The Unthinkable (22 page)

The room hadn’t changed much in the ten years since the earl’s death. Heavy furniture, plush dark fabrics, and endless shelves of leather-bound books lined the walls from floor to ceiling. A worn rug in deep colors with eastern designs covered the wooden floor. A decanter of brandy rested on the sideboard. Taking this as an invitation, Huntingdon helped himself to a generous pour.

He pulled the chair out from behind the desk and sat down to wait.

The irony of the place he’d chosen to have this conversation did not escape him. No doubt Hawk’s anger, like Genie’s, would be formidable.

Not that he blamed them.

Huntingdon wished there was another way. He reminded himself to focus on the ends and not the means. He’d gambled and won. He had her. He’d seen her hesitation when he mentioned Hawk. Genie would agree to marry him; it was just a matter of time.

If Genie had actually called his bluff, Huntingdon didn’t know what he would have done—whether he would have actually gone through with his threat to ruin her.

But he did know that he wouldn’t lose her. Not again.

He wanted her. Wanted her in a way he never had another woman.

His body still raged from that kiss. More than a kiss really. And moments away from being much more. No doubt after this latest disappointment his bollocks had turned a permanent shade of blue. He recalled the softness of her responsive lips beneath his, the feel of her silky skin under his palms, the weight of her breast in his palms, the honey taste of her tight nipple rolling between his tongue and teeth, and the sensuous press of her hips against his swollen cock. He shook his head to clear the vivid fantasy, raking his fingers through his hair in frustration. Cursing the semipermanent rise in his breeches, he adjusted himself as best he could when his body still demanded release.

For one sweet moment, he thought he’d had her. But something had made her hesitate, and it was enough to clear his mind. It was important that she realize that he’d changed. He didn’t want their joining to be like before—illicit and dishonorable. He owed her the honor of his name. He owed her the proper order of things: marriage
then
passion.

A short engagement would be the most that he could manage. Otherwise, he’d be forced to take matters into his own hands, so to speak. The constant state of arousal she left him in was interfering with his ability to concentrate on anything else.

He didn’t analyze his motives for marriage too deeply. It was time for him to take a wife. To have children. And he’d never wanted another woman the way that he wanted Genie. It was reason enough.

The door flew open with a crash.

Spitting the expected fire, Hawk stormed into the library, issuing an impressively creative string of colorful epithets. Huntingdon lifted his timepiece from the pocket in his waistcoat. Forty minutes. Not bad. Not even an hour had passed since he’d delivered his ultimatum to Genie.

“I should kill you.”

Huntingdon chuckled, but it was without amusement. Lazily, he held his crystal glass up to the light, slowly rotating it in his hand, observing the subtle play of candle light flickering off the amber liquid. After draining the contents in one deep gulp, he glanced back to his seething friend. “You could try.”

“I might succeed.”

Huntingdon shrugged indifferently. “You might.”

Hawk shook his head, disappointment etched across his features. “I honestly didn’t expect this of you, Fitz. She wouldn’t agree to marry you, so now you’ll force her to it? Issuing crude threats like the lowest blackguard?” Hawk banged his hands down on the desk in front of Huntingdon with enough force to make his empty glass rattle. “You don’t know what you do. You don’t know how she’ll hate you for forcing her.” Hawk stared at him intently, his expression losing some of its anger. “I beg of you, as a friend, don’t do this.”

Uncomfortable with Hawk’s earnestness where he’d expected only anger, Huntingdon ignored the sudden shiver of trepidation that shot up his spine. “It’s already done.”

“I could do the same, you know. Bring ruin down upon your heads if you go through with this.”

“But you won’t.” It was not a question. Huntingdon knew his friend too well. Hawk was noble to the bone—even if it meant he would lose something important. That was where they differed.

“No,” Hawk murmured, clearly disgusted with himself. “But it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s not too late to walk away.”

“Yes, it is.” He wouldn’t lose her again.

“Why?”

Huntingdon didn’t answer.

“Do you love her?” Hawk persisted.

“I did.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

Huntingdon stared at him mutely. Not really sure himself.

A glimpse of understanding appeared in Hawk’s eye. He laughed dryly. “You’re a fool. You’re seeking some kind of atonement, but don’t you realize if you do this you’ll never find it? You’re going to do what you should have done five years ago, and you think that magically the past will be corrected? It sounds more to me like you’re repeating your past mistakes by taking what you want, without any thought as to the consequences.”

Huntingdon had heard enough. Hawk would never understand. “I will make it up to her. You won’t change my mind; I’ve made my decision.”

“There are things you do not understand,” Hawk warned. “Things that might interfere with your plans for a cabinet post. Things that could destroy your position in society.”

Huntingdon’s expression darkened, annoyed at being kept in the dark about Genie’s mysterious past. “I’m getting tired of hearing the same refrain from you and Genie. Why don’t you tell me what it is I don’t understand? She said that I should ask you where you found her.”

Startled, Hawk stood from his bent position over the desk. “She said that?”

Huntingdon nodded. There was clearly something wrong here and a twinge of uncertainty niggled at him. Exactly what was the mystery he was seeking to unlock? He had a strong premonition that it might be something he didn’t want to know.

Hawk paced the room. Abruptly he stopped and spun around to face him. “Can’t you just leave it be?”

“No.”

“I want your word that you’ll never speak of this.”

“Don’t insult me.”

Hawk considered him for a moment, obviously debating whether to believe him or not, seemingly forgetting that they’d been friends for years.

“Very well,” Hawk agreed, albeit reluctantly. “I don’t know how to begin.” Hawk pulled a chair out and sat down. But he kept repositioning himself, unable to get comfortable. “I searched most of Boston as you asked, with no luck. I visited many of the leading drawing rooms of Boston society, numerous employment agencies, theaters, workhouses, markets.” He paused. “Every respectable place I could think of with no sign of her. No one had ever heard of Miss Eugenia Prescott and given your description of her, I figured that she was not one easy to forget. I nearly gave up. I didn’t know where else to look.”

As he spoke, Huntingdon started to feel vaguely uneasy, until the pit of dread that had settled in his stomach snowballed. Something in Hawk’s face made him guess what was coming next. His gut twisted and the blood drained from his face. That ball of dread, so dark and twisted, rose, lodging in his throat. He could barely get the word out. “Except…?”

Hawk nodded, confirming a nightmare. “Except those places that are not so respectable.” Hawk took a deep breath and met Huntingdon’s agonized gaze with one of his own. “I scoured the waterfront and…” Hawk stopped and met his gaze squarely. “I finally found her in one of Boston’s finest brothels.”

“No!” he cried, though his voice barely broke above a whisper. Huntingdon’s mind reeled. The world shifted. Everything he knew about good and bad, right and wrong, gone in an instant.

The innocent young girl he’d once loved had sold herself like a… He couldn’t get the word out. A terrible blackness of rage, pain, and disillusionment washed over him. Stunned didn’t even begin to describe how he felt.

Hawk continued to explain, but Huntingdon put his head in his hands, not sure he wanted to hear anymore. “It was only by chance that I found her at all. I’d asked around most of the houses of ill repute, but no one had heard of anyone matching your description. Finally, at one of the last stops on my list, one of the women overheard my questions and brought me to the room of a young girl who was very ill. I swear to you at the time I didn’t know it was Genie. She was using a different name. Her appearance had changed drastically from your description. She was half-starved.” He stopped and met Huntingdon’s blank stare with true sympathy. “She’d been badly beaten.”

Huntingdon flinched.

“The ladies of the house nursed her cuts and bruises as best they could, but her spirit was crushed. For a long time, even after her injuries had healed, I didn’t think she was going to live. She’d lost the will of it.” Hawk studied him. “You have to understand. My heart broke to see a young girl—any girl—so brutally treated. I didn’t care who she was, I had to help her. I think I fell a little in love with her from the first time I saw her lying in that bed. She was like a little broken bird, so fragile, in such despair.” Hawk’s jaw hardened and took on a defiant tilt. “I would have done anything for her.”

“But how?” Huntingdon asked incredulously. “How did she end up in a place like that? My mother sent her away with a small fortune.”

Hawk’s expression turned cold and accusing. “After she lost the child Genie became very ill. While incapacitated, the maid your mother so graciously provided stole her money, fleeing the ship as soon as they docked. Genie arrived in America ill, destitute, and alone.”

Huntingdon felt ill. Bile soured his mouth. His mind was spinning in thousands of directions. He wanted to lash out. To find answers that would explain the unexplainable. He’d wanted to know what she was hiding, but he’d never imagined anything like this.

“But as for how she ended up there,” Hawk shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. I’ve never asked her the details. I know that she worked as a governess, but that it became impossible for her to continue. I have my suspicions about why.”

But to sell herself in a brothel? There had to have been another choice.
Anything
other than that. How could she have…? His stomach rolled.

He clenched his teeth together, holding back the bile. “Who beat her?”

“She never told me. Believe me, I did my best to find out. I was most eager to take care of the matter.” Hawk gazed at him meaningfully. Huntingdon understood how “the matter” would have been handled. He felt the same way now—like he could kill the bastard. “But Genie said she didn’t know.”

Another horrible thought crossed his mind. He leveled a long look at Hawk. “Did you…?”

Hawk’s eyes blared with fury. He drew himself up stiffly, every inch the honorable English gentleman. “No.”

Huntingdon knew he spoke the truth. Hawk would never take advantage of a damsel in distress. He, on the other hand…

As if he knew what Huntingdon was thinking, Hawk explained. “She was hardly in any condition for that. It was many months before she’d recuperated enough for loving, and by then I knew I wanted her as my wife.”

“But before you found her. Did she… had she?”

“I don’t know.”
And I don’t care
. Huntingdon heard the unspoken censure. “Does it really matter?” Hawk asked.

Yes, unfortunately, it did. He was not as generous a man as Hawk.

Hawk must have read the answer on his face. He shook his head. “She was right then to tell you. You’ll not force a marriage upon her now. I assume this means you will step aside.”

Huntingdon put up his hand. “Not so fast. I’ll hear the story from Genie first. Go. Rejoin your guests. I’ll be along directly.”

He needed to compose himself. To give his shock and anger time to abate. Edmund looked like he wanted to say something more, but deciding against it, left Huntingdon to his thoughts.

Suffocating in the small room heavy with emotion, he strode to the window. Fumbling with the latch, he managed to finally force it open. A cool breeze washed over him. He planted his hands on the wide sill and leaned out into the darkness, filling his lungs with long, deep breaths. The crisp air cooled the heat of his anger, but the twinkling stars seemed to taunt him with their celestial beauty. With their very purity.

Could he take a woman as his wife who had sold herself?

For the life of him, he didn’t know. His reaction to Hawk’s kiss had been visceral, extreme. What would the knowledge of her lying with another man, or God forbid, multiple men, do? Could he wipe the image from his mind?

What had driven her to such perdition?

Even if Genie had come to be in the brothel innocently—a hope that he clung to—if society found out she’d spent time in a house of ill repute, she’d be ruined. And he along with her. He hadn’t thought a scandal would matter, but then he’d never imagined something like this.

A brothel. God in heaven, how had it happened?

At times like this, Genie thought morosely, the obligations imposed by society seemed particularly onerous. Rather than taking refuge in the cathartic solitude of her bedchamber as she wished to do, she laughed and danced as if she did not have a care in the world. As if everything she’d fought to achieve did not hang in the balance.

Looking at her, no one would ever know how dangerously close to the edge she hovered. How just one push might send her catapulting into darkness. She flirted harmlessly with her latest dance partner, a man old enough to be her father, executed the intricate dance steps with casual precision, and tried to keep her gaze from flickering back and forth to the entry. Her mouth ached from the effort to force a gay smile across her face. A smile that she hoped would mask the worry, and perhaps fear, clouding her eyes.

Edmund had been gone for some time now. At any minute…

Her dance partner stared at her expectantly.

He’d said something and she hadn’t been listening.

“I’m sorry, Lord Chester.” She swayed a little. “I feel a bit light-headed.”

His weathered brow wrinkled with immediate concern, forgetting his unanswered question. “Allow me to find you a chair, my dear.”