The Study of Seduction: Sinful Suitors 2 (29 page)

“That’s appalling! How dared he believe those wretches over your mother?” At least Niall had realized the truth about what had happened to
her
, had never doubted her word for one moment.

When he didn’t say anything more, she eyed him warily. “You . . . you didn’t come to agree with your father when you were older, did you? Blame your mother for . . . for . . .”

“Of course not,” he bit out. “I might have been a child, but I could tell that she didn’t want what that bastard was trying to do, even if Father was too stupid to realize it. My father broke her heart. I could see the pain in her eyes whenever he was cold to her, hear her crying at night when she thought no one knew. And as the years went by, I could see her grow
hardened by it.”

His expression was troubled. “She died without him at her side, because the man who’d claimed to marry her for love blamed her for that bastard’s attack. It’s why Father was never around, why his jaunts to London got longer and longer.”

“Oh, Edwin, I’m so sorry. What a terrible thing to have to hold inside you. Is that why you’ve always been so strict with Yvette about what women should and shouldn’t do—”

“Yes. Because I know that some men will use any excuse to justify hurting a woman.” He locked his gaze with hers. “Better that women curtail their freedoms than end up broken and battered and betrayed.”

“Better that men just stop hurting women,” she countered fiercely. “Better that people stop allowing it, condoning it, excusing it.”

That brought him up short. “Yes. You’re right. That
would
be the best alternative. Sadly, we don’t live in such a world.” He approached her with a serious expression. “But I think you know that already.”

Oh, Lord, the time had come. She had to tell him. Glancing away, she murmured, “Yes.”

A shuddering breath escaped him. “Some man hurt you, scared you so badly that you’ve had trouble being touched intimately ever since.”

He spoke the words so gently that it made tears clog her throat. “Yes.”

Coming up next to her, he cupped her cheek. “He tried to do to you what that son-of-a-bitch tried to do to my mother.”

Unable to bear his sympathy, which she didn’t quite
trust, she pulled away and turned her back to him. “He didn’t
try.
” Lord, but it was hard to say. Especially to Edwin. “He succeeded.”

The long silence behind her made her wince. Then he let out his breath in a whoosh. “Are you saying that some man—”

“I’m saying I’m a ruined woman. That years ago, a suitor of mine got me off alone and . . . took my innocence.” Now that the words were spilling out of her, she couldn’t seem to stop them. “That’s why I—as you put it—shy from you. It’s why my nightmares, which I fought so hard to extinguish, erupted again recently.”

She could feel his stare boring into her back. “That’s why I . . . didn’t want to marry you or anyone else.” Bitterness crept into her voice despite her attempts to quash it. “Because I didn’t want to spend my life like your mother—wed to a man who despised me because I ‘let’ some scoundrel assault me.”

“
Let
? No woman chooses that,” Edwin said softly, determined to banish the bitterness from her voice. “And I do not despise you. I could never despise you.”

Her shoulders shook violently, but when she spoke again, her tone was still harsh. “Perhaps you misunderstood me. I’m not chaste. I have lain with another man.”

“I understood you. I simply don’t give a damn.”

It was true, oddly enough. Even as a boy, he hadn’t understood the idea of being possessive of another person. Slavery was outlawed in England; people should belong to themselves and no one else. No matter what the law said, it had never made sense to him that women should be chattel.

And after his father’s betrayal of his mother, he understood it even less. Love was supposed to mean accepting and trusting the object of one’s affections over all others, wasn’t it? Instead, it seemed a sort of license to mistreat someone.

So no, he didn’t care that she was unchaste. But
that didn’t mean he didn’t care how it had occurred, and a thousand feelings were roaring through him. Frustration that she’d felt she couldn’t tell him this before. Relief that it wasn’t he in particular who frightened her. Fury that some bastard had hurt her.

Horror that she’d lived with this weight on her soul for years.

Years? How could that be?

“When did it happen?” he asked. He needed information so he could help her. Given the anger and belligerence in her tone, he could easily say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing. And any misstep, like a bell lightly struck, could reverberate down their future for a very long time. “How long ago?”

“Seven years, give or take a month,” she clipped out. “During my debut.”

His heart constricted in his chest. What a terrible thing for a young woman to endure during the period that was supposed to be her triumphant entrance into society. “Who was the man?”

She stiffened. “Why do you want to know?”

“So I can kill him for hurting you.”

His hard words made her rigid shoulders relax a fraction. “You’re too late. My brother already did that.”

Bloody hell. “Niall?” Then he realized— “The duel. Oh, God, that’s what the duel was about.”

She nodded.

Suddenly a number of things fell into place. Why the circumstances of the duel had been kept so mysterious. Why Clarissa never spoke of it if she could avoid it. Why no one had seemed to know what woman the two parties had fought over.

But now Edwin knew who her attacker was. “The
Honorable Joseph Whiting. Damned bastard. No wonder Niall killed him.”

The vehemence in his voice made her whirl on him with a look of surprise. “You knew Mr. Whiting?”

“I did. Not well, but he happened to attend school with Samuel. He thought he was God’s gift to women. And as I recall, a number of women thought so, too, despite his reputation as a fortune hunter. He was a very handsome man with a glib tongue.”

Her lips tightened into a line. “Yes, he was. And I was a stupid, foolish girl who fell for his . . . smooth advances.”

The self-loathing in her voice pierced him. “You were barely eighteen, the kind of innocent whom men like Whiting prey on. He was older, more experienced, and a third son with a small allowance looking for a pretty heiress to marry.” He reached up to cup her cheek, relieved when she let him. “I daresay his attack was part of his plan to force you into marriage. Am I right? Do you even know?”

Taking his hand from her cheek, she gripped it in hers as if holding on for dear life. “You’re right. And ironically, that’s probably why the gossips have never heard of my . . . ruin.”

“How is that?”

She dropped her gaze to his chest. “The night that Mr. Whiting took my innocence, Niall came in upon us almost immediately after it happened. Mr. Whiting instantly offered to marry me, but Niall could see me lying there weeping and . . . bleeding and torn, so—”

“
Torn
?” Rage tore through him. “How badly? Where?”

She glanced up at him, clearly startled. “You know where. Down there. The way all women bleed and tear when they . . . do that.”

All women
? Oh, God. The situation might be more complex than he’d initially thought. What if she wasn’t frightened of being bedded, but of being
hurt
?

The thought made him want to punch something.

But he controlled his anger, lest she think it directed at
her
. He must let her finish her tale. Once he had all the facts, he could pursue understanding how badly she’d been “torn.”

“Go on, then,” he said, sandwiching her hand between both of his. “What did your brother do when Whiting offered to marry you?”

“Niall wouldn’t hear of it. In a fury, he challenged Mr. Whiting to a duel at dawn.” She swallowed convulsively. “Mr. Whiting accepted the challenge, but said Niall would come to his senses in the morning and would realize that marriage was my only choice. That if he didn’t, Mr. Whiting would happily shoot him and overcome any objection by the family.”

“Bastard.” It was getting harder by the minute to control his anger at her attacker. “That was a blackmail as bad as any Durand ever came up with.”

She nodded. “I’d almost think the count had learned his tricks from Mr. Whiting, except that they couldn’t have known each other. Count Durand had been in Paris with his family for years by then, and Mr. Whiting couldn’t even afford to go to Brighton, much less France.” She ducked her head. “I just . . . seem to attract men who won’t take no for an answer.”

“That’s absurd. You attract men with a penchant
for beautiful women, like me and all those pups who were flirting with you at the theater, and half the fellows in the world. You’ve merely run afoul of a couple of bad eggs.
Very
bad eggs, unfortunately.”

“At least Mr. Whiting’s brand of blackmail didn’t work,” she said. “Niall was a better shot than the scoundrel realized. So after he killed Mr. Whiting, he fled England.”

“That’s one thing I don’t understand. Public sympathy would have been on Niall’s side during any trial. He probably would have been acquitted. Rarely do they convict a peer of murder in the case of a duel of honor, especially when it involves a family member.”

With a squeeze of his hand, she pulled free to go over to the window. “I know. It wasn’t fear of hanging that prompted his exile. He fled England for
me
.”

The reason hit him like a hammer. “Because a trial would involve your telling the world what had happened.”

She nodded. “Papa and Mr. Whiting’s widowed mother agreed that neither family would be well served by having it come out that I was the reason for the duel. Apparently, Mr. Whiting had already told her that he was anticipating marrying me, so afterward, Papa had to convince her to say nothing about that in order to protect my identity. She agreed to comply, since she said she’d gone through this sort of . . . trouble with her son and young women before.”

“Like my father with Samuel.”

She nodded.

“But the seconds knew it involved you, surely.”

“No. Mr. Whiting didn’t tell them—he just said he and Niall were fighting over a woman.”

“I’m surprised. You’d think he would have bragged about his conquest to his friends beforehand.”

“Given what Mr. Whiting had told his mother, Papa assumed that at the time of the challenge, Mr. Whiting was still hoping to gain my hand and thus my fortune. Slandering his future wife wouldn’t have fit into his plans for eventually cutting a fine figure in society with an earl’s daughter on his arm. The morning of the duel, Mr. Whiting apparently just asked if Niall had changed his mind, and when Niall said no, they fought. And to everyone’s surprise, Niall won.”

“Thank God.”

“
No!
” She whirled to face him, tears welling in her eyes. “I mean, yes, I was glad Niall wasn’t killed, but I begged him not to fight in the first place. I told him to let Papa deal with it, but he wouldn’t listen. And when it was over and he and Papa agreed that Niall should flee to protect me, I . . . I begged him not to do that, either.”

“Why?”

“Because now he can never return! He won’t risk putting me through a trial. He and Papa kept the whole thing utterly quiet—from Warren, from the rest of the family, from everyone. They didn’t even tell Mama, for fear that she would let it slip. If she ever finds out that I was the cause of her son’s exile—”

“You were
not
the cause of Niall’s exile, blast it!” He strode up to seize her hands in his. “
Whiting
was. Your brother did a very noble thing by protecting you after the fact. And if I ever see him again, I will thank him for it.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I do. You feel guilty over something that wasn’t your fault.”

“But it
was
my fault, don’t you see?” Tears trickled down her cheeks. “If I hadn’t gone into the orangery with the Vile Seducer—”

“The ‘Vile Seducer’?”

“That’s what I’ve always called him in my head. I can’t think of him as a . . . as a person with a name.”

“That I can well understand,” he bit out. “Though you ought to call him the ‘Vile Rapist.’ Because that’s clearly what he was.”

“Was he?” Jerking her hands from his, she turned her back to him once more. “I went willingly with him. I let him kiss me—a lot. Like some tart, I let him put his hand on my breast.”

“You did all that with me, and every time you balked at going further, I retreated. Because that’s what a gentleman does—even with a woman who initially encouraged him. Even with his wife. A gentleman does not force a woman.
Ever.
”

As if she hadn’t even heard him, she went on in a harsh rasp, “I should have fought him harder. I protested when he began to lift my skirts, but I didn’t seriously struggle until he tore my clothes and held me down and . . . and pushed himself into me and—”

“Raped you,” Edwin said fiercely. The very idea of that
bastard
tearing her clothes and holding her down made him wish he could march into hell and kill the man all over again. Bare-handed. “It’s clearly a rape to me. And it clearly was to Niall, too. And your late father.”

With a shake of her head, she wrapped her arms
about her waist. “I’m not so sure. A-after it happened, they could barely even look at me. Father never chided me, but I—I’m sure that he blamed me.”

“If he did, then he was wrong. But I doubt that he did. The Lord Margrave
I
knew would never have blamed you. He was as different from my father as I am from Samuel. He was a man of character, and if he didn’t look at you, it’s because he couldn’t stand to see you hurting. Couldn’t stand the fact that he wasn’t there to protect you.”

Desperate to make her see, he came up behind her and pulled her back against him. “
I
can’t stand the fact that I wasn’t there to protect you, and I didn’t even know any of this was going on.”

She was crying now, though he could only tell because of the hitch in her breathing.

He held her as close as he dared, as close as she’d let him. “I’ve seen how you react to a man crowding you in, and being on top of you, sweetheart. I heard you scream after your nightmare. If that isn’t the behavior of a woman who was raped, I don’t know what is. I only wish I hadn’t assumed that your balking was due to your dislike of me. Perhaps then I would have recognized it before.”