"You can speak freely, Mary, in fact I prefer that you would be honest, and of course I'd never hold your answer against you," Lady Havenshire assured her.
"Y... yes, m'lady, I've been intimate with men, before," she replied, her voice full of shame.
"You've nothing to be ashamed of, Mary. You're a grown woman, and you're free to find men handsome and interesting, I certainly wouldn't hold it against you," Nadia said. "I have a... query," she continued hesitantly, "about... the first man you were intimate with. How often did you interact with him after?"
"The first man? Oh, he had been a friend of mine for some time," Mary recalled; the line of questioning clearly unsettled the maidservant, whose voice grew unsteady as she began to pick up odds and ends left scattered about Lady Havenshire's bedroom, pulling linens from the corner and idly ensuring the surfaces to be dust-free. "We've... not spoken, often, since then," she said; the manner of her speech suggested to Nadia Mary had not thought much on the subject until prompted. "...I don't see him as much as I used to."
"Do you think there's a reason for that, Mary?" Nadia pressed her, glancing up from the bed.
"I'm... not well-versed in the manner of men," Mary laughed nervously. "I suppose... some men, are simply... well, they've an idea of what they wish to have, and once they've gotten it, they move on with their lives. Perhaps that's what... my friend, thought. The other serving girls, they've... mentioned it, of how men have treated them. It's an unfortunate part of how the world is, I wager." Mary pondered, before blushing embarrassingly. "Men of the sort I spend time with, anyway. I'm certain the kind of gentleman you'd find would be quite different, m'lady. Why do you ask?"
"No reason in particular," Nadia said dismissively, though the reason proffered weighed quite heavily in her mind. She felt embarrassed herself, having such little experience in these matters; she had spent her years abroad studying, thinking, learning about the wild ideas the world had to offer, but when it came to matters of the sexes and of relationships, she found her own viewpoint quite lacking. She hadn't even considered so crass a thought before the sight of Lord Beckham had enticed her so deeply.
Had she been used?...
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
"You'll never be the man you think you are, or the man you ought to be!"
Those words, fallen from the mouth of his love Anna, stuck with him; they hurt him, crippled him. He imagined that day with her; he had found her rather inebriated and in a compromising position with Lord Rossing, a man he had only ever held the foulest of contempts for. He had retrieved his love, but her actions had brought great sorrow to his heart. He asked her if she had ever truly loved him.
She said she had.
"Anna, please," he pleaded; scaling the stairs of Berrewithe Manor he followed her to her room, only to find she had locked the door shut. "I'll... I'm sorry," he pleaded, pressing his shoulder against the door, longing to feel her body against his once more. "I love you... I want to have your hand in marriage, Anna, doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"Of course it does! I find that you think otherwise to be quite insulting," her voice, muffled, rumbled through the locked door.
"M'lady, I didn't—I would never intend to insult you, please," Lord Beckham pleaded.
"If you hadn't meant to insult me you wouldn't have questioned my integrity over matters so simply as an evening with Lord Rossing!" she sniped back, her voice hysterical.
"Anna, please... I'm... sorry, I..." his heart throbbing, he couldn't bring himself to break his last barrier; to let her take so complete a control over him. He had to stand up for himself, he thought... he couldn't simply let another man have his wife so thoughtlessly. But he couldn't bring himself to do it; to chastise her. He loved her too deeply, and so caught was he in her spell that nothing could break it.
"You can't even apologize properly for something so outrageous!" she shouted.
"I..." he withered against the door, falling to his knees, eyes full of tears. Ms. Cauthfield had warned him of the woman and her capricious cruelty; of her manipulations. Still, he couldn't say no to someone he loved so deeply.
"Won't you ever say you're sorry for wronging me?" Anna shrieked through the door.
"You're not going to apologize, are you?" Ms. Cauthfield emerged from the shadows, having listened to the conversation. "She's devastated you, m'lord! Spending the evening with another man? She's using you," Ms. Cauthfield whispered. Broken, Lord Beckham looked up to his loyal servant; a woman who had helped raised him, a second mother.
"What am I to do, Ms. Cauthfield? I love her dearly. She is everything to me," Lord Beckham pleaded, tears at his eyes.
"You deserve loyalty, m'lord. Anyone - man, woman, or otherwise - who gives love, deserves love back," Ms. Cauthfield excoriated him.
"Marshall? Marshall! How dare you ignore me!" Anna screamed through the door. Lord Beckham's expression fell, his voice cowed.
"I'm... sorry."
***
His eyes flashed open, that fetid reverie still clinging like spores of mold to the back of his mind. She had been right, all along; she had broken him, and he knew he could never make a woman like Nadia happy. Anna had been his nadir, but she had taught him that his love would never be enough.
Worse yet, he had claimed the woman's first time; something which had grown to a great storm of dread in the depths of his churning stomach. Since returning to the manor he had drowned himself in loathing for being so crass, so short-sighted, as to steal one of the most sacred things to a young woman! The more the panic set into him the more he convinced himself of the need to settle this the only way he could now, without ruining Nadia's life as he had ruined his own, and his sister's.
"She's quite a creature, isn't she? Takes after her mother, who had all those same, wild, unmarriageable characteristics," Lord Havenshire's hoarse laugh echoed through the hall as night began to creep across the moors. Watching night fall at the top of the stairs, where a towering window gave him view of night's silvery lunar eye, Lord Beckham turned at the sound of the old man's voice, his dark coat bathed in the moonlight.
"M'lord," he said with a nod.