Page 37 of To Tame the Wild Rake
“Whatever has been done to you in the past,” he said with care, “you are deserving of every honour.”
She shook her head, looking at the hands in her lap, twisting the brandy grass, round and round, and her voice was a thread above a whisper. “It is worse than ruination, Aldridge. Much worse.”
“It was not your fault, Cherry. Dammit, you were asleep!”
She looked up, then, a tear trembling in the corner of one eye. “Do you know, then? I used to wonder if he told you, since you were his friend, but then you never treated me as anything less than a lady, so I supposed he had not. It would have shamed him, of course, as well as me.”
Aldridge cast what caution was left to the wind. “It was Elfingham, wasn’t it? Your brother?” Her nod was tiny, and she avoided his eyes again. Aldridge hastened to add, “He said he took a lady unawares. Someone who was not who he thought it was. Even deep in his cups, he never mentioned the name or where it happened. It was years before I guessed the rest.”
She was shrinking in on herself, hunching her shoulders against expected abuse. He blundered on, hoping he’d stumble across the right words. “I knew something had happened after that summer we met. At some point between then and two years later, when you were out in Society, you stopped trusting. You had learned to stiffen when you were touched. Your joy had died.”
He knelt at her feet and took the glass from her, putting it to one side. With her hands in his, he continued, “Cherry, I guessed someone had betrayed you, because I’ve known women who were betrayed.” He had come close to it himself, as a heedless boy, seducing those who thought he’d promised more than he intended. To be fair, he’d never taken anyone against their will; never, as Elfingham had described, come upon a girl sleeping in a garden folly and forced himself upon her without even waiting for her to wake, without discovering who she was until it was too late.
“You didn’t make your debut the year after we met as planned. You were sick, they said, but then you didn’t appear the following year, either. Because you were in mourning, I told myself, but your brother did not die until the middle of the Season.”
She gasped a deep shuddering breath at that, and the pain of it flayed his lacerated heart, but he could not make his words unsaid so he kept going. “It took me a while to put all the pieces together.” He kept rejecting his conclusion. He hadn’t wanted—still didn’t want—to believe it.
“I would not have spoken now, except that you sound as if you blame yourself; as if you think Elfingham’s behaviour was your fault. It wasn’t, Cherry. It was entirely his.”
“Elfingham said I was a wanton to be alone where he could come upon me in the dusk. Father and Grandfather blamed me entirely, for the… the incident. And for Elfingham’s death.”
Elfingham had always been reckless, but after raping his sister he grew even more careless. The stupid accident that killed him had been just the latest in a series of increasingly dangerous escapades. Suicide by curricle, and a team of good horses with him. The other driver had been grievously injured, as well. The boy had been drunk, of course. He’d never been sober.
“You should have been safe in your own garden, and with your own family,” Aldridge told Charlotte.
“That is not what they said,” she replied.
Aldridge wished he could dig Elfingham up and resurrect him, in order to kill him, slowly. Charlotte had more courage and grace in her little fingertip than her brother, father, and grandfather combined. Elfingham had ruined her life, and her father and grandfather had made things worse.
“So, you see,” Charlotte said, returning to her point, “you need not worry about ruining me.” She slipped one hand out of his grasp and laid it against his cheek, her gaze not leaving his. “Indeed, I have a theorem, Anthony. I think you can, at least in part,unruin me. You have noticed how nervous I am with men? It is not that I am afraid, or not exactly. I know that I am safe when other people are around, but I have bad memories.” She was in lecture mode, now, the teacher in her determined to explain things clearly. “The touch and sound of men, their smell, if I might be so coarse—they bring back those memories. Except you. You are the only man I could bear to give myself to. I know you can be trusted, Anthony, not just in my mind but in my heart. If you will bed me, I hope to make new, pleasant memories.”
Her hopeful smile trembled on her lips. How could he refuse when her eyes were so uncertain, when she braced herself for rejection? What she said seemed logical, but was that true? Or just what he wanted to believe?
He mirrored her action, cupping her face with his hand. “If I agree to this, it is not because you are ruined, or in any way deserving of less honour than any other lady we know.”
Her smile broadened. “Do you mean it? I have the whole night, Anthony. My family think I am staying the night with Jessica. We can…” She shifted, so she could look towards the bedchamber that he had set up as an erotic playroom when he first moved into the heir’s wing as a very young man.
“Not there!”
The idea of taking her in that bed revolted him. He should have had the room redecorated and turned into a sitting room or a guest chamber years ago, when he first realised that his casual encounters left him feeling empty and dissatisfied.
She tensed at his sharp tone, and he softened his voice. “That isn’t where I sleep, Cherry. It is—it was—my place for entertaining women. But you are not just any woman. You are my Cherry, and I would be grateful if you allowed me to make memories with you in my own bed.” Where the painting he had commissioned of the Rose of Frampton no longer watched over his sleep. He had moved it to the playroom three years ago, before he last proposed to Lady Charlotte.
“Yes,” Charlotte said. “Yes, please, Aldridge.”
He was overwhelmed by a surge of emotions. She would join him in his bed. He could hardly believe he had agreed; part of him could hardly wait.
Perhaps resolving the internal struggle had freed his intellect a little, for a new plan surfaced in his mind. “One night will probably not be enough, Cherry. I will do my best to ensure you enjoy it, but you have lived with bad memories for a long time. A week of good memories would be better.” A lifetime of good memories, if a week in his bed persuaded her to give him a chance.
She trusted him, she said—enough to ask him for this scandalous service. If it was fear of intimacy that kept her from marriage, perhaps a week with him would change her mind. And if she feared the impact should her scandal become known, he had arguments for that, as well.
“A week?” She sounded intrigued, and not dismissive.
“I have a cottage,” he said, inventing the plan as he disclosed it. “We would need to look after ourselves to ensure our privacy, but I can carry water and set fires, and a couple of hampers from Fourniers would mean we would not starve.”
“A week,” she said again, this time thoughtfully. “I will need a day or two to make the arrangements. But I may still stay tonight, may I not?”
Aldridge was unable to resist leaning forward to lay his lips upon hers, his mouth closed, just a tender promise of things to come. “Tonight, and then—shall we say in three days’ time? I will send a carriage to collect you?”
