Michael flinched as he remembered Damaris’ words after Belle left the room. ‘She said she wouldn’t ask for forgiveness. She never said she didn’t want it.’ Belle hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him about her nightmares. Why should she? He’d obliterated what trust she’d offered him when he’d turned away from her today and dismissed her.
“Be assured,” Belle continued acerbically, “the members of the ton I meet these days accomplish my abasement for me. Muriel Cathcart, one of my particular victims, you’ll recall, is now the Countess of Wrightly. She had the pleasure of giving me the cut direct – actually pulling her skirts away so that brushing by me wouldn’t taint her.” Belle’s eyes searched his face in the room’s dim light waiting for his reaction – either approval of the countess’ actions or condemnation of them.
“That day,” Michael began, thinking of the morning Belle had upended Drew’s breakfast on his head, “I wouldn’t really have had you arrested as a ....” Michael stopped, unable to use such a loathsome word in connection with Belle. She had no such qualms.
“As a whore?” She made a scoffing sound. “You would have if I’d made you angry enough. Luckily for me I didn’t.” Her golden eyes met his unflinchingly. “Don’t forget, I was there in the Malberry’s parlor that night too. Remember me? The girl with her gown pulled down to her waist when Kingsford brought in her fiance´?”
“There will always be that standing between us,” he said softly, reaching out to stroke her cheek. She surprised him by leaning her cheek into his palm.
“Standing between us, or connecting us – I’m no longer certain which it is. You also stood in front of me that night until I’d covered myself so that neither Kingsford nor Iredale would see me unclothed. Many men wouldn’t have bothered. They would have completely ruined me, Michael, and never looked back. As you pointed out, I would have let you. Your revenge would have been complete.”
He shook his head. “I would never have turned my back on a baby if....” He stopped himself, but it was too late. She understood his implication.
Belle stepped away from him and returned to her vigil at the window. “You never would have abandoned your child, so you wouldn’t risk having to give me your name. No amount of revenge was worth that.” She drew a ragged breath and Michael searched for something to say. “What I never understood though, was why you and Kingsford never wrote my name in the betting book at White’s like you did poor Sarah’s.”
Michael joined her staring into the night. “It was never the plan. I wanted you humbled, harmless. I didn’t want you destroyed – at least not then, but after Drew was wounded,” he sighed, “well, I’m glad I didn’t see you at Scutari. I might very well have destroyed you that day.”
“You were too late by that time,” she said. Cold dread worked its fingers through his stomach at her matter-of-fact tone. She turned and regarded him with an odd mixture of bitterness and curiosity. “Would you like to see some of my invisible scars, Michael? Would you like to hear what dreams make me scream in the night?”
“I will listen to whatever you wish to tell me,” he answered, reaching out to gently capture her arm. “All night long, if you want.”
“Very well,” she said in that arch manner she’d used to such great effect years ago. “It might prove amusing for you to....”
“No, damn it,” he ground out. “Don’t ever think that. I will never be amused by anything you've endured, or by anyone who’s hurt you. If I thought that for even a moment, then I was a damned fool.”
Belle sighed and rubbed her forehead in a gesture of exhaustion, as though she’d decided to end their battle because she no longer had the stamina for it. “I dream of the battlefields – at least in the beginning.”
“I thought as much,” Michael replied.
“It’s mostly the same dream. There’s so much blood and all these arms and legs are scattered around me like the pins in a game of Spilkins.” She shuddered. “I’m always trying to sort them, if you can imagine that – sort them and reattach them. Every time I reach into my basket to find cloths, or a needle and suture I pull out a fan, or a nosegay – once, even those blasted combs Drew bought me. That was a bad night.”
Belle rubbed her temple with her hand, the memory of her dream overtaking her for a moment. Michael remained quietly at her side, waiting for the moment to pass. “I have nothing useful to work with, nothing that can help them,” she continued in a whisper. “Every soldier has a big, gaping chest wound as if their hearts have been ripped out. They keep pleading and begging me for help just as they did that first day at Barrack Hospital and I still can’t do anything for them. When I look in my basket again, it’s full of hearts. I’m the one who’s ripped them out, you see.” The last word ended on a dry sob and Michael pulled her into his arms.
“Ah, Sweetheart, don’t,” he murmured.
Belle rested her head on his shoulder. How could he have let his own stubbornness shove aside everything he’d come to know about the woman he held? What kind of man had he become to have left her to fend for herself after making her relive such horrible events? He'd selfishly granted himself the time to sort out his feelings, but Belle didn't have that luxury. She'd been trapped in her memories tonight as surely as if he'd turned a key locking her inside of them.
“It’s just a face,”she murmured. “It’s not who I am – not anymore. Strathmore was right, though. That’s all anyone ever saw. The reigning beauty. I think sometimes it would be easier if I was scarred on the outside. People would be more forgiving if they could see my flesh, torn and mottled – the obvious evidence of my redemption.”
Michael brush her hair behind her ear and then bent down and kissed her lightly, temple to ear. “Let me help you, Belle. I've no right to ask, but tell me what happened to you. The truth, all of it, no matter how ugly.”
“Didn't Drew tell you?” she whispered, her voice broken, fatalistic.
Michael shook his head. “No. He'd die before he betrayed you.”
She gave a ragged laugh. “He almost did, didn't he, and not only in the Crimea. My stepfather threatened to kill him that Season. He would have, too if I hadn’t driven him away. Drew knew you see, and he was a danger to the baron’s plans.” Her words poured over Michael, as cold and shocking as a plunge in an icy lake. Belle eased herself away from the protection of his arms and stepped closer towards the heavy, velvet drapes surrounding the windows.
She reached out to finger the material, her motions jerky. “He's very observant, our Drew. He noticed when I had difficulty breathing because my ribs bothered me, or when we danced and my wrist couldn't bend without causing me pain.”
Michael felt the air leave his lungs in a rush. She couldn't mean what he thought she did, surely. Everyone knew Baron Seaton had doted on her to a fault, spoiled and pampered her until she'd become a tyrant.
“I tried to brush those things away, a clumsy fall, stays that were cinched too tight, but then one day I was careless and Drew noticed the bruising on my arm.” She lowered her head as if to hide her shame. “The baron likes to hurt...to punish those who disappoint him. Unfortunately, he's very easy to disappoint.”
“God, Belle!” He reached for her, but she shied away like a timid animal.
“Drew always fancied himself as knight errant – I’ve told you that. He wanted nothing more than to rescue his princess, but I couldn't let him do that. I was ashamed that he'd discovered the kind of life my mother and I lived, constantly in fear of doing, or saying anything that upset my stepfather. I tried convincing Drew that he was mistaken. He didn't believe me, of course. He just gave me this tender, pitying look that made me feel even more ashamed because he knew that my life was one enormous lie. I became angry with him simply for having the common decency to feel compassion for me, Araby Winston, the darling of the ton.” Belle looked up at him from the corner of her eye, a quick, darting motion that despite its brevity, conveyed all the pain and humiliation she held inside. She walked away from hi
m and Michael feared she wouldn't continue, wouldn't tell him the one thing he needed most to know, but feared to learn. Belle sat down on one of the small chairs by the fireplace.
“I lived with Seaton from the age of ten. I watched him strike my mother at least once a week for nine years. Sometimes he did much more than that. Two months after they married he beat her so badly that she lost the baby she carried.” She turned to look at him, her eyes vacant. “The last time I tried to stop him from beating her I couldn't leave my bed for three days.” She held up her hand to stop him when he would have crossed to her. “I'm a survivor by nature, Michael. It was not in my mother's nature, but by God, it is in mine. By thirteen I'd become mistress of the cutting quip. I learned to draw his ire from my mother by decrying the idiocy of others, particularly those who held him in low regard. He would laugh and pat my cheek, calling me his creature, his little puss whose face would be all our fortunes.” She laughed, but the sound coming out dry and raspy. “He was right. I became his creature, Michael, and I would have done anything to anybody to stop him from tormenting my mother, or myself. That's not very pretty now, is it?” she murmured as she stared sightless into the fire. There was a hopelessness conveyed in the set of her shoulders, a despair she wore like a mantle.
Michael rushed to her, kneeling down in front of her chair and gathered her into his arms. He'd be damned if he left her alone now. Belle didn't protest though and for that he was grateful. In a sign of trust her arms encircled his neck as she laid her cheek against her shoulder. He whispered soft words as he rocked her.
“You were just a child, Belle. No one can blame you for doing what you had to do in order to survive,” he said, but he knew that he had blamed her, had ignored all the evidence that told him there had been two very different girls inside Araby Winston, one the heartless flirt and another, a compassionate young woman capable of great kindness. “My God, Sweetheart if I'd known, if any of us had known....”
She suddenly pushed away from him, a look of incredulity on her face. “You still don't understand, do you? My uncle knew and while he grudgingly offered me, his own brother's child the shelter of his home, he refused to aid my mother. I couldn't leave her.” Michael swore at the thought of that young, frightened and unprotected girl having to make the decision not to abandon her mother. “Lord Ambrose knew,” she continued. “He'd seen the baron strike me. Ambrose knew what my stepfather would do to me for losing my fiance´. He counted on it. He sent me a rather gloating letter the day after the Malberry’s Ball, you know.”
“That evil...I didn’t know.” Time slowed to a crawl for Michael and in those stretched out moments clarity shone its blinding and unforgiving light on not only Ambrose and his plots, but on Michael and Rafe as well. He longed for the comfort of disbelief, shadows where he could repeat to himself that they'd only humbled her a little, made sure that because of her crimes against Damaris and Drew she would never be a marchioness. No lasting harm done. She'd simply have to settle for a lesser match. In his arrogance he'd told her that he would have destroyed her after Drew had been injured. Little had he known that he'd already done so. Carriage accident, hell. He'd set a madman loose on a nineteen-year-old girl and blithely turned his back on her.
“What happened to you?” he asked hoarsely. “What did Seaton do to you?”
She studied him for a moment, as if deciding how best to begin. “He owed Elkhorn a great deal of money,” she said softly, “so he offered him me as recompense.” She gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Ironic, isn't it? I'd conspired to deliver Damaris into Elkhorn's hands and I ended up there myself.”
Michael cursed as he surged to his feet. He didn't want to hear any more but he had to know. “Elkhorn attacked you?”
Belle rose from her chair. “Him? That little worm? No. They'd planned to take me to a gaming hell to auction off my...innocence. The winner would claim me for a night, Elkhorn would get most of the money and me as his mistress afterward. I saw future events a little differently and I ran. The baron caught me.” She shuddered. “Some men came and chased him away before he was finished, or more correctly before he finished me. I don't really remember much about that, accept Duncan. He carried me to the hospital. The rest you know.”
“Christ, what did we do to you?” he rasped, turning away from her. He’d almost gotten her killed with his blind anger and his stupid arrogance.
He felt her come up behind him and it was his turn to flinch when she laid her hand on his arm. “You did nothing, Michael. My stepfather beat me, not you, nor, as much as it pains me to exonerate him, did Kingsford. Ambrose manipulated both of you because The Furies, the baron and Lady Bellwood dared to set ourselves against his ward – against him. He would have turned just as viciously against Damaris had she embarrassed him, or if Strathmore hadn’t married her. Don’t doubt that for a moment.” She tugged him around to face her, determination reflected in her stance, her expression and her words.
“I have hated you, Michael – hated, as in the past. I do not hate you now and I have never blamed you for my stepfather's actions. It was his fists raised above me, not yours. Had I married Leo I still would have lived in constant fear, hostage to the baron's increasing demands for money, his threats against my husband and our family and worst yet, his attempts to force me into his bed.” She stepped closer to him, her eyes terrible in both their beauty and truth. “What I truly hated you for was making me love you and then teaching me that love between a man and a woman is rare, so rare in fact that it's almost nonexistent. It's certainly never for people such as you and me. What we call love is simply a convenient lie to make our own lust acceptable to ourselves.”
He had no reason to balk at her words, to deny them. Her position on love mirrored his own. Still, he felt a strange sense of loss, as though she were more distanced from him by this one revelation than by all those proceeding it. Her body and been battered, but it had healed. She'd transformed herself from a vain, calculating girl into a compassionate woman who healed those in her care, but the cost had been the death of her romantic ideals and he had been the man who'd delivered the killing blow.
Chapter Twenty-two
Belle willed herself to continue meeting Michael's gaze. “I suppose that's something to be grateful for out of this mess,” she said. “Some women live their entire lives basing all their decisions on a delusion. You spared me that, at least.”
“Please know that I never intended you to suffer as you have, Belle.” He spoke softly and his gray eyes, usually so cold and distant held sorrow and self-recrimination. “Had you, or Drew confided the situation to me I would have called Seaton out and seen you settled with a man who would care for you.”
“Don't you dare make this my fault, Michael Lassiter,” she snapped. ‘If you had just trusted me I could have helped you.’ Sentiments like that, no matter how well-intentioned, placed all responsibility on the victim in a situation like hers. Belle would accept neither the sentiment, nor the responsibility. There was only one person accountable for the abuse she'd suffered, the baron.
“I'm not blaming you, Belle. Christ, I would never....”
“You just did. What happened to me that night was not my fault, not your fault, nor anyone's save Elkhorn’s and the baron's. It has taken me a long time to forgive myself for letting Seaton abuse my mother and for being too afraid of him to fight back, or to ask for help.” She covered her face with one hand attempting to push the images of her stepfather's violence from her mind. “I've had to admit to myself that I was powerless then and that I truly believed everyone else was powerless as well. God, Michael, even now I don't know if I would have the strength to push past my own terror and fight him if it ever came to that again.”
He took hold of her wrists and gently lowered her hands cradling them in his own as if they were made of something fragile. “I merely meant that I would have protected you, had I known. I never would have used and humiliated you that night at the ball. I've regretted my actions that n
ight for weeks now, but tonight I despise myself for them because I endangered you then left you to face that monster alone. Despite what you say everything was my fault.” He cupped her cheek and gazed into her eyes, into her soul. “I'm sorry, Belle. God knows that’s too little too late, but it's all I can say.”
“I know you’re sorry,” she whispered. Of course he was sorry. Michael was a decent man. Initially her shame had kept her silent about the baron, but now, looking at his expression, she knew that she'd also kept quiet because she would hate to see the pity in his face, the remorse. She just hadn't been able to fight his questions tonight, not after the nightmare. Belle's exhaustion overwhelmed her. She needed sleep, but she was too cowardly to attempt it. Sleep opened the door to her demons. No, there would be no sleep for her tonight.
“You're tired. I should let you sleep,” he murmured.
She sighed. She didn't want him to leave her alone again, but she also had no right to ask him to stay and keep her company, or to hold her and make the shadows go away. With everything they'd been and done to each other he still had the power to make her feel safer than anyone else. “I'm not going to sleep tonight. I'll just sit by the fire,” she replied.
He stroked her cheek. “Let me sit by the fire and you can try to sleep. I promise to wake you if your nightmare returns. I won't leave you alone.”
He'd offered to stay, but did she have the courage to ask him for what she truly wanted? She licked her lips and took a deep, steadying breath. Heaven knew it was highly improper but all he could do was say no. “Would you hold me, Michael? I mean, lie down beside me and just hold me?”
He hesitated a moment and Belle felt her courage desert her. She'd asked too much from a man as much at odds with himself tonight as he had ever been with her. She opened her mouth to apologize for her request, to give him the chance to leave gracefully when he answered.
A Terrible Beauty (Season of the Furies Book 1) Page 31
