Page 96 of The Captive Duke
“Was it your father? You said he was stern.”
She shook her head, crying audibly now, the sound terrible and raw.
“Tell me.” He gathered her close, his hands tracing the disfigured patterns on her flesh. “Please, love, you must say who did this.”
“My husband. My husband did this to me.”
Christian’s hands stilled on her back, and Gilly wished she could retrieve the words. For years, she’d held her head up on the strength of the knowledge that her situation had been between her and Greendale only. The servants had likely guessed—Gilly had needed some time to learn to fight Greendale in silence—but they hadn’tknown.
Her parents had known, but they’d chosen denial as the better course, leaving her at the age of seventeen in the hands of a monster.
Helene had suspected, and welcomed Gilly as a frequent visitor in recent years as a result, but Helene hadn’t known either, not for a certainty.
“Stay here.” Christian’s arms dropped away, and he grabbed up his dressing gown and left the room. In his absence, Gilly found her night rail and donned it over the ruined nightgown.
Would she ever see this bedroom again? Duchesses were not an old man’s widowed whipping post.
As minutes ticked by, it occurred to her she didn’t have to do as Christian said.
Not ever, because he wasn’t to become her husband, and yet, she sat exactly where he’d left her.
When Christian returned, he carried a large tray.
“Come,” he said, setting the tray down on a low table. He dragged two chairs close to the fire and stood behind one, his expression unreadable. “We shall talk, Gillian, Lady Greendale. You shall talk to me, and I shall listen.”
Lady Greendale. Even hearing her title hurt. “Why?”
“Because you didn’t even have bloody, bedamned, tame, fucking mice.”
Whatever she’d expected him to say, it wasn’t that. She crossed the room as much on her dignity as she could manage and took the indicated chair.
He took the other, poured for them both, and added cream and sugar to hers.
“Drink it. Don’t just hold it and expect you can wait me out.” His expression was so fierce, Gilly did as he said, and to her surprise, the tea was good.
Strong and bracing, like the man giving her such a broody perusal.
“He was doting at first,” she said, without intending to say anything, “or as doting as a pompous old man can be. I did not know what to expect on my wedding night, except for my mother’s admonition that if I submitted quietly, it would be over quickly, and it would hurt only the first time.”
He clearly didn’t like what he heard; neither did he interrupt her.
“It hurt rather a lot, and I cried and begged him to stop. He slapped me for it. Repeatedly.” She paused and took a sip of her tea, wanting to recite rather than remember. “I did not at first comprehend what he was about.”
“Your pain and humiliation aroused him.”
Six words, but they were so astonishingly accurate Gilly left off staring at her tea.
“Yes. I did not understand on my wedding night, and not for a long while thereafter, but he couldn’t…he couldn’t finish, and when I cried, and he could become violent, it allowed him to achieve…to reach…”
“To spend.”
“Yes, to spend inside my body, or in his own hand. If that happened, he’d beat me for it, say I caused him to waste his seed.”
“And you put up with this for eight years?”
“The last few years he wasn’t as apt to try,” she said. “I think the ignominy of not being able to perform even when he raised his hand to me overcame the pleasure he took from the beatings. And he was never…he wasn’t like you.”
Dark brows drew down fiercely. “In what regard?”
