A Scandalous Deception (24 page)

But then she pressed slightly against his
chest and took a step away from him. At once Fin felt the loss.
What he wouldn’t do to have her back in his arms right now. “Lissy,
I know I’m not the only one who feels this.”

Of course he wasn’t. But what was she
supposed to do, encourage him? Lissy shook her head. “Please don’t,
Fin.”

He heaved a sigh, studying her as intently as
a student preparing for an examination. “Tell me you don’t love me,
Lissy. Tell me that and I’ll leave you be.”

But she couldn’t tell him that. He’d see
right through her, like he always did. “Why are you making this so
difficult?”

“Because I love you,” he said. “Because I’m
trying to understand.”

There was nothing to understand. There could
never be anything between them and that was that. “You don’t want
me, Fin. I’m not any good for you.”

“I do want you. I want you more than
anything.” He took her in his arms once more.

Lissy shook her head, no longer able to look
at him. “I’m damaged. I’m not who you think I am. Please just leave
it at that.”

He scoffed. “Leave it at that? You mean
leave
you
, don’t you? I love you, Lissy. I adore you. I’m
not going to leave it at that. Help me understand. Tell me what
this is about. Tell me what happened with Pierce.”

She would have pulled away from him if he
wasn’t holding her so tightly. The last thing she wanted to do was
relive her life with Aaron. But she was tired of fighting Fin over
this. He truly was a most stubborn man. So she sagged a bit against
him instead. At least with Fin she’d always been safe. “He wasn’t
who I thought he was,” she breathed out.

He said nothing, almost as though he was
holding his breath, afraid she wouldn’t continue if he made a
sound. Perhaps he was right. She’d never uttered these words to
another living soul. She hadn’t ever even spoken them aloud to
herself.

“I thought him the most handsome of men,”
she admitted, even smiling a little as she remembered how innocent
she’d been at that time. Heavens, she’d been just an idiot to marry
Aaron. “He’d been so attentive, so charming as he courted me, and I
was young and foolish, easily duped. I fell for his entire
performance and by the time I realized what and who he was, it was
too late. I was already married to him.”

Memories started to play about the corners
of her mind and instead of pushing them away as she usually did,
Lissy let them rush into her thoughts, almost as though she was
seeing herself in a play on the stage.

She took a staggering breath as long held
off emotions swamped her. “O-on our wedding night, he bound me to
his bed. He was so very strong and cruel and violent. I’d never
seen any of that in him before.” And the things he’d done to her
that night and the nights since… She hadn’t known such pain
existed. But she didn’t want to think about those particulars.
Certainly, Fin would allow her that privacy. “When he was through
with me, he left me bound there for days. I begged him to free me,
but he wouldn’t.” He’d told her when she pleased him, she could go
free, his cold and heartless voice striking terror in her young,
innocent heart. His eyes that had once seemed to dance with mirth
were nearly vacant in expression, almost as though he couldn’t even
see her, that she was nothing more than an object meant to be toyed
with for his own personal amusement.

“He left you there?” Fin’s horrified voice
filtered into her thoughts. “For days?”

“Many, many times.” Lissy nodded. Begging
and pleading never did her any good. Doing so only proved to anger
him more quickly.

“And what about your cousins? The ones you’d
gone to visit? They didn’t lift a finger to help you?” He sounded
angrier with each word he spoke.

Lissy shrugged. It was so hard to explain.
If she hadn’t lived the life herself, she doubted she’d understand
it. “No one knew. If I ever looked at anyone and wasn’t smiling the
way he wanted, he’d be furious later.” She heaved a sigh. “And the
threat of his punishment was enough to ensure my silence at all
times. You don’t understand what he was capable of.” She’d kept all
of this a secret for so long. Now that she was saying the words,
they just seemed to spill free.

Fin grumbled something under his breath, the
word punishments, perhaps.

“If it hadn’t been for Sally, an indentured
chambermaid, I think I might very well have died in his bed more
than once. She always managed to get me a bit of food and cup of
water...salve for my injuries after he was gone. But the bindings
were too much for her, expert sailor’s knots, of course. And I
suspect she feared for her own life if she were to free me.”

“Sadistic son of a bitch,” he muttered under
his breath, his hold tightening just a bit.

“I had thought,” she continued, lost in
horrible flashes of memory from those days in Boston she’d once
feared would never end, “things would be easier, that he would be
kinder, gentler with me after I was carrying his child.”

Lissy didn’t even realize she was crying
until tears fell to her bodice, dampening the material. She swiped
at her tears with the palm of her hand.

“But he only got worse, and…” A sob she was
unable to hold back finally escaped her throat. “There was so much
blood. So very much.”

“Dear God, Lissy.” Fin pulled her closer in
his arms. “He made you lose your child?”

She nodded once, pain and anguish twisting
her heart anew. She had wanted that child so desperately. A tiny,
little person who would love her no matter what. A child she could
hold and dote on, adore for all of her days. But that wasn’t to be.
Another sob wrenched from her soul and Lissy couldn’t catch her
breath. She couldn’t stop shaking and she couldn’t speak.

Fin’s hand smoothed up and down her back.
“Shh,” he soothed. “I’m here. I’m here, sweetheart. Just take a
breath.”

But all she could do was cry. Tears flooded
down her face, soaking his jacket and cravat through. But still the
tears kept coming, the tears she’d tried so hard to never shed, the
tears she’d tried so hard to pretend weren’t always right beneath
the surface, the tears for her child who had never had a chance.
“Tr-trauma,” she struggled to get the words out. “Th-tha’s what
Doctor Watts said.”

“Trauma?” Fin echoed, still caressing her
back, still giving her whatever peace he could.

Lissy nodded against his chest, trying to
remember exactly what the London doctor had said. “The trauma I
suffered—” she took a staggering breath “—would make it nearly
impossible for me to conceive.” She stared at Fin’s tear-soaked
cravat, but all she saw was nothingness. “He said the word so many
times that day I never wanted to hear it again. B-but I still do.
At night, when no one else is around I hear it in the recesses of
my mind.”

“Oh, Lissy.” He peppered the top of her head
with soft kisses as though they could erase the memories plaguing
her. “My dear, sweet Lissy, I’m so sorry.” Then he simply held her
against him, gentle but firm, offering his love and comfort in the
most quiet of ways.

Goodness, she loved him, with every bit of
her heart and soul. There was no better man in all the world. She
could have stayed there forever, wrapped in the safety of his arms.
The only time she’d ever truly been safe, she’d been with him. He’d
comforted her after Papa had passed, he’d comforted her when she’d
returned home and learned of Georgie’s death, and now he comforted
her once again.

“My poor, sweet Felicity,” he cooed after
what seemed like a lifetime. “My darling girl. I am so sorry about
everything. If I’d known…”

“There’s nothing you could have done,” she
said softly, pulling herself back together a bit. “There’s nothing
anyone could have done. He was my husband.”

“Husband?” Fin scoffed. “He bound you to his
bed. He was your captor and tormentor.”

“That too,” she agreed.

“He’s damned lucky he’s dead. I’d—”

“He’s not dead.” The words flew from her
before she could stop them. She hadn’t meant to tell him that part.
She’d never meant to tell him any of it. But really, what was the
point in keeping that secret any longer? Perhaps now he’d
understand.

“I beg your pardon.” He pulled back slightly
as though to see her better. Anger and disbelief flashing in the
depths of his brown eyes.

“That’s why I can’t marry you, Fin.” She
looked away once more, unable to see the pain and fury flashing in
his eyes. “I’m not free. I’ll never be free.”

“Aaron Pierce is
alive
?” Fin’s
fingers tightened on her shoulders. “Is that what you’re
saying?”

Fin’s mind was awhirl. Damn it all, the
things she described where truly beyond comprehension. As hard as
it was to believe, Lissy had endured an even worse fate than
Georgie had. Until this moment, he hadn’t known it was possible to
hate anyone more than he’d hated the late-Marquess of Teynham. But
Aaron Pierce was an even more despicable villain. Binding her to a
bed and leaving her for days on end, doing God knew what to her in
the meantime. And causing her to lose her child!

If Fin hadn’t been holding Lissy, he would
have balled his hand into a fist. That damned bastard was
alive
? Was that true? If Fin ever got his hands on the
monster, he wouldn’t breathe another breath, there wouldn’t be a
safe corner in the world for Pierce to hide. How quickly could he
get to Boston?

He glanced down at Lissy in his arms, who’d
begun trembling again. Truly, he could not have heard her
correctly. It wasn’t possible that Aaron Pierce was alive. It just
wasn’t.

“Sally helped me,” Lissy said softly, not
even daring to lift her gaze to meet his, but staring instead at
the onyx pin in the middle of his tear-drenched cravat. “When I
lost the baby, I was beside myself. All I could think about was
finding a way home, anyway I could. Something I’d thought about
many times before, of course. But at that moment there wasn’t
anything I wouldn’t have done.” She shook her head as though
memories were flooding her thoughts. “Aaron went to sea that very
afternoon. He wasn’t supposed to be gone long. A week or so at the
most, but it was my chance to escape. And I wouldn’t have made it
without Sally.”

“How did you escape?” He had no idea how she
could have managed it.

Lissy took a deep breath and finally lifted
her gaze to meet Fin’s. “She sawed through the bindings with a
blade, then we left it in the middle of the blood stained
bedclothes so it would like I’d managed to free myself. I wrote
Aaron a letter saying that my will to live was gone. I told him I
was going to slash my wrists and leap from a bridge into the bay so
I could join my child in the next world.”

Good God! Fin’s mouth dropped open in horror
at the image she painted in his mind.

“He had to think I was dead,” she continued,
blinking back another deluge of tears, “or he would have come after
me, Fin. I left him the note so he wouldn’t look for me,” she
explained, though her voice sounded so distant all of a sudden.
“Then I fled to New York with just the clothes on my back and
sought passage on the first ship destined for England that I could
find.”

“And then told everyone here that your
husband was dead,” Fin finished for her.

Lissy nodded. “I didn’t have any other
choices. Everyone knew I’d gotten married. I had to say
something.”

So she chose an enormous lie over the truth?
“Why didn’t you tell
me
?” he asked, his mind still spinning.
He hadn’t been in love with her then, but he’d always loved her.
There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t have done to keep her safe.
Surely, she’d always known that.

Lissy pushed out of his embrace and turned
her back to him. “I couldn’t risk anyone sending me back to
him.”

Sending her back to him! Of all the damned
things to say! “You think Luke and Juliet would send you back to
him?” His voice raised an octave in frustration. “You think
I
would send you back to him?” The idea that she thought he
would do something so terrible made his blood nearly boil. Didn’t
she know him at all?