“Tell me.” He squeezed her hand, an invitation rather than a demand.
She looked at him, this man who had proposed to her, who had defended her to the village gossip, who had called her name when he was dying. If she told him, he might hate her—yet he might look at her with disgust instead of love. But if she didn’t tell him, she would never be free.
“I was seventeen when I met Gabriel Hyde.” She turned to face the window, finding the glass easier to look at than his face. “My father was an esquire. Respectable. I was supposed to marry well and be a good, obedient daughter.”
She paused, her shoulders hunching. “Gabriel was none of those things. He was handsome. Charming. He said all the right things.”
Dominic’s hand tightened on hers, but he remained silent, allowing her the space to continue.
“I thought he loved me.” She shook her head, the old shame rising like bile. “I was seventeen and stupid, and I believed everyword he whispered.” She shifted her gaze to the far corner of the room. “He asked me to elope. To marry in secret.” She pressed her nails into her palms, the old shame rising like bile. “My mother begged me not to go. She pressed her jewelry into my hands and wept. She knew I’d need it. As for my father… He stood in the doorway and told me I was no longer his daughter. And I ran anyway.”
Her fingers tightened around his. “We married in a small church with strangers for witnesses. My father disowned me that same week. My mother never wrote. I never heard from either of them again.”
Dominic’s thumb continued its steady, warm stroke across her knuckles.
“The first few months were not bad. Gabriel was attentive. We moved often because he said it was for work.” Her expression turned brittle, the softness of the memory vanishing. “I didn’t question it.”
She pulled her hand from his and wrapped her arms around herself. “Then I learned what he really was.”
The fire crackled, a sudden spark jumping in the hearth. She stared into the glowing wood.
“He’d lost badly at cards. He owed a man named Blackett more than he could pay.” The name seemed to scrape her throat like broken glass. “Blackett came to collect. The man was thick-necked. Pig-eyed. Reeking of tobacco and sweat.”
She could still smell him. She could still feel those heavy hands on her arms.
“Gabriel smiled at him. That charming smile I had fallen in love with.” Her nails dug into her own arms through her sleeves. “And he gestured toward me like I was a horse he was selling.”
The bed creaked. Dominic had gone rigid, his entire body tensing under the linens.
“He told Blackett I was his for the night. That we would be even.” She forced the words out flat and distant, the only way she could bear to say them. “Payment for a gambling debt.”
“Nell—” Dominic’s words were a strangled rasp. He reached for her, his hand trembling slightly in the air.
“Blackett grabbed me. He started dragging me toward the bedroom.” She didn’t flinch from the memory. “I screamed. I begged Gabriel to stop him. He just poured himself a drink and watched.”
Dominic’s breathing had gone ragged, his chest heaving like he were the one struggling for air.
“So I fought.” Something fierce flickered in her chest, a spark of the girl she’d been. “I clawed Blackett’s face. Three deep gouges from his eye to his jaw. He was bleeding so badly he threw me to the floor and left.”
“Good.” The word ripped out of Dominic, savage and raw. His hands fisted in the sheets, knuckles white.
“Gabriel didn’t think so.” She touched her cheek, phantom pain ghosting across the bone. “He beat me until I couldn’t stand. He said I had cost him. He said next time, I would do as I was told.”
Dominic was shaking now. She could see it, the tremor in his shoulders and the vein pulsing at his temple.
“There were other nights.” She kept her gaze fixed ahead, though her heart was hammering. “Other men he owed money to. I learned to lock myself in the cellar when he had that look in his eye. I never let them touch me, but there were nights I wasn’t sure I’d manage it.”
“I am going to kill him.” Dominic didn’t raise his volume, but the words carried a terrifying weight. He stared at the far wall like the surface of a frozen lake. “I wish he were alive simply so I could kill him again.”
His jaw worked, his whole body vibrating with barely contained fury. He nodded once—a sharp, jagged movement—for her to continue.
“Twice I fell with child and lost them both.” She pressed her hands flat against her knees, smoothing the fabric with slow strokes. “After the second, I went to an apothecary’s wife in the village. She gave me herbs—pennyroyal and tansy—to keep from conceiving again. Gabriel found them.” Her throat closed around the words, but she forced them through. “He beat me for it. And then he forced himself on me until I was with child again.”
“I was pregnant, disowned, and married to a monster.” She stared at her own hands as though they belonged to someone else. “There was nowhere to go.”
“By the time I was eight months along, I learned that Gabriel had killed a man over card games. He was in hiding. I just knew I had to leave. Not for my own sake, but for the babies.” She paused, her gaze flickering to the candle on the bedside table. “The midwife told me there were two. Twins. I hadn’t known until then.”
Dominic drew a sharp breath, his chest rising and falling beneath his linen shirt.
