The Gentleman Who Loved Me (Heart of Enquiry Book 6)(95)

“You think that high-kick chit is better than me?” Kitty scoffed.

“I know she is.”

“She’s a bastard,” Kitty spat, “same as you and me.”

“She’s a lady, and it has nothing to do with her birth. It’s something you’ll never understand. Now get out,” he said in glacial tones. “If you breathe word of this, if I see you again—you will regret it.”

Fear darkened her eyes—then again, she’d always been a coward. She’d bullied and used those weaker than her. She’d called it survival, but in truth she was nothing more than a predator.

She headed for the doorway, where she, being who she was, couldn’t resist a parting shot. “What lady would want a pimp for a husband?” she sneered before flouncing off.

It wasn’t Kitty’s words that stayed with him but Primrose’s.

You disgust me. I never want to see you again.

A spasm hit his chest. I don’t blame you, sunshine.

Going to his bedside table, he opened the drawer. The rag doll looked out at him with lifeless eyes. He sank onto the mattress, his elbows bracing his thighs, and dropped his head into his hands.





Chapter Thirty-Eight


In her old bedchamber, Rosie opened the cabinet that contained her dolls. She’d left them here when she’d moved into Curzon Street; at the time, she’d thought of it as a symbolic letting go of her childhood. Now she found herself holding Calliope once more, looking at the doll’s composed porcelain face, her fingers curling into the folds of the doll’s perfect ballgown.

“Why did he lie to me?” she whispered.

Calliope stared back at her blankly.

“I don’t understand it. I thought Andrew loved me—he said he did,” she said, her throat swelling. “Why would he go to such lengths to protect me, only to betray me in the end?”

She’d been asking herself that question for the past two days. Well, that wasn’t precisely true. The day after Kitty’s shocking revelations Rosie had spent weeping. She’d cried and cried and cried. When her parents and even Edward had come to check in on her, she’d told them, “Go away.” She hadn’t been ready to talk; the last thing her misery wanted was company.

That had been yesterday. Today, she felt as dry as bone. But now that her emotions were sapped, fresh questions whirled in her mind.

Why did Andrew lie to me about Kitty?

Now that she was calmer, she had to admit that he hadn’t lied, not exactly. His sin had been one of omission. He simply hadn’t told her when he’d ended things with Kitty, and, to be fair, she hadn’t asked. She’d just assumed that it had been longer than two years.

As her belly churned, she tried to think rationally. Two years were two years. It was not as if he’d been unfaithful to her…. then why did she feel as if he had?

It was because of Kitty. The cold, calculating bitch who had sold her to a disgusting lecher.

Rosie’s fingers clenched the doll’s satin skirts. Why hadn’t Andrew fought to save her back then? Why had he abandoned her to those monsters?

With a cry of rage, she threw the doll across the room. She watched, bosom heaving, as it flew through the air and smashed against a wall, pieces scattering on the ground.

Slowly, she went over. She crouched and picked up the largest piece—the doll’s face: still white, still pretty, still composed. She turned it over in her palm, and her breath jammed at the discovery.

The inside of the figurine wasn’t white, pretty, or composed. Here, the unglazed clay was dark and rough. Before being hardened by fire, the pliable material had been deeply scored, slashed with random marks.

All this time... her beautiful companion had been scarred on the inside.

Scarred on the inside.

Scars on the inside.

Out of nowhere, memories pelted her.

I thought you came to me because of what I used to do, and I didn’t like that…. She didn’t sell me. It was my choice. I wanted to put food on our table and fucking was an easier way to do it than thieving or running with cutthroats…. We all have to be good at something, and I’m a good pimp.... No one has ever given me what you have—passion, sweetness, joy. I don’t deserve it, but you make me feel like a different man.

Awareness prickled through her like sensation through an awakening limb.

“Rosie, are you all right?” Mama entered in a swish of forest green velvet, a sleeping Sophie in her arms. “I thought I heard something…” Her gaze went to the fragments on the floor.

Rosie stood, swallowing thickly. “I think I broke something, Mama. And I—I’m not sure how to fix it.”

“Are you ready to talk about it?” her mother said quietly.

“May I hold Sophie while we do?”

Cuddling her sleeping sister close, she sat next to her mama on the window seat and told the other about Kitty Barnes—about everything.

“I was so hurt, Mama, that I just ran away. I didn’t give Andrew a chance to explain,” she said miserably. “Now that I’ve had a chance to think, I suspect there’s more to the story than I realized. More to his story.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Mama murmured. “Given your own history, it’s no wonder you’d react that way. And I think you’re right about Corbett. He’s a complex fellow. I realized that when I met him all those years ago.”