His heart began to race as she guided his fingertips to her back, just above her waist. There, he found the knot of her stays; it could be nothing else.
I should have locked the door. Anyone might walk in.
With surprisingly steady hands, he managed to unravel the tight knot and let his hand slide up the crossed laces to tease apart the two sides. He felt the quickening of her breath, and longed to slip his arm around her, to pull her against him… but, instead, he stepped away. Keeping his promise.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
“It was my pleasure,” he replied stiffly.
In the ensuing quiet, he listened to the rustles and susurrations of her dressing, imagining the fall of the fabric over her body, the relief she must have felt to be dry again.
“Henry?”
“Hmm?”
“You know when you said that you married me to help,” she said unexpectedly. “What did you mean by that?”
“It means what it means,” he replied, resisting the urge to open his eyes. Surely, she was clothed by now? “I married you to help you.”
“But why? Why make your life more difficult? Why… waste so much of your fortune, your income, when you did not have to?” she pressed.
In the darkness of his own making, he felt as if she would keep him there with his eyes closed until he told her the truth of it. He could not risk opening them too early and breaking his promise, but nor could he stay there all day.
Why not tell her? Does she not deserve to know?The trouble was, he did not want her to feel like charity. As such, he would have to be very careful, or very vague, with his explanation.
“Because of my father,” he said simply.
“What do you mean?”
He puffed out a breath. “If we are to have this conversation, can I open my eyes?”
“Yes,” she said, somewhat shyly.
Hesitant, he cracked open an eye… and opened the other as he found her seated on a chair by the garden door, fully clothed once more. Save for her lack of shoes.
“My father was a man of excess,” Henry began. “In every aspect of his life, he wanted everything he could get: he bought the most expensive things, he went to the finest events, he commissionedthe finest painters and sculptors and tailors; he kept a lot of mistresses.”
Thalia paled. “Oh…”
“Gambling, drinking, and women; they were his favorite things,” Henry continued. “But he was fiendishly intelligent, and he knew how to make those things work in his favor, too. He got rich from other people’s losses, other people’s vices. My inherited fortune, immense as it is, was built upon lies and deceit and the ruination of others.
“I am still the owner of one of his former establishments, and I keep it to remind myself of the kind of man my father was, so I never become like him. But I needed a wife to tip the scales of that endeavor back to good repute, so when I overheard your father in my gentlemen’s club, lamenting his debts, I investigated. When I discovered the true severity of your family’s situation, and that you were unwed, I made an offer of marriage. A chance for you to escape the reckless men of your family, as I escaped mine.”
She stared at him, wide-eyed. “You own a gentlemen’s club?”
“It wasmore of a gambling den when my father was alive. Not anymore. Now, it is… moderately well-respected and very well attended,” he replied with a smile.
She rested her head against her hand, puffing out a breath of disbelief. “What of your mother?”
“An angel, who died when I was rather young,” he said, his throat tightening. “I am glad she did not have to endure him for long, but I am sad that she had to endure him at all.”
Her forehead furrowed. “I am sorry, Henry.”
“That is why I found it so… ridiculous when you thought that having two children in two years meant that my parents were in love.” He shrugged away his discomfort. “All my father wanted was more sons, as quickly as possible. He got his heir and his spare and then cast her aside. Although, I have no doubt that he must have multitudes of illegitimate children out there in the world.”
Just the thought of his father made his blood boil, all those years of acting like a scoundrel, neglecting the sons he had put Henry’s mother through such torment for.
“I never wish to be anything like him,” Henry said, his lip curling. “I loathed him.”
