Forever My Love (Berkeley-Faulkner #2)(38)

“I suppose… there is a chance you would understand. I mean… you’ve probably done some unsavory things during your life—”

“—and enjoyed most of them quite shamelessly,” he added helpfully.

“I wonder what your motive’ for listening to my confession would be,” she mused, her tone gently acidic. “Is it that you’re bored? Would you like me to fill the few minutes before your supper with entertaining anecdotes of my sordid past?”

“As a matter of fact, yes… I would. It’s not that I don’t already have a few suspicions about the kind of trouble you might be in… I’d just like to hear your version of it.”

“You’re a fine one to judge me!”

“Oh, I’m not judging you,” he countered wryly. “As you pointed out, I’m the last person qualified for that. I’m merely offering to lend a sympathetic ear.”

Looking at him warily, Mira decided that confiding in him—a little bit—was not too great a risk. After all, there wasn’t much for her to lose. “I… I have to leave tonight,” she said, waiting for some sort of reaction from him and hearing none. “I mean leave, for good. I found out something today… I didn’t know about it before, but I can’t stay here now…you see… Rand Berkeley and his wife are arriving here tomorrow.”

“Berkeley,” Alec said emotionlessly, his gaze locked on her face. “You’ve made his acquaintance before, I gather?”

“Yes. I first met him in France.”

As he calculated what sort of connection Mira might have had to the Earl of Berkeley, a man universally acknowledged to be one of the most financially powerful and physically attractive men in England, Alec was not pleased with the most obvious answer. “Were you his mistress?” he asked sharply.

She was too annoyed by his blunt question to notice the jealousy that rang out in his voice. “No,” she replied stonily. “Believe what you like, but I have not… I don’t…” She sputtered to a halt and closed her mouth with a snap.

“Go on,” Alec said, impatiently drumming his fingers on his taut thigh. “Tell me about Berkeley.”

“He doesn’t know I’m here in England. When he knew me, my name… my name was Mireille Germain.”

“Mireille,” Alec repeated as if savoring the sound. He pronounced it differently from her; his easy drawl was miles away from her pert French syllables. “An attractive name. Why did you change it?”

“Because Mireille was a child who… wasn’t aware of the wrongs she did. She didn’t know enough to be ashamed of what she was.”

“But Mira does?”

“Yes.” She hid her face and began to weep again. Alec let her cry a minute or two, finding that it took incredible concentration to remain where he was instead of scooping her up and cuddling her close. He focused his attention on the puzzling questions, the mysteries about her. What kind of life had she led? What jumbled mixture of experiences had made her into a creature of such bewildering contradictions? She had the strength of a woman and the vulnerability of a child. Constantly he was torn between rampant desire and an alarming feeling of protectiveness toward her. In that moment Alec would have given a fortune for her to have been anything other than his best friend’s mistress. Why couldn’t she have been the daughter of a respectable family, untouched by any other man? Or a distant cousin, far removed enough to beeligible for his attentions, delicately raised and nurtured… or even the daughter of a merchant? He would have been free to court her in any of those instances, with no doubts and no obstacles in his way.

Mira’s tears subsided eventually, and she gathered herself together with a heaving sigh, entirely unaware of the thoughts that lurked in her companion’s mind.

“Did Berkeley hurt you?” Alec asked, his voice soft and chilling.

Mira shook her head, drawing the back of her hand across her damp eyelids. “He didn’t hurt me. Just the opposite. I hurt him and the woman that he loved. And he would never forgive or forget anyone who hurt Rosalie.”

“What in the hell did you do to them?”

“First you must understand about Guillaume, my brother. He had a great deal to do with it. The first time I saw him I was twelve. Our mother had just died, and she was…”

Mira stopped suddenly, realizing that she could not tell him. She looked into his alert gray eyes and realized that her every instinct called for her to keep the secret about her mother hidden from him. He would not understand; he and she were at the opposite ends of an impossibly wide spectrum, and the kind of life she had led was entirely foreign to him. Alec Falkner came from a background of wealth and prosperity. His rightful place was in a world of leisure time, opulence, a world of exquisite manners and carefully protected reputations. He had been educated at the best institutions, he wore expensive clothes, he rode only thoroughbred horses, he drank and ate of the finest fare, he associated with the most affluent people in England. He would be revolted by the knowledge that her mother had been a prostitute. After she told him, he would think of her as something unclean. He would no longer be attracted to her in any way… he would never want to touch her again.”Mira,” Alec said dryly, “don’t turn shy. To be indelicately frank, my expectations concerning your background have never been too high. What were you going to say about your mother?”