Free Captured by a Gentleman (Regency Unlaced 6) by Carole Mortimer Page B

known an advantageous marriage was better than none.”
    She gave a shake of her head. “There was no one.”
    Ranulf’s eyes narrowed as he realized she was still avoiding looking at him directly. “Why do I not believe you?”
    Possibly because Darcy was skirting around the truth. She had previously told Ranulf she had never been in love, but she now knew that statement had not been exactly truthful.
    Earlier, as Ranulf made love to her, she had realized she had fallen in love once, was still in love, with the man who had been her cousin’s bridegroom and husband.
    Ranulf.
    A man who was so deeply wounded emotionally, so disenchanted with anything to do with love and marriage, his every word made it clear he never intended to allow himself to fall in love and be that vulnerable ever again. Oh, Darcy had no doubt, no matter how Ranulf felt now, that he would marry again one day. But any woman who took him as her husband could only ever expect half a marriage. One perhaps based on mutual respect, but never love.
    “There was no one,” she repeated dully. “Are your parents still alive?” She deliberately changed the subject.
    The frown left his brow to be replaced with a look of affection. “Unfortunately not.”
    “Siblings?”
    “None.”
    Darcy sighed. “Your abrupt replies are not helping the conversation progress.”
    “Possibly because I do not wish to… I only have my cousin and his wife,” he relented as she frowned her disappointment with his terseness.
    She nodded. “The man who was witness at your wedding.”
    “Lord Sinclair Montgomery, the Earl of Winterbourne.”
    Darcy’s eyes widened. “My goodness, I have just realized the man Society dubbed the Ill-Mannered Highlander—before meeting him, that is—is your cousin!” And the reason she had not made the connection before now was because at the wedding, she’d only had eyes for Ranulf.
    He smiled at the description. “I am sure that Sin soon set them to rights.”
    “Oh, he did.” She chuckled. “The gentlemen were all most envious of his height and muscular build. The ladies all swooned every time he graced a room with his presence. Which, as I recall, was not very often. He appeared to have as much contempt for Society as they had previously held for him.”
    “That sounds like Sin.”
    “He married Mrs. Felicity Randall last autumn, I believe?”
    Ranulf nodded. “They are expecting their first child next month.” He eyed her quizzically. “And did you also swoon whenever my cousin entered a room?”
    Darcy wrinkled her nose. “I actually caught a chill at your wedding and missed most of the social events of the last few weeks of the Season, when your cousin arrived in London. Which is probably why I failed to make the connection before now. My friends were all agog, though, with the handsome new Earl of Winterbourne.”
    Ranulf grimaced. “It would seem that we would both have been better off not attending that particular wedding.”
    Darcy eyed him quizzically. “Did you just make a joke on the subject?”
    “I believe I did, yes.”
    “That is a definite improvement on your previous bitterness—” She broke off with a gasp as she realized her frankness had caused Ranulf’s humor to evaporate as if it had never been. “I apologize. That was…far too personal.”
    “But truthful?”
    She could lie, or— “Yes. I have no reason to disbelieve you when you say your marriage was a horrible experience, but you really should not allow it to color your future.”
    “Perhaps you should worry about your own future rather than offering unwanted and unasked-for advice about mine.”
    Another of those verbal slaps in the face Ranulf enjoyed delivering whenever Darcy stepped over the invisible line he had drawn beneath personal subjects that were not for discussion. “Do you have to be so— What was that?” She turned sharply toward the door.
    “What was what?” Ranulf prompted irritably.
    “I thought I heard—