by Jade Lee
She didn’t want to answer. She wanted to lie and deny it all. “Yes,” she said.
He touched the back of her hand, the caress exquisitely gentle. “Were you forced? Was it . . . rape?”
Tears flooded her eyes. How did she explain? How could she justify how dumb she had been? “He said he loved me. He said we would get married.”
His hands fell away, first one, then the other until he stood before her with his arms hanging at his sides. “Charles Barr,” he said dully. “My name shall forever be paired with that snake.”
There was nothing to say to that. Nothing but to stand there and wonder futilely how she could redeem the situation. Now, twenty minutes after the fact, she thought of a dozen ways she might have put Charles in his place. She might have screamed that she had no mole on her backside, and he was a lying cad. She might have pulled any number of the ladies into the necessary room and proved to them that her bum was pristine white.
But she hadn’t thought of that. And she doubted that would have helped anyway. Neither could she think of anything to say to Kit. So she remained silent, even as he opened the door to her and handed her inside.
“Oh, Kit,” she said in the last moment. “Kit, I’m so sorry about this.”
He flashed her a weak smile. He didn’t say it wasn’t her fault. He didn’t even tell her he didn’t mind, that he should have expected this when he proposed to her. He didn’t do any of those things. He simply closed the door and gave directions to the cabbie.
She watched him as the hansom began to move. He stood at the side of the road watching her, his shoulders hunched and his expression morose. Her heart broke at the sight. He was supposed to be the exuberant one. Wasn’t that what he said when he proposed? That she needed his lightness? How sad he looked then. How mortified.
She fell back against the squabs and looked down at her hand. Her engagement ring seemed to stare back at her, mocking her in its very dullness. The diamond was small, but she had polished the metal until it gleamed. What a foolish girl she was believing this was possible. Kit had not cried off, but his last expression haunted her. His face—that look—it was of a man suddenly tallying losses. It wouldn’t be long now. The countess and his mother had won.
She swallowed, fighting the tears. She ought to be the one to cry off and save him the pain. They weren’t right for each other on so many levels. She saw that now. And even if she didn’t, the memory of his face said everything he hadn’t. In just a short time, she had made him look morose. What would it be like in two months? Two years?
With sudden resolve, she pulled off the engagement ring. It slid off too easily, as if even the ring knew it would never be. And then, finally, the tears began to flow.
Chapter 14
Brandon was glad he’d bothered to shave when Scheherazade came in. She’d been crying, he saw that immediately. Then he saw her beautiful blue dress and remembered Lily’s tea. Bloody hell. Last, he noticed that she didn’t wear her engagement ring. Her left hand was conspicuously naked. He struggled to sit up, torn between anger at his brother’s wife and elation that the engagement with Kit appeared to finally be over.
“You’re awake,” she said needlessly when she entered his room.
“You’ve been crying,” he returned. Then he wondered exactly where his smooth tongue had gone. Wasn’t he the one who could charm a woman into anything? He’d been told that in India a dozen or more times at least. Of course, a lot of things had been true in India that had since deserted him.
Scheherazade attempted a cheery smile. It failed miserably to meet her eyes. “A surly temper is a sure sign of improvement.”
“So is an appetite. Tell that woman Martha to feed me something more edible than gruel.”
Her smile warmed, though not enough to reassure him. “Food needs to be paid for, Brandon.” She sat down in the chair beside his bed. “Is there a reason you have not removed yourself from ‘that woman’s’ care?” Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you letting your family worry about you?”
He frowned. “Who is worried?”
A flash of fury twisted her features, but she smoothed them soon enough. “Kit has asked after you.”
“And Michael no doubt.” He reached out and touched her hand. “What happened? Was it Lily’s tea?”
She nodded miserably and looked away, but not before he caught the sheen of tears in her eyes. She said nothing more, and he knew better than to press. She would tell him in her own time as long as he kept quiet. But it was a hard wait. Especially as he could do no more than touch the edge of her fingers with his own.
“I want to hold you,” he said softly. The words were out before he realized how inappropriate they were. She would see him as a cad pushing for favors when she was at her weakest. “I-I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I should not have said that.”
She turned back to him, but her eyes were looking at something long distant. “When I was little, I used to curl up on Pappy’s bed and read. I liked his tiny room and the smell of his sheets. I would wake in the morning curled into his side, my book laid neatly on the floor by my shoes.”
“You slept nights with a man in the troupe?” he frowned. “What must your mother have thought?”
“I don’t know that she ever found out. And even if she did . . .” She shook her head. “I spent all the time I could with Pappy. He was my father. Not my real one, of course, but in all other ways. Besides, Mama was more concerned with Cleo.”
He frowned. “Your sister Cleopatra.”
The corners of her mouth turned up in a vague smile. “My mother liked dramatic names.” Then her expression faded. “Broke my mother’s heart when she died. Cleo had the beauty and the talent to be a great actress.”
“Whereas you have the intelligence to make the playhouse a profitable business. Is it heartless for me to say that I believe your mother undervalued you?”
She looked at him then, really focused on his face rather than staring vaguely in his direction. “That was terribly heartless,” she said with a soft smile. “And Pappy used to say it too.”
“And I am sorry for the loss of your sister. Between the two of you, the company could have done great things.”
She shrugged, and her eyes brightened just the tiniest bit more. “She was born to play the great roles. But I don’t know that our little playhouse would have satisfied her for long. She started talking about the Royal by the time she was eight.”
“Isn’t that what childhood is for? Grand plans? Great dreams?” And how quickly adulthood strikes them down.
She flushed and looked at her hands. “Kit has grand plans for the playhouse. He wants to remake it to rival the Royal.”
What a disaster that would be! London already possessed two grand theaters. It would never support a third. He searched her face, pressing her to speak her mind. “And what do you think?”
Her lips quirked. “That he is young.” She dropped her head into her chest. “I am so tired, Brandon. I don’t know what to do.”
He moved as quickly as he was able, grimacing against the pain. He slid to the side. The bed was large enough without his shift, but he wanted her to feel as comfortable as possible.
“Come lie down, Scher.”
“I couldn’t,” she said, though he could already tell it was a token protest. She was hurting deep in her soul. She needed to return to that safe haven of childhood in Pappy’s bed.
“I won’t tell,” he said. “And you are perfectly safe,” he lied. He could never be sure of what would happen this close to her. Could he ever touch her and not want more? He tugged on her hand. “Come on.”
She leaned forward, lifting a knee to climb onto the bed. Then she paused to grimace at her dress. “I will crush it.”
“You could always take it off.”
She flashed him an annoyed expression, and he immediately backtracked.
“It was crushed already, Scher. For once, don’t think about propriety or other people or anything beyond this
moment. Climb in. Close your eyes. Let yourself rest.”
She did, though he could tell she thought she shouldn’t. But the lure of lying down, of curling into herself on a man’s bed was something she couldn’t resist.
He was careful not to touch her. He had lifted himself up on the pillows and she settled low, facing him, such that not one curling lock of her hair met his raised arm. Two tiny inches separated her from his side, and he thought this was how she probably slept with Pappy. A little girl in a tight ball against his side or maybe even his back. How angelic she must have appeared, dark lashes against a child’s pure downy skin. How beautiful she was now, though her lashes darkened the smudges beneath her eyes, and this close he could see the light freckles that dotted her cheeks.
“I won’t let him do it,” she said as she tucked her hands beneath her cheeks.
“Do what?” he asked. His fingers twitched with the desire to stroke her hair off her forehead.
“I’m going to cry off. I won’t let Kit destroy the troupe or the playhouse,” she returned without opening her eyes. “Grand dreams are all well and good, but he is playing with our lives.”
He noted that she said “our lives” not the actors’ lives or even the company’s life. As much as she longed for respectability, she still identified herself as one of the troupe.
“I believe you,” he said softly. And if that was the excuse she gave for the end of her engagement with Kit, then he could allow her the deception. “Kit is a fool,” he said with real feeling.
“Kit is young,” she said softly. “And we have all been young before.”
He couldn’t stop himself. He arched his near hand down to stroke her hair off her cheek. Her lips curved in acceptance and she snuggled a little tighter to his side. Not yet touching, but not so far away either. An inch left between them, maybe less. And he was rock hard with the awareness of her.
“The countess invited Charles Barr to her tea.”
Scheherazade spoke in a whisper, and he wondered if he had heard her correctly. What did that ass Charles Barr have to do with anything?
“He’s grown fat and ugly. I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse, but he still dresses in the best style. And I think his smile is the same, though I didn’t see what was underneath it before. I didn’t see that his eyes are so cold.”
His fingers stilled on her cheek. She had said “before.” She hadn’t seen that before.
“Why did Lily invite Charles to the tea?” he asked slowly.
“To humiliate me. To embarrass Kit. And it worked.” She curled into a tighter ball. He could tell by the tension in her back that she held back her tears.
He spread his fingers, caressed her neck and shoulders. If he could, he would pull her right to his heart and cradle her there forever. “I’m so sorry, Scher. I’m so . . . sorry.” Why weren’t there better words to use? A better way to say how deeply sad he was for her?
“He was the answer to my prayers,” she continued. “I was sixteen. I should have known better. After all, I’d heard about men like him. And didn’t some of the actresses try to warn me? Stupid. So damn stupid.”
He was the one then, Brandon realized. The man who had taken her innocence. “No one is smart at sixteen.” He reached his other hand around, trying to move protectively about her without seeming to. “He said he loved you and would take you away from your life,” Brandon guessed. “He offered you everything you’ve ever wanted.” He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “It wasn’t your fault.”
She broke down then. Her sobs came hard, with a clenching of muscles as she tried to bury herself into the mattress. He could do nothing but hold her while her body shook. And as he lay uselessly beside her, he silently raged at Lily and that bastard Charles. He tarred them both with the same feather: the man for despoiling an innocent, and his sister-in-law for doing it again and so publicly. But in the meantime, Scher was still sobbing, her cries sounding like the release of a dam. Years of pain flowed out of her with every tear, and he wasn’t in the least bit surprised to feel wetness on his own cheeks. He understood regrets. But whereas he had engineered his own downfall, she had been unwillingly duped.
He leaned forward and gathered her into his arms. It pulled at his wounds, but he barely even noticed. All his thoughts centered on her. And drawing her up enough that she released her pain into him and not the mattress.
“Come to me, Scheherazade,” he said. “Let me hold you.”
She resisted at first, as he knew she would. But in a moment, she reached out for him and wrapped her arms around his torso. He drew her up and back such that she lay on his chest, her arms a tight band that was both painful and so exquisitely wonderful that he could barely breathe.
She trusted him. She trusted him enough to climb into his bed and pour out her pain in his arms. That was a wonder to him, a miracle that he would do nothing to disturb.
It ended all too soon. Her sobs eased, her shudders slowed, and her body relaxed. She wasn’t asleep. There was too much tension in her for sleep, but she was more at ease than she had ever been in his presence.
He didn’t speak. He stroked her shoulder and even pressed a kiss onto the top of her head, but he didn’t speak. He didn’t know what to say. And then, unexpectedly, words flowed from his lips. Soft confessions spoken to the air above her head. And yet, every word, every thought was for her.
“I left for India when I was twenty-three. As a second son, I had no interest in war, but in commerce? In a foreign land? That intrigued me, and the money I could make there intrigued me even more. I went as an investor, but also as a worker. I would see to it that the money I put in would multiply a thousand fold.”
She was listening. He could tell by the way she lifted her head the tiniest bit, cocking an ear to hear him better. Her mind had left her own misery to learn about his. And if confessing his sins distracted her for even a moment, then he would tell her all.
“We made our money in an Indian factory, weaving and dying cloth that was sold back here in England. Our only competition was a group of dyers. Artists really, and they knew how to make this color of blue that was exquisite.”
He fingered the edge of her dress. How appropriate that she wore nearly the exact shade that had cost him so dearly.
“It was my task to hire the head dyer, the artist who had designed that most beautiful color. If he worked for us, then we would have the secret and the best fabric in the world.”
“He didn’t want to work for you, did he?” Her voice was rough from her tears, but he could hear her well enough. And her words proved that her mind was as sharp as ever.
“I offered him triple what the other dyers were paid. I became his friend, had meals in his home, played silly games with his children.”
She shifted against his side, straightening enough to look up at his face. “The fire,” she whispered, horror in her expression. “They say you got your title because of heroism trying to rescue Indians in a fire.”
He rolled to his back, startled to realize how painful talking about this was, even now. It felt as if it had been yesterday. The wounds to his hands and face still burned as he remembered tearing through the debris, the agonizing shame. She started to raise up off him, but he held her close with his right arm. In truth, he was the one clutching her, not the other way around.
“Tapas would not come to work for us,” he said. “How could he work for so much money when we paid his friends so little?”
“Did he work for someone else?” she asked.
“Worse. He put together a group of his fellow artists—dyers and cloth makers with incredible skills—and he started his own company.”
She shuddered. “Did you burn them out?”
He looked down at her eyes, seeing the wide shock in them. He should nod and tell her the lie because it was so much easier than the truth. But he couldn’t. “If we had, then they would have never given us the secret dying techniques. We needed that formula.”<
br />
She frowned. “So what did you do?”
“They had skill but little money. We had money but no skill. I convinced them to work together with us. A joint venture. It took months of convincing. I had to prove to them that I was just like them, an honest hardworking man. I dressed like they did, I attended their festivals and their market, brought expensive gifts to their children.”
“They came to know you. They trusted you.”
He touched her cheek, wiping away the streaks her tears had caused in her makeup. “We signed the papers. We had a grand celebration. Then Tapas showed me the formula. He was smart. He told me and only me. He didn’t trust anyone else.”
She sighed. “Who did you tell?”
“Charles Cornwallis, Marquess. My superior in the company.” He made no excuses for his stupidity. The terrible thing was that Cornwallis seemed no different than any other Englishman overseas. He had a wife, a fondness for wine, and a genial disposition. Nothing in his manner that would indicate ruthlessness. Nothing except a slight dismissiveness of foreigners, a deeply rooted belief that the English were superior. That was bad enough, but Brandon realized now that the man didn’t even consider the Indians real people. That was what created the monster.
He felt her hand on his cheek, a warm presence as she drew his attention back to her. “What happened?”
He shrugged, pretending to be casual when the very words sliced new pain into his mind. “I don’t really remember. It was a . . . a celebration. I had been drinking. Cornwallis got me to explain the process. I have a good memory for facts and figures. I got the formula right, I know it.”
“Of course you did. You’d been working for just that thing for months.”
“Then he offered me another drink. What was one more? But there was opium in it. I was already drunk enough that I didn’t notice the taste. I woke up two days later, long after the damage was done.”
She frowned. “The fire. I thought you were burned in the fire as you tried to rescue . . .” Her voice trailed away.