Difficult? Her jaw came unhinged. He wanted her to feign a pregnancy and then claim another woman’s child as her own? And he called that difficult?
“。 . . but I think you will see that it is the only solution.”
No. She shook her head. “That cannot be possible. There must be some other way.”
“Do you really think I came to this decision lightly?” Richard said, his voice rising with temper. “Do you imagine I did not consider every possible alternative?”
Iris’s lungs grew tight, and she fought the need to suck in great big gulps of air. She couldn’t breathe. She could barely think. Who was this man? He’d been almost a stranger when they married, but she had thought he was at heart a good and honest person. She had let him kiss her in the most mortifyingly intimate way imaginable, and she did not even know him.
She’d thought she might even be falling in love.
And the worst part was, he could force her to do this. They both knew that. In marriage, the man’s word was law, and the woman’s lot was to obey. Oh, she could run to her parents, but they would just send her back to Maycliffe. They might be shocked, they might think Richard was mad to consider such a scheme, but in the end, they would tell her that he was her husband, and if this was his choice, she must go along with it.
“You deceived me,” she whispered. “You deliberately tricked me into marriage.”
“I am sorry.”
And he probably was, but that did not excuse him.
Then she asked the most terrifying question of all. “Why me?”
Richard blanched.
Iris felt her blood drain from her body, and she stumbled back, the force of his unsaid reply a punch to her gut. He didn’t need to say anything; the answer was right there on his face. Richard had chosen her because he could. Because he’d known that with her modest dowry and unremarkable looks she would not have suitors clamoring for her hand. A girl like her would be eager for marriage. A girl like her would never refuse a man like him.
Good Lord, had he researched her? Of course. He must have done. Why else would he have attended the Smythe-Smith musicale, if not to seek an introduction?
Winston Bevelstoke’s face suddenly flashed in her mind, his smile so practiced and suave as he introduced them. Had he helped Richard to choose a bride?
Iris nearly choked with the horror of it. Richard must have asked his friends to draw up lists of the most desperate women in London. And she had topped the charts.
She had been judged. And she had been pitied.
“You have humiliated me,” she said, barely able to find her voice.
No one would call Sir Richard Kenworthy a fool. He had known exactly what he needed in a bride—someone so pathetic and grateful for a marriage proposal that she’d roll over and say yes, please when he finally revealed the truth.
That was what he thought of her.
Iris gasped, clapping her hand to her mouth to stifle the cry that rose from her throat.
Fleur regarded her with a disconcertingly steady gaze before saying to Richard, “You really should have told her the truth before you asked her to marry you.”
“Shut up,” he snarled.
“Don’t tell her to shut up,” Iris snapped.
“Oh, now you’re on her side?”
“Well, nobody seems to be on mine.”
“You should know that I have told him I will not agree to the scheme,” Fleur said.
Iris turned to look at her, to really look at her for the first time that afternoon, to try to see something beyond the petulant, hysterical girl who’d stepped down from the carriage. “Are you mad?” she demanded. “What do you propose to do? Who is the baby’s father?”
“It’s obviously no one you know,” Fleur snapped.
“The younger son of a local baron,” Richard said in a flat voice. “He seduced her.”
Iris whirled to face him. “Well, then, why don’t you force him to marry her?”