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“What are you afraid of?” he repeated, his tone low and curious.
“Someone…someone hurt me.” It took so much to admit that when her family had made her feel at fault. “There are consequences to youthful exuberance,” her mother had cried at one point. Taking a deep breath, Verity repeated it, only stronger this time. “Someone hurt me.”
The earl faltered into remarkable stillness, a dark expression crossing his face before his mien shuttered.
She waited in pained silence for his response.
Finally, he asked, “Do I need to summon a doctor?”
“No,” she said, clearing her throat delicately. “It was some years ago.”
His curious expression didn’t change, and it was making her uncomfortable. “Then it is no concern of mine, lady.”
How remarkably disinterested he sounded. The notion he would have aided her had been wild and farfetched, in the realms of possibilities, it was along the same ideas of dragons being real. Yet the disappointment that lodged against her stomach felt like a massive boulder, pushing her into the carpeted floor.
“I…I heard a story of how you helped Lady Morton with a delicate problem she had, and Miss Cecily Bateman. You broke Lady Morton’s husband arm for beating her most severely, and Miss Cecily's blackmailer had been persuaded to direct his nefarious attentions elsewhere. From your expression, I am assuming there is some veracity to those stories. I was hoping you would help me too. Please.” And everyone knew that a lord had slapped his servant at Tattersall last week and Maschelly had intervened. Despite everything, he was kind. “I gambled my reputation in coming to see you.”
“I am sorry you undertook the disagreeable task of coming here this late for nothing. I cannot help you.”
Verity felt tears prick behind her lids, and she lifted her chin, grateful he could not see that she was on the verge of crumbling. She had been so hopeful. “May I tell you a story before I leave?”
He stared at her, a peculiar expression on his face. “Go on,” he urged softly.
“Five years and eleven months ago, a young lady met a lord, a friend of her brother’s, whom she believed to be good-natured and amiable. Being eighteen years at the time, she was hopeful, and wistful with dreams of a prince charming, an unmatched love, and marriage and family. So…she foolishly allowed the lord to kiss her.” The memory unsettled Verity sufficiently to make her press a hand over her mouth through the veil, even though she recounted the experience from an out of body perspective.
“They took long walks in the country, rides in his curricle, and she anticipated an offer. When no offer came forth, she daringly asked what his intentions were, for she was impatient to start living the life she’d long dreamed for herself. That was when he revealed he already had a wife…who lived in Scotland with his two children. The young lady was not being courted for marriage, but to…to be his mistress. She was disconcerted, for how could such a person be a gentleman. She lashed out in anger, calling him every vile name she knew and made to depart his presence, and…and the veil of her innocence was rent from her as he attacked her. Tou…touching her in places no one should ever touch. And treating her in ways no woman nor lady should ever endure. Her Aunt came upon them, and that is how she was spared greater pain and humiliation.”
The earl had clenched his hands into tight fists at his side. “And did her brother call him out and put a bullet through his black heart?”
She laughed, the sound hoarse with remembered pain. “No. That vile blackguard is the son of a duke. Somehow the young lady’s brother was convinced by the attacker’s story that she was the seducer and he fell under her seductive wiles. She was blamed entirely, and her brother and mother were ashamed of her.”
A harsh curse slipped from Lord Maschelly.
“She was no longer the bright, rosy debutante. With all her aspirations replaced by nightmares which started that very night, she eschewed society and hid away in the country, in Bedfordshire to be precise, for she had become timid, a mouse afraid of her own shadow. And they’ve lasted for four years, six months, and eleven days.”
Her voice cracked, and she took several steadying breaths to regain her composure. "That young lady, Lord Maschelly, is me. And five months ago, sometime after the nightmares had ceased, my isolation bore down on me. For I realized I still wanted everything I used to dream about. A loving husband, children to dote on, a charitable endeavor to support. I also missed my friends, attending balls, the theater, the opera, even the noise and smell of London I wished for. So, I ventured back into society…and the first night I saw my attacker at a ball I cast up my accounts. I thought I had moved past it, I thought I had healed, but I am still afraid.”
“And why do you think learning to fight will suppress that fear?” he demanded gruffly, searching her veiled features intently.
“The night I saw him…last Friday to be precise, he touched me. It was so very fleeting, but I froze, then I trembled as if ill. Society does not know he is a snake who wears a charming mask.”
She took an involuntary step back at the sudden fierceness in his expression. And Verity wondered at his reaction. She could only ho
pe her honesty would pierce his earlier icy refusal.
“I jerked away from him, and he laughed.” She closed her eyes briefly against the memory. “That night my dreams started again when I thought I’d left them in Bedfordshire. I do not want to feel helpless.”
His eyes narrowed, and his mouth tightened. “Why are you telling me all this, I am a stranger.”
“Because I desire your help, my lord. Please think on it.” Then she turned and walked away.
“You court scandal and ruin if you go ahead with such a scheme and society finds out. As you've said, you have a dream for a home and a family, are you willing to risk that?” His tone was measuring as if he was trying to determine her backbone.
She paused, and without shifting around, answered, “The freedom to rest without nightmares, to walk in the park without fearing what lurks behind the bushes, to attend a ball without dreading his presence, is worth everything, my lord.”
Chapter 3
Someone hurt me…
