He raised a brow. “I’ll be the one asking the questions, Miss Wren. Not you.”
She swallowed a lump of uncertainty. “You do realize my employers will wonder if I fail to return, do you not, sir?”
He cocked his head, considering her with a vibrant regard that made her long to shift on her seat. His hands, large and gloved like a proper gentleman’s, rested on his thighs. The fingers of the right lightly drummed against his trousers. She wished he were not wearing a hat, for it seemed a shame for his golden hair to be confined beneath the brim.
“And you do realize, Miss Wren, that you drugged the brother of your employer with laudanum, stripped him of his clothes, beat him over the head, and spent the night in the same bed as him?” he returned, his tone mild.
She could not suppress her wince at his description of the unfortunate circumstances which had seemed to yoke them. “I did none of those things, sir, and while I must apologize for allowing you to sleep off the ill effects of your brandy drinking in my room, I had no choice.”
Well, that was not true at all, was it? She had drugged him, and she had spent the night in the same bed as well. Her lie was growing weary, as was she. How to extricate herself from this mess she had created with her own reckless panic?
“No choice but to lie there in bed with me all night long, knowing there was nary a stitch to cover my bare arse beneath the counterpane?” he asked.
He was speaking with the accent of a gentleman once more. Aside from the subject matter of his discourse, there was not a hint of the East End in his perfect speech. It was almost as if there were two different Rafe Suttons. Which one of them was real? She could not be sure.
“I did not peek, sir, if your modesty is what concerns you,” she offered, attempting to deflect the subject.
“It ain’t what concerns me at all. Your motivations do, however.” He paused, his expression growing stern. “Why did you do what you did, Miss Wren?”
Why indeed? Her reasoning in the moment had been abrupt.
She was thinking of her past when she blurted her next question. “Do you believe yourself the first gentleman to force his attentions upon a servant?”
Persephone regretted her choice of words the moment the query left her, for she did not mean to suggest he had forced himself on her. Merely that her experience had left her with a tremendous distrust of handsome rogues who attempted to seduce the governess. One of them had not accepted her refusal. It had not been him, but another.
And Rafe Sutton had paid the price. Guilt skewered her. She had never intended to do him harm. What Lord Gregson had done to her had made Persephone suspicious of every man, and she had reacted with reckless haste.
Mr. Sutton’s jaw went rigid. “What are you suggesting, Miss Wren?”
His voice was silken and yet laden with an inherent hint of menace.
How to explain the sudden fear that had overtaken her, the worry which had been shadowing her every interaction since she had abandoned her previous post? She could tell him, could she not, without mentioning any other details? Surely admitting she was a governess who had been importuned by the eldest son of her former employer was not tantamount to telling him who she truly was and what she had escaped from first.
It was apparent he believed she was accusing him of forcing himself upon her, and that was not what she had meant at all. Her words, like her thoughts, were a jumbled hodgepodge of pure confusion.
Time for the truth.
She took a deep, fortifying breath. “I was not referring to you, Mr. Sutton. I am attempting to explain my actions that night. You were charming and handsome and you were flirting. I…I panicked because of a former, regrettable circumstance. Pray forgive me. You are correct. I did slip laudanum into your brandy when your back was turned. But only out of an instinctive need to protect myself. I did not mean to pour as much into the brandy as I did.”
The silence, when she had completed the swift rush of her confession, was almost deafening, broken by nothing other than the steady rhythm of plodding hooves and the jangle of tack and other street sounds. Mr. Sutton was watching her intently, his expression unreadable. His jaw was clenched, his hazel eyes dark.
How she wished again for the easy, joking mannerism of his arrival at the garden when he had teased his nieces into running about like hoydens. The man opposite her now seemed dangerous, his face all sharp angles and planes.
“You admit to drugging me?” he asked at last.
She inhaled, not realizing she had been holding her breath until that very moment. “Yes. But I did so in fear. I regretted my actions at once.”
“You needn’t fear me, Miss Wren. Not now. Not ever. Rafe Sutton doesn’t need to steal a woman’s virtue. She gives it to ’im freely.”
His low rasp curled around her, wrapping her in warmth and an inexplicable longing. He was not the same sort of man as Lord Gregson. Whilst her initial interaction with him that mad night had led her to react with a frenzied terror, the rational part of her mind could discern the difference. Not every man was a predator.
Only some.
“There are men who prey upon women for reasons other than a lack of charm,” she said quietly, thinking of Lord Gregson.
Hateful thought.
Yet, necessary.