Page 37 of His Mistress, His Muse, and Other Madness
Silence, as loud as a roaring river rushed between them.
He did not have to respond. They both knew the answer to her question.
She swallowed and tucked her feet beneath her skirt. She couldn’t stop there. “Even though they wondered—all of my instructors, you understand—about my relationship to your father, and why he supported me as he did, I never told them. Not a single one of them. Not because I’m ashamed, though I’m supposed to be, I know. But…” Heat flushed across her cheeks, and she cupped them to hide the blush, took a deep breath before continuing. “I did not tell them because I liked the idea that they might think me his daughter.” She winced. How mortifying. She’d been missing her own father terribly when the marquess had found her and saved her.
“If you had been his daughter,” Theo said, “he would have brought you home to Briarcliff. Had you been alone and in need…”
She risked looking up at him.
His eyes were softer than she’d ever seen them before. “I’m frankly surprised he did not bring you to Briarcliff, daughter or not.”
“Better to be in London and attempting to do something to earn my keep.” Did she truly believe that? London had been so very lonely, even with instructors marching in and out every day. The two remaining people who had professed to care for her—the marquess and his wife—had lived so far away, visited so seldom. She curled her toes and swept the questions away. “Though I admit… it has been a bit lonely at times.”
He grunted. “You? Lonely? Every time I step foot in that house, you’ve a circle of people around you, every room filled.” She liked to keep it that way, keep voices always echoing nearby so she did not have to remember how she belonged to no one, and no one to her. Not really. “You’re not telling all.” His jaw twitched. He’d grown impatient. “You’ve gone in circles round the real story. Your betrothed?”
“Simon Oakley. Four years ago. My father contracted the union at my request. And then… we anticipated the wedding night.” Best said without hesitation.
She waited for the reprimand to come, for him to storm out of the room. A man who lived to reveal others’ weaknesses and secrets… she should be running, hiding her secrets where he could never see, never draw them up to lay before greedy ton eyes. Not an option any longer. She held his gaze, daring him, showing him his judgment would not faze her.
He bounced off the bedpost, stalked toward her, and with a slight spin, sat next to her on the trunk. He braced his elbows on his knees and steepled his fingers together before him, hanging his head. His hair hid his eyes, and she could not see what truths his face might hold.
“And then?” he asked.
And then. Such simple words, a gentle request. No judgment or name calling. No haughtiness or abandonment. Just simple human curiosity.
She breathed deep, letting the air fill her lungs, letting his two words—and then—guide her forward.
“And then my father died,” she said with a shaky exhale, “and Simon wanted nothing more to do with me.”
Theo’s knuckles turned white as his steepled fingers wove together to make a praying fist. “Why?”
“My father had many connections, but no heir. The title died with him. And I learned that Simon had wanted more to be the Earl of Crossly’s son-in-law than Lady Cordelia’s husband. Simon wanted connections to the ton. Young and promising painters with little money and no connections of their own must start somewhere. He’d thought marriage to an earl’s daughter a miracle, a blessing. But marriage to an orphan with no living family… a burden.”
Theo cursed and shook out his hands.
She continued. “When an alliance with me could no longer provide him with what he wanted, needed, he did not wish for the alliance.”
“And how does my father fit into this?”
“Your father supported Simon, who prided in telling me—and anyone who would listen—that Lord Waneborough had called him a ‘rising genius.’ It was all a happy coincidence, really. The day Simon told me he would not marry me, your father happened to visit. He found me sitting outside Simon’s front door, crying.” There’s where the shame rushed in. She’d been so weak, so alone and helpless. “He asked what ailed me, and when I told him… I wasn’t really thinking. I just poured all my troubles out to him. I should not have, I know. I expected nothing from it. But after I did, your father marched into the house, and a quarter hour later, marched right out again, picked me up, and told me that everything he’d promised Simon as his new patron was now mine. The two hundred a year, the house… what was meant to support a rising talent in the art world was wasted on talentless me. I suppose your father thought it fitting retribution.”
The sinewy hands resting on Theo’s thighs bunched into fists. “Let me see if I understand this correctly.” She held her breath. Here it came. The censure. The lecture. The venomous disapproval. “Simon Oakley slept with you.” She nodded. “Then your father died.” She nodded. “And then Simon Oakley abandoned you?”
She didn’t nod this time. She ducked her head to hide her tears. Silly things. Silly her. She had not cried over this in years. “You see,” she said, speaking into her shoulder, “I am, in the end, the perfect woman to bring to this house party. Fallen quite thoroughly. All the way down. The only reason every bone in my body is not broken from the fall, the only reason I do not currently work in a brothel or as a pampered mistress in the demimonde, is because your father saved me. At the risk of his own reputation, really. I understand why you hate him. I think if I’d had a father so careless with our blessings, I, too, would wear a scowl as you do.”
“Ifyou’d had a careless father?” He stood slowly and glared down at her. “What about your dowry? Where were the close friends to look after you? Did he truly leave you so unprotected?”
She swallowed, bit her lip to rival the pain of the truth in her heart. “He had a solicitor.”
“Why didn’t you turn to him? I assume no one knew you’d laid with your betrothed.”
The frustration, loneliness, despair from four years ago welled up within her as if it were new. She jumped to her feet. “Have you ever felt desperation? I have! My lover had thrown me out. My father dead. No family to speak of. Simon told me everyone knew I’d ruined myself, said he’d told many and no one would want me. And”—she began pacing—“I was a naïve girl. A fool perhaps, but I believed him. Have four years taught me the truth, taught me he is a lying scoundrel not fit to hold a woman’s heart? Yes, but I can still feel that girl in here.” She stopped before him and pounded a fist to her chest. “And she wasso scared. And there before her, like a good fairy, stood a kind man promising to do her no harm. Should I have thought of the solicitor? Oh, yes, of course. Absolutely.” Her words were crisp and practical and could not even begin to hold back disdain cut through with burning pain.
Silence, then he said, “He ruined you.” No need to say whohewas. His father.
“He didn’t mean to, Theo. And I am as much at fault as he was, as I’ve so recently explained. I have done as best I could in the intervening years to educate myself, to arm myself so I do not fall prey to young artists and philanthropic marquesses. Do not pity me.”
“I don’t. But I blame him—both of them—whatever you might say. Does this Mr. Oakley yet live?”
