Though the lord’s words were true, sweat began to trickle down the center of his back. Despite the fact that Mariel would be the one to end the betrothal, he felt like a criminal before the man’s faith in him.
“That may be true, father, but a dowry must be accepted and Mariel’s happiness assured.” The duchess flipped over three pages with writing on them before running her finger down the next page where she stopped. “Lord Blackmore, I will of course let you read through the whole contract; however, my father and I have a few questions.”
“Of course.” He wasn’t quite sure who he should be looking at. The first time he’d met with Lord Wakefield, the man had handed him the marriage settlement, asked him to sign and then offered him a scotch to celebrate. That time he’d signed without reading, perfectly happy to do whatever was necessary to marry Mariel. What a change in circumstances four years had wrought.
The duchess cleared her throat, so he focused on her. “What do you wish to know?”
“Do you intend to marry my sister this time?”
Affronted by the question, he sat straighter. “I intended to marry her the last time.”
“Jo, what do you mean by that?” Lord Wakefield had sat forward as well. “The man was killed.” He turned to him. “Obviously, you weren’t killed. Was it a clerical error then?”
Mariel’s sister clasped her hands over the documents before her. “Yes, Lord Blackmore. How is it that you were on the rolls of the dead? I was with Mariel when she saw your name. Was it a clerical error, or perhaps planned?”
Though the woman had every reason to be skeptical, his irritation didn’t lessen. “I was shot three times and left for dead on the battlefield.” He expected the duchess to at least go pale, but her brows remained lowered and there was no such change in her complexion.
“Then how did you find yourself back in England, whole and hearty?”
It appeared the woman thought he’d hidden away from Mariel since the start of the war. “I was discovered that same night by an older French woman who was searching the pockets of the dead on both sides for valuables. Napoleon didn’t care that his people suffered, so she kept her granddaughter and herself fed, clothed, and sheltered with what she found. Since I was not dead yet, when she went into my pocket, I woke from my painfilled doze and grabbed her hand. She offered to care for me in exchange for my help later. I was in no position to argue. Even as she dragged me through the wood, I lost consciousness due to the pain.”
Though the lady no longer frowned at him, she was clearly not convinced. “Would it not have been smarter to wait for your men to find you?”
And there it was, the true reason for his horror. “My men knew I had fallen and were more inclined to report my death, since saving me meant the gallows for them.”
The silence from the duchess was broken by Mariel’s father, who it appeared had a keen interest now. “Had they committed a crime you witnessed then?”
He nodded, trying not to think of the crime even as the farmhouse in the wood appeared in his mind. As he approached the small home, the screams inside suddenly stopped, sending a chill up his spine. “Yes, they had. I was on my way to report them when we were called into action.”
“For them to leave their commanding officer to die, must mean their crime was significant.” The older man’s hazel eyes seemed almost as gray as his own now.
As much as he wished to keep the images at bay, they refused, filling his head. His body broke out into a sweat, even as a chill passed through him. He couldn’t tell Mariel’s family nor Mariel herself that he’d witnessed his men raping unconscious women, and Cobby in particular, raping a dead woman. He’d never be able to forget Cobby’s grin as he noticed him in the doorway and told him he could take a turn. In that moment he’d sworn to bring Cobby and his followers to justice.
He hadn’t realized the extent of his own disgust until he’d learned that Mariel had married, and tried to drown his sorrow in the best bordellos in Paris. No matter how many women he took to bed, despite how hard he became, the moment before he sunk into their bodies wishing for oblivion, the images and sounds of that night flooded him, and he lost all ability to perform. As the courtesans were paid, they did not mind, and he brought them to fulfillment in other ways.
“Lord Blackmore?”
Lord Wakefield’s hand on his arm startled him, and he opened his eyes, not remembering he’d shut them. He stared at the man, whose sympathetic gaze offered comfort.
“I’m to guess it was a significant crime then.”
He nodded, swallowing to force his throat to work. “It was horrific.” He finally moved his attention back to the duchess. “I searched for all five men as soon as I was well enough to do so. Four have already met their fitting ends, but I still search for the last.”
Lady Joanna gave him a brief nod, accepting his explanation. “And was this while on the continent?”
He glanced at Lord Wakefield, who was clearly unaware of the timeline. When he looked back at the duchess, she had her eyebrows raised in expectation of his answer. Obviously, she wanted her father to know everything.
Feeling as if he were on trial for a crime he didn’t commit, he told the blatant truth. “I found two on the continent. When I came back to England, I found the other two.”
The duchess set her hands down flat on the desk. “Here in England. Yet you did not feel the need to tell Mariel you were alive?”
He rose to his feet, his anger no longer allowing him to sit. He placed both palms on the desk. “That’s correct.” He looked the woman in the eye, his tone deep. “I didn’t contact your sister because I read of her widowhood while still abroad. It wasn’t difficult to surmise that after a few short months of my absence, she had quickly turned to another.” The old hurt rose in his chest.
Sitting back, the duchess didn’t blink. “She married to save our family.”
He stood straight. “What I knew was that she had married another. Why would I tell her I was back in England? She’d obviously had no feelings for me.”
Now the duchess rose as well. “She never stopped loving you. When we read of your death, she stopped living. She was wasting away, not even eating. I told her she didn’t need to marry and that I could eventually bring us back to comfort, but she needed a reason to live.”
