Page 105 of The Dangerous Lord

“How was it not my fault?” he cried as his head snapped up. “I stepped in where I had no business being! I let my temper so possess me that I shoved a tiny woman hard enough to make her fall and kill herself!”

Frantically, she searched for words that would assuage his guilt. “She could have fallen on a cushion instead. That she didn’t was tragic, I agree, yet you can’t blame yourself for bad circumstances. Besides, your uncle might have killed her anyway if you hadn’t stepped in.”

His eyes blazed into hers. “But he didn’t, don’t you understand? I did!”

“You were trying to protect her! No one could reasonably blame you for that!”

“My family did!”

A chill struck her heart. “If you mean your uncle⁠—”

“Not my uncle.” His expression hardened into stone. “I mean, he blamed me—he still blames me—but there’s not much he can do about it. He’s no fool. He knew even then that if he accused me outright of murder, I’d accuse him outright of wife-beating. He had no desire to drag the truth out before the world. Nor did he wish to reveal his true character to my father.”

“So, the two of you didn’t tell your father what really happened?”

He sat up, away from the reach of her hand. Shifting restlessly, he tightened and untightened his fists. “By the time Father was summoned and found me holding her body and raging at myself, Uncle Edgar had regained his composure enough to present his own version of what happened. It didn’t include any mention of wife-beating, I assure you. He told Father he’d caught me seducing Aunt Cynthia, and in the struggle between us she’d tried to stop us from fighting and had fallen.”

“The bastard!” she said, even more furious at Ian’s uncle than before. How dare the man blacken Ian before his father when the old viscount had already been so distrustful of his son? “Well, at least your damned uncle is consistent in his lies. That’s a variation on the tale he told me.” She added dryly, “He didn’t mention wife-beating to me either. Though I’m surprised he didn’t just accuse you of killing his wife.”

“I think he’s always feared that if he did, I would simply lie and accuse him of murder. It would be more plausible to most hearers. I was nineteen and fairly young; he was a grown man. The woman was his wife. I have evidence of his wife-beating—Miss Greenaway would be only too happy to testify to it, for she witnessed it once herself.”

Which explained Ian’s continued interest in the woman, she thought. As usual, he’d been strategizing, keeping Miss Greenaway on his side until he might need her. And Felicity had assumed the worst. No wonder he’d been so angry at her.

“No,” he went on, “I’m sure my uncle thought that telling you I’d seduced, even raped, his wife was far less risky. It fed into the tales circulating about me and made me look like the evil seducer while he played the betrayed husband, a role more to his liking. Even so, he never circulated his story about me generally. He must have known that if I realized what he’d told the women I courted, I might take stronger measures against him. And I would have, if I hadn’t married in time to produce an heir.”

“What I don’t understand is why your father wrote such an abominable will. You did tell him what really happened that day, didn’t you?”

“I told him,” he said hollowly. “He simply chose not to believe me.”

“His own son?” The enormity of it cut her to the heart. “He believed his brother over you? What kind of father would do that?” Oh, her poor love, enduring so much torment and guilt at the hands of his own family! She squeezed his leg, wondering how much more it must hurt him if it made her hurt so badly for him.

Ian shrugged, as if it hardly mattered, but she knew it mattered a great deal. “Father already blamed me for Mother’s death. He thought me a rash and intemperate young man, which I suppose I was. It took little to convince him I’d seduced my aunt. I’d been fairly obvious in my adoration of her.”

She sat there speechless. What possible comfort could one offer to remedy the pain of such a terrible betrayal? It was a good thing Ian’s father was dead. Otherwise, she’d be tempted to kill him herself.

“I left that night for the Continent,” Ian continued, “left them to deal with the questions and the rumors and the mess. If I’d known then what I learned later—that Miss Greenaway and most of Uncle Edgar’s staff knew of his frequent beatings of my aunt—I would have stayed and tried to convince my father. But I didn’t know, and I couldn’t go on living there, seeing my uncle every day, enduring my father’s disapproval, hiding the nasty secret.” His voice broke. “And I had murdered her. All I wanted was escape.”

Moving to sit beside him, she took his hand in hers. He squeezed it so tightly she was sure she’d bear the imprint of his fingers later.

“Of course, Father took my flight as ample demonstration of my guilt,” he went on. “It was a stupid thing to do, but then I was only nineteen. I hadn’t yet learned to think before acting. If I had, she’d still be alive today.”

She couldn’t stand his self-deprecation any longer. “You must stop blaming yourself for it, my love. Your actions were perfectly understandable.”

His bleakly staring eyes told her that her words had changed nothing for him. “Understandable or not, I deprived two children of their mother. I daresay my poor cousins don’t much care how it happened.” He released her hand and stared out the opposite window. “As far as they’re concerned, I murdered her as surely as if I’d put a gun to her head.”

She started to protest, then realized that wasn’t how to reach him. “You’re saying that an accidental death is the same as a murder.”

“The result is the same, isn’t it?” he ground out.

“Well then, you have even more crimes on your conscience.”

“What do you mean?”

“You raped me, didn’t you?”

“What!” He swung his head around to glare at her. “You said yourself you wanted⁠—”

“It doesn’t matter if I wanted it or not. ‘The result is the same.’ Isn’t that what you said? I’m no longer a virgin, so it follows that you raped me, because rape and seduction and mutual lovemaking all have the same results, do they not? ”