Page 47 of Broken

“Because I find it is a pleasurable activity that I do not like to deny myself,” Giles answered honestly, blowing out the breath he had held.

He loved intimate relations with women, but he wondered where her questions were leading. He was sure that was not the whole of her questioning.

“Why do you have so many different partners?”

She must be thinking of the night she found him with Sabine and Millie. A night when he’d had the rare privilege of two women in his bed. He had forgotten much of that adventure, but what he clearly recalled was his ghost, Lilly, watching.

How she had watched and especially how, at the end, Giles had held her gaze and imagined he was with her instead. That memory curled around Giles’ overactive brain and tormented him. He still wished it had been Lilly beneath him, even now. But he hadn’t known her then as he did now, and he couldn’t erase what he’d done. “As I think I may have told you before, I enjoy a life of pleasure in London. Sex can be a lot of fun. Sometimes pleasure comes from a variety of sources.”

In truth, sex had become a hollow release, the only meaning found while under Lilly’s ghostly gaze.

“How many?”

“I beg your pardon, how many what?”

“How many bed partners have there been in your life, Giles?”

“Dozens,” he answered without hesitation, “but I do not keep a list and I am always discreet.” Glancing at her compressed lips, he amended, “Until you.”

“Dozens.” Lilly’s voice sounded flat.

“It’s not quite as bad as it sounds, Lilly,” Giles murmured, desperately hoping she would believe him.

“Any woman?” Lilly murmured, but it was not a question. She thought he fucked anyone.

“I tend to stick to widows and courtesans. I find less trouble in that direction.”

“You don’t like complications?”

“I prefer honesty, Lilly. A courtesan must earn her way in the world, but I have never kept one as a long-term mistress. Since I despise infidelity in marriage, I am select in choosing my partners. Bedding widows and courtesans hurts no one. There are no husbands to cuckold, and I do not allow myself to forget the consequences of my actions. There are no illegitimate children bearing my likeness, ruining their mothers’ positions in society. I prefer to keep matters of whom I bed and where private, and as I said before, I am discreet.”

Lilly’s thumb attempted to rub a dent in her hand. “You could always marry them if there was a child.”

“I have no wish to marry. Those women join me in bed for a romp and nothing more. They would not wish to be stuck with my poor company for a lifetime.”

Giles thought he saw a tear fall from her eye, but she turned away to look off into the woodland track.

“You lied to me, Giles.” Lilly swiped at her face, but pulled herself up straight to look him in the eye. “You have dallied with someone’s wife. I know you spent a night in Lady Cameron’s bedchamber.”

“You know Genevieve?” Giles asked.

“Lord and Lady Cameron were my papa’s friends.”

“Oh.” Lord Winter had visited Genevieve briefly during their affair to offer his condolences at her husband’s fate, but he left soon after, if he remembered correctly. Giles hadn’t heard of Lilly’s existence then either, but then again, he’d had a hysterical woman to deal with. “Then you must know all about Lord Cameron’s accident.”

“Accident?” Lilly shook her head. “I don’t know of any accident but my own.”

Irritated that he had to account for whom he bedded, and just as amazed that he wanted to, Giles cleared his throat. “A short while ago, Lord Cameron had an accident involving a serving girl and a very heavy skillet. The usual sad story. He was enamored of a new servant, and thought she should let him bed her. The blow knocked him unconscious. But when he woke, his every word, his every action, was changed. He became dangerous, Lilly. Lady Cameron feared for her children’s safety and her own. She needed help to have him committed. He currently resides in Bedlam.”

“How do you know this?”

“Cameron is an old acquaintance from school. I was a guest the night he tried to strangle his wife,” Giles murmured. “I helped take him away.”

“And you took advantage of her later?”

“Believe me, no one was taken advantage of. Lady Cameron was the one to instigate the short-lived affair. I will never comprehend what she hoped to gain by inviting me to her bed.”

“That still doesn’t make it right,” Lilly asserted, her disgust clear.