“Very well.” She straightened as if preparing for battle. “Why have you never married?”
“Do you want the truth?”
“Of course.”
“Because after what happened eight years ago I could never trust another woman. And you know my feelings on marriage and fidelity.” He would have been faithful to her as long as he lived. And therein lay the irony of the man he’d become.
She placed a trembling hand on her collarbone. “But you have had relations with women?”
“I’m not a monk. I’ve not taken a vow of celibacy.” And I thought you were dead.
“No,” she whispered. “I didn’t expect you had.”
Vane leant back against the squab as one question suddenly burned within. “And what about you? You say you never married but have you ever had relations with a man?” It was an impertinent question, one a gentleman would never dare ask a lady. But he felt he’d earned the right to know.
She looked to her lap and sighed — and there was his answer.
The blood in his veins turned ice-cold. She was his, always had been, always would be. To know she’d given herself to another was like a cleaver hacking at his heart. God, if there was one thing he despised it was his own damn hypocrisy.
“Did you love him?” he heard himself say, though he was still rolling on a metaphorical floor, writhing in pain, twisting in agony.
She grew suddenly restless, refused to look at him as she rocked back and forth in her seat. “This was a mistake. Stop the carriage. I want to get out.” She reached for the handle.
“Wait!” Panic flared. “You’ll fall to your death.”
Her hand settled over the metal.
Vane lurched forward and grabbed her wrist. “You can’t get out here.”
“I don’t care.” Tears filled her eyes as she tried to wriggle out of his grasp. “Let me go.”
He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her across the carriage and into his lap. She fought him at first, kicked the side and tugged the curtain on the viewing window.
And still, Wickett did not take it as a signal to stop.
Vane wrapped his arms around her and held her close. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.” It would kill him to hear her story, but her needs had always come before his own.
She squirmed in his lap and punched his chest, the hollow sound drowned out by her sudden sob. “I can’t.”
Fear turned to anger. When she’d mentioned someone hurt her, surely she had not meant— He shook his head to banish the thought from his brain.
“Tell me what happened, Estelle.” How he kept his voice calm, he would never know. “Confide in me.”
“I was a fool … a fool who forgot how some men treat their maids,” she blurted. “I thought he was a friend.”
“Who?”
“Philipe Robard.” She gulped for breath. “The … the merchant’s son.”
Vane kissed the top of her head to bring her comfort, and to stop him from raising the roof with a barrage of vitriolic curses. “Are you telling me he forced you?”
“It all happened so quickly.” She curled into his lap and pressed her cheek to his chest. “I hit him with a chamber pot, ran down the stairs and out of the house and never looked back.”
Philipe Robard was a dead man. He just didn’t know it yet.
One question filled Vane’s mind. The words stuck to his tongue like a bitter taste that he desperately needed to expel. “Was … was there a child?”
Please say no.