Jennifer Horseman by GnomeWonderland

tightly, accenting the fear and shame with painfully lowered eyes. He drained the glass and leaned his weight on his long arms, studying her intently. "Your father's name?"
    "Charles Princely ... he was French. . . ."
    "Princely? French?" Garrett's derision came as an unkind sneer, as if growing bored of these questions. He sat on a chair, setting his long legs on the table top. He picked up a piece of fruit, an apple from the fruit bowl, and began carving it. "If you really exist my lovely 'Juliet,' why did my agents find no trace or word of you?"
    She looked up at him, her eyes speaking of her confusion, as if she hadn't expected the question. "I don't know. My uncle kept me from society—"
    "And why would he do that? The shame again?"
    "I said he ... hated my mother and me," she spoke in a soft whisper, filled with trepidation and uncertainty. "You must see by the way he called me ... Clarissa when he knew, he knew you would kill me and not Clarissa herself! She gave me your brother's ring—"
    "Ah, yes, the ring. Let's do hear how you explain that."
    Distress marked her face and manner as she tried now to explain the ring. "Last night she came to my room. She made a ... a speech about becoming friends after all these long years, about how she was sorry and how the ring, the ring was to be a symbol of a new beginning — "
    "Or end, as the case may be. Tell me, love, why did these people—your own blood relatives —hate you enough to want you dead?"
    "I don't know," she cried. "I don't know. . . . I've never known—"
    "You don't know why your relatives wanted you dead?"
    She shook her head. "He was cruel since the very first day I arrived at his house after my mother's death. He always referred to my mother in the most vile terms, yet he never said why . . . exactly. I could only guess that he sought to punish my mother through me."
    "Punish a dead woman, now that's clever," he said after a contemplative pause. "You were identified, you know. Why would your maid do that?"
    The question distressed her more and she struggled for a moment before saying: "I don't know that, either. She was Clarissa's maid and I knew Missy never cared for me but ... I shouldn't have imagined she'd do that."
    "Yet she did," he said indifferently now, and he rang a bell connected by wire to one outside. "Look at me, love, I need to see those eyes."
    Startled, she looked up, but only briefly, for the way he stared at her sent a rush of apprehension through her. She bit her lip hard and clasped her hands together, wringing them, searching for one thing, anything, that could convince him. What more could she say? How unlikely her life sounded! She could hardly blame him for doubting it, unless—
    Unless, dear God, unless the very unlikeliness lent it credibility . . .
    Garrett measured each lie she uttered against the contradiction in those eyes. He had Leif s own gift for recognizing deceit, and her story seemed as likely as a snowfall in Egypt. He could only assume that the ridiculousness of her lies were the result of her fear, which must be great indeed, for she did not seem witless enough to otherwise imagine he—indeed anyone—could believe them.
    Gayle promptly answered the call, his gaze taking in the situation at a glance. The lovely girl's clothes were still on and she was still breathing, two miracles, considering . . . Yet Garrett had threatened her, that was plain, and the hopelessness of her fate left her trembling with fear, a fear he could taste even if it wasn't so plain in those enormous eyes. For the first time in his life, he, like Leif, found himself doubting Garrett's judgement.
    Garrett's gaze never left her. "Gayle, who searched the girl's house? Heart, was it? Pax?"
    "Aye."
    "Send one of them in here."
    Gayle left as quietly as he entered.
    Juliet held herself tightly to contain the mounting horror of this day, a horror not over yet, one in fact that might have only begun. The whole day began to take on an unreal,