Mrs. Crayton cast a final glance at her young mistress, turned slowly, and walked from the room. She couldn’t help but feel that his lordship was reacting too calmly to his young wife’s accident.
Julien pulled a chair next to the bed and sat down wearily. It seemed that nearly a lifetime had passed in this one afternoon. He gazed at his wife’s pale, beautiful face and felt a numb coldness sweep through him. How he wanted her to suffer, to feel the deep, scarring humiliation he now felt. His rape of her was not sufficient revenge, for that pain she would soon forget. God, what a ludicrous bargain he’d made. He refused to accept that he’d practically forced her to marry him, that she’d never wanted to have him. No, he wouldn’t think about that, not yet anyway.
She slowly opened her eyes and blinked rapidly to sharpen her blurred vision. She saw her husband sitting next to her, his face buried in his hands. She frowned in confusion for one brief instant before her memory righted itself. She cried out as every moment of what had happened to her roared through her mind.
Julien schooled his voice into false concern. “My dear, are you all right?”
She turned wild eyes toward him. Her lips moved and she said in a strangled whisper, “How am I here? Oh, Julien, is it really you? You’re here with me? There’s no one else, no stranger, no other man, no one else?”
Julien leaned over her and said firmly, “You had a riding accident. I found you unconscious beside Gabriella on my return from the village. You will be quite all right, I swear it to you.”
“Riding accident?” she repeated vaguely, his words making no sense to her.
“Yes, attend me well. You had a riding accident. You were thrown. Nothing more.”
She didn’t notice the hardness of his voice and quickly turned her face away from him. Dear God, he didn’t know. The man must have left her to be found, not caring. At least he hadn’t killed her.
But it wasn’t right, simply wasn’t right. “Julien.” She struggled up on her pillow. “Oh, God, I must tell you, there wasn’t, that is, I didn’t have—” The words died a quick death. Her story would sound utterly unbelievable. She knew that even if he were to accept what she had said had happened, he would know that she was no longer a virgin, that another man had taken her. She choked back a sob and fell against the pillow.
“Kate, no, no.”
She cried silently now, tears coursing down her cheeks, no sound coming from her throat. Her eyes were tightly closed. Oh God, his voice was so very gentle. If only she hadn’t scorned him, fought him, but now it was too late. What had happened to her was real and she would never forget or forgive herself.
She felt her head being raised from the pillow and a glass touching her lips. For an instant she relived the cloth being held to her face, the bitter fumes plummeting her to unconsciousness. She struggled frantically, jerking her head back and forth.
“No, hush, it’s only laudanum. It will make you sleep, nothing more.”
She quieted at the sound of his calm voice. Sleep, yes, she welcomed the opportunity of forgetting, if for only a while. She opened her mouth eagerly and swallowed the water.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, really but a shadow of a whisper, so low did she speak, “please let me never awake.”
He jerked back at her words. With trembling fingers he set down the empty glass. He wanted her to suffer, to know regret and shame. But that she could whisper with such hopeless despair of death tore at his very being. The burden of guilt that he’d fought against consumed him relentlessly, and try as he would, he couldn’t dismiss the enormity of what he had done.
He watched her fall into a deep sleep and settled back in a chair to keep silent vigil.
It was shortly before dawn, as he was building up the dying fire, that he whirled around at the sound of a low, piercing scream. He was at her side in a moment. She was writhing, her body tangled in the covers, in the throes of a nightmare. Julien grabbed her shoulders and shook her, but the effects of the laudanum seemed to hold her from consciousness, and she cried out again and again. In desperation he slapped her face until a tremendous shudder passed the length of her body and she opened her eyes and stared up at him, her pupils dilated with fear.
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