If she slid her eyes all the way to the side, she could just make out his shadow over her.
“Do you?”
“I—I—” Helplessness stole her words. Relieved her of all reason.
“No, Lady Alexandra, they take their licks.” The unwelcome heat of his breath on her cheek should have warned her. But, being uninitiated in the ways of men, she never could have dreamed that his tongue would follow.
The moist path he left across her cheekbone evoked such revulsion, she had no time to react before her arms were tangled in the layers of skirt and petticoat he’d tossed above her waist.
Stunned, she desperately tried to decide what to do. Should she fight him? Should she scream, hoping to rouse one of their teachers from their beds? Would they protect her? Would they expel her? Should she plead for his mercy? Or give in to the tears stinging her eyes and nose and hope they softened his ire? Should she submit to the lashing and be done with it?
“Thin enough to see the treasure beneath,” he murmured, confusing her utterly. “I think I’ll keep them on.”
Her panic-muddled thoughts only just processed that he referred to her white merino drawers when the first blow snapped against her tender rear.
Had he used the strap, she might have remained submissive. For the sake of a deserved punishment. For the protection of her future goals and her close friends.
She’d have taken her licks like a man.
But the bruising imprint of his fingers on her backside—the sound of flesh against hers, the pain of it, the absolute degradation—drew a violent response of which she’d not considered herself capable.
He was able to deliver three more punishing blows before her struggles became too wild for him to subdue with one arm.
He used his body, then, to pin her to his desk. Shaped it to hers. Torso to torso, hip to hip.
“Be still,” he panted, his serpentine voice thicker than before. “Or I’ll not be responsible for what you drive me to do.”
“You will be responsible,” she hissed. “I’ll make certain the law holds you responsible.”
His dreadful laugh filled the room. “Who do you think they’ll believe, Lady Alexandra? The respected headmaster whose family has educated ancient kings, or the spoiled little thief, making outlandish claims to save her reputation?”
His question gave her a moment’s pause.
Who, indeed? She was nobility in England. But here, so far from home … what power did she wield?
“Let me up.” She’d meant it as a demand, but it escaped as a plea. “Do it, or I’ll ruin you.”
“Not if I ruin you, first,” he snarled into her ear, driving her painfully against the desk with his body.
The shape of what she felt against her backside injected new terror into her veins. Greater strength. More conviction.
She became a wild thing, bucking and rearing against his solid strength. Frantic noises she’d intended to contain words broke from her. She’d meant to command him to stop. Then she tried to beg. But to her everlasting vexation, the sounds escaping seemed to only contain different forms of the word “no.”
She said it in every language she knew.
She screamed it as he reached between them to grapple with his trousers.
“Fight me all you like,” he breathed into her ear as he found the convenient opening in her drawers. “This won’t take long.”
And it didn’t.
Alexandra watched her rhythmic breaths spreading over the lacquered wood of the desk in a fleeting vapor.
They disappeared with every painful inhale.
Perhaps she could just stop breathing.
This won’t take long.
It didn’t have to.
Time, she thought, was of very little consequence. It only took a moment to lose everything. One’s virginity. One’s dignity. One’s ability to trust. To ever feel safe again.
One’s sanity.
One’s self.
Her eyes scanned the space before her, noting the inconsequential—the grain in the wood, the books on the shelf, the curtain the color of blood, a glint in the moonlight before her. The vision of Francesca pulling an object from her pocket flashed in her mind
A pearl handle.
The first item they’d ever taken from him.
The reason he now took her innocence from her.
The razor was cool and smooth in her palm, but when had she reached for it?
It could make him stop, she thought. I must make him stop.
She twisted suddenly, slashing the sharp blade across his throat.
The sounds he made now were not unlike the grunts and moans from before. And then they were wetter. Softer. Garbled.
He stumbled away from her. Out of her. Into the shadows. His hands clutched at his throat as though he could hold it together. His mouth formed words his windpipe could no longer lend voice to.
Blood disappeared into the collar of his black headmaster’s robes.
Her skirts whispered to the ground as she walked away, still clutching the razor in her aching fist. He reached for her, lurched toward her, and fell facefirst on the rug.
Silently, Alexandra closed the door behind her. She floated like a specter through halls of shadows which were interrupted only by the long, crooked crosses where the moon shone through the windowpanes. She climbed the stairs to the tower in which she and the Red Rogues shared a magnificent room.
The noises he’d made echoed inside her head, stole any other sounds, even the sound of her own voice as she whispered her confession.
“I killed him.”
* * *
The Red Rogues stood panting with exhaustion beneath a silver night sky as they watched Jean-Yves, the groundskeeper at de Chardonne, plant a stunning array of poppies. It was late enough to be early, and even at this hour the flowers all but glowed with sunset hues. He didn’t make neat little rows, but artful gathers of blooms, arranged with the perfect balance of natural chaos and controlled synchronicity.
“De Marchand has always been shit,” he spat in weighty, guttural French. “Now, at least, he will be useful shit. Fertilizing the gardens.” He took off his cap and swiped his balding pate as he glanced up at Alexandra with an expression of sorrow so complete, it threatened her composure. The drooping bags beneath his eyes were heavier than ever. Alexandra watched the wild tufts of hair above his ears flutter in a gentle breeze off the lake. “His behavior has escalated with no reprisal for too long. I’ve said for so long that de Marchand would forget himself and … and no one listened.”
Alexandra lowered her lashes. She hadn’t yet shed a tear.
Not as Francesca, in her long blue dressing gown and sleek carrot plaits, had tucked the razor into de Marchand’s pocket. Nor when stalwart Cecelia, her heart-shaped face pinched with determination, had rolled the body up in the bloodstained carpet and assisted Jean-Yves in hauling it out to the gardens.
Not even as the three of them had begun to cover his gray skin with black earth did a single tear fall.
The Rogues only allowed Alexandra to hold the lantern, which she’d done rather well, she thought. She’d stood like a statue, brandishing the light even when her shoulder had begun to tremble with fatigue. Even when it ached. Then burned.
Even when something viscous and unthinkable had begun to run down her leg.
She’d not moved.
A part of her feared she’d become so cold. So empty. So hard that she’d turn to stone. That they’d not be able to pry the lantern from her fingertips, and when the authorities came, as they surely would, she would advertise just where the body was hidden.
She could condemn them all.
“I will finish here and then I will make certain the study is cleaned.” Jean-Yves motioned toward Alexandra, though he addressed Cecelia. “You take her, and you care for her as we discussed. Comprenez-vous?”
Cecelia nodded, placing her hand on the man’s shoulder.
“We will speak of this tomorrow.” He kissed her temple
affectionately, then turned back to his work, dismissing the girls.
Alexandra hadn’t let go of the lantern until Francesca uncurled her fingers and relieved her of it.
She felt nothing.
Nothing but sensations beneath her feet as they led her back. First, the chilly dew of the grass. Then the slippery tiles of the back kitchens. The lush carpets of the school halls were welcome cushion against her beleaguered soles.
Her beleaguered soul.
And then she was standing in the tower, staring at the coals in the fireplace as her friends silently bustled around her, not realizing that she was naked until the sensation of the lukewarm water on her foot returned her to the moment.
A blaze flared as two filthy nightgowns, dressing robes, and Alexandra’s favorite yellow gown, stockings, and underthings fed the fire.
Francesca added a log or two as Cecelia lowered Alexandra into the tub and bathed her gently.
Alexandra stared at her conflagrating undergarments.
De Marchand had never even taken them off. The slit made for her necessary conveniences were convenient for men, as well. She’d never once considered that. Had anyone considered that? She suddenly wanted to warn every woman alive.
“Are you certain we can trust Jean-Yves?” Francesca finally broke the silence from where she stood in front of the wardrobe, completely naked, snatching at fresh nightgowns and heavy, warm robes. “I don’t like that he knows.”
Alexandra clinically examined her friend’s lean body. De Marchand had been wrong. Francesca was impertinent, but she wasn’t scrawny. She’d the sleek, long build of the thoroughbreds she was so fond of riding. Comprised of lean muscle used for speed and agility.
Her wit was just as quick, her tongue as sharp, and her instincts impeccable.
How Alexandra envied her that. Perhaps she’d have been able to escape before—
“Jean-Yves is the only man I’ve ever trusted,” Cecelia insisted, using the back of her wrist to slide her spectacles back up to the bridge of her nose. “He’ll keep our secret, of that I have no doubt.”
Francesca paused with a pair of new white drawers in her hand. Her cat-green eyes glimmered with equal parts sardonic speculation and gentle curiosity. “Isn’t your father still alive? Isn’t he a vicar?”
“Yes.” Cecelia’s plump, ever-placid features darkened.
“And Jean-Yves is the only man you trust?”
“That’s what I said.” Her sapphire eyes flashed at Francesca as the latter pulled a ruffled nightgown over her head.
“I know he’s important to you, Cecil, but we have to consider—”
“Jean-Yves and I have long had an arrangement,” Cecelia cut in, picking up a pitcher and easing Alexandra’s head back, so as to wash her hair. “I’m taking him with me once we leave to be a part of my household.”
“But—”
“We will speak of this tomorrow.” Cecelia echoed Jean-Yves’s words with more vehemence than Alexandra had ever marked from her. For the first time in their short lives, her tone brooked no argument. Even from Francesca.
My fault.
The burning, aching tears finally arose, branding Alexandra with the same punishing heat as any fire of inquisition. Her friends were quarreling, and it was all because of her. She’d put dear old Jean-Yves in danger, not to mention Cecelia and Francesca.
My fault. My fault. My. Fault.
Those words repeated through her head like rifle shots in a terrible, terrible accelerating rhythm. Like that of flesh against flesh. She couldn’t have said how long Cecelia and Francesca bathed her, or how they disposed of the bathwater. She didn’t remember them dressing her. Braiding her hair. Nor could she tell when she ended up in bed.
But, eventually, Francesca’s commanding voice calling her name permeated the gray fog in which she’d been floating all night. “Alexandra!”
“My fault!” Her inner thoughts manifested in a raw cry even she didn’t recognize. “It’s all my fault.”
“Dear God, no!” Francesca settled in beside her beneath the wide canopy and rested her head on Alexandra’s shoulder. “Nothing that happened tonight is your responsibility.”
“Y-you’re now my accomplices,” she agonized, spreading her fingers in front of her. “I shouldn’t have brought this to you. It could ruin your entire lives. This shouldn’t be a secret you are forced to bear.”
Cecelia lay on her other side, drawing up the coverlet and sharing her warmth and bosomy softness. “We all have secrets, Alexander. Ones that could ruin us.”
Alexandra shook her head, staring up at the white canopy, hating the color of purity almost as much as she hated herself. “Not like this. I—I murdered a man.”
“Your rapist.” Francesca tucked the quilt beneath Alexandra’s chin. “We all might have done the same if…” She didn’t finish her sentence, displaying a rare sensitivity she didn’t often possess.
“We all have secrets?” Alexandra turned her head toward Cecelia, her previous words only just permeating her numbness. “I’ve known you four years now … You’ve never mentioned a secret that could ruin you.”
Cecelia sobered, suddenly appearing so much younger than her eighteen years. “I don’t want to share, and yet.” She hesitated. “I don’t want you to feel alone…”
Francesca locked eyes with Alexandra, her elfin face a shade of pale Alexandra hadn’t considered anyone but a corpse could attain. “We should all share, then we’ll have something to carry that will forge an unbreakable bond of trust.”
The gesture touched Alexandra utterly. “Tell me,” she whispered. Anything to distract her from the horror of what would face her every day for the rest of her life
Cecelia inhaled for an eternity until she finally gathered the courage to speak through a voice made even huskier by emotion. “I’m a bastard. My mother had a lover. She died giving birth to me, you see, and my father … the man who raised me … has made it clear there isn’t a physical possibility that he sired me. He’s spent my entire life insisting that my mother died because of her infidelity.”
Francesca nodded, heaving a breath made weary by the weight of so much pain. “Oh, darling, is he cruel to you?”
“Unspeakably,” Cecelia whispered, blinking away an unwanted memory.
“Do you know your real father?” Alexandra asked, snuggling closer to Cecelia. “Is it this mysterious benefactor who finances your education?”
Cecelia shook her head and shrugged her shoulders, shame tinging her cheeks even more peach. “I wish I knew. I sometimes am certain it is. I’ve spent so many years at de Chardonne alone. Before I befriended you, Jean-Yves was the only comrade I’d ever known. And only then because I hid so often as a girl in his gardens and pestered him into eventual partiality to me.”
“Now I feel like such a dunce,” Francesca lamented. “If you trust him, we shall, as well.”
“The more people who know a secret, the more in peril it is. It is right that we are all cautious.” Cecelia dashed a few errant tears from her peachy-cream skin. “What about you, Frank? Do you have a secret?”
Francesca locked eyes with Alexandra. “I’m an impostor. My name isn’t Francesca Cavendish. It’s Pippa. Pippa Hargrave.”
Their mouths opened, slackened, then nearly unhinged with shock.
Francesca’s emerald eyes were made brilliant by the fire, but a dark veracity emanated from her that distracted Alexandra from her pain, if only for a moment.
“I was born to Charles and Hattie Hargrave in Yorkshire where they served as cook and underbutler to William and Theresa Cavendish, the Earl and Countess of Mont Claire. I grew up in paradise along with their children, Fernand and Francesca.”
Cecelia’s brow wrinkled in a frown. “I thought the Cavendishes all perished in a fire, but for…”
“No one died in the fire.”
Alexandra blinked, wondering if distress had made her a lackwit. “What? What are you saying?”
Francesca’s brilliant
gaze dulled as she gazed into a past so tormented, it seemed to make her smaller, as though it could crush her into the dust. “Have you ever heard of a fire starting in a household of nearly one hundred people in the middle of the day, without one soul escaping it alive?”
“The odds of that happening seem quite impossible, unless…” As Cecelia let the thread trail away with a wince, she and Alexandra shared a speculative glance.
Francesca’s next words validated what they’d feared. “Unless everyone inside was already dead.” She plucked at a loose seam in the lining of her robe as she vacantly stared ahead. “Not dead,” she amended. “Butchered. Men on horses came during tea. At eight years old, I thought it seemed like an army, but I’m convinced now it couldn’t have been more than a dozen or so. They slaughtered everyone. The earl and countess, the housekeeper, butler, the groundskeepers, maids, the children … my parents.”
She took a breathless moment to compose herself. “I ran with Francesca, but they caught her. Wrenched her right from my grasp. I watched as they … they … She didn’t even have time to scream.” She put a hand to her throat, and it was easy to guess how Francesca had died.
Alexandra hated that she took solace in the telling. It didn’t speak very well of her, that she found comfort in their secrets. In their pain.
Because it meant she wasn’t so alone. That she wasn’t the only girl in this room who would live with a clandestine shame.
“Oh, Frank.” Cecelia added her other warm, soft hand to the pile. “How did you ever survive?”
For a moment, Francesca’s features softened. “Declan Chandler, he found me, and hid us in a crevasse up a chimney. We thought we were safe until the fire started. We waited as long as we could, until we believed the men had ridden away, until the smoke became too thick and we had to escape it. Declan spirited me out of the house and we were running for the woods, for safety, when we were spotted by a man who’d stayed behind to make certain all traces of foul play were erased in the fire. That only ashes remained of the dead. Of the grand and happy house that had stood there since the white rose of York hung over the throne of England.”
Francesca accepted the handkerchief Cecelia fetched for her, wiped her eyes, and blew her nose in a way that was anything but delicate. “The man followed us into the woods and Declan, always the hero, created a diversion.”
How to Love a Duke in Ten Days Page 2