Page 97 of The Captive Duke
“He wasn’t…firm. He was soft, until he started whacking at me, and then he’d grow a little firmer, but not like you.” She took another sip of tea and dared glance at Christian again. “I never inspected him closely, if that’s what you’re wondering. I have no idea what his male parts looked like. I didn’t want to know.”
And yet, she was glad to know what Christian looked like, felt like, tasted like, smelled like.
“Bloody hell.” He scrubbed a hand over his face and turned a scowling regard on her. His hair was in disarray around his shoulders, his face dark with an inchoate beard, and she could not guess at his reaction. “Didn’t the servants hear you? He must have taken a riding crop to you.”
“A driving whip, usually, a riding crop sometimes. Greendale chose his moments for the servants’ half days, and the late nights when all were abed. He’d accost me at other times and ask me to speak to him privately.”
“He’d wake you up from a deep sleep when it pleased him to?”
She nodded, once. How could Christian know that?
“And he’d turn up sweet at odd times too,” Christian said, his grip on his teacup appearing perilously tight.“And you’d begin to hope, to think maybe the horror was behind you and things could be different.”
“Only for the first year or so.”
“Eight years.” He made the scrubbing motion with his hand again, as if something were getting in his eyes. Then his head came up, and he regarded her with a piercing, blue-eyed stare. “And the servants never heard you, not once?”
“They did not,” she said, finding her tea was finished. She set the cup on its saucer. “But they guessed. I could hardly move some days for the way he hurt me. He was full of casual tricks too. He’d accidentally step on my slipper when in his riding boots, then apologize for an old man’s clumsiness. He’d kiss my hand and beg my forgiveness.”
“I am going to be sick.” Christian glanced around the chamber, as if genuinely searching out the chamber pot; then his eyes came back to her. “Your hand, the little finger. Did he do that to you?”
“My hand?” She brought her left hand up, with the slightly crooked little finger. “I was playing my flute, and he took exception to the noise. Usually, he was careful not to risk injury where an evening gown might reveal it, but he took my hand and held it to the hearthstones, then started beating at it with his cane. He was particularly angry that time, and I wasn’t fast enough.”
“The tea? You didn’t spill it on yourself, did you?”
“He spilled it on me, and again apologized very prettily while the footmen looked on.”
Christian grew silent, his hand propped on his chin, and Gillian felt something inside her going cold with dread. And then when he did speak, his voice was very hard. “You blame yourself for what befell you.”
“Of course not.” She lifted the teacup to her lips, only to recall it was empty. “Of course I didn’t blame myself. I am not an imbecile.”
“You were seventeen, and your parents were powerless to help you, so they ignored what they’d done to you for the sake of gaining a title to boast of. By sacrificing you, they kept the familial coffers sufficiently lined that your cousin could snabble a tiara. Fromme. You were the only one who could have stopped your wedding to Greendale, and you didn’t.”
He spoke quietly, the same voice she’d heard from him when he was newly back from France, unable to take much sustenance and jumping at any loud noise.
“You are spouting nonsense, and it isn’t very nice of you, Christian. More tea, if you please.” She passed him the cup and saucer, hoping he’d ignore the way her hand shook.
He watched the cup and saucer trembling in her hand for a pointed moment, then fixed her a second cup.
“Then when it was obvious the marriage could not be undone,” he went on as if there’d been no pause, “you were the only one who could have orchestrated your own escape, and you failed to do that as well.”
“And what purpose would that have served?” shesaid, staring at her tea. “Anybody I sought aid from would have been bound to return me to Greendale’s care or suffer the King’s justice. My own father, my uncles, they would not help, Helene could not, Marcus could not, not openly. Greendale was careful to ensure I made no friends, and never allowed even the vicar to call on me privately. Greendale read my correspondence, controlled my money—”
She had to set the teacup down lest she shatter it, and the last thing, the very, very last thing she sought was to indulge in the violence her husband had delighted in.
“And still, you think you should have found a way,” Christian went on. “Passage to America, a life following the drum, a lady’s companion on some remote Scottish island. You never stopped blaming yourself, and belittling yourself, until you began to believe the things he said about you.”
She gave up wondering why Christian, of all people, would say such mean things to her, for he spoke only the truth. By the second year, her marriage had become precisely as he’d described it.
“I came to believe I wasn’t conceiving because I dreaded the prospect,” she said. “To imagine bringing a helpless child into that man’s household. The housekeeper was the one to tell me I was his fourth countess, every one of them as petite as I am, and they’d all despaired of having children too. Something my parents had carefully neglected to tell me.”
She made herself tell him the rest of it. “Thehousekeeper’s admission must have been overheard, for Greendale fired her without a character the next week.”
“So you stopped even looking for allies,” Christian said, staring at the fire. “You no longer even talked to the mice.”
What was he going on about with his blessed mice?
“I prayed for his death. I did not kill him.”
