“I’ll no’ blame you if you tell people the truth about us and set me aside.”
He pulled her against him, kissed her hair, torn between fury and tenderness. “Why would I do that, love?”
Her voice, already weak, quavered with emotion. “I’ve brought shame on you.”
Nicholas tilted his head, looked straight into her eyes. “That is not true. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“B-but he is my...brother.” The last word was an anguished whisper.
“Your stepbrother. Aye, I know.”
Whatever Bethie had expected from Nicholas, it was not this. She’d been so certain he would turn away from her the moment he knew the truth. But here he was, beside her, comforting her.
Perhaps it was his kindness, or perhaps it was the lulling effects of the laudanum, but she found herself telling him everything.
How her father had been killed while helping neighbors build their cabin when she was only ten. How her mother, burdened with a daughter and no living sons, had sought a husband at the meetinghouse and found Malcolm Sorley. How her gospel-greedy stepfather had taken them to his home farther west, where he lived with his already-grown son, Richard. How Malcolm had found her lacking in piety and overblessed with beauty and had made it his duty to beat the fear of his vengeful God into her. How Richard had watched the beatings with a strange look in his eyes that made Bethie afraid.
“The first time he came to my bed, I was twelve. I didna know what men did with women, didna understand what he was tryin’ to do. When I started to protest, he told me Malcolm would punish me if he found out.”
“And then he raped you.”
“Nay. At first, all he did was t-touch me, run his hands over me.” She shuddered, a feeling of deep horror mingling with utter revulsion in her belly.
Nicholas held her closer. “I’m right here, Bethie.”
“But then he began to...”’Twas almost impossible to say it. She took a deep breath. “Then he began to put his fingers... inside me.”
“I’m so sorry, love.”
“It hurt, but he didn’t care. I tried to fight him. I tried! But he was so much stronger.”
“A little girl can hardly be expected to fight off a grown man, Bethie. It was not your fault. You did everything you could.”
She pushed on, desperate to get the words out. “He laughed. He laughed at me, laughed when... when he saw my maiden’s blood on his hands.”
“Dear God! Bethie, I—”
“Every night I went to bed, hoping and praying he would stay away. And every night I would hear him creep up the ladder to the loft. He hurt me. He rubbed himself against me.” A wave of nausea assailed her.
“You should sleep. Tell me the rest later. It’s too soon.”
“Nay! I must finish! You must know!”
“I know everything I need to know about you, Bethie. There’s nothing you can tell me that will change the way I feel about you.”
But Bethie scarcely heard him. She had started the story. Now she must finish it.
She told him how one night when she was fifteen, Richard had come to her and told her it was time for her to become a woman. Afraid of the pain and unable to bear it any longer, she had fought him, and her struggles had awakened Malcolm, who had beaten her almost senseless, accused her of seducing his only son and leading him down the path of eternal damnation.
Bethie was trembling now, her body shaking uncontrollably. Tears slid, unheeded, down her cheeks. “Three days later, he married me off to Andrew, a man my father’s age, and sent me away. Andrew knew what had happened, said he forgave me, but I could always see it in his eyes—the pity, the shame.”
The helpless rage that had been brewing inside Nicholas all day began to boil. “And what of your mother? Did she do nothing to help you? Did your stepfather beat her, too?”
“Aye, he beat her. But she hated me. She said I had cursed her womb because I had been born alive and her sons had all been stillborn. When Malcolm told her I had bewitched his son, I think she believed him.” Her voice broke into quiet weeping at this deepest betrayal.
Her grief was almost more than he could bear. Rage, fueled by anguish, burned hot inside him. Richard Sorley would die. It would be Nicholas’s great pleasure to kill him.
But not tonight.
