Chapter Twenty-One
Stoker had ravished her, plain and simple. He’d worn his boots—his bloody boots were on still—as he’d pummeled her virgin body. He’d ripped her silk gown like a lunatic.
They were in a strange bed, in an anonymous room, with only a low fire, no basin to wash, no wine to dull the pain, no lady’s maid to attend her.
He’d ravished her. As he’d known he would, given half the chance. And now it was true.
It felt wrong; he’d known it was wrong. But self-control was but a faint notion in the corner of his mind, a discarded tool he’d forgotten how to use. And yet while he was in the moment, it had also been... glorious.
He sat up, cringing at the pain in his rib. He deserved the pain. He deserved to suffer a relapse and perish by morning. He deserved the bloody Duke of Wrest to seek him out and shoot him with his own gun.
“Will you lie back down with me for a moment?” she asked quietly, reaching for his hand.
“Let me call a maid to attend you,” he said.
“I don’t want a maid.”
“Your dress is in ribbons.”
“So it is,” she said.
She sounded irritated. He glanced at her, trying to seek out her face. The fire had burned nearly to ash and the room hung in shadows. He was glad; he could not look at what he’d done to her dress. He didn’t want to look at her body. He’d feasted on the sight of her body like a blind man who had just been given sight. He dropped an arm over his eyes, trying to erase the image of how he must have looked, staring down at her.
Sabine said, “It was worth it. To me.”
“What was?” He struggled to follow the conversation, and he owed it to her to behave like an articulate person in this moment. He owed her whatever she wanted.
“The ruined dress. I’m not sure how I will get home, but perhaps if we hide here until—”
“Elisabeth can loan you a dress,” he said and then he pressed his arm against his eye sockets until he saw stars, realizing what he’d said. He made an anguished sound.
“What?”Sabine demanded. Now she sounded angry.
“I can’t face Elisabeth with this request. I’ve delivered so many girls to her who required new dresses because some... brute had ripped away their very clothes.”
“Stoker, we will not entertain this line of thought,” she said tightly.
“It’s not a way of thinking, Sabine. It’s the precise animal behavior I have fought my entire life. I am no better. I am the same. Elisabeth was a fool to think she could truss me up and send me to school and pretend that I have any place acquainting myself with well-bred ladies.”
Sabine gave a shout and bolted from the bed so quickly, Stoker jumped too. They squared off across the twisted coverlet and decimated pillows.
“That,” she said, gesturing to the bed, “was too... wonderful for me to allow you to proclaim it a... a gap in your character.” She glared at him, yanking up her corset and clutching her bodice to her chest. “You did not inflict animal behavior on me, Stoker, wemade love. You are my husband, I am your wife. We are realizing our... relationship in an unorthodox way, but we are married. We have spent the past six weeks together, and I have said that I love you and I mean it. There is a world of difference between making love to your wife and attacking a strange girl.”
“Did we make love?” he asked. “Or did I go out of my head, risking your safety, paying no regard to injury, spoiling your dress. I... I unfastened my breeches like a randy soldier with only three minutes to spare and a guinea for your trouble.”
“Is thatreallywhat happened?” she challenged, pulling pins from her hair. He’d never seen it long and loose, and he was momentarily distracted by the sight of it dropping around her shoulders in black rolling waves.
She smiled. “You see, I am happy. We’ve shared this moment. I am taking down my hair because I am a real woman who is irritated by hairpins after four hours, and I feel as if we have passed the point of your not seeing me perfectly coiffed and kempt and pilloried by pins.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, staring at her hair.
“At the threat ofassumingwhat you think, Stoker, I believe that you have positioned me on this pedestal in your mind—perfect and tidy and proper, but that is a character, not a human woman. I am not perfect. I am not tidy and I have very little use for propriety. Obviously. We are learning our authentic selves.”
“My authentic self is not for your knowledge.”
“If you withhold yourself from me in that way,” she said, “we are doomed.”
“Then doom it is,” he said, his heart ripping in two. “Just look at you. Look what I’ve done to you.” He gestured to her dress.
