The Study of Seduction (Sinful Suitors, #2)(75)

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.”





Twenty


“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.”