Her gaze was searching. Many women would have taken such revelations and turned them into accusations. Or hidden them, not speaking of them at all, letting them fester in suspicion and secrecy. But not his Beatrice. Her forthright nature would not allow anything but the truth between them, and her honor deepened his shame.
He exhaled. “All of that is true.”
“But there is more to the story, isn’t there? I want to hear it.”
He gave a terse nod. “Shall we sit by the fire?”
They headed to the hearth beyond the bed, sharing the settee there. Taking a breath, he began the story that he had told twice before. Once to his brother and sister-in-law. A second time to the magistrates when he’d been taken into custody.
“The affair took place a decade ago. Her name was Monique, and she was the star acrobat at Astley’s. We met after one of her shows, and she became my mistress.” Remembering the terrible pride he’d felt securing such a celebrated lover, he felt his gut knot. “It was a purely physical relationship, at least on my end. I thought I had made the expectations clear, but apparently I was wrong. A few months into the affair, I had to break things off; I believe I’ve told you about the debt I incurred with Garrity. My only means of paying it off was to marry an heiress, and thus I couldn’t keep things going with Monique.”
“She didn’t like that,” Bea said.
He smiled grimly at the understatement. “I’d never seen her like that, simultaneously weeping and enraged. She said she’d…kill herself if I left her.”
The memory of that sliced through him: her agitated threats and frenzied tears, his own helplessness and panic. He hadn’t known how to calm her; when she’d sobbingly asked for his signet ring as a keepsake, he’d gladly given it to her. The ring had later been recovered…from her dead body.
“Eventually, she seemed to accept that our affair was over,” he said, his throat dry. “But soon thereafter we were at a house party together; I’d had no idea she would be there. She engaged in some mischief—I won’t get into the whole sordid tale—and was killed because of it. At one point, because of our past, I was taken into custody as a suspect for her murder.”
He swallowed, recalling being dragged from his horse by constables, the weight of irons clamped around his wrists. His dishonor had been witnessed by a houseful of party guests and now, dredging it all up again, in front of the woman he hoped to make his wife, he felt like the veriest scoundrel.
“Oh, Wick,” was all Bea said. Whatcouldshe say after all?
He’d gone too far to stop now. Best to purge it all. “The situation was one of my own making. And even though I didn’t kill Monique, I acted dishonorably and failed her.”
“How did you fail her?”
He speared his fingers through his hair. “I was careless with her feelings and acted selfishly. If I hadn’t broken things off with her, maybe she wouldn’t have lost her mind. Maybe she wouldn’t have sought out trouble at the house party and ended up dead. If I hadn’t started the affair, maybe she would be alive today.”
“That is utter claptrap.”
Beatrice’s sharp reply cut through his self-condemnation.
Blinking, he said, “Pardon?”
“Your reasoning lacks logic. What does your affair with Monique have to do with her murder?”
Since this was a painful subject he avoided talking about, he’d never had to justify his belief before. “It…just does. She was my lover, and I failed to protect her.”
“First of all, she was not your lover at the time of her murder. Second, your affair, no matter how acrimoniously it ended, had nothing to do with her death. Did you know that she intended to cause trouble at the house party?”
“No.”
“Or that someone intended to murder her?”
“Of course not,” he said slowly.
“Then how on earth would you have prevented it?”
Stunned, he realized he couldn’t answer the question. Yet hehadto bear some responsibility.
“Even if I couldn’t have stopped her murder, I should have been better to her,” he said heavily. “I ought to have shown more care for her feelings—perhaps then she wouldn’t have become overwrought. Perhaps she would have thought more clearly and decided against engaging in the business that got her killed.”
“You cannot take responsibility for someone else’s actions,” Beatrice said softly. “Perhaps you could have done better. Maybe you would choose to act in a different manner if given the chance. Yet the fact remains that you would still have no control over the choices Monique made.”
He frowned, trying to absorb her words.
“Was Grigg’s death my fault?” she went on. “If I hadn’t interfered with his beating of that boy, and he hadn’t whipped my horse, would my brother have left him alone? Would Grigg then still be alive today?” She shook her head. “I’ve asked myself these sorts of questions countless times—enough to make myself mad. In the end, I have no answer except that Benedict did what Benedict decided to do…just as Monique acted in accordance to her judgement.”
