Her expression, light and happy a moment earlier, became wary. “Yes?”
“Will you tell me how you came to be . . . well, in your line of work?”
She gave him a small, sad smile at his cowardly use of such a weak euphemism. But he could not use words like whore or prostitute to describe her.
“Why do you want to know, Magnus?”
“It’s your past, Melissa. I’ve talked about my past—and when you meet my family, they will tell you mortifying tales of me when I was young. But I know nothing about you.” He hesitated. “I’ve held off from asking, not wishing to pry, but you are my wife. I know what you did for a living, I just want to know how you started down that road. Whether you like it or not, we shall have to tell my family at least part of your past—and we shall have to do so sooner rather than later. I cannot allow them to find out from someone else.”
She stared at him with opaque eyes and he had no idea what to expect. Finally, she nodded. “I daresay you should tell them when you go for the wedding.”
Relief flooded him and he took her hands and kissed her fingertips. “You mean when we go for the wedding.”
She smiled. “Of course.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For understanding what we must do, no matter how uncomfortable it will be. I cannot say they will not be shocked, but we are married now and they will come around.” He could see from her face that she doubted that. Well, so did he, but he hardly wanted to admit it. “Now, please, tell me your story.”
“It is not an uplifting story.”
“I understand that. I hope it doesn’t upset you—I don’t want to cause you pain—but I want to know you.”
“It doesn’t hurt me to talk about it, Magnus. I came to terms with my past a long time ago.” She smoothed her hand absently across his chest, the light caress leaving his sensitive nipples hard. Magnus had never given a moment’s thought to his nipples until he’d met Melissa. “No, I do not mind telling you about it, but it will change the way you look at me.”
He kissed her cheek. “Nothing could do that. I love you with all my heart.”
She made no comment, but removed her hand and turned onto her back, looking at the ceiling. “I have to begin a few years before I became a—well, just so you will understand my mother and maybe not judge her so harshly.”
Magnus opened his mouth to say he did not judge, but then closed it. Yes, he did judge, as much as he tried not to. And already he judged a mother and father who’d allowed their daughter to fall into such work.
“I grew up in a decent area in London—at least for my first years—where people were neither poor nor rich. My father was a merchant sailor and I have very little recollection of him. One year, he simply did not come home. I know my mother sought information about him from the man who owned the ship, but there was nothing. The assumption was that he’d decided to start a new life in some foreign port.”
He lightly caressed her arm, wanting to be in physical contact as she recounted what was surely to be a difficult and unpleasant tale.
“My mother worked many small jobs to keep body and soul together. She did mending, washing, cleaning—anything she could find. Our neighbors were very kind, especially the butcher’s family who lived just down the street.” She turned to him and smiled. “I am still very close with their youngest son, Jocelyn Gormley. I hope you will meet him one day—he is my closest and dearest friend.”
Magnus squeezed her arm and smiled. “I would like that, too.” The jealousy that stirred inside him was worrying. He was not, by nature, a jealous man. Or at least he had never believed he was. But he’d quickly realized he was possessive and territorial when it came to Melissa. Asking God for help with his jealousy had begun to factor regularly in his nightly prayers.
“The Gormleys and other neighbors helped us in small ways. Charging us for only a half-pound of something but giving us a pound. They were kind people who I know felt badly for us. But it was never enough.”
Her hand caught his and she laced fingers, as if she needed closer contact for what came next.
“When I was thirteen, we were evicted from the room we rented. My mother had already sold everything we had of value. We lived in a narrow street not far from our prior home for almost two weeks. There were other families—decent people—those were hard times. But there were not-so-decent people, too.”
Magnus heard her swallow.
“One day I came back from a day of selling oranges—something I did for a fruit and vegetable vendor—to find that my mother had found us a place to live. The kind woman who owned the house was sending a cart to collect us. They would take me first, and my mother would follow with our things.” She turned to him, her eyes bleak. “I asked why? Why were we being separated? She made up excuse after excuse. But I wore her down. And just before the woman arrived, she told me: He’s a rich man and will treat you kindly, she said. He will dress you in pretty things and you’ll live in a beautiful house.”
She stopped and bit her lip before meeting his gaze. “Although I was a maiden and only thirteen, I was a woman by the standards of the streets and I knew plenty about what went on between men and women. I’d seen streetwalkers plying their trade in broad daylight. I knew what my mother meant. I was terrified and I begged her to tell them no—or if not that, at least to come with me.”
Magnus closed his eyes; pity, frustration, and rage prickled his lids. He felt the touch of her lips on his.
“Don’t, Magnus. Please, don’t be sad for me. I should have never begun—”
“No, I want to hear it. All of it.”
“It is so . . . I don’t know, worse than sordid—really, just sad.”
He pulled her against him, their bodies like spoons in a drawer. It was easier not to see her while he listened to her grim story. That might be cowardly, but so it was. “Tell me the rest, my love.”
She sighed. “The woman who’d bought me had been doing her job for a long time. She brought two big men with her. It was not pretty and I fought like a wild animal. But I remember one thing—she told my mother an address, a place where she was to go. Not until I a few years later did I find out it was a brothel, a place that was only one step up from the street.”
“Did you see your mother there?”
“I didn’t go until a year later. By then, nobody knew where she’d gone. My guess is she either moved on to a worse place or ended up on the street. She’d not been well the last time I saw her. I believe she must have had consumption. I can never forgive her for what she did, Magnus, but the one thing she did manage was to negotiate a decent contract when she sold me.”
He kept his mouth shut; he had no right to comment on her mother’s behavior one way or another.
She inhaled deeply and slowly exhaled. “As for me, Mrs. Pelham took me to a very proper looking house and had me deposited in her sitting room. When I tried to run, she had one of the men hit me, but not in the face—never in the face.”
Magnus’s temperature shot up, his head so hot his vision seemed to waver with the heat. She squeezed his arm but did not comment.
“It didn’t take much to convince me that I’d better obey Mrs. Pelham. She sat me down and fed me a tea complete with biscuits and cakes and sandwiches of a quality and amount I’d never had. And then she’d said to me: This is what your life can be if you are obedient. If you are not, you will get beaten, and, in the end, you will wind up in the same place but with bruises rather than cakes. The decision is up to you. Mrs. Pelham said I was to call myself a widow—as asinine as it was for a girl my age to behave like a widow. It was the way things were done—to prevent the man who would be my protector, an aristocrat who’d paid a great deal for me—from appearing to be debasing a minor and—”
“Who?” he grated, “Who was it.”
She twisted around in his arms, until they were facing one another. “No, Magnus. I will never tell you his name. Ever.”
“Yes, it is. And that is why I won’t tell you. You can order me to tell you, I know I am legally bound to obey you, but you will have to beat it out of me.”
His jaw dropped in horror. “How could you think I would—”
She gave him a quick, hard kiss and a smile. “Hush, of course I know you would not beat me. I cannot tell you, Magnus. Just the same way I cannot tell all the other men’s names.”
Magnus wanted to close his eyes, to hide the fury her words evoked, but he couldn’t. It would shame her. So, he just clamped his jaws shut.
“Do you want me to go on?”
“Yes.” No!
But how could he not know what happened to her? Even though he knew that hearing it all would bring him nothing but heartache. He should have never opened this door, but now that he had, he could not close it. He had to go inside.
***
It is happening, a relieved, weary voice in Mel’s head said as she watched her beautiful, kind, sweet, and—ultimately—innocent lover discover what kind of woman he’d chosen to marry.
She’d hoped to leave him without having to tell the whole sordid story of being sold, and she knew she could lie to him—she’d thought about it when he’d asked her—she probably should have lied to him, at least for his sake. But with the squire’s threats today she’d realized he needed to know something of her past—because later, after she’d gone, somebody was going to tell him. Even if it wasn’t Barclay, he would come face to face with the truth of everything—perhaps even the worst of it. Melissa knew there was no escaping it. Even in a backwater like New Bickford there was a man who knew what she was. Or what she had been. At least she could make sure that Magnus wouldn’t be surprised when some nameless person confronted him about the whore who’d not only tricked him into a false marriage but then abandoned him.
She looked into his eyes. He’d steeled his expression, like a man who was determined to see something through, something unpleasant.
“I will call the man John, for simplicity’s sake. As dreadful a woman as Mrs. Pelham was, she never lied to me. Right from the beginning she made sure I knew what would happen to me. First, I was taken to a lovely town house. It had been furnished tastefully. There was a lady’s maid, a butler, a footman, and a cook. In time, when I could be trusted to go outside my gilded cage, I would have my own carriage, horses, coachman, and groom. I lived in the house alone for a few days. Mrs. Pelham had told me a woman would come to see me. She was somebody chosen by my protector to—” She glanced up to Magnus, who was watching her with a mixture of revulsion and dread curiosity on his angelic features. “This woman had been a famed courtesan in her time. She was old then, but men still came to her for advice on all manner of subjects. John had sent her to me.” She hesitated, not sure of how much to tell him about Dorothy, whom she’d come to love a great deal, no matter that she’d been complicit in sacrificing her to Lord Vanstone.
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound.
“She taught me many things—things that would keep me from getting with child, protect me from diseases, when possible, and, of course, she taught me how to pleasure a man.”
His eyelids fluttered but did not close. “Go on,” he said through clenched jaws.
“I was to be fed, groomed, and prepared—it seemed my new owner was in no hurry. My hair, which had been brittle and dull, became luxuriant and shiny. My skin, which had been insect-bitten, rough, and raw, became soft and supple. My body, which had been spare and angular, became healthy and plump, although I had been underfed for long enough that I did not begin to develop a womanly form until I was seventeen.” She felt her mouth pull into a grim smile. “Whether by design or by malnutrition, I remained small and slight for longer than most girls my age. Almost as important as my physical grooming was the grooming of my voice, manners, and behavior. I was not an ignorant urchin, but I’d had very little schooling and I spoke with the accent of the streets. Dorothy is responsible for the way I speak today, although I have employed various others over the years to further smooth any rough edges. I did not meet John until two months passed.”
She reached out and took her husband’s face in both hands, locking eyes with him.
“More?”
He swallowed before nodding. “Yes.”
“It was no surprise what he wanted from me and I was able to perform as he wanted. He was so pleased with me that he soon began taking me around with him—to the theater, to dinners at other mistress’s houses.” Magnus shuddered, but said nothing. “And, eventually, to the parties such men enjoyed having. Time passed in a blur. I settled into my life and accepted my lot. To be honest, Mrs. Pelham and my mother had been correct. I was one of the lucky ones.”
He shook his head, but she stopped him.
“No, it is true. There were girls—far younger than I’d been—being sold every day for far less and into far worse conditions. John was not demanding or rough or cruel. He was gone for the summer every year and I had that glorious time to myself. I had holidays to myself also, as he had a family he was expected to be with. I had a family of my own by then—other women and even a few men—who were in my position, people who would not judge me for what I did, for what I’d become. My life seemed to have settled into a pattern.”
She paused, but then continued. “Then, a few months after my seventeenth birthday, I began to notice a change. John came to me less frequently. When he did, it was usually to take me out to . . . parties. These were functions we’d often attended through the years. But there was a difference.” She stopped and sighed. Every time she thought she’d said the worst, she’d forgotten there was something even more dreadful. She’d only ever told this story to Joss and there’d been no need to soften things for his consumption. She paused, almost believing she could work up the nerve to tell Magnus at least some of what Barclay had boasted of knowing today. But she couldn’t. She simply could not describe what had happened at the end with Lord Vanstone, no matter that Sir Thomas might eventually take care of educating Magnus for her.
She realized there was a tension in his body; he was waiting.
“Go on, finish it.”
She inhaled deeply. “What was happening had happened before: John was tiring of me. It was Dorothy, rather than John, who eventually told me. I was to be provided with a generous settlement—what my mother had negotiated for me, even though I was leaving his employ early. The amount would be enough to allow me to live for several years without working. But I was to vacate the townhouse in a month’s time, to make room for another occupant.”
He shook his head, his expression appalled. “Another young girl?”
“Yes, this was something he’d done for years. Dorothy told me I was the fourth girl, and now I was to make room for the fifth.”
A vein in Magnus’s temple was pounding so insistently she thought he might do himself harm. “The swine. Is he still—”
“I’ve already told you, Magnus. I will give you no information. The last thing I want is for you to show up on his doorstep the way you showed up at The White House.”
He looked grim and she knew this was not the last she’d hear of this. “Go on.”
“There isn’t much more to tell. I went to The White House because I knew I didn’t have enough money to never work again, even if I lived frugally. But I did have enough money to invest with the woman who owned The White House at that time. Mrs. Hensleigh was a legend—a madam who paid her girls well, abhorred the virgin trade, allowed in no girls younger than sixteen, and permitted no violence. She had more people wanting to work for her than she could ever accommodate, so I was fortunate I had money to invest. At first, I was still required to work, but I could be selective.” That much, at least, was true—although she was slightly overstating things. “We never became close friends, but she was a good employer and business partner to me. When she accumulated what she n
eeded to stop working, she offered me the first option to purchase.”
He was studying her, his eyes no longer frantic, but pensive. “I want you to know this, Melissa, I do not judge you for what you’ve done, but—as much as it shames and pains me to admit it—I’ve found myself feeling jealous. Even after hearing your painful story, I suspect I will still feel threatened that you have such extensive sexual experience while I only know what I’ve overheard from boasting young men and a few books. That jealousy is the product of my own insecurity and is a problem of mine, not yours. I’ll continue to grapple with it, probably for a long time. If I ever seem to be taking out my own frustration on you, you must bring me up sharply. Do you understand?”
She smiled at this very Magnus-like statement. “I understand.”
He didn’t return her smile, but stared over her shoulder, as if seeing something else.
He looked so . . . determined, so willing to tackle his demons head on. That made her ask something she swore never to speak out loud. “Why did you marry me, Magnus? When you found out what I was you must have been appalled. Why?”
He exhaled noisily and rolled onto his back. “I won’t lie to you, Melissa—I was deeply shocked. Horrified, would be more like it.”
She swallowed, glad he wasn’t looking at her when he admitted to such feelings.
“I was furious with you for lying to me—for using my proposal to manipulate me that night at Halliburton Manor. But I came to realize I’d wanted you every bit—more, I’m guessing—as you wanted me. I was hurt that you would just run off without saying anything. Even when I knew who you really were, I couldn’t believe you’d think me capable of being the type of man who’d stop loving you because of what you’d done.”
“But you didn’t really know me, Magnus. I lied so much—”
“Were you lying when we laughed together over some absurdity?”
She parted her lips. “But—”
“Were you lying when we discussed our impressions of books, arguing and bickering and—once again—laughing together in spite of our differences?”
Melissa and The Vicar (The Seducers Book 1) Page 24