Page 59 of A Duke Changes Everything
To hell with Enderley. Every impulse told him to take her, seduce her, use whatever charms he possessed to keep her. He needed to leave Sussex and never look on this gloomy heap again.
He would not tread near the story of how he’d been shoved inside the tower and feared he’d never escape.
“Don’t ask me to tell that tale.” He turned back to her, but he couldn’t look into her eyes. “If any of this is real”—he waved a hand between them and wished he was close enough to touch her one more time—“then never ask me that question again.”
She said no more, and a rush of relief loosened the knot in his stomach. Perhaps she understood, or at least accepted that this was a history he could never divulge. Then she looked up at him, a glistening line of tears streaking down her cheek.
“Did he... lock you in? Your father?”
He hadn’t meant to show her anything, but something in his face, his gaze, must have given the answer away. Whatever masks he’d mastered in business matters, they didn’t work with Mina.
“Why would he do such a thing?”
That answer was easy. “Tremayne hated me. He believed rumors that my mother was unfaithful. In his twisted mind, they became true. He said he’d make me pay for her betrayal.”
Her hands came up, clutched over her mouth. She looked as if she might wretch. Then her eyes ballooned. “That day I saw you,” she whispered. “The day the carriage came to take you away. That’s why you never came back.”
Nick’s throat went dry. His heart burned in his chest. His skin felt as tight and useless as old parchment. One more word and he feared he’d tear in two.
She wouldn’t stop. She was too impulsive, too bloody bullheaded. She’d storm straight toward the empty gaping darkness inside him. She wasn’t afraid. The lady was unhesitating. She was going to march right in and poke her finger in the bloody, aching wound.
“Nicholas, where did the carriage take you?”
“To hell, where I belonged, according to my father.” Nick gritted his teeth and rushed over the words. Despite how much he hated returning to those wretched memories, he found himself telling her. “I cried like the weak little fool I was. Wouldn’t even look out the window for fear my mother would notice my tears.”
He could see the blasted carriage in his mind’s eye, hear the gravel crunch under its wheels. The black hulking beast of a brougham waiting to take him away from Mama. But he’d been happy to leave his father’s vitriol behind, and that’s what finally propelled him onto the single carriage step.
He’d never admitted to anyone that he’d cried as he settled on those velvet squabs. Half his emotions had been relief. Boarding school, he’d thought, would free him from his father’s wrath.
“I don’t know who he was, the man who took me. Not the usual coachman. He was a behemoth who reeked of onions and ale.” The vehicle had jerked forward and he’d slammed against the bench, praying the journey wouldn’t take long. “The carriage stopped minutes after we departed. The man wrenched open the door and snatched me up.” Nick swallowed back a rush of bile. “He locked his hand over my face so tightly, I couldn’t breathe.”
Mina said nothing, but a little cry of distress escaped.
“Did you know that hell is up, not below? Up, up, up we went. The stones cut my knees when he dropped me in the room. I barely had a moment to look around before the door was locked behind me.” God, he’d been hungry in the beginning. “No one returned for three days. Then a tray was slid inside. Gruel. Tea.”
“How long?”
“Months.”
Mina let out an agonized moan. He felt it echo inside him, but he couldn’t make a sound. Even when she came to him and wrapped her soft body against his, he couldn’t respond as he longed to.
His muscles wouldn’t work. His tongue wouldn’t work. His heart wouldn’t work.
Mina pulled back to look at him, tears brimming in her eyes. “How did you get out? Why did no one know you were there?”
Nick drew the pad of his thumb across her cheek. “My mother thought I was at boarding school. She even visited the headmaster when all her letters to me went unanswered. She confronted my father when she returned. Wilder helped her, helped both of us, to escape.”
“I’m sorry.” She wept, little hiccuping tears, and held him. Lending him her warmth, her comfort, her goodness. But it was as if a wall separated them. He couldn’t feel her. Even as impulses rushed through him—to taste her, to push her against the hedge, strip off her trousers, and sink inside her lush body.
Urges raged, but he couldn’t feel the emotions connected to any of them. Suddenly, he was empty. As useless as his father always claimed.
And now Mina pitied him. Now she knew he wasn’t the business maven gamblers feared. He was a pathetic wretch who’d been his father’s prisoner.
“I don’t want your pity.”
“What about my sympathy?” She gripped the front of his shirt and lifted onto her toes. “What about this?” Her mouth touched his, an urgent press of need and heat.
Nick willed himself not to respond. To pull away. “You should go, Miss Thorne.”
