Even if he hadn’t suggested she not wear her ball gown she was more than tired of it—not just because it was dirty and torn, but because of what it represented. She’d been stupid and naive that night, and she’d paid for it with her reputation. If her grandfather hadn’t seen fit to gift her with forty thousand pounds upon her marriage, she would have lost her future, too. She glanced across the room at Duncan, seated at the table with her shoes and trimming a pair of rabbit pelts to fit around them. At this time yesterday she’d been in a corner of a bed chamber that didn’t belong to her, watching a man she thought she knew become more and more a stranger, and more and more frightening. At the beginning Bellamy had been pleased with himself, but polite and even a touch apologetic. When she didn’t swoon or fall to her knees and agree to marry him to save her reputation, his polite veneer had begun to melt away. By yesterday morning she’d begun to fear that he would resort to something physical—something like what she and Duncan had been up to last night and this morning.
