Gabby climbed out of bed and picked up her night rail from the floor. In the heat of anger, she had lost all self-consciousness.

“You are beautiful, Gabby.” His voice was hoarse.

She looked at him composedly. Then she pulled the night rail over her head. “I will never be able to trust you again, and no marriage could be successful in those circumstances.” There was a bitter edge in the way she repeated his words.

“They—your lie was different,” Quill said, rather desperately. “You might have killed me with that potion of yours.”

“And you might have broken my heart,” Gabby answered politely. “After all, I thought myself in love with Peter. But you didn’t give a damn about me, did you? I was just an awkward, plump heiress whom your father dredged up somewhere. I gather I should count myself grateful that I wasn’t simply jilted and sent back to India. After all, unlike Peter, you didn’t need my money.”

Quill searched for an answer. “I don’t see that you showed much concern for me when you gave me a deadly potion.”

“The potion is not harmful in small doses,” Gabby repeated. “Would you like to see for yourself?” As he watched, she opened a drawer and pulled out a tiny brown bottle. “I gave you precisely half of this small bottle. There is not enough poison here to harm anyone.”

“I doubt that,” Quill said, his guilt sharpening his tone. “How many times has Sudhakar administered this medicine? Hundreds?”

“No.”

“How many times?”

“Twice,” Gabby admitted.

“So based on the fact that two people were not injured by Sudhakar’s dose of poison, you decided I was an appropriate candidate for the third experiment?”

Gabby could feel hysteria rising in her throat. “Oh, what right have you to be so angry?” she cried. “You are cured! We made love and you didn’t have a migraine afterward. Now you can make love to those concubines you talked of—go ahead! I cured you!”

“I am angry because my wife showed a reckless disregard for my well-being. You know, I received a letter from your father warning me that you had so-called ‘nefarious plans for my life.’”

Her stomach clenched into an instant knot. “You have been corresponding with my father?”

“He wrote me a few letters.”

She tried to match his careless tone. “Oh? What did he say? And why didn’t you mention the letters to me?”

“I thought he was out of his mind. The way he described you—”

“I’m certain I can fill in the adjectives,” Gabby said coolly. “I had no idea you were sharing confidences with my father.”

“Perhaps I should have paid more attention to his warnings,” Quill said, his voice dangerously quiet.