If she did not follow her uncle’s advice, she could end up as that woman - alone, with no protector and no means of earning an income to support herself. Her uncle’s bitterness and selfishness had already swollen like a boil about to burst, and it was at a point where it would squeeze her out of his home and his life. Soon, he was for Brighton with Peregrine to partake of late summer’s season of balls, house parties and sea bathing.
Grace let the tears come again, for her, for William and all he could have been. For once in her life, she was utterly without hope.
Chapter Thirteen
Rawden woke to a pounding, like a horse and carriage thundering through his brain. He groaned aloud, disturbing the woman sleeping beside him. The redhead stirred and squinted up at him in the half-light of dawn trickling in through the threadbare curtains. The sheet fell from her curvaceous body, revealing ample breasts and pale amber nipples standing proud in the morning’s chill. Rawden vaguely remembered burying his head between them for comfort and wanting to sob himself to sleep with his manhood still inside her the night before.
He groaned again. God, how much ale had he downed last night? Too much, for his temples pounded like a drumbeat, and his stomach roiled. He dearly hoped he had not shamed himself by a quivering show of weakness as his grief had come upon him like an unstoppable wave of agony.
He jerked when cold fingers circled his manhood and grasped him tightly. ‘Ready again, Sir? You so tireless and so hard and strong, like a bull.’ Her bad English irritated him for no good reason. The whore’s other hand stroked his chest hair as she kissed his cheek. He smelled cheap perfume, sex and stale sheets.
Rawden threw himself out of bed, rushed to the fireplace and vomited.
‘That not polite,’ wailed the whore, followed by some expletives which Rawden was at a loss to translate.
‘Nothing we did to each other last night was even vaguely in the realm of polite, woman,’ snapped Rawden with unnecessary harshness.
‘Que? You not like, but I still want pay!’ she continued.
‘What the devil is going on?’ The voice came from the depths of a curtained, four-poster bed on the other side of the room. Hardy emerged and scratched his head, bleary-eyed and yawning. He was followed by a brunette who frowned and snuggled against his back.
‘What is amiss that you would wake me at dawn with all this shrieking?’ said his friend.
‘Nothing. Go back to sleep, Hardy.’
The whore started hurling a torrent of Belgian insults at Rawden. She had been all seduction and smiles last night, and by the alchemy of candlelight and far too much ale, he had almost imagined her soft and pretty. But her cries of pleasure and cooed words of affection were bought and paid for and meant nothing. Worse still, his efforts to drown his feelings in pleasure and oblivion had failed miserably. In this cold dawn, he was still the pitiful wretch he had been last night, and she had turned to a harpy whose voice grated on his nerves.
Hardy approached her, shushing and holding out his hands. ‘Come into my bed, little dove, if you are cold. Viens ici,’ he continued, and the whore scuttled out of Rawden’s bed and disappeared behind the curtains with an acid look in his direction.
‘See that she is paid, would you? I will pay you back,’ sighed Rawden.
‘Why. Where are you going?’
‘Outside. I need air, and after that, I hope to drink myself into an early grave.’
Hardy took him by the shoulders. His grey eyes, lilac-shadowed from a night of debauch, looked solemn. ‘This must stop, Rawden. Drowning in self-pity will not help. It is time we went home.’
‘Why? Are we not content here? Are you not enjoying yourself?’
‘After a fashion, for I have always been a hedonistic devil, indolent and irresponsible. We all need a way to forget, and I never give too much mind to the past or the future, whereas you.…’
‘I have no future.’
‘That is not true. You must rally, Rawden, and we must return to England and leave the dead behind. Life has to be faced, as does your promise. It is what Will would have wanted.’
Rawden stared into his friend’s eyes and tried to claw his way out of his anger and hopelessness, for Hardy’s concern on his behalf pained him deeply. What could he say?‘I failed Will, and I will fail him again. I regret my promise to a dying man, and even if I did not, how can I honour it when I am broken inside, and life holds no meaning or hope anymore?'
‘We have talked of this, Hardy, and I told you to let it lie,’ said Rawden.
‘Rawden, a promise is a promise.’
‘That woman duped Will into proposing. I had heard nothing of it. If he was in earnest, he would have told me. Will was fooled into thinking he was in love.’
‘As you are fooling yourself now that his dying wish meant nothing. He thought of this woman at his end, Rawden, when he was in agony. He was in love with her. You should at least….’
‘Enough,’ snarled Rawden, making his head pulse with pain.
A sharp knock on the door had them both frowning. Rawden rushed to open it and found a soldier there. He could not have been more than eighteen, and his adam’s apple bobbed violently in his throat as he held out a letter in shaking hands. Rawden was shamefully aware that his bad-tempered reputation must have preceded him.
