Sandra Owens

by The Letter

  Michael stared at her.

  She took her son’s hand. “Come with me, Jamie. We must allow his lordship time to contemplate his poor behavior.”

  Jamie looked over his shoulder as a chuckling Diana led him away. Michael thought it likely his face showed the same puzzlement as the lad’s.

  Who was this woman?

  He sure would like to understand what had brought the glow to her eyes. Last night and this morning, she reminded him of the young woman he had once loved. At the breakfast table, he hadn’t been able to take his gaze away from her, his eyes too often settling on her pink, smiling lips. There had been a time when he knew that mouth intimately, along with other lovely parts of her.

  Standing alone on the steps, it occurred to him that the last time he had been happy, truly, deeply happy, had been with her. And now, here she was, eleven years later back in his life. What role was he to play this time? Certainly not husband, nor lover. He no longer had the right to call her his.

  She is yours, always has been.

  He scowled at his gravel driveway. Where had that thought come from? No, what she needed was the protection of a husband, someone to care for her and Jamie, someone kind. His scowl grew fiercer at the low growl in his throat. She was supposed to be his wife and there should have been no doubting Jamie was his son. By all rights, they were his.

  He slashed a hand through the air dismissing the direction of his thoughts. He would do whatever necessary to ensure their care and safety, and then he would marry Serena. It was time to give Diana the letter. He wanted it over and done with.

  ****

  “You asked to see me?”

  Michael turned from the window. His expression was so solemn, Diana had the urge to flee.

  “I did.” He stepped behind his desk and gestured to a chair in front. “Have a seat, please. There is something I must show you.”

  Whatever he wanted to show her, she didn’t want to see. The step toward happiness she had taken yesterday fled and she resented it.

  She sat down and clasped her hands together. “What is it?”

  “What it is…” His words trailed off. He picked up what looked like several pages of a letter, stared at it a moment, then lifted his eyes to hers. “Before I give it to you, I want to say—” He took a deep breath.

  Her heart did a hard thump in her chest. What was written on that paper that disconcerted him so much? Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. She was on the verge of leaving when he began to speak.

  “I want to say I’m sorry, but the words sound trivial because they won’t undo what I allowed my cousin to do to you.” He caught her gaze and held it. “But, Diana, I am sorry, more than I can possibly say.” He held out his hand, the sheets fluttering.

  My God, his hand was trembling. She recoiled from the pages wavering at her like the head of a snake. Whatever it was, it was evil. It would bite her and open old wounds. She vigorously shook her head. “I don’t want it.” She wanted to be happy, had promised herself she could be. She didn’t want to be a beaten down thing huddling against the wall with her arms protectively over her head. Putting her hands on the arms of her chair, she pushed up, prepared to leave.

  “It is a letter from Leo.”

  Diana fell back down on the chair. It was a snake all right. “I don’t understand. If he wrote to me, why do you have it?”

  “It was written to me.” Michael placed it on the desk, close to her. “I’m not sure when, sometime after he learned he was dying, I assume. I’m sorry.” He sighed heavily. “I seem to be saying that a lot, don’t I? But I am. You need to read it. There are things in it you need to know.”

  Whatever Leo wrote, it would be vile. She considered going to her room and getting a pair of gloves to put on before touching it. Lord, she was acting like a coward. Her resolve to be a new woman, a strong and happy one asserted itself. There was nothing her husband could say that she hadn’t already heard, lived through and survived. She picked up the letter and began to read. Oh, God, she had not heard this. Leo never touched her that night? She hadn’t known, didn’t remember anything and now she knew why. It meant Jamie… Oh, God, she couldn’t think about that now, not until she was alone.

  “He drugged me?”

  “If you can believe him, yes.”

  Oh, she did. It would have been just like Leo to do something like that. Did Michael believe it? It seemed important to know. “Do you?”

  The time he took to answer was so long, she didn’t think he was going to.

  He pushed a hand through his hair. “I wish I didn’t, but I do.”

  She didn’t understand him. “Why do you wish you didn’t?”

  His gaze bored into hers. “Because it means I failed you. I should have trusted you. I should have known you wouldn’t betray me.”

  The pounding of her heart roared in her ears. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. She willed air into her lungs, and when she spoke her words sounded desperate to her ears. “I loved you, Michael. You. I never would have willingly allowed Leo into my room.”

  He shot up from his chair and paced to the window, then back. His voice was so angry, so full of fury, but she understood it was directed at himself. “You think I don’t know that now? I have spent the last week accusing myself of allowing my cousin to carry out his wicked plot.” He came to her and put his hands on the arms of her chair, leaned his face close to hers. “If I can’t forgive myself, how can I expect you to do so?” He stalked away, back to the window. With his back to her, he said, “Finish reading the damned thing.”

  Her hands shook with rage. She hated her husband and what he had done to her, but Michael should have known her, should have believed in her. He should have known something was amiss. Because she had been drugged, she hadn’t been able to defend herself when her father accused her of shaming him. Her mother had been so distraught that she had refused to see her daughter.

  She had tried to tell her father something was wrong, that she didn’t remember anything, but Leo had prepared for that. Two empty bottles of wine and two glasses set on the bedside table. Leo told her father that she had drunk too much and passed out. As the daughter of a marquess and the betrothed of an earl, she should have been protected, safe from evil. How had Leo made them believe the unimaginable?

  Her gaze strayed to Michael. Still staring out the window, he stood with his legs braced apart, his hands clasped tightly behind his back, his posture rigid. Dreadful mistakes had been made that night and she believed him when he said he couldn’t forgive himself.

  She had erred, too. Behind Michael’s back, Leo had made advances to her after her engagement to his cousin was announced. She had never liked Leo much even before then, but once it became obvious he was trying to take her away from Michael she should have said something. She should have shouted her concern from the rooftops, but had kept quiet, not wanting to cause trouble in the family.

  “Have you finished?”

  He still kept his back to her. What they had once been to each other and all they had lost suddenly hit her. Tears burned in her eyes. She didn’t doubt he had loved her. His words to Jamie came back to her. I was young and made a stupid mistake. Had youthful pride blinded him to the truth?

  She glanced at the letter in her hands. “How did he drug me?” She was delaying, not yet ready to read more, but she needed to know how Leo had deceived them all.

  Michael returned to his chair, steepled his hands under his chin and gave her a questioning look. “I don’t know. Did he give you anything to drink?”

  “No, I never saw him again after we dined. Your mother came in with a glass of warm milk. She said she knew I must be excited about our wedding the next day, and the milk would help me sleep.”

  His expression hardened. “My mother would not have drugged you.” Apparently still restless, he stood and paced the room.

  Diana’s gaze followed his movements. She couldn’t help thinking he had grown into a beautiful man. His breeches, tucked into shiny Hess
ians, hugged lean muscular hips, his dark blue morning coat stretched across broad shoulders. Black hair, midnight blue eyes and high cheekbones, everything about him attested to his noble birth. If not for Leo, he would now be her husband.

  “Unless,” he turned, catching her staring at him. He stilled.

  She blushed, but couldn’t look away. Silence stretched between them, the air crackling around her like sparks in a fire. A memory came to her, the first time he looked into her eyes, his warm and adoring, and said, “I love you.” It had happened in the middle of a waltz, in the middle of a hundred people, all their conversations buzzing around them, yet she saw no one but him, heard no one but him. Just him. She had thought then her life was perfect, her deepest dreams come true. She could weep an ocean of tears for what Leo had done to both of them.

  A bird outside the window chirped out its cheerful song, so at odds with the sadness in her heart, breaking the strange spell. Diana tore her gaze from his face and took a deep breath. “Unless?”

  “What?”

  By the way he startled, she knew he had been as unsettled by the surprising moment between them as she. “You said, unless. Unless what?”

  His eyes shuttered, hiding his thoughts so effectively, she wasn’t sure what she had seen in them. Out of nowhere, a question came. Why had he never married? He’d had eleven years to find someone else. Why hadn’t he?

  He came to the chair next to her and sat. “Listen. If the only person who gave you something to drink was my mother, or at least, you thought it was her, then it had to be my aunt.”

  Oh, God, of course. Leo’s mother, twin sister to Michael’s, would do anything for her son. She had always had trouble telling the sisters apart, so alike were they. “I wish I could deny she would do such a thing, but I can’t. She was always making excuses for Leo’s behavior. We never got on well, but it was after she died that he turned truly malicious.”

  “I would kill him for you, Myana. I should have done so years ago.”

  Diana squeezed her eyes closed. It had been so long since she had heard the pet name pass his lips. A play he had made on her name, she was his Ana he once told her. She lifted her lashes and looked at him. “Don’t call me that. I’m not yours.”

  His face jerked as if she had slapped his cheek. “My apologies. I meant no harm.”

  But it had hurt, more than she wished, to hear the endearment. If she had truly been his Ana shouldn’t he have fought for her? At the very least, he should have given her the benefit of doubt about what he had seen that night. What had he seen?

  “No one has ever told me what happened when you found Leo in my room. I would like to know. I need to know.”

  ****

  Michael stood and went to the sideboard and poured two fingers of brandy into a glass and one finger into another. He was delaying, trying to get his thoughts together, but for this story, he wasn’t sure the whole bloody bottle would be enough to fortify him. He looked at his glass and then added another splash.

  Drinks in hand, he sat in the chair next to her. Keeping the fuller one for himself, he handed her the other. “Sip this slowly.”

  She stared down at the glass for a moment, and then lifted her gaze to his. “Sometimes, I would sneak some of Leo’s. Usually after a beating, something to dull the hurt and help me sleep, you see.” She brought the brandy to her lips and drank it in one swallow, and then without even a small cough, she finished her story. “Then he caught me and I never did it again. He showed me the error of my ways.” She handed him the empty glass. “More please.”

  Sweet Jesus. Michael set his drink on his desk and went again to the sideboard, this time pouring a more generous amount. With his back to her, he closed his eyes and tried to banish the image of his cousin beating her. He had seen the burn on her back. How many more scars were there attesting to what she had lived through? How had she survived it?

  He turned and studied her. She sat in quiet dignity with her head bowed and her hands in her lap, covering the letter. How had she managed to raise a beautiful boy amidst the horror of her days? He wasn’t sure he could have lived her life without losing his mind. She was bloody amazing.

  Michael took the drink to her. “You really should sip this one.”

  “All right,” she said. “Will you tell me now?”

  He sat next to her. “Yes, I will tell you about that night.”

  Chapter Eight

  The insistent knocking on his chamber door woke him.

  Michael pushed himself up against the pillows. “Who’s there?” No answer.

  What the devil? He slipped on his dressing gown, lighted a candle and held it up to the clock on the mantel. Two in the morning. Someone must be sick. Diana? She couldn’t be ill, they were getting married tomorrow.

  His heart picked up its pace and he rushed to the door, opening it. No one was there. He stepped into the hall. What the hell was going on? He glanced at the door of the room adjoining his, the one meant for his countess. The one Diana had already moved into. The door was ajar, light spilling through the crack. He started for it, stopping halfway. The thought came out of nowhere that he didn’t want to look in that room. The foreboding was so great, he turned to walk away. He shook his head at his foolishness. Even so, he approached slowly, his bare feet silent on the waxed oak floor.

  “Wake up, darling, I want you again.” Silence. “No?” Soft laughter. “I know how to get your attention, luv.”

  Michael stilled. That was Leo’s voice. What the bloody hell was his cousin doing in Diana’s bedroom? His heart pounded so hard, he feared it would stop beating for good. He gently pushed the door with a finger, widening the crack.

  Sweet Jesus. His knees buckled and he grabbed the doorframe to keep from sinking to the floor.

  Diana lay with her face turned toward the wall, her legs spread wide, one hand resting on Leo’s head, the other cradling a breast. Leo’s face was between her legs, his mouth on her quim. The noise coming from the bed was unbearable to hear. Michael tried to close his ears to the sound of sucking, the sound of Leo’s grunts.

  In a gray haze, he moved toward the bed. The smell of sex assaulted his nostrils. This could not be. Mother of God, it could not.

  Diana moaned softly.

  Michael lost all reason.

  Rage, all consuming, powerful rage possessed him, turning his vision blood red. His cousin was dead. “You bloody bastard!” Michael attacked.

  It took Diana’s father, his mother, and the butler to pull him off Leo. He fought them, trying to get to his cousin, but it was the fear in his mother’s eyes that stopped him.

  “You can’t kill him, Michael,” she begged.

  “Let me up,” he demanded. “I’m not going to touch the bastard, but I want him out of my house. Now. I want all of you gone. Tonight.” He gestured at the bed. “Especially her.”

  Michael turned to leave. At the door, he stopped and gave Diana one last look. How could she do this to him? He had believed his heart safe in her hands. He wanted to ask her, but she had her face buried in his aunt’s chest, in shame, he was sure. His aunt held Diana close, softly talking to her.

  He walked out.

  ****

  “I went to my room, dressed and in less than an hour, I was hell bent for Wyburne where I spent the next three days attempting to drink all thought of you away.”

  Diana stared at her empty glass, wishing she could drink away the horrifying images his words had put in her mind. Dear God, she wanted to get up and leave, to find a place she could hide in shame.

  The story was worse than she could have imagined, and she had tried many times to envision the events of that night. Yet, because it was so appalling, she understood better why Michael had reacted the way he had. If he had only found Leo stretched out next to her, then he probably—no, she was sure that he would have seen Leo’s picture for the forgery it was. Leo, being a devious bastard, knew exactly how to ensure that Michael didn’t take the time to reason things out.
>
  “He staged everything, even to my hand resting on his head, and his mother pretending to speak to me. I swear to you, Michael, I wasn’t aware of anything.” Would he believe her?

  Anguish filled his eyes. “I know. God, I know. I want to kill him.”

  “Then, thankfully, he is already dead. I would not want his blood on your hands.” Neither one of them deserved what Leo had done. She understood Michael’s need for revenge, there had been times she thought about killing her husband. But she wasn’t Leo, had never wanted to become like him, nor did she want Michael to stoop to that level. Had Leo’s mother made him like that by catering to her son’s every wish, by encouraging his belief that everyone owed him?

  “Who do you think knocked on your door?”

  His eyes shifted away from her. “It could only have been my aunt. What is difficult for me to get past is that everything done to you was from my side of the family.”

  She shook her head. “No, that isn’t true. My mother refused to see me, and my father disowned me and then left me with Leo. I’ve not talked to them since.”

  “Myana.”

  Her special name, spoken so softly, so filled with remorse was more than she could bear. She lifted a hand, stopping him. “No, please. If you want forgiveness, it is yours. It is a horrid story, and we were all deceived by a despicable man. I need you to be patient while I settle everything in my mind.”

  What if she had walked into Michael’s chamber and found a woman with her mouth on him? Just the thought of it made her want to hurt something. As much as she wanted to believe she would have asked for an explanation, she wasn’t so sure. How could she blame him for doing what she might have done in the same circumstances?

  “Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you.”

  Perhaps she shouldn’t have asked. But no, although she hated the mere thought of the things Leo had done to her that night, she now understood why Michael and her parents reacted the way they had. It still didn’t mean they hadn’t deeply hurt her, their actions leading to ten years of hell with the Devil’s minion.