Page 65 of Project Duchess
He shook off the memory. This wasn’t abouthissuffering but Beatrice’s, which he genuinely wanted to understand. He said nothing, but simply laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.
“It started with him commenting on my clothing—whether it enhanced my breasts, whether it showed my . . . bottom to good effect.” As Grey swallowed his disgust, she left him to roam the kitchen like a caged sparrow seeking a way out of her prison. “Then he began . . . trying to kiss me on the lips, but I mostly managed to avoid that. He was, after all, a good bit older than I, so I was usually able to evade his . . . attentions.”
“You shouldn’t have had to.”
“No. But he was my uncle. He had me . . . under his thumb, so to speak.”
Other questions occurred to him. “Didn’t your grandmother try to put a stop to it?”
“I didn’t tell her.” She stared down at her hands. “Grandmama already thought me a ‘naughty saucebox,’ so I was afraid she would blamemefor what he did.”
“And that would have been wrong, too,” he said hoarsely.
Startled, she glanced up at him. “Do you truly think so?”
Her reaction made him want to weep, and he’d never wept in his life, even when Uncle Eustace had been at his worst. “His behavior was intolerable, sweetheart. And he forced you into hiding it by making you think that knowledge of it would wound his mother, your grandmother.”
“It would have,” she said with her usual bluntness.
“Perhaps. But from what the servants told me, his wife had known about his ‘dalliances.’ So your grandmother might already have known, too.”
She poured claret in a glass and set it by the plate. When he ignored it, she drank some herself. “The maids suffered much the same treatment as I, so she might have seen that. Though he was careful to keep his behavior towardmefrom being seen by anyone.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” he said softly. “One of the maids told me your uncle wasn’t ‘circumspect’ about his dalliances. And when I remarked that he surely hid them fromyou, she said, ‘A man like that don’t hide his true character from nobody.’ At the time I thought she meant he was open about his mistresses around you, but now I realize she meant that he . . . showed his true colors with you, as well.”
Shame suffused her cheeks with scarlet. “Oh, Lord, what the servants must have thought of me!”
Instantly, he regretted having roused that particular fear in her mind. “Theythought,and still think, that you are, and I quote, ‘a fine woman, always considering the needs of others without any reward.’ And I can’t be sure they knew, anyway. The maid didn’t say anything about that in particular.”
Her throat worked convulsively. “I never encouraged his behavior, you know.”
“I assumed that you didn’t.”
She stared down at the wineglass. “Yet you asked the servants about me. And him.”
“Not about the two of you together, for God’s sake. I had no idea . . . I never dreamed . . .” When he paused, thinking through his next response, she lifted a questing gaze to him.
He drew in a harsh breath. “After the maid said you were his hostess and he was a philanderer, I had some notion you might have seen things—” Damn, he was digging the hole deeper with every word. “You can’t blame me for wanting to learn more about what makes you who you are,” he finished feebly.
Her pretty eyebrow shot up. “Is that really why you asked about me? Or was it just to determine how easily you might tempt me into betraying my brother?”
Holy hell. She always got right to the point, didn’t she? “It’s not as if the servants would ever reveal such a thing to me. They’re loyal to you.”
Now he fervently wished he’d remembered that before he had come over here half-cocked. Because the scheming seductress he’d conjured up in his fevered imagination—between when he’d spoken to Sheridan and when he’d confronted her—bore no resemblance to the woman the staff at Armitage Hall had described. Or the woman he’d come to know himself.
Clearly,thatwoman had been caught in a cruel trap. And he was only making matters worse. “But we were talking about your grandmother and what she knew.”
“Right. And why I didn’t tell her.”
“It might have been better if you had. At least then she could have called your uncle out for it.” He wanted to take her in his arms, reassure her. But now he wasn’t sure how she’d regard such an act. “It wasn’t your responsibility to protect him.”
“Trust me, it was never about protectinghim.” She glanced away. “If you’re right and Grandmama did realize what he was up to, then it might not have made a difference if I’d told her, anyway,” she said glumly. “I was almost afraid to find out.”
He could understand that. And she might be right—it might not have made a difference. But that was neither here nor there. Beatrice should never have been abused in such a fashion in the first place. “Your brother was still gone, I take it.”
“He didn’t return until six years after my aunt died but shortly before Grandmama’s death.”
“Did matters improve once your uncle knew you had a protector nearby?”
