by Darcy Burke
God keep him from striking a woman. He stalked down the shadowed corridor. Upon finally reaching her room, he banged it open.
Theodosia sat in her bed reading a book by candlelight, a long mahogany braid draped over her robed shoulder. The silvering strands that reached into her mahogany hair whispered of the terrible frost within. One that had always been there. She didn’t even bother to look up from her book. “How was your evening?” she asked.
His nostrils flared and he almost lunged at her mocking indifference. “I’m staying here by the door to ensure I don’t leave any marks on your body.”
She turned a page in her book, still reading. “I know you far too well. You would never.”
“I should,” he rasped. “I damn well should.”
“Then why don’t you?” she asked in a strained tone. “Go on.”
“Because I’m better than that. In fact, I’m better than you.” His pulse roared. “How could you? How could you— I violated her! I violated her thinking it was you.”
She gently shut her book, setting it aside. “One cannot violate a desire that is already there. She wanted you badly enough to disregard every respectable path laid out before her. She went to you willingly and with an open heart. Why do you continue to deny that? More importantly, why do you continue to deny her?”
She thought she was in the right. He could tell she thought she had every right. His ‘association’ with this, with her, had ultimately allowed Caroline’s future and entire life to be swindled.
Fury choked him.
Swinging viciously, Ronan smashed an entire fist into the nearest wall, wishing he could smash his way out of the reality he’d been sentenced to. The jarring pain blistering his hand wasn’t enough to blur the angst he knew he’d never be able to dig out of himself again.
“If you intend to destroy my house,” she coolly tossed out, “I suggest you leave.”
He swung back toward her. “Why did you do it? Why did you have to go and put on a goddamn charade the size of Buckingham Palace? For what? Your own goddamn entertainment? Is that what you think I am?! Paid entertainment?”
Her brows flickered. “Though you clearly refuse to admit it, I know you love her, Ronan.”
His eyed widened. “So you— Are you fucking mad? She was an innocent, Theodosia. An innocent I violated without any gentleness whatsoever! To hell with what you think! She didn’t deserve—”
“I wanted to ensure she became yours without any resistance from anyone. Her brother can’t object, her mother can’t object, you can’t object, no one can. Because she is now yours. As she should be.”
His throat tightened. “Mine? I’ll have you know, Theodosia, she won’t have me. I’ll have you know that after what I did to her tonight, she—” Swinging back toward the wall, Ronan smashed a fist into it again, thudding straight through the plaster. “She won’t have me!” he roared, feeling as if his veins would pop out of his throat. The very thought of knowing Caroline despised him made him want to rip himself apart. “After I have spent seven years cradling the only thing that didn’t make me feel like a whore, you come in with your high and mighty hammer and smash everything. Nothing remains between her and I after what you did. Nothing!”
She leaned forward on the bed, disrobing herself and released an agitated breath. “Cease being overly dramatic. She was about to get involved with another. And knowing you, and your approach toward women, you would have stepped aside and allowed for it. And forgive me, but I didn’t want that for you. You deserve to have your share of happiness.”
He stared, his chest still pumping from anger. “So instead of telling me about a potential prospect that Caroline was considering, and letting me decide on what to do with said prospect, you decided to play God?”
She settled back against her piled pillows. “I did what I needed to do to ensure your future and your happiness. That is all.”
He gave her a black, layered look. “And what do you know of happiness? Do you think anything will right what you have done? Do you think anything is going to buy back the tears Caroline has cried? The tears I had to watch her shed because of me? Is that your definition of happiness? Is it?”
“If she truly loves you, she will forgive you anything.” Theodosia swept up the book again. She paged through it, grazing her fingers against its binding. “Dowager Gifford, whom I am very well acquainted with, informed me that her son, Lord Gifford, is planning to propose to Lady Caroline. When she told me, I knew I had to do something. Because I know you, Ronan. I knew you wouldn’t fight for her. I knew you would let her go because it is in your nature for you to place everything above yourself. At least now, you have to fight for her. Don’t you?”
Ronan stared, his breath hitching. It was like this woman’s finger was on the pulse of every person in London. He knew Lord Gifford. Not very well, but he knew him. Gifford was everything he wasn’t. Wealthy, respectable, and probably still held the air of a gentleman even whilst pissing into a chamberpot. He was a damn good man, a damn good father and everything Hawksford could have ever wanted for Caroline. Unlike him. “She would have been better off with Gifford. She would have had a better life. She would have had security and a respect no money can buy. The sort of respect her brother is clamoring to give to her. Something I could have never offered her. Instead, I have destroyed her and her trust. I…I destroyed her.”
Theodosia stared. “Why do you seem to think Gifford is worthier of her than you?”
He swallowed. “Because he is.”
“No.” Her voice hardened. “Because you want him to be. You have the means to be everything Gifford is but it’s easier to fuck women and take their money as opposed to loving them, isn’t it? It’s easier than facing that fourteen-year-old boy who was ruthlessly seduced by a lecherous married woman under the pretense of ‘love.’ It’s easier than facing yourself and asking yourself what love really is.”
Ronan’s breaths came in uneven takes. His eyes burned in unblinking disbelief.
For there it was. The truth. The truth he thought he had buried from everyone, even himself. How at fourteen, four years after his mother had died, he’d idolized a regal, kind, older married woman by the name of Lady Stanbury who had always called on his father and had always delivered him gifts and smiles. She was the epitome of all things beautiful, structured and kind. Unlike the madness of his father’s life that included too many nights spent drinking, too many nights stumbling around at events where he only made a fool of himself, too many nights of reading the works of Marquis de Sade, and too many debts that further marked shame.
The man forgot he had a son.
Lady Stanbury, however, listened to him when he needed her to and was always there to talk to him about everything. In the same way his own aunt had done before she was forced to leave to Paris when a close friend of hers died, and he’d found himself alone within a quiet house, cluttered with empty brandy decanters. Ronan had spent most of his days reading books his aunt sent to him or wandering the streets of London, and was only ever truly able to escape his loneliness and misery whenever his uncle would take him out riding through the park twice a week. Until one evening, Lady Stanbury had called on the house shortly after his father had stumbled out to yet another event. She’d asked that he join her for a carriage ride so they could talk. It was a carriage ride that took him toward the outskirts of London and onto a quiet, dark side road.
And that was when her true nature had emerged.
Lady Stanbury had seated herself beside him, smiled and gently rubbed his thigh as she spoke. At first, he thought she was being motherly. So he allowed for it. Until she’d grabbed his face and forcefully kissed him on the mouth with her brandy-flavored wet tongue that slid so deep into his throat, it choked him. As he’d struggled to breathe against the unexpected assault and weight of her moving dewy lips that sought to penetrate the back of his throat, she had slipped her hand into his trousers and rubbed him. He’d panicked, not knowing what to do, and
tried to shove away her hands and escape that tongue, so he could breathe, but his cock responded to her advances all the same.
Despite his protests, she’d torn the buttons off of his trousers, spraying them to the floor, to give herself free access to his erection which he didn’t want but one he couldn’t get rid of. Though he’d shoved her toward the carriage door, it only riled her more and she not only managed to hitch up her skirts, but straddle him against the carriage seat. Holding him by the throat, she’d commenced riding him hard and tonguing him deeply and possessively. And that was when he had ceased struggling. That was when he recognized that deep down inside he had to be a whore.
Because something far more primitive had taken over: pleasure. He had found himself instinctively rolling and driving up and into her and soon, he didn’t recognize himself and found himself uncontrollably and ruthlessly pounding and grunting into that wetness, searching for whatever his cock wanted until he bucked and shuddered and yelled out with an explosive pleasure he had never thought possible at fourteen.
This, while her footmen had quietly kept to their well-paid post to ensure no one was coming down the dark gravel road.
When Lady Stanbury slid herself free of him, wiping his seed into a handkerchief she carefully folded and tucked away into her reticule, she then raggedly whispered into his ear that she loved him and that was why she’d done it. He felt guilty knowing he should feel blessed to be loved by someone. By anyone. He felt guilty knowing he had actually enjoyed spilling his seed into her. After all, up until that moment of forced bliss, he was too scared to try to even masturbate and knew nothing of what his body was capable of.
Lady Stanbury had slammed open a door he hadn’t been able to close since.
Pleasure became both his greatest exultation and his greatest agony.
As her carriage had made its way back to his father’s home, and he did his best to hold the flap of his trousers closed, given the buttons had long disappeared across the seat and floor, she had slipped a hundred pounds into his coat pocket and told him it would be their secret. That she would pay for everything he wanted in return for more.
His father had needed the money. And Ronan himself had always wanted to afford to go to Eton. Like Hawksford. To get away from his father. A greater part of him also wanted to relive that pleasure of spilling seed and forgetting about all loneliness and pain. So he obliged Lady Stanbury twice a week in her carriage on the side of a road at new locations, and then slipped all of the money he ever made into his father’s ledger to fund both his school and whatever bills there were. His father had spent the money on everything but sending him to Eton. His father had never asked where the money had come from.
A good father would have.
Ronan quickly learned to bury his shame by making himself believe that what he and Lady Stanbury shared was love. She’d told him it was. She made him believe it was. Until she got bored nine weeks later, ceased coming to his door and the money stopped.
That was when he knew it wasn’t love.
That was when he knew it had only been sex and that he had been used.
He had kept it to sex and used other women in turn ever since.
Ronan swallowed hard. Holding Theodosia’s gaze in pulsing disbelief that she knew his most guarded shame, he eventually managed, “How did you know about Lady Stanbury? No one knows. Not even my uncle.”
Her features twisted. “I’m about to confide something I should have told you when we met.” She was quiet for a long moment, her fingers grazing the golden locket that lay beside her on the linen. The locket bearing her brother’s portrait that she wore only when she left the house. “Lady Stanbury seduced my brother, Harris, in the same way you were seduced. Except he was eleven. While you were able to move on, my brother wasn’t so fortunate.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “He took a pistol and shot himself in the head before I knew what had happened. One of the servants later told me it had been going on for months and that Lady Stanbury had been forcing him to do things with another man while she watched.”
A sob escaped her. “He was all I had left of my family. And I failed in protecting him by allowing that…that monster to call on us, thinking it was innocent. Thinking he needed the sort of mother I could never be to him. I had ignored his protests when she took him out riding, thinking he was being silly and rude to a woman who had always been kind to us. So I…I made a promise to right what had been done to him. I hired a man to find proof of what she was doing to other boys. That man found that proof in a diary where she logged every single boy she had ever seduced. I paid him to get it. I wanted to use it against her and destroy her life before the very eyes of society. Only the man I hired…he…he stabbed Lady Stanbury when she found him retrieving the diary from her room. He did it out of fear but it was fatal. He barely got away with the diary.”
Ronan stared, his throat tightening. He had heard of Lady Stanbury’s murder years ago and how the killer had never been found. He had secretly cheered knowing it. Until now.
Theodosia swiped a lone tear that had escaped. “I was too wrapped in grief to know what I was doing anymore. I paid the man a thousand pounds and told him to disappear. He was inconsolable, after all, and I knew he didn’t do it intentionally. They would have hanged him, and he had children and no wife. So I…I took the diary and used it to hunt down every boy Lady Stanbury had ever wronged in the hopes of bettering their lives. I had the means to.”
She set a visibly trembling hand to the side of her face. “Hence my interest in Ridley. He was one of twenty boys. And sadly, the most affected. Unlike you. You were the strongest out of them all. You hated nothing. You were angry with nothing. Not even with women. Even though you had every right to be.” She captured his gaze. “I only meant to slip into your life long enough to ensure your finances were in order. I only wanted to ensure your happiness, Ronan, after what had been done to you. Nothing more.” Her expression stilled. “I didn’t expect to fall in love with your strength and your intelligence and your charm. I didn’t expect to want you in a way I knew you would never want me. Nor did I expect to buy your affection and turn into the very thing I was fighting against. I wronged you. I thought I was protecting you from other women, but in the end, I was only hurting you and I’m sorry for that.”
His eyes widened. “Jesus Christ.” He edged back and back until he hit the wall behind him. The room seemed to sway and he couldn’t focus.
Her lips trembled. “I wanted one last night before I let you go. I planned on it. As we had agreed. But when I heard of Lord Gifford’s intentions toward Lady Caroline, and after I met her that night and knew how enamored she was with you and what you two shared, I knew I couldn’t keep you. And I knew I had to help you claim her in a way you wouldn’t. So I…I went through all of the letters you ever wrote and sent it to her along with the invitation you sent me. At the time, I thought it right.” She swiped her tears away. “The house in France has already been paid for. I also sent your aunt enough money to see her through the next five years. She was led to believe it was from you. Our association is now done. It’s over. As you had wanted.”
She was like God and Satan sewn together. He slowly shook his head from side to side, still in loathing and disbelief. “You knew what that woman did to me and yet you still took me to bed?” He raised his voice. “You still took me to bed?!”
She lowered her gaze, wrapping the chain of the locket around her fingers. “I met with my solicitor yesterday to finalize my last will and testament. I am leaving my estate and all of my assets to you and am asking that you hand me over to Scotland Yard for the murder of Lady Stanbury. When they hang me, and I know they will, as I was a willing conspirator in her end, you will get your justice, and all of my money will go to you. All you have to do is hand me over to justice and you will never want for anything again. I give you permission to hang me. You have earned that right.”
Although Ronan wanted to stumble out of the room and put
as much distance between them as possible, he knew he was bigger than this. He knew he was bigger than her. He slowly crossed the room toward her, sensing that the loss of her brother was enough of a life sentence. Who was he to send her before a court to hang for a woman who had destroyed so many lives?
Despite what she did to him, he couldn’t do it.
Ronan sank down onto the bed beside her and said in a toneless voice, “I will leave in a few moments and we will never speak of this to anyone again. Nor will I see you ever again. Nor will you contact me ever again. Nor will you continue to contact these boys who are now men. Do you understand? Leave Ridley be. Or you will answer to me. Or I will take you to Scotland Yard.”
Theodosia let out a sob and lowered her head onto his lap, digging her pale hands into his thighs, the locket slipping onto the linen. “I’m so sorry I hurt you. I know nothing of the person I have become. This isn’t me, Ronan. I used to be more than this. I had a husband who loved me despite the fact that I couldn’t give him children. He, Harris and I were like a family. Eric knew Harris only had me and treated him like the son we never had. And then my husband died from typhus, leaving me and Harris broken and alone. And then Lady Stanbury—” Her shoulders shuddered as she sobbed harder.
With trembling hands he eased her out of his lap and away from himself. He rose, knowing there was nothing left to do but forgive this creature and leave. “I’m sorry for your loss. And I forgive you despite what you did.” He swallowed, mentally preparing himself for what he really wanted to know. “Did Lady Stanbury write about me in her diary?”
She still sobbed. “Y-yes. That is how I found you.”
Christ. “She detailed everything she did to me?”
“Yes, but I couldn’t read it. I couldn’t read any of it. I only read enough to retrieve your name. I swear it. I was only retrieving names.”
The thought that his shame had been written in Lady Stanbury’s own hand turned his stomach. “Where is the diary?”
