She strove to maintain an impervious façade. To preserve the veneer of her composure.
“He got on top of me. He was heavy, suffocating,”—panic fissured, too close to the surface, and she fought to keep her voice from cracking—“and I couldn’t really tell what was happening. He fumbled about, and for an instant, I felt stretching… down there. But I don’t know if it was his fingers… or his, um, you-know-what. But then he started cursing, saying this had never happened to him before, and it was all my fault—”
To her horror, her voice broke, her vision fracturing into liquid fragments.
An instant later, the glass was removed from her grasp. Male strength engulfed her, and she buried her head into the comfort. Into the sanctuary that was Andrew.
“It’s all right. You don’t have to say any more.”
“I haven’t told this to anyone—I’m so ashamed,” she whispered into his waistcoat. “I don’t know why I thought I could talk about it with you.”
“Because you can, sunshine. You can tell me anything.”
“Do you… hate me?”
“No, love. Never.”
Soothed by the immediacy of his reply and his spicy, familiar scent, she sniffled. “I’ve made such a fool of myself. When you didn’t want me, I got so angry that I went after Daltry.”
“It was never a question of wanting. You know that now, don’t you?”
“So the times you refused me,” she said haltingly, “you truly did it to protect me?”
“Yes.” His eyes told her this was the truth. “You want respectability; I can’t give you that.”
His honesty gave her the courage to make her own confession.
“I don’t deserve respectability. The only reason men have shown any interest in me is because I’m pretty on the outside. But inside,” she said in a small voice, “I’m frivolous and scheming. Wicked through and through.”
A sound rumbled beneath her ear. He was… laughing at her? When she’d just confessed her greatest flaw?
Wounded, she struggled to get away. “It’snotamusing.”
He kept her caged against him with one arm. Tipped her chin up with his other hand. “It is, actually. Imagine a little thing like you calling yourself wicked.”
“Iamwicked,” she insisted. “I’m a flirt, and I eloped with a man I didn’t even like.”
“Why did you? Elope with Daltry, I mean.”
“Because I’m shallow and flighty,” she said hollowly. “I wanted to be the Countess of Daltry.”
“Because it would make you rich?”
“No. I mean, money is nice, but I have everything I need from Mama and Papa. I didn’t marry Daltry for that reason. What I want is the title—the position. I want to be calledmy lady, to be welcomed in the upper echelons, to have thetonacknowledge that I belong,” she said with a touch of defiance. “See how awful I am?”
“No.” He rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip, making her shiver. “I don’t.”
“You must be blind then,” she said decisively.
Crinkles appeared around his eyes. “My vision is quite acute. In fact, I see you more clearly than you see yourself. And I know what you really want.”
An arrogant statement, no doubt. Yet she couldn’t help but ask, “What do you think I want?”
“To be free of fear.” His knuckles skimmed along her cheekbone, his touch as mesmerizing as his words. “You’ve been running for so long, haven’t you, sweetheart?”
His words resonated like music in a cathedral. Pure, soaring in their accuracy. Suddenly, she realized shewasafraid—had been all her life. Images flashed: walking on shaky legs down that dark dock to where Sir Coyner waited, holding her mama at gunpoint; waiting by the window whenever Papa was late coming home from work, her small hands clenching the sill; hearing Mama’s moans of pain during Sophie’s birth…
A dark undertow sucked at her, threatening to pull her under.
