Page 101 of The Captive Duke
Or her heart.
“St. Just, you will pour me a drink while I light the lady up to her chamber.”
St. Just, the wretch, merely offered her a good-night bow.
Christian waited until they’d reached the first landing to start his interrogation, though of course a simple question would have been too direct.
“You look tired, Gillian, but then you did not sleep well last night.”
“Perhaps I’d better remain in my own bed tonight.”
The words were out, unplanned, but she didn’t want him to be the one to make the awkward excuses. Her disclosures had changed things, allowed doubts and despairs to break free that she’d spent months walling up, brick by brick.
“Do you forget somebody has tried three times to kill you?” Christian moved along at her side, his voice holding a thread of steel.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Gilly said. “I’ve concluded it was merely a batch of meadow tea gone wrong. Somebody thought they were picking mint and pulled up a noxious weed. And as for the other, wheels come loose, leather breaks.”
“Meadow tea is not served in my household above stairs,” Christian said with painful gentleness. “And it did not taste like meadow tea. That was a strong black tea, the household blend, Gilly, sweetened no doubt to cover the taste of poison.”
She’d known he’d say that, but hearing the words put her anxiety that much closer to out of control. At least in Greendale’s household, she’d known exactly who her enemy was, and that his malevolence had predated her marriage to him.
“I would ask you to use my bed,” he said, “and have done with this farce we endure nightly, carting you about from room to room, but you will not oblige me.”
“So you’ll let me have some solitude tonight?”
“You crave solitude?”
She craved him, and she craved an innocence so far lost to her, nothing would resurrect it. “I am tired.”
“Then, my love, you must find your bed.” He stopped outside her door, pushed it open, and peered in to see the candles and the fire had been lit. He stepped aside to let her pass then followed her in.
And that was a relief, that he’d still presume to that degree.
He sat on the bed while Gilly went to the vanity and began to take down her hair.
“No matter what I say to you right now,” he mused, “it won’t come out right.”
“Say it anyway,” she rejoined, using the mirror to appreciate the picture he made at ease on her bed. “You talk to me, remember?” And how she loved him for that.
He lounged back on his elbows, a great, lean, ducal beast of a man with far too much patience.
“You think things have changed between us because I know what a hell your marriage was, and you’re right: things have changed. I can’t view you the same way.”
She bent her head, as if to locate her brush, but all she really wanted was to hide her eyes and weep, for with his changed view, her own view of herself dimmed too.
“I never wanted you to know. I never wanted anybody to know. That was my one victory, you see.”
“You wanted to keep your silence, because you believe your experiences have disfigured you on the inside as Greendale tried to on the outside.”
Greendale had tried and succeeded.
Gilly stared at boar bristles and wood, the same hairbrush she’d taken with her from the schoolroom to her marriage, for Greendale begrudged her even so small a thing as a brush.
“I can’t stand the sight of a buggy whip or a riding crop, and can’t use them myself. I’m always nervous serving tea to guests, afraid somebody will be burned. I hate the smell of burning tobacco, and I can’t abide the thought of sleeping with the bedroom door unlocked.”
His expression in the shadows behind her was tired and thoughtful.
“Go to sleep,” he said. “You’ve trusted me with only the start of a very long list of transgressions Greendale perpetrated during your marriage. If St. Just were not here, I’d be brushing your hair, did you allow it, while you told me more of the abominations you’d rather not acknowledge.”
