by Lucy Monroe
"She ran away because of something that happened to her."
Calantha could not misread the accusation in Jared’s eyes and guilt flayed her. It was as she had always suspected. If only she had been more aware of what was happening around her. If only she had not withdrawn into her books, she might have saved Mary from suffering some cruelty at the hands of her husband.
Jared must have read the guilt on her face because he scowled. "You were aware of your husband's depravity."
She could not deny it. She had suffered too much at his hands to be ignorant. "Yes."
Had he beaten Mary as he'd beaten her? Is that why she had run? The very thought made Calantha sick to the depths of her soul.
"Bloody hell."
"I’m sorry." She did not know what else to say, but then something that should have been obvious fell into place. "You are Mary's viscount, the one who paid for her schooling. She ran to you when Deveril mistreated her."
"She told you about me?"
"Not your name...I always wishes she had. I wanted to look for her. After she left. We were friends."
"And yet you allowed your husband to abuse her? That is not friendship."
She could not meet his eyes and looked away. "No. That is not friendship."
Mary had deserved so much better.
"She had a child."
She did not understand how that connected to what they were discussing, but she was more than willing to change the subject. "Hannah?"
"Yes."
"Is she yours?" She was shocked at her own blunt speech, but no less so than by his reaction to it.
He seemed to swell with fury and his eyes filled with angry disdain. Without conscious thought, she reacted to his anger with old fear and scooted backward.
"No," he barked, leaning forward to close the small distance she had created between them.
"I don’t understand." She pushed herself backward on her bottom until the solid trunk of a tree stopped her progress away from him.
He followed her, the look in his eyes terrifying. "She bloody well is not mine and don’t pretend you didn’t know, damn it." He grabbed her arm with one large hand. "I won’t tolerate your lies."
She stared at him, feeling as if a wild animal ready to shred her to pieces trapped her. His massiveness surrounded her and it was too much. Although she was tall for a woman, she knew how puny her strength would be pitted against his.
"I’m n-not lying," she stammered, fear she thought she had conquered coming back to torment her.
Was he going to strike her? She tried to steel herself against the possibility, realizing that she could not run. His hand held her arm too firmly, though the grip was not a painful one. For once, he truly seemed the beast he had been labeled by society.
She tried to remember the gentleness he had shown her to mitigate some of the terror coursing through her body, but it did not work. His very real, very present fury overshadowed any ephemeral memory she might have.
Her breathing turned shallow. Her palms grew damp as she clutched her hands into small, useless fists. Her mouth went dry. How could she have been so foolish as to go riding alone with him? Did she not know better than anyone how risky it was to put oneself at the mercy of a man?
Bile rose in her, the acid burning against the ache in her throat. "Please. Don’t hurt me," she croaked past the tightness there.
She had promised herself she would never beg again the second month of her marriage, the day her husband had stood over her with his fist raised and laughed with pleasure at the sight of her pleading, terrified form. Yet she could not hold the words back, perhaps because even in her terror, she trusted Jared to have more mercy than Clairborne.
Suddenly Jared moved. She screamed and tried to jump up, but she was too late. He grabbed her shoulders and yanked her against him, but not cruelly. The lack of pain registered at the same time as the reassuring caress against her back.
The hand she had feared would deal her a blow moved against her with soothing assurance. "Hush, baby. I’m not going to hurt you. It’s okay."
He repeated the words over and over again until she stopped trembling and lay in quiet acquiescence against his chest. She listened to the steady beat of his heart and she realized he really wasn’t going to hurt her. The fear receded and in its place came a terrible, cold anger.
She had trusted him. She had allowed him to kiss her more intimately than she had ever been kissed, had been enthralled by him and he had used his size and anger to intimidate her. Perhaps he had not expected her fear to be so intense, but he had unleashed his anger against her and she did not even know why. She would not put herself at the mercy of another unstable man’s whim.
"Let me go." She spoke quietly, but with conviction.
He obeyed, but she sensed his reluctance. She didn’t care. For the first time since meeting him, she did not crave his touch.
She scooted backward and then stood up. "Perhaps you had better explain."
"First, tell my why you were so bloody terrified. I would never hurt you, Calantha. Surely you must realize that."
She did not want to discuss her unreasonable fear, but the vulnerable expression in his eyes pricked her conscience. He was used to being treated like a beast by others.
She did not want to add to the burden of his title. "I learned to fear a man’s anger and his strength. You were furious with me and I reacted to your emotion rather than your character."
It was all she was willing to say.
It was not enough. "Who taught you that fear? Was it your husband?"
She refused to answer. "Tell me about Mary."
"Tell me about your marriage, Calantha."
"I do not discuss it. You brought me here to talk about my former friend, not my marriage." It struck her at that moment that Mary was dead.
Grief rose in her, but she tamped it down. She would show this man no more weakness. "Please say what you intended to say."
He certainly hadn’t come riding with her to discuss a future together. Her naïve hope mocked her now.
"She made me promise to tell you about Hannah. On her deathbed."
Pain lanced through her as if Mary's loss was as fresh as the day she'd gone looking for her and found she'd disappeared from Clairborne Park.
"Why?" She could not begin to understand, unless Mary hoped she would do something for her child based on their earlier friendship.
She would. She would do anything for the one true friend from her past.
"Because Clairborne was her father."
The sun-dappled meadow receded and black shadows blocked her vision as she swayed under the impact of the verbal blow Jared had just dealt her. Then he was there, holding her arms in a light grip that prevented her falling down.
She shook him off and tipped her head upward, looking into his dark eyes. "Mary and Clairborne had an affair?"
She could not take it in. Betrayal dealt her heart another painful blow. Mary had been her friend.
"No."
She shook her head, trying to understand. "Then how?"
"He raped her."
The words were the final shock to her system and Calantha welcomed the feeling of numbness that overcame her just before the world went black.
The first thing she saw when she awoke was the sun filtering through the green leaves on the branches of the tree above her head. Although she knew the sun to be warm, she felt cold all over and deep into her soul. All the warmth that Jared had brought into her life had been sapped from her, leaving her more frozen than she had ever been.
The second thing she saw was Jared’s face. He leaned over her, a look of concern on his features. She dismissed it as a trick of the light. He wasn’t worried for her. How could he be? It was her fault. All of it. She finally understood his anger.
She moved to sit up, but he held her back.
She did not want to remain in the vulnerable position. "I’m all right. Please let me up."
He didn’t look like he
believed her, but he gently lifted her into a sitting position. "I’m sorry."
Why was he apologizing? He hadn’t raped Mary.
"She was so young." She'd been a year younger than Calantha.
"Yes."
"She was so sweet." She remembered Mary’s laughter and ready smile and tears burned at the back of her eyes.
"Why did you faint? You said you knew of your husband's depravity."
At first, she was confused and then appalled by the direction of his thoughts.
"Yes, but I didn't know his cruelty stretched that far. I thought she left because he had hurt her...I could never have suspected it would have been in that way. She was my friend. We would talk. When I was first married to Clairborne, I didn’t know how to be a duchess and I was frightened." She was babbling, but shock was still shrouding her mind. "I had more in common with her than the other titled women around me."
"Then you made friends with the others and dismissed Mary from your life?"
Calantha winced at the accusation, but her anger was gone along with any other feeling. "I didn’t dismiss her."
"Don’t lie to me." His rage had turned as cold as her heart, but this time it did not affect her.
"I’m not lying."
"I know the truth. She told me that you pulled away from her, stopped treating her like a friend."
Yes, but her guilt at the consequences of a behavior meant to protect wasn’t something she could deal with right now. "I want to go home."
"We have to talk about Hannah."
What was there to say? Clairborne had had a daughter, but his wife had never been pregnant. He had raped a sweet, innocent girl who should have been able to trust him for her protection, but had kept his duchess pristine.
Calantha could not face that reality. "Not now. I can't talk about it now." She looked at Jared, meeting him cold look for cold look. "I won't talk anymore."
She meant it, sealing her lips shut in a firm line.
Jared opened his mouth to argue, but then snapped it shut again. He went to fetch the horses. When he lifted her onto her mare's back, all of the glorious feelings his touch usually elicited were gone. She had withdrawn to that place of safety in her mind, the place where her emotions could not penetrate. Where even physical sensation could be ignored.
***
Jared led Calantha back to her cottage, keeping their horses at a more sedate pace on the return ride. He didn’t want to risk her falling, not after the way she’d fainted. While the silence on the ride to the meadow had been of his making, the utter stillness between them now was of hers.
She had pulled into herself and he knew without trying that he could not reach her. Her emotionless demeanor bothered him more than he cared to admit.
It shouldn’t. She'd as good as admitted to turning a blind eye to her husband's evil, but then had said she had not known Clairborne's cruelty would stretch to rape. She'd said she thought Clairborne had hurt Mary. Like he had hurt Calantha?
He could not forget her terrified reaction when they had first started talking. She’d acted as if she thought he would beat her. Three days ago, he would have chocked that reaction up to his reputation as Lord Beast, but he knew better now.
Calantha had never seen him as a beast and he didn’t like to admit that even for a brief time today that had changed. He had no doubt he knew who was responsible for her reaction - the bastard who had married her. Why had Jared never seriously considered what sort of life Calantha must have lived at the hands of her vicious husband?
He was guilty of his own prejudice, assuming a woman in her position had had the power to stop her husband's wickedness. His own mother's life should have warned him just how much of a fallacy that sort of thinking was. Hadn't she been forced to flee England so she could raise at least one of her children? Instead of being able to curb Clairborne's brutality, Jared was damn certain now that Calantha been a victim of it.
She did not easily trust, nor did she open herself up to others, but that was something Jared could understand. She was a private person, holding most of her thoughts captive behind a marble-like mask.
Until she had met him. For a brief time she had allowed him to see behind her mask to the passionate woman who grew roses for their beauty, but used their healing properties to help others. He hated the fact that she’d withdrawn again.
She was not the monster he had at one time believed her to be. He would find out the full story from her, when she was ready to talk.
In the meantime, they still had to discuss Hannah. He had to know if she wanted to be part of the child’s life and in what capacity. Would she want the role of mother? Had Mary been right to believe that the Angel would do right by the by-blow daughter of her dead husband?
The prospect left Jared cold. He couldn’t give up Hannah. He loved the little girl and wanted to raise her. If Calantha decided she wanted Hannah, could he ignore Mary’s death-bed wish and keep the child for himself?
If he did not, he would lose his daughter. If he did, he would lose his honor.
The only solution lies in somehow connecting himself to Calantha. What if he were to marry her?
He found himself seduced by the possibility before he could dismiss it from his mind. He could fulfill Mary’s desire to see Calantha raise her daughter and he would not have to lose the little girl that he held so dear. He would also have Calantha. The fire and passion she hid behind her emotionless façade would be his. So would the right to protect her.
He would chase the fear from her eyes and teach her that a man’s anger and strength could be controlled.
Angels did not marry beasts, but she’d told him more than once that she wasn’t an angel. He was beginning to think that with a certain woman, he wasn’t the beast society believed him to be either.
CHAPTER FIVE
Calantha withdrew to her conservatory immediately upon arriving home. She did not even take time to change her riding habit for an afternoon gown.
She had been surprised by the ease with which Jared had allowed her to dismiss him, but grateful. She could not discuss anything with him right now. She had to come to terms with his revelations.
Deveril, the monster, had raped the oh so dear and sweet Mary, her one and only true friend during her life as a duchess. Calantha sank to her knees beside a potted rosebush. Its pale pink loveliness had reminded her in the past of Mary, prompting her to pray for the gentle friend that she had lost. If only she had known just how great the loss truly had been.
She had believed Mary had gone on to another position or back to her viscount savior...and she had. But the evil that had sent her running was worse than anything Calantha could have imagined. Now she had to come to terms not only with that knowledge but the reality that her dear friend had given birth to a child and was dead. Mary. Dead.
The busy hands forever stilled, the laughing mouth forever silenced, the rosy cheeks pale and bloodless in a coffin. No doubt, now buried in some plot reserved for sinners outside the churchyard because her innocence had been brutally taken and along with it her chastity.
The grief came out of nowhere, crashing through the wall of ice that surrounded Calantha’s heart and bringing with it a pain so great she thought she would shatter from it.
Silent sobs racked her body as she buried her head in her arms on the edge of the rose pot. She cried for all she had lost, not just Mary. She grieved her own stolen innocence, her hard won knowledge of the baser side of human nature, the friendships she had forced herself to relinquish among those weaker than her husband, and she grieved her own cowardice along with all it had wrought.
She had allowed her fear of her husband to push Mary away, so the girl had not come to her when Clairborne had raped her. She would have helped Mary, even if it meant facing Clairborne’s wrath – but the girl had not known that. How had she ended up Jared’s housekeeper?
Giving her the position had probably been his way of coming to her rescue once again. Calantha would regret forev
er her inability to be there for her dear friend. She had loved Mary as much as she could have loved a sister. It had been that love which had prompted her to withdraw more tightly into the loneliness of isolation in an effort to protect Mary. A sob snaked through her as she acknowledged that her efforts had failed spectacularly.
Had Jared loved Mary?
Calantha thought of the pretty girl and her indomitable spirit and thought he must have. Why else would he have taken on the responsibility of raising Hannah? The child that should have been Calantha's.
Oh God, she cried out silently, how can I be so cruel and base that I would even think such a thing?
But she had thought it and the thought brought more pain. She, the weak one, had been unworthy of bearing a child. Unworthy of love. Clairborne had told her again and again that if she were not so common, so frigid, so foolish, so lacking in every way that counted, he would come to her.
He said she was no better than a mindless marble statue, all beauty and no substance. She made a good ornament, but nothing else. And it was because she had been so unattractive in this way to her husband that he had hurt Mary.
As the thought formed a great well of rage erupted from her and Calantha shot to her feet. No! No! She might be weak. She might have been a coward, but she had not forced her husband to such a monstrous action. He had mistresses. She ought to know, he threw them in her face often enough. He did not have to resort to rape. He had been the monster, not her.
She had let Mary down because of her fear, just as she had allowed her spinelessness to stop her from helping the servant girl Clairborne had put out until it was too late. But she hadn’t made her husband cruel. He’d managed that all on his own. Just as he’d managed to deposit dread so deep in her soul that she had merely existed for the past six years, but had not actually lived.
She feared her own feelings, both pain and joy. She feared attachment to others in case they were taken from her as her parents had been and the few friends she had made during her life. She even feared meeting Hannah. What if the child carried her father’s cruelty in her?