Alarm flickered in her eyes. “What if he is? Now that he’s seen me—”
“It no longer matters.”
“Of course it matters! I don’t want to cause trouble for your niece. You’ve already done too much for me as it is, by introducing me to your friend.”
“Which did you no good,” he pointed out, still angry at Sir Humphry.
“That’s not true. You believed in me even before he revealed he’d received my letters, and that touches me more than you can imagine. I’m so sorry you’ve been forced to lie for me twice today, inventing an engagement and—”
“That wasn’t a lie.” The words left his mouth before he could consider them, but he wouldn’t take them back. “Sir Humphry is right, you know. The best way to combat my uncle is for you to marry me.”
She paled. “I couldn’t allow you to make such a sacrifice, Anthony.”
“It’s not a sacrifice, damn it!” Striding up to her, he seized her hands. “If anyone would be making a sacrifice, it would be you, having to put up with me.”
A self-deprecating smile touched her lips. “That’s very sweet of you to say, but we both know you could do much better.”
“I don’t know that at all. You’re an amazing woman, Madeline. I knew it the moment I met you. So please don’t punish me for briefly losing sight of it in my madness this afternoon.”
“Punish you! By keeping you from yoking yourself to a woman whose family is steeped in scandal?”
“I don’t care.”
“Your niece will care,” she said softly. “If you marry me, you’ll lose custody of her for certain. Sir Humphry’s comments about my gulling you are only half of what your uncle will say to the world. He’ll claim you’re helping an evil man, that I sold myself to you to gain your influence on my father’s behalf…He’ll make you out to be a wicked reprobate allying himself with another wicked reprobate.”
That she was right didn’t alter his purpose. “We’ll fight my uncle together, then. We’ll keep fighting until we get her back, even if it takes years.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “So she can suffer the same things you suffered all those years ago? Would you see her tied to the bed at night as well?”
His heart dropped into his stomach. “You know about that?”
“I asked Papa about it yesterday after what you said about his abandoning you. He didn’t, you know.”
She related a sequence of events that made perfect sense and absolved her father of blame, but he heard them with only half an ear.
No wonder she hesitated to marry him. His secret was out.
Chapter Twenty-three
Dear Charlotte,
If you mean Miss Prescott, then I should warn you that even if his lordship professes an interest in marriage, you should advise her against it. Rakehells are rarely faithful to one woman. As for my being upset about his drawing your attention from me, that wasn’t the case, but think what you will if it soothes your pride.
Always your concerned cousin,
Michael
Anthony?” Madeline cried, alarmed when he dropped onto a divan that had clearly been designed for seduction, sudden despair sweeping his face.
She hurried to sit beside him. “Anthony, what’s wrong?”
He stared at the empty fireplace. Ample light from the windows fronting the street turned the walnut furnishings and rich yellow walls into a cozy blend of amber and bronze. It contrasted sharply with the desolation in his eyes. “How did you find out about my being tied up?”
Why was he so upset? He’d just asked her to marry him, for heaven’s sake—that was more astonishing than anything she’d learned about his childhood. Marriage between them was impossible, of course, but the fact that he’d asked warmed her to her very soul.
“My father told me what the Bickhams did,” she said. “I just explained that.”
“So he knew why they tied me up?”
“Because you kept trying to run away. Sir Randolph said you missed your mother.”
A strange relief suffused his features. “Ah. I did miss my mother, that’s true.” He dropped his eyes to where his hands gripped his knees. “So…er…that has naught to do with why you won’t marry me.”
“It has everything to do with it. The thought of them tying your niece to a bed is appalling! You have to save her.”
“I intend to save her.” His gaze shot to hers. “And I intend to save you, too. I took your innocence. I won’t let you suffer the consequences of that. We’ll be married, and that’s an end to it.”
So that’s why he wished to marry her. Tears welled in her throat that she ruthlessly squelched. What had she been thinking? Of course that was his reason. He was an honorable man—that did him credit. She mustn’t be hurt by it.
She would simply ignore the part of her hoping that he could feel more.
“The thought of living my life without a husband doesn’t frighten me.” Not much, anyway. “So don’t let my loss of innocence prod you into offering for me.”
“I’m not,” he said fiercely.
His answer perplexed her. “If you’re worried about my bearing a child, you shouldn’t be. We used that contraption of yours, so we’re safe.”
“That’s not why I’m offering, either.” He settled his arm about her shoulders. “Can’t you see, dearest? I want you. You’re the only woman I can imagine marrying.” His voice roughened. “Surely the advantages to you are enough to outweigh your scruples about marrying a man as wicked as I.”
She placed a finger against his lips, her heart breaking for him. “Don’t say such things.” He did care. Perhaps he hadn’t yet said he loved her—perhaps he never would—but at least he wasn’t proposing merely out of a desire to behave honorably. “You aren’t wicked. I don’t care what you did before—in the past week, you’ve proved yourself to be a good, and, yes, moral person. And if not for your niece—”
He cut her off with a long, needy kiss that seared her to the soles of her feet. Several moments passed in which he possessed her mouth so thoroughly she actually forgot to breathe. She even forgot her objections.
Until he drew back and released her from his spell. “Marry me,” he urged.
“Oh, Anthony, if you only knew how badly I want to be your wife. But we have time for that later. Your Tessa doesn’t.”
“Time? How long will it be before my uncle wins his attempt to have your father charged with a crime? Once that happens, saving him will become harder.” He stroked her cheek tenderly. “Uncle Randolph’s desire to ruin your father is likely born of revenge for the help your father gave me years ago. I won’t repay his kindness by doing nothing to save him.”
“Then pay for Papa’s lawyer if I have to hire one. But marrying me—”
“Might make a lawyer unnecessary. Your vicar may bring charges against a defenseless physician with a spinster daughter, but I doubt he’ll bring them against a viscount’s father-in-law.”
That was true, and Anthony’s willingness to throw his rank behind Papa touched her to the heart. Made her want to give in. Except for one thing. “If you involve yourself in this, it will almost certainly mean the end of your chances to gain Tessa. Your uncle will gleefully point to your scandalous association as proof that you’re unfit to be guardian to a child.”
“Yes, he will. And I’ll argue that being a respectably married man counts for something. After all, you aren’t the one accused of scandalous behavior, only your father. And I have Mrs. Harris on my side, too.” He seized her arms. “I can help your father and Tessa both. It’s better than taking a chance on his life, isn’t it?”
“If it comes to that, you may handle it however you please. But until it does, work to gain guardianship of your niece first. I can’t bear to think what she might be suffering even now. The thought of them tying her to the bed every night—”
“They will not tie her.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I just can.” He rose to pace
the spare wood floors. “They’ll preach and read lectures and make her kneel on cold marble and other such creative punishments, but they won’t tie her. They didn’t tie Jane, and they won’t tie Tessa.”
“Their daughter suffered such punishments, too? No wonder she married the first man to offer for her, even though he was only a headmaster. Her parents were very angry over it, you know.”
He didn’t know. To his shame, he hadn’t kept up with Jane at all since he’d left the Bickhams. “So is she friendly with her parents now?”
“They hardly speak.” She wouldn’t let him change the subject. “But when she lived with them, they had no cause to tie her up—she had nowhere to go if she ran away. Your niece, on the other hand, has you to run to, so—”
“That’s not why they tied me, Madeline,” he said in a voice so wrought with emotion she could hardly make out the words.
“What?”
“They didn’t tie me to prevent my running away.” He let out a frustrated oath. “They tied me because of…how I am. What I am.”
The shame on his face filled her with unnamed dread. “What do you mean?”
Refusing to look at her, he leaned against the mantel to stretch out his arm atop it. “Do you know what the sin of onanism is?”
She blinked. “Masturbation, you mean?”
His startled gaze shot to her. “Yes, that would be the naturalist’s term. And what do you know of it, anyway?”
A blush touched her cheeks. “One of Papa’s patients gave him a copy of Onania; or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution. I overheard Mama and Papa discussing it, so I…read it in secret.”
A bitter laugh escaped him. He focused his gaze on his hand as it curled into a fist. “Well, then you know what I’m speaking of, since my uncle had the same book. I committed the sin of onanism several times a day, beginning when I was nine and only lessening when I could sate my desires in other ways.”
The Bickhams had tied him to the bed to keep him from pleasuring himself? Oh, her poor sweet dear!
How could they have humiliated him so cruelly? She’d also read the other book Papa had mentioned, one by a doctor who’d debated what the first writer said. There seemed no agreement on the matter.
Besides, he’d been only a boy! As she stood up, she chose her words carefully. “You must have been a precocious child.”
“Precocious?” His gaze shot to her, dark with anger and shame. “That’s what you call a child who can read Latin and recite Shakespeare at three, not one so consumed by his desires that he can’t keep his hands off his own penis.”
“Anthony,” she said in a soothing voice, approaching him with the caution she might show a wounded fox caught in a trap, “other children do—”
“At nine? So persistently that no amount of lectures and cold baths and nights spent in futile prayer can keep them from touching themselves? How many children are so hungry for it that they must be tied to a bed to keep from…”
He trailed off with a curse, but when he started to push past her, she gripped his hand to pull him to her side. “Now see here—everyone explores their bodies, don’t they? I can’t see what’s wrong with it, no matter what the Bickhams said.”
“What’s wrong is the frequency and intensity of my urges.” His eyes met hers, shadowed by uncertainty. “I still have very strong desires, Madeline. Sometimes I fear I won’t be able to control them if I ever loose them completely.”
Squeezing her hand compulsively, he gazed past her out the window. “I almost wish the writer of that damned book had been right about how pleasuring oneself weakened your ‘healthy’ urges once you grew to a man.”
“Don’t say that! There’s nothing wrong with your urges. Papa called that book sheer quackery, and he’s right. Only your ignorant relations would read it to a child.” She laced her fingers with his. “Besides, if pleasuring oneself is evil, then why do animals do it? Horses, for example. I heard about it from the stableboys.”
“Are horses so desperate for it they nearly kill themselves trying to get free?”
“You were desperate for it because they tied you down. It made you focus on it even more. That’s not why you tried to get free; anyone would.” She kissed his hand, her heart twisting inside her for what he’d suffered. “You were just a boy, my darling. What boy wants to spend his nights tied to a bed?”
Silent tears slid down his cheeks that he rubbed away with a furious gesture. “I hated it so much,” he whispered. “Some nights…I just wanted to die.”
“Of course you did.” Her own tears fell freely.
“I lay there alone in the dark, wondering what creatures might crawl up my leg.” He spoke as if from far away, every word rousing an answering ache inside her. “To distract myself, I’d think of the last pretty maid I’d seen and my cock would stiffen and I couldn’t stop it, and I would wish to God I weren’t so very wicked—”
“You weren’t wicked!” She pulled him into her embrace. “You were a young boy in a strange house, who didn’t understand why his body betrayed him, who only wanted someone to care about him. That house was unspeakable. You should never have been sent there.”
He buried his face in her neck, his body shaking so violently she had to stroke him to soothe his emotions. “My father never knew what they did.”
“But he did find out you were being tied down at night after Papa told him.”
He shuddered. “That would explain why Father brought me home.” Lifting his face to her, he choked out, “But he behaved so oddly upon my return, as if he couldn’t bear the sight of me.”
“He was probably too plagued by guilt to face you.” She smoothed a lock of hair from his flushed brow. “He had sent you where he thought you’d be safe, and then he learned that you were anything but. He probably blamed himself. Did he talk to you about it?”
“Only once. Right after I came home, he asked if I wanted to tell him anything about living at my uncle’s. I said nothing…I was afraid to tell him.” He dropped his gaze. “I was afraid he’d find out how debased his son was.”
“You are not debased! You had a natural desire that ignorant people tried to stifle—that’s all.” Something dawned on her. “Is that why you haven’t told the courts what happened to you at their hands? Because you’re ashamed?”
“Because I knew the courts would merely consider it further evidence of my bad character.” His voice dripped sarcasm. “My aunt and uncle would claim that they’d been trying to save my soul, and that their lack of success only proves how wicked I am. I daresay the courts would believe them.”
“They shouldn’t!”
His usual dry self began to return. “You were the one who pointed out that I’ve wasted my life in the reckless pursuit of pleasure, remember? You were right, too.”
She blushed to hear her own words thrown back at her. “I merely didn’t understand why you chose that path. I still don’t. You say you have strong urges, but surely now that you’re grown you can control them—”
“That’s how I control them.” He swept his hand to encompass his bachelor’s domain, moving away from the mantel to stand before a closed door that probably led to the bedchamber. “With short encounters, different women, brief but frequent liaisons.” He added, almost to himself, “Anything to give me release and hold the dark nights at bay.”
“Why not do that with a wife?”
He shook his head. “Gently bred females aren’t prepared for the likes of me, sweetheart. I’ve always been afraid to overly tax one woman. I’m still afraid that during the long years of a marriage I might not be able to maintain my control.”
Clearly, he meant that to be a warning. She caught her breath, fighting to make her words casual. “You mean you might be tempted to take a mistress, like other married men of your rank?”
“No, not that,” he said with all the fervor she could have asked for. “My parents were faithful to each other; they had a wonderful marriage. I want no less for myself. But that means inf
licting my unruly urges on a wife, and no woman should have to suffer that simply because I can’t face the dark nights alone. If I hadn’t taken your innocence, I would never…”
When he trailed off, she suddenly understood. He’d buried his boyhood fears in the soft flesh of women, but only under strict circumstances, terrified that if he didn’t watch himself, he would loose the monster his aunt had convinced him he was. And he’d known marriage wasn’t conducive to watching oneself all the time.
He went on in a subdued tone. “That’s why you needn’t worry I’m making a sacrifice by marrying you. You’ll be the one enduring my insatiable appetites.”
“Drat it, you’re not the half-crazed fiend you make yourself out to be. Look how easily you controlled your ‘appetites’ that day at Mr. Godwin’s. If you were incapable of restraining yourself, you would have attacked Lady Tarley the minute she brandished those breasts of hers.”
His eyes darkened. “I damned near lost control with you in your classroom.”
“But you didn’t.” She gave him a tender smile as she walked up to him. “And I’ve never felt truly afraid with you. Never.”
Sudden yearning leaped in his features. “Then marry me.” He cupped her face in his hands. “I need you. I’ve never needed anyone so much. Marry me.”
Her throat felt tight and raw. “I will, I swear. Once you’ve got Tessa away from your horrible relations.”
He let out a low oath. “That could take months, and anything could happen to your father in that time. I can handle both.”
“I won’t take the chance.” Not after hearing what he’d endured. He might think the Bickhams had only been cruel to him because of his “debased” character, but she wasn’t so sure. And how could she be happy in a marriage built upon his niece’s suffering?
Releasing her, he leaned back against the door to cross his arms over his chest. “You mean, you won’t trust me with anything so weighty as my niece’s future and your father’s life.” His eyes held an unreadable emotion. “That’s why you kept me in the dark from the time we met, why I had to drag the truth out of you…or stumble over it by accident. Because you knew you couldn’t trust me.”
Let Sleeping Rogues Lie Page 26
