Pamela?
“That’s indecorous. It’s got to be…what…” He squinted at the mantel clock and couldn’t make out a single goddamn number. “Morning?”
“It’s afternoon.” She licked his ear, and again the scent of onions washed over him, making his stomach clench. “Why don’t you take me upstairs and tie me to your bed? You can birch my naughty bum if you’d like. Punish me until I’m raw.”
No, he didn’t want this. Didn’t want her.
“Perdita,” he managed at last.
Yes, that was her name. She was lifting her skirts, placing his other hand on her knee. He closed his eyes as the room began to swirl. He was going to be ill. This wasn’t right. It was all wrong. He never should have left the cottage yesterday. Never should have left Rhiannon’s side. He could still hear her voice telling him those words he didn’t want to hear. The words he couldn’t bear.
I love you.
He opened his eyes again, and as if he had conjured her, there she was. Rhiannon standing in the doorway of his study, her blue eyes filled with tears and betrayal. Was she real or a chimera? Was he dreaming or awake?
“Aubrey,” she was saying. “What is happening?”
The room was swimming around him. Or he was swimming. Drowning. Drowning in her gaze, in the hurt he saw there, the confusion.
She couldn’t be here. He couldn’t be with her. He had taken her innocence, and if she let him, he would destroy her.
The woman in his lap was laughing, the sound husky and mocking. She shoved his hand higher so that it skimmed past her garter and he felt soft, smooth, womanly flesh, but it was all wrong, that skin. All wrong, that woman.
Rhiannon was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks. “What have you done?”
He forced himself to speak. “You will thank me later, minx.”
“Aubrey,” she said again, pleading.
“Can you not see Richford wants a woman and not a mere girl?” snapped the blonde in his lap as she pressed a kiss to his neck. “Go before your reputation is completely ruined.”
Rhiannon was shaking her head, backing away. He was losing her. It was what was right. What he wanted. He was no bloody good for her. He was the son of a madman. He was a danger to her, to himself, to everyone.
The door slammed closed, and Pamela was laughing again, only that wasn’t her name, and she had wrapped her arms around his neck, forcing his face to hers.
“Kiss me,” she said.
He couldn’t do it.
The blackness inside him, the awful, ugly, jagged shards he kept buried rose up. He saw blood. So much blood. On his hands, on his shirt, on the floor. Streaking his trousers. He saw the lifeless form draped in fine silk. The eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. He heard the report of the pistol firing.
Aubrey pushed the woman from his lap, setting her on his desk. The gin spilled. Glass broke. The walls swirled around him.
He rushed from the study, unsteady on his feet.
But it was too late.
Too late.
Rhiannon was gone.
His butler’s frowning face appeared before him. “Is Your Grace ill?”
“Yes, Wickett. I bloody well am.” He fell sideways into a wall and cast up his accounts into a potted plant. When he was finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “See my lady guest sent on her way, if you please.”
Still feeling sick, he dragged his miserable hide to his bedroom and bolted the door before he passed out in his bed just as he deserved to be, alone.
Utterly, damningly alone.
