When I’d confronted Priest about the letter that morning, he hadn’t made excuses or denied the adultery. He’d been too distraught to form words. More distraught, it seemed, about his paramour leaving him than about his wife discovering the affair.

Upon that realization, I’d lost my ever-loving mind, screaming, throwing dishes, and demanding answers. But he’d only sat there, dazed and speechless, drowning himself in a bottle of rum. He drank so much, in fact, he didn’t notice I’d left the room, boarded Jade, and fled Nassau without him. By the time he sobered, I was long gone.

To this day, the identity of his lover remained a mystery.

I suspected she was a titled lady of breeding, someone like my mother, who couldn’t live beyond her dowry, her role in high society, and her obligation to marry a lord.

As a wanted criminal and son of a prostitute, Priest Farrell didn’t stand a chance with a woman like that. He was lucky she’d given him her virtue. If that had even been the case. Maybe she was a widow.

“Who wrote the letter, Priest?” I reclined in the chair, draping a leg over the armrest in feigned indifference.

“I can’t give you that.” His fist curled, wadding the letter beneath it. “Don’t ask me again.”

He was still protecting her.

My molars ground together. “Does she know you had a wife?”

“Following our agreement, I’ve told no one about our marriage.”

“If you followed our agreement, you wouldn’t have rutted between every pair of legs in a skirt!”

“One person.” His gaze shot to mine, igniting with the same ire that roughened his Welsh accent. “Since the moment I met you three years ago, there’s only been you and one other.”

That couldn’t be true. Not that it mattered.

If I knew his lover’s identity, maybe I wouldn’t kill her. Perhaps I would just ruin her the same way my grandfather had ruined my mother.

Did that make me the villain?

Whomever this woman was, she loved Priest. Her letter said as much. And she’d met him before I had, which meant I was the other woman. A woman she didn’t know existed.

He didn’t just fuck her while he was married to me. He loved her, deeply and completely. That was the greatest, most destructive source of my torment.

I’d watched the devastation of his love bleed out around him the day she left him. He’d loved her long before he knew me and would’ve given her his life. But he wasn’t good enough for her.

So he married me.

His second choice.

A consolation prize.

“If it was aristocratic breeding you wanted in your bed…” I met his eyes. “My lineage isn’t lacking. My grandfather was an earl and—”