Claiming the Courtesan

Verity wanted his quivering, inadequate, vulnerable soul. And she wanted him on his knees when he offered it.

Damn her. Damn her to hell. He couldn’t do this.

But what did his pride matter when he’d made her unhappy?

Nothing. Less than a single speck of dust.

Still, he couldn’t bring himself to watch her face while he told her. Once, she’d loathed and despised him. With good reason.

After the miracle that had flowered between them since last night, his courage failed at the prospect of reviving her contempt. Slowly, he moved across to the window and looked through the bars onto the rain-swept glen.

“Madam, I will speak of this once and once only.”

His voice was low with the control he exerted. The humiliations he’d endured since his mistress ran away last spring paled in comparison to this bitter moment.

He waited for her to say something, perhaps encourage him to go on. If she called him Your Grace again, he honestly thought he might strike her. But she remained silent, though he felt her gaze trained steadily on his back.

He curled one hand hard against the window frame. “My father, the sixth duke, was a debaucher, a drunkard and an opium addict. The poisons he’d taken since his schooldays gradually but inexorably sent him mad. My mother had him confined in this glen to avoid the scandal of committing him to a lunatic asylum.”

He paused for her to make some conventional expression of surprise or dismay or even denial.

She said nothing. Perhaps he’d already shocked her into speechlessness. Worse was to come, he grimly and silently told her.

He wished he didn’t need to say more.

He steeled himself to continue. “My father’s retinue included Hamish and a twelve-year-old mistress called Lucy. And my infant self. He had some idea snatching the heir would spite my mother.” He used the same flat voice. “He never understood his wife. He hated her, but he certainly never understood her.”

As though appearance of distance made it so in fact, he spoke quickly, unemotionally. Because, of course, the pain and fear still fed on him. They were close as his own skin.

Closer.

He no longer saw the rain-sodden view outside the window.

Instead, his head filled with the long, dark nights of debasement and imprisonment in this house. Long, dark nights that insidious memory melted into one endless night. He took a deep, shuddering breath, bracing himself to reveal the rest.

“When the mania was upon him—and it grew increasingly more severe—he became violent. Everyone within reach was at risk, but he took a particularly virulent hatred to me. Perhaps because I look so much like my mother. At his worst, he tried to kill me. Several times, he tried to kill himself.”

He paused, the memories rising as poisonous as any adder. His voice was bitter as he continued. “He died in Lucy’s arms when I was seven. The poor little bitch didn’t know that his foul diseases would finish her a year later. After my father’s death, my mother sent me to Eton while she evicted most of the tenants to starve or emigrate.”

He paused again. Surely, Verity would say something now. Protest, express sympathy. Scoff, even. But the taut silence extended.

And extended.

Perhaps she gloated to see him brought so low. His mother would have relished the moment. She’d made it her lifetime’s work to crush his pride and turn him into one of her creatures.

She’d never succeeded. But Verity could destroy him with one word.

Christ, he was so very tired of pretending to be the great Duke of Kylemore. He found a bleak freedom in owning to the truth behind his sham magnificence.

The silence continued.

Christ, what was wrong with her? Why the hell didn’t she speak? Surely his pathetic confession deserved some response.

A gust of wind spattered cold rain against the windowpane.

What was the use of hiding? He had to face her. He was no longer the frightened child he’d once been in this glen. Even so, making himself turn tested the limits of his courage.

As he moved, he ha