For several heartbeats he stared at her. Why didn’t he just devour her? Or did he savor her fear like he’d savored his port after supper?
Then he set the candle aside, picked up the cup on the dressing table, and smashed it against the wall. He took a shard and dragged it along the heel of his palm until a fat red droplet appeared, then he advanced on her.
“No!” she cried. “Please, no!”
Ignoring her pleas, he tore the bedsheet from her grasp and rubbed his palm across it, leaving a dark smear. Then he released the sheet and withdrew to the door.
“Don’t go!” she said as he opened it. “Come back inside—you’re supposed to…”
She faltered as he raised his hand and shook his head. Then he slipped outside, closing the door behind him.
Moments later she heard another door open and slam shut, thenthe sound of splintering wood—a fist pummeling the paneled walls in the adjacent chamber once, twice…five times in total.
Olivia held her breath, willing him to return—to tell her what she was supposed to have done. She heard footsteps and a creak, presumably as he climbed into the bed next door, followed by another series of thuds—he was giving a pillow the same treatment as the wall. Then, silence.
She drew her tattered nightgown around her and rolled onto her side, curling up. Only when she caught the distant sound of female giggling elsewhere in the inn did she surrender to her despair. Hot tears splashed onto her cheeks, blurring the glow from the fireplace.
Chapter Nineteen
Devil’s fucking breeches,what the bloody hell did Whitcombe think he wasdoing?
Charles drove his fist into the wall, but the explosion of pain in his knuckles did nothing to lessen the shame of what he’d done.
What he’dalmostdone.
The girl was a maiden, and he’d come at her like a rutting bull at the behest of her brother to claim the remainder of the dowry.
The sheen of terror in his bride’s eyes had cleaved his heart in two and shattered his soul. It was the same expression that haunted him almost every night—the expression in his mother’s eyes the moment before her life had been extinguished as her broken body lay, inches from his face, while she drew her last, her final exhalation caressing his skin.
He paused, his knuckles throbbing, but heard nothing from the chamber next door. Perhaps the girl was too terrified to make a sound, lest he thrust his way into her chamber to force himself upon her again.
He climbed into bed and satisfied himself with driving his fist into the pillow. Then he tossed the pillow across the floor.
What the devil was he supposed to donow? His bride lay in the adjacent chamber—shaken, terrified, in need of comfort. But he was the last person to comfort her, and he’d be damned if he’d ask John to do it for him. The young slut who’d served them supper was busy—hecould hear her screaming her pleasures elsewhere. Which left the innkeeper’s wife.
But what could he say toher? That he was sorry for being such a brute that his bride screamed with terror on her wedding night?
He ought to demand an annulment. That might, at least, put the girl out of her misery. But it would humiliate her even more than she had been already. Not to mention Charles would find himself on the wrong side of Whitcombe’s pistol.
Perhaps he ought to consider a novel idea—ask his wife what she wanted.
But the poor creature would drop dead with fright if she saw him again tonight. Better to deal with the matter, and with her, in the morning.
Coward. Sniveling little wretch. You’re your mother’s son, all right.
Charles flinched as his father’s sneering voice sliced into his mind. But perhaps Father was right, and he was a coward, a pathetic creature unworthy of the Devereaux name.
But hewasa Devereaux. The name formed the walls of a prison that ensnared him. He was stuck with it.
And so was his wife.
*
The next morningCharles entered the dining room, his valet in tow, to find it empty. He blinked in the sunlight and his stomach growled at a warm, savory aroma.
“The Fiddlers’ reputation for good food is well deserved, sir,” John said. “Mmm…it smells good enough to wake the dead.”
But was it good enough to coax his terrified wife from her chamber?
