“You sacrificed your engagement,” he said. “You’re responsible for your own unhappiness.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Kirkland snapped. “I have lived with that regret for the past three years—two of those with a spendthrift harpy of a wife, whose company I could not stand for longer than a handful of minutes. I might’ve suffered her the rest of my life had she not done me the courtesy of breaking her neck in a riding accident.” He made a harsh sound in his throat. “I should have felt something other than relief when she died, but she had killed any tender feeling I ever had for her. I did what was required and spent a year in mourning, but the very moment that year was through I returned to London.”
The man was utterly serious. He was cognizant of what he had lost through his own carelessness, and jubilant at the thought that Jillian had remained unwed. He viewed this opportunity as a second chance at the happiness he had lost. If Jilly retained any feeling for him, he might even win her—and that would mean the ruination of James’ plans for her.
“You had your chance, Kirkland,” he said. “She is not for you. Not any longer. She deserves better.” That, unfortunately, was true. She deserved better than either of them. Kirkland was a man of dubious honor, but James had no honor at all.
“I love her,” Kirkland reiterated. “Can you say the same?”
Of course he could not. He was not fool enough to fall in love with a woman he intended to seduce and discard. “What I feel for her is none of your concern,” James said. “Just as Jilly is none of your concern. If you attempt to approach her, if you contact her in any way, I will make certain that you regret it.”
It was not an idle threat, and he watched Kirkland swallow thickly, watched the tendons in the man’s neck grow taut as if his cravat had begun to strangle him. “I only want her happiness,” Kirkland said. “I can make her happy—she was happy before.”
“If you believe she has remained unwed due to some misguided devotion to you,” James snarled, “allow me to disabuse you of that notion. She has no inclination to marry at all. You destroyed that desire in her. Your careless disregard robbed an innocent woman of any bit of faith in humanity she might once have possessed. If you think I will allow you to make yourself known to her again, you are mistaken. I will destroy you first.”
The depth of the fury in his voice surprised even him. He wanted to smash his fist straight through Kirkland’s face, punish him having made a wreck out of a woman like Jilly, for scheming to insert himself back into her life after having destroyed it so utterly. It made absolutely no sense given his own plans for her. Even if he had betrayed her, Kirkland loved her.