Page 14 of The Cutthroat Countess

“I didn’t realize that believing in loyalty to one’s country and friends was hubristic.”

Gray sneered. “You speak of matters you can never, ever understand. You weren’t even born when the Colonists rebelled; you can’t have any notion of how that conflict almost tore this country in half. It was father against son and brother against brother. There were tens of thousands who believed as I did: that the colonials were our family, not our serfs. To go to war with them was an atrocity against our very own people.”

“Ah, so it was pure altruism, then. You took no money for the information you sold? You betrayed your government for free?”

The ugly red flush that stained his cheeks told her that she’d delivered a hit.

“Some of us were not born with a silver spoon. I grew to boyhood above a butcher’s shop, my lady, not into the lap of luxury like your father. John could always champion whatever cause he chose because there was a fortune waiting for him to fall back on. Honor is easy when that is the case.”

“You speak of him with such scorn, Gray, and yet my cousin Richard told me that my father was the reason you went to Harrow and the reason that you moved up so rapidly in the government hierarchy of the country you chose to betray. Without him, you’d still be living above that butcher shop.”

“And do you think I’ve been allowed to forget that for more than a minute?” he retorted with more heat than he’d shown before.

“Are you saying my father advocated for you and then held your origins over your head?”

“Not him,” Gray admitted, “but everyone else at that bloody school and then afterward in London. Not for one second was I allowed to forget who I was or where I came from. Not once was I allowed inside the inner circle.”

“Perhaps they smelled the stench of treason on you, Sir Stanley. Did that ever occur to you?”

He pushed to his feet and stalked toward her. “Long before I chose to pursue my ideals, I was treated like an interloper. I have never married, because the women of my class would be miserable in my world, and yet the women I now associate with have never given me so much as a second look. I will die without issue, without anyone to leave my legacy to.”

“Why don’t you look on the brighter side of things, Sir Stanley?”

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What is that?”

“At least there will be nobody left behind to suffer the ignominy of your name once the truth of your treachery becomes known.”

Gray was an old man, and he moved like one. Jo saw his hand coming and could have lessened the impact of the blow, but she relished the pain almost as much as she relished the look of horror that spasmed across his face at his brutal response.

“Good God! I—I cannot believe I did that. I am sorry,” he said dazedly, staring at his hand as if he had never seen it before. “Never in my life have I struck a woman.”

“I’m sure that killing a woman is much more honorable.”

His head whipped up, and he stared at her with loathing and disbelief. “You have a viper’s tongue for a woman bound to a chair. A smart woman would be trying to appease and please her captor.”

“Why? Are you saying that you aren’t going to kill me? That you will let me go free if I speak the right words?”

“It was actually my plan to send you somewhere nobody would listen to anything you said, my lady.”

Jo snorted. “Oh, transportation. And that’s not as good as a death sentence for a woman?”

“I’m sure somebody with your skills would always end up surviving.”

“My skills will hardly save me from starvation or disease in the hold of a transport ship.”

He smirked. “Into every life a little rain must fall, my dear.”

“You think my life has been luxurious and easy, Sir Stanley? Thanks to your treasonous actions, both my parents’ deaths were likely hastened by running from persecution in the wilds of America. My only caretaker for most of my life had to move from place to place like a hunted animal, always looking over his shoulder—running until the very last day of his life for a crime he did. Not. Commit.” Jo was so furious she could barely force the last words out. She jerked her arms against her bindings hard enough to make the wooden chair creak, and Gray flinched back and then flushed at his fearful reaction.

“You had better kill me now, Sir Stanley, because if you don’t, it will be my life’s goal to hunt you down and slowly carve you into small pieces.”

His eyes narrowed, and he smiled in a way that chilled her. “You obviously care nothing for your own life, but perhaps you might try cooperating to save your lover’s?”

His threat caused a sickening lurch in her belly.

Gray smiled and nodded at whatever he saw on her face. “Yes, I can see you take my meaning. I’d hoped to take the last book without any of this . . . nastiness, but wherever you’ve hidden it, not even my best men have been able to locate it.”

“There is no book. You saw the ones my grandfather sent, and I gave the others that Mungo had to Morrison.”