Page 39 of A Rogue's Rules for Seduction
She got to her feet, and her legs were far stronger beneath her than she would’ve expected.
“I’m going out,” she said to Isla.
“What in God’s name are they doing?” Willa asked from the shore. A group of four men, including Kieran, Gilbert, Viscount Marwood, and Baron Hunsdon, had piled themselves into a rowboat and were beating their oars against the waves as their small vessel lifted up and down on the surf. They were yelling indiscernible things to each other and to anyone on dry land who bothered to listen.
The others, including Mr. Longbridge, Finn, Tabitha, Celeste, and Lady Marwood, promenaded along the water’s edge, occasionally shouting encouragement to the would-be seafarers. Dom stood on his own, watching the scene from the beach, his arms folded across his chest, and shook his head. No doubt wondering at the foolish pursuits of the gentility.
“Enacting the siege of Troy,” Miss Steele said beside her.
“Good Lord.” Willa shook her head. There really was no defensible position for aristocrats’ pastimes.
“I’m coming for you, fair Helen!” Kieran bellowed to Celeste, who waved a scarf overhead.
“Are they trying to land or are they taking to the open waters?” Willa asked.
Miss Steele shrugged. “I don’t thinkthey’vedetermined that, yet.” She cautiously eyed Willa. “You seem to have recovered from this morning’s indulgences. But then, I’d expect no less.”
Willa tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
“At school,” the other woman explained after a pause, keeping her gaze fixed on the men in their pitching boat. “The rest of us were always struggling to stay on the right side of Miss Beckford’s rules. You didn’t even attempt to appease the old dragon. Flew right in the face of her statutes and regulations—but every time she’d punish you, you came roaring back. Nothing bothered you. So, it stands to reason that a few too many glasses of wine wouldn’t hinder you.”
“I see,” Willa murmured. She did her best not to remember those years at school, full of terror and shame and attempts to mold her into the kind of young lady her parents and Society demanded her to be.
“Do you know,” Miss Steele said with a self-deprecating laugh, “how in awe of you I was? I daresay you... well...”
“Go on,” Willa urged.
The other woman grimaced. “Youterrifiedme. Perhaps because you truly didn’t seem to care what punishment Miss Beckford threw at you. And it seems you werealwaysbeing punished.”
“Obedience and I were never on speaking terms.” Yet she turned to Miss Steele with a troubled frown. “I didn’t know I was so frightening.”
“The fault’s mine,” Miss Steele replied, sheepish. “I was so dreadfully homesick for India, and my amma. Once you found me in the closet, crying. You told me to dry my face and stand up—but I just couldn’t. I felt so ashamed of myself for not being as strong as you.”
“My God.” Willa’s eyes suddenly burned. “What an utter shrew I was to you.”
“That’s not the word I would’ve used,” the young woman answered softly.
“I can think of others,” Willa muttered, “that are far more crude and just as appropriate. The truth is...” She swallowed. “I wasn’t nearly as strong as I pretended to be, and to insist thatyou, a meregirl, far from home... to demand that you somehow swallow down your pain and pretend that it didn’t affect you...”
Turning to Miss Steele, she said urgently, “That was wrong of me. Very wrong. And I’m so terribly sorry that I wasn’t there to give you the comfort you needed. I can’t excuse my behavior. Only... I didn’t... Idon’thave much experience being consoled, or anyone to tell me it was all right to cry.”
Miss Steele’s eyes went wide. “Then, if you don’t mind me saying,I’mterribly sorry.”
Though Willa tried to laugh, it wasn’t a successful effort. “If I was as bloody tough as I’d claimed to be, I wouldn’t have run away from school so much.”
“Youdidseem to do that quite a lot.”
Learning how to forage had become a necessity, since Willa’s appearance at a villager’s home or at a farmhouse, asking for food, would’ve caused the residents to notify the school. Yet invariably she was found and dragged back, and punished all over again for her transgressions. She’d been beaten, denied food, locked in her room on freezing cold days with no fire and no blankets, permitted to wear only her shift.
When she’d been fourteen, she’d actually made it all the way back to London, back to her parents’ house. They’d been horrified, naturally, by her appearance on their doorstep. She’d been bedraggled, exhausted, undernourished. Despite her desperate plea to remain at home, they’d returned her to the school. Well, they themselves hadn’t done it. They’d hired someone, andthat manhad hauled her to Miss Beckford’s.
From then on, whenever Willa had run away, she’d picked other destinations. Bath. Brighton. Cheltenham. Anywhere she thought she might beable to disappear. Her brothers had been at university, so they hadn’t known until much later that she’d made several escape attempts from boarding school.
It hadn’t mattered, though. Perhaps driven by fear of the earl and countess’s anger if she truly did vanish, the school’s administration always made sure she was found and brought back.
Come to think of it—it made sense that after Dom had jilted her, she’d run away again. In that case, she’d fled to the Continent. But then, just as in her girlhood, her escape attempts hadn’t helped. She’d been trapped in one way or another.
“I wasn’t... a veryhappyperson back then,” she said slowly. The sudden realization was a painful one, the way in which a child’s body ached as it grew. “And I’m afraid I turned most of my unhappiness on the other girls at school. Including you.”
