“Glad,” he finished, the word almost a croak in his tight, dry throat.
Bea rose and went to him. Without saying a word, she put her arms around him and gently pulled him close.
In her warm embrace, in the softness of her encircling arms, he felt her forgiveness and understanding. Silently she gave him the comfort he hadn’t known since his mother’s death.
Sorrow for his lost dog, for the mother whose life had ended when he was so young, as well as for the boy he had been, welled up within him.
He closed his eyes, trying to hold back the tears, because they were a weakness. “What kind of man kills his own brother and doesn’t care?” he asked hoarsely, his throat constricted with the effort to be strong.
“A man who’s never had a reason to care. Who’s never had the love he deserved. Except that you weren’t a man then. You were just a boy.”
He drew in another halting breath and, as a tear slid unheeded down his cheek, he said, “I didn’t feel guilt or remorse. I feltfree, free to do what I wanted, and I wanted to learn how to fight, so that nobody could ever hurt me again. My mother had talked of Sir Leonard de Brissy, and I knew where his castle was, so I made my way there. Praise God, he took me in. The rest you know.”
“Did you tell Sir Leonard what had happened?”
“Yes. That’s why he didn’t make me learn to swim like the others.”
“Merrick and Henry don’t know, do they? About your brother, or your fear of the water?”
“No, I’ve been too ashamed to tell them. And my family didn’t seek me out to charge me with the crime. My father didn’t want the family name besmirched, you see. Better my brother’s death be deemed an unfortunate accident and I a useless, unmanageable runaway than have the truth revealed.”
“If Merrick and Henry knew, they wouldn’t condemn you, and they never would have dumped you from that boat.”
Determined to confess all now that he had started on this path, he said, “Celeste told you something else. About a wager.”
Bea nodded. “She told me you wagered you could seduce fourteen virgins in a fortnight. She said you won, and you brought their shifts as proof.”
Her eyes pleaded with him to tell her that was a lie.
He could not. He would not. If she was ever to really love him, she had to know everything. “I did make such a wager, Bea, and I won.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“BUT IT WASN’Tfourteen virgins. It was four,” Ranulf confessed as Bea stared at him with shock. “And as if that shame were not enough, I took the evidence of my success to the man with whom I’d made the wager.”
His guilt and remorse increased even more as her expression changed to one of revulsion.
He rushed on, desperately trying—hoping—to regain what little might remain of her affection. “The moment Ollie put the winnings in my hands, I knew how Judas felt. I made him swear never to tell anyone. There were some who’d been in the tavern who’d witnessed the wager and—worse—the winning of it. I searched them out and threatened them with death if they breathed a word. I gave the money to the church, thinking the taint might be washed away if it was used for good. When I returned to Sir Leonard’s castle, I told no one what I’d done. I still pray every day for God’s forgiveness.” He hung his head. “Now, Bea, I humbly ask for yours.”
Her face a pale mask of disappointment and dismay, Bea answered like one in a daze. “But I’ve been championing you, proclaiming your innocence. Saying that story had to be a lie, that you were too good, too honorable to do anything so lewd and disgusting.”
He held out his hands in supplication. “Bea, I’m sorry for what I did. I’vebeensorry ever since. I’ve cursed myself a hundred—nay, a thousand times, and felt sick with remorse. Andnever have I felt worse than when I met you. Never have I felt more soiled, more stained, than when you smiled at me in your youthful innocence and looked at me with love.”
She raised her hands as if to hold him off and began to back away from him, her silence more upsetting than curses or a harsh denunciation would be.
He followed her and desperately tried to explain, to win back her good opinion, or at least a tiny portion of it. “When I made that wager, I was drunk, and half-mad with rage and jealousy.”
She stared at him as if she’d never seen him before. Perhaps, in her determination to see him for a man worthy of her love, she never really had.
“Oh, Ranulf,” she whispered, “what of those poor women you seduced? Whether it was four or fourteen or forty, you weren’t drunk when you did that. You gave no thought to them at all, did you? You were cruel and selfish, more so than I would ever have believed you could be.”
If he thought he’d seen her heart break before, it was nothing compared to the recrimination in her eyes as she regarded him now. “Bea, I—”
“No, Ranulf, say no more!” she cried, turning away as if she couldn’t even bear to look at him. “Your brother’s death, done in the heat of anger and sorrow when you were so young—your rage, the need for vengeance—that I could understand and excuse. But the way you used those women…You cold-bloodedly sought them out and seduced them only to win a wager to assuage your wounded pride.” She shook her head. “You are not the man I thought you were.”
Celeste’s rejection had been painful, but it was nothing compared to this. The terrible despair. The awful sorrow. The horrible finality. The knowledge that in Bea’s lovely eyes, he was despicable, not worthy of her regard, or her respect.
In spite of that bitter realization, he was still a man of pride, for his pride was strong—strong enough to sustain a boy as he walked toward his goal and enable him to stand tall when he reached it. What was left of Ranulf’s shattered self-respect rose and came to his aid now.
