Page 108 of The Matrimonial Advertisement

But she didn’t know what she was agreeing to. She was too mortified to think. Too ashamed to meet his eyes. If only a hole in the floor would open up, she would gladly leap into it.

Good gracious, she had kissed him. And now—

He was rejecting her.

“It will only confuse things,” Justin said.

“I see.” She backed away from him. “Forgive me, I thought— But you’re quite right. I was mistaken.”

“Helena—”

She took another backward step toward the door. “It’s clear as day. I don’t know why I couldn’t see it before.”

He moved to rise from the bed. “What the devil are you talking about?”

“You can’t get past it. The lies I told you. The way I tricked you into marriage.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. That’s not why—” He broke off with a low growl of frustration. “Good God, Helena, we’ve already been over this. You didn’t lie to me. I knew you had secrets. I wanted you anyway.”

“You don’t want me. You can’t.” Her cheeks burned. “When someone has wronged you, you’re incapable of forgiving them.”

A spasm of emotion passed over Justin’s face. “Not you. Never you.”

“Why not? It would be fair, in my case. What I did is unforgiveable. It was stupid of me to think—to expect—” She swallowed. “After what I kept from you, I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”

A bleak look of resignation flickered in Justin’s eyes. It was there a moment and then gone, snuffed out like a candle flame as his expression hardened into firm resolve. “Would you like to know what’s unforgiveable?” he asked. “The things I’ve kept from you.”

“Nothing could be worse than this.”

“You think not?” He looked at her. “The day we met at the King’s Arm, you asked me which general I served under in Cawnpore. You wanted to know if it was Major General Hugh Wheeler or if I’d arrived later, as part of the relieving forces under Brigadier General Neill.”

Helena stared at him, her embarrassment at his rejection temporarily receding. “You said it wasn’t General Neill. That you didn’t take part in the…” She couldn’t bring herself to mention rape. “In the…pillaging…engaged in by his men.”

“I didn’t,” he said. “But if I’d capably performed my duties, there would have been no need for Neill to ride in with his troops and retake the city.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Because of me, more than two hundred women and children were slaughtered in Cawnpore. British women and children. All captured and killed in the most violent manner. Yet I survived. I. Who was supposed to be protecting them. Is that not unforgivable?”

A cold, cloying sense of uneasiness seeped into Helena’s blood. More than two hundred British women and children? Good lord. He couldn’t mean… “The Cawnpore Massacre,” she whispered.

She knew about it. Everyone did. It had only happened two years before and had been in all the papers. Early reports had described the atrocities in graphic detail. It had outraged the British public.

And it had galvanized the relieving forces.

Under the command of Brigadier General Neill, they had exacted a brutal vengeance against those deemed responsible. Many innocent Indians had been casualties of their wrath.

Justin sank back down on the edge of the bed. “The British garrison at Cawnpore was under siege. We couldn’t last much longer. We hadn’t the resources. After three weeks, General Wheeler had no choice but to negotiate with the rebels. In exchange for his surrender, he made their leader—a rebel rajah called Nana Sahib—promise to grant the women and children safe passage out of the city.”

Helena moved closer to him as he spoke, her arms folded across her midsection.

“I was one of the soldiers escorting the women and children to the River Ganges. There were boats there that would have taken them to safety.” Justin’s throat convulsed in a swallow. “But when we arrived at Sati Chaura Ghat—when we began to board the boats—”

“The sepoys attacked,” she said.

“They killed most of the soldiers. My batman, as well. I’ll spare you the details. As for the women and children…”

“They captured them and imprisoned them in a little house near a well. I read about it in the newspapers.”