Page 42 of An Inconvenient Vow

“Extremely reckless. Dangerously so.”

“But you really know nothing of me, Sir Jeffree,” she pointed out. “Heretofore, my life has been lived on a very quiet and peaceable scale.”

He snorted. “That is not what I have heard.”

Sabina forced herself to take a deep, calming breath, rather than react to the probing of a still-sore wound. “You mean,” she said steadily, “because I left my marital home to return to my father’s house. Society being male-led, would be bound to blame me I suppose.”

“You believe yourself to be blameless in the matter?” He sounded skeptical.

“I believe the fault lay firmly in my late husband’s lap.”

“What did he do?”

The question was so direct that it almost took Sabina’s breath away. She answered before delicacy of feeling could prevent her. “He would not stop fornicating with any willing wench who strayed upon his path,” she answered forthrightly. “I could never enter a room but that some maidservant had to spring out of his arms. He expected me to turn a blind eye to his philandering, but I could not do so.”

To her embarrassment, these last few words sounded half-choked. Sabina turned her head away from him a moment and forced herself to take steady, even breaths. “In the end, I asked only that he respected his marriage vows under our roof,” she continued in a low tone. “But even that was too much to ask.” The words were bitter on her tongue.

The crowning injustice was how ashamed she felt by Miles’s conduct. Of course, everyone wondered what his wife lacked that she could not inspire faithfulness in his bosom. Even her mother seemed to think that if Sabina had only hit on some way of pleasing her husband, then he would not have strayed so flagrantly.

“He sounds like an uncouth, mannerless dolt,” Jeffree said at last with a curl of his lip. “You should consider yourself well-rid of him.”

His words were so dismissive of the great tragedy of her first marriage, that Sabina again felt a wildly inappropriate impulse to laugh. Instead, she bit her lip. “He was well-liked by his friends and acquaintances. In general, his neighbors had nary a harsh word to say of him. Even my parents…” She trailed off.

“They approved of him?” Jeffree’s tone was sharp.

“They thought him a well-favored man of pleasant speech and goodly aspect. They believed he would make me a good husband.”

Jeffree’s eyebrows rose. “And when he did not?”

“They were… sorely disappointed. In both of us,” she added quietly, thinking of how dismayed her parents had been. How they had encouraged her again and again to overlook Miles’s womanizing and to end the estrangement.

“Doubtless, they were also disappointed with themselves,” Jeffree said, surprising her greatly. “They should have guarded against such a thing. They were as taken in by him as you. Daughters should be protected against such men.”

Sabina turned her head to stare at him. “I… yes, I suppose that is true.”

“Unless you married him in the face of their opposition?” he suggested with an edge to his words.

Sabina shook her head. “Far from it. Our wooing was very straightforward. My father introduced us and negotiated the match not long after Miles moved into the area. Perhaps if he had been Ganford born and bred, we would have had warning of his true nature. Then again…” She shrugged. “Perhaps not.” At Jeffree’s quizzical look, she added, “It is considered customary, is it not, for young men to ‘sow their oats’ before marriage?”

His face was once again stiff with disapproval. “Not by me.”

Sabina studied him in silence a moment. “That is an unusual attitude for a man in your position to take, Sir Jeffree,” she mused.

“What position is that?”

“A position of wealth and privilege, with the world at your feet.”

He shrugged. “I have always held myself to a high moral standard. My guardian expected it.”

“May I ask…?” She broke off awkwardly. But after all, she had confided in him the facts of her own past. Why could she not ask him about his own?

“Ask what?”

“Why… Why it was that you made that vow? On the occasion of your eighteenth birthday, I mean.” Was it purely her own imagination, or did he turn a little redder? “Did you… wish to take holy orders?” she asked tentatively. “But your position as the duke’s heir prevented it?”

Jeffree cleared his throat. “I had no inclination for a holy life,” he admitted grudgingly. “There was another reason.”

“A disappointment?” Sabina ventured. “You were… disappointed in love?” However unlikely it seemed that staid, aloof Sir Jeffree could have nursed some thwarted passion in his bosom, she could think of no other reason why someone should make so life-altering a vow, on his eighteenth birthday no less.