There must have been something in the way he said her name, because she flinched. There was a flash of vulnerability and pain, fear and regret, that cascaded over her expression in a horrible waterfall.
“Selina,” he pressed, holding tight to her hand when she tried to back away. “Why were you on your own?”
Chapter 16
It felt like everything in Selina’s world froze in a flash as Derrick asked that question. The question that revealed everything. The question she’d been running from for years. But this man asked it so sweetly and so gently and without any ulterior motive to it. And she desperately wanted to explain it to him.
She desperately wanted to run away, too.
“Derrick,” she murmured, at last freeing her hand from his. Now shecouldrun, but she didn’t. She stayed, looking up at him, lost in him and everything he offered with his presence in her life. Everything he threatened.
“You told me before that you’ve been alone since you were a child. And I need to know why.” He reached out and cupped her cheek, stroking his thumb over her lower lip gently. “Please,” he whispered.
Her eyes closed and a sigh ripped through her, ragged and broken, just like she was broken under the surface she tried to present as a protection. This had been her burden to carry and hers alone for many years. She’d never shared the whole truth of it with anyone.
Showing him that vulnerability was dangerous, and yet she yearned to do just that. To open herself just a fraction and let this honorable man past the gates. Perhaps if he heard her past, he would understand why she’d become what she was. Perhaps he’d hate her less if and when he figured out she was the very thief he despised and hunted.
And perhaps she just needed to say it to see if he was as good and decent as he pretended to be. To test his mask and see if it fell or if it was his true face.
“My mother was the daughter of a baronet,” she whispered. “She met the last Roseford at some party in London. She was staying with an aunt as chaperone, sampling the delights of the Season. But the aunt was very old and mostly deaf and easy to escape. So when the duke crooked his finger…”
Derrick nodded. “It was easy for her to make her escape and meet with him.”
“Yes.” She sighed. “He was married, of course. But he was also handsome and, from all accounts, quite persuasive. I have no idea what he said to make her love him, to make her give herself to him when she had to know there was no future. But she did. They carried on an affair for months, with him whispering promises of protection and faithfulness and a lot of other lies she was foolish enough to believe.”
“What ended it?” Derrick asked, no judgment in his tone.
She shrugged and then lifted her gaze to his. “Me,” she whispered. “She discovered she was breeding and the duke was livid. He accused her of a dozen awful things.”
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“Oh, we’ll come to that,” she said with a false smile that felt as brittle as glass. “Don’t rush the crescendo, Mr. Huntington.”
“Selina,” he said, taking her hand again.
She stared down at their intertwined fingers. Felt the weight of them against her palm. The comfort of them. This man made everything so easy, even this story that was so damned hard.
She cleared her throat and continued, “He sent her back to her father, all his promises broken in one sweep. She tried to hide me for a while, but in the end how could she? Her pregnancy became obvious and it revealed the truth of what she’d been up to when her father thought her safely chaperoned to parties and teas like a lady above her station.”
“He must have been furious when he found out the truth,” Derrick said.
“Yes,” she said with another humorless chuckle. “But with her, not Roseford. My grandfather arranged a marriage to a merchant within days of discovering the truth. He paid the man handsomely to claim her bastard as his own and never spoke to my mother again.”
He winced. “So you never met him.”
“No,” she said. “I saw my grandfather once. At a party at the Earl of Grangerfield’s London estate. I froze, staring at him. I have his eyes, you see. But I never got up the nerve to talk to him.”
“You, not have the nerve?” he teased gently, his fingers smoothing over hers. “I don’t believe it.”
“You should,” she murmured as she pulled away and paced to the window. “I wanted to confront him, to rip him to shreds, but instead I just stared at him, like a gaping fish.”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“Save those platitudes until the end, Derrick,” she said, staring out the window without seeing anything in her line of sight. “The story doesn’t get better. You see, Peter Oliver, my stepfather, was willing to overlook the bastard he didn’t sire for the tiny fortune that came along with his bride—in theory. But in truth?”
Derrick flinched. “He was cruel to you?”
“Sometimes. Never physically. I think there might have been some lingering fear that the Duke of Roseford would materialize and punish him if he laid a hand on me. But he certainly took great pleasure in hurting me in other ways.” She sighed. “Hedespisedme, and that only grew more potent as he and my mother established a real relationship. He loved her, in his own vague way. And she accepted anything he did to me because he sometimes brought her flowers.”
