His eyes widened. “Him?” he repeated.
“Him,” she repeated. She held his gaze and saw he understood. “Aaron Walters was his name, not that it matters. I didn’t want to be there. Even before…ithappened, I was shy around people I didn’t know well. I still am. He was handsome and he approached me, which shocked me. He asked me to dance.”
“And did you?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I told him the same thing I told everyone: I don’t like to dance. Mostly that makes the young men back away.”
His brow wrinkled. “Idiots.”
She smiled despite herself and was shocked that she could. Normally this story made her feel like she couldn’t breathe. Like she was trapped in the past all over again.
“Well, this particular idiot suggested we take a walk in the garden if I preferred it. I thought I shouldn’t. I knew I was too young for such a thing. But he was so…kind. So I said yes.”
Morgan swallowed. “I assume that began a courtship.”
“Unofficially, yes.” She sighed at the memory. “Hugh wasn’t at Brighthollow at the time, he was in London, and no one expected me to do anything wicked. I was probably allowed more leeway than another girl might have been and I betrayed the trust everyone had in me. I met with him in secret. We took rides around the lake and talked and picnicked. It was…it was romantic on the surface.”
“On the surface,” he said, and there was a wariness to his tone. “He wasn’t what he seemed?”
She tried not to allow bitterness into her tone, but it was in her heart and it was impossible not to show. “He was not. But I didn’t know it. I was so foolish and blind and…and so desperate for love that I ignored any warning signs. He led me by the nose all the way until the day he asked me to marry him.”
Morgan stepped back, his eyes wide. “You married him?”
“Well, I was only sixteen. I told Aaron that we should speak to Hugh. That there was no rush. But he was insistent. He said that my brother would never accept him because he wasn’t moneyed or titled. He said the only way to convince him was if we eloped. It would force Hugh’s hand and we would be happy in the end.”
When Morgan’s lips parted, she nodded. “Oh yes, I know. Not a very gentlemanly suggestion. Iknewit was wrong. But he told me I had to decide right then. If I said no, he would take it that I didn’t care as much as I had declared. That I had been playing him for a fool, and he would leave and never come back.”
“Blackmail. That bastard,” Morgan muttered.
She bent her head. “I was too foolish to see the manipulation, I suppose. And so I agreed. It was such a long ride to Gretna Green. And…”
She trailed off and pushed from the chair. Her cheeks flamed as she walked to the window, looked down at the garden in the darkness. Her mother’s garden. Her mother who certainly would have been so ashamed of what she’d done.
She heard Morgan move closer, and then she felt him. He stepped up behind her and, without speaking, wrapped his hands around her forearms. In the wavy reflection from the window before her, she saw him looking down at her. She felt his strength and his warmth and all the things that drew her to him. Was that a repeated mistake or something real this time? Did she even know the difference?
Did the difference even matter?
“You don’t have to tell me what he did,” he whispered.
“You are a man of the world,” she replied, and hated that her voice cracked. “I’m sure you can guess. What do you think he did?”
He was silent for a moment, hesitant. Then he said, “Made you believe that you would be wed, so you might as well do the thing you’d been warned against your whole life. I think he took your virginity.”
She bent her head, staring at the ground as she relived that experience. Quick and perfunctory and unpleasant. Tears filled her eyes and she nodded. He turned her then, slowly and gently, and she was forced to look up at him.
But there was no judgment to be found on his face. No pity. Nothing but understanding and concern and acceptance. She blinked to see it there, unexpected in this man who had been brought here from gaol in order to end his wicked ways.
Right now he didn’t look wicked. But he was very close and his hands were very warm on her bare arms and he madeherfeel wicked.
She let out a breath in a long sigh. “Yes. I gave myself to him and the deal was sealed. There would be no going back. I felt the shift in him right away. He got harder, more cocksure. Less the man who was gentle with me. I suppose I realize now that was who he really was. The rest was just an act to get what he truly desired. My dowry. My brother’s connections.”
“Did you make it to Gretna Green?” Morgan whispered.
“No.” Memories returned again, sharp and terrible. “The night before we were to arrive, Hugh appeared. He’d been making chase, it seemed. Come to rescue me, though it was too late. Aaron showed his true colors then. He…laughed at me.”
Morgan flinched, as if that statement pained him as much as it had torn her to shreds that awful night. Even now she sometimes woke to Aaron’s words ringing in her ears, his smirk dancing across her field of vision.
“There was nothing to be done. To protect me, Hugh paid for his silence. I was ruined and I returned home.”
