Miller, Raine - The Undoing of a Libertine (Siren Publishing Classic) (29 page)

He winced, and his eyes looked pained.

“It is a lot, isn’t it?”

“Gina, they don’t matter.” He squeezed her hand and swallowed.

She was compelled to know, like a demon sitting on her shoulder telling her to ask the next question even though she knew the answer would hurt terribly. “How many? More than ten?”

He nodded weakly.

“More than fifty?” God, the pain in her chest hurt!

Another single nod.

“More than a hundred?” She looked down at her chest, sure she’d see a gaping wound and lots of blood.

This time he closed his eyes and his head fell when he nodded. “I don’t really know. I’ve never counted.”

“You’ve been with more than a hundred women?” she wailed, knowing she sounded like a hysterical fool.

For a moment, all Georgina knew was a kind of jealous madness. She wanted to find those women and rip out their hair and scratch at their eyes. Jeremy was
her
man, and she had no intention of sharing him now or ever. Best to make that clear to him right now! Taking in a calming breath, she opened her mouth to say her piece, but he beat her to it.

“You have every right to be disgusted with me. I was never a saint, Gina. Not even close. I was—I was empty inside until you. I never felt anything when I was with others. It was merely a need for release.”

She nodded her head, gulping for air, trying to push down the jealousy and accept that she couldn’t hold him to his past, to a time before her.

He had more to say though. “It is well that you are upset with me. I want you to be so because it was bad behavior on my part and I deserve your repulsion. But you must hear me now. This is critical information. No matter how many women I’ve had before, there is only one woman I will ever be with now. I don’t miss a thing about that life I lived before, and I’ll never go back to it. I only want you. The most beautiful and perfect woman I have ever known. You. My first and only lover.”

“It is a good thing, Jeremy Greymont, because I will not share you! Not ever!” Close to breaking down, she drew deep breaths, willing herself back to the rational.

Jeremy got up from his seat and came to her, drawing her up against his chest. He took her face in his hands and spoke close. “And you’ll never have to. You’re all I want. You’re all I need. You are everything.”

The quiet lasted a long time, nothing but soft breathing between them. Finally she spoke. “I’ve learned something I didn’t know before,” she whispered, taking in his words and opening her heart to trust.

“What is that?”

“Loving can hurt, too.”

“True. So very true, my Gina.”

She looked up at her husband. “But it’s worth it. If we can be together in the end, then it’s worth it.”

* * * *

The letter arrived that very afternoon. Jeremy realized his error as soon as the sender’s address was revealed.
Mdm. T. Blufette, 26 Oxley Court, Covent Garden, London.

He did not welcome the missive. This was not good news. He didn’t want any connection with his old life. And coming on the heels of his disclosure this morning at breakfast! God help him if Gina knew the abbess of a popular bordello wanted an audience with him. His wife had a bit of a jealous streak, he’d discovered, and wouldn’t take to it well. Jeremy had his failings but wasn’t stupid enough to risk his marital harmony on a brothel madam.

And what could Therese Blufette possibly want from him? He’d forgotten his promise to meet with her the night he’d talked to Marguerite and Luc. After discovering the true identity of Gina’s rapist, his one and only thought had been to get to her as soon as possible and secure her safety. He had put Madame Therese Blufette out of his mind without a second thought. He read the letter.

Dear Mr. Greymont,

It is with deep regret that I write this. I so hoped we could have talked that night you were in London
,
but we did not, and alas I am afraid, sir, that I can no longer be patient. Time is of the essence now.

All I can say in this letter is that the matter at hand is in regards to your family. Our meeting must be in person. The Velvet Swan will do.

Please come to me in London at your earliest convenience.

Therese Blufette

Jeremy was dumbfounded. Not what he was expecting in a letter, although very intriguing. What “family” did she mean? He didn’t have much family. His mother had been an only child like him.

It must be family from his father’s side. There was some family he’d never known, and of French citizenry. Madame Blufette was French.

He knew his father had died around ten years ago, somewhere in his native France. Jeremy didn’t even know exactly when and where, for they had never seen each other again after the day he’d left when Jeremy was just a young boy. A notification of death had come through a solicitor, and there was no property to inherit that Jeremy was aware of. The miserable matter of Henri Greymont had finally been laid to rest, literally.

And Jeremy did not care to know or have anything of Henri Greymont’s either. The man had walked out of his life more than two decades ago, and Jeremy felt nothing. As far as he was concerned, his “father” was Sir Rodney, the man who had raised him from a boy and been his guide into adulthood, his grandfather.

The only part of his real father that he had to show he’d ever existed was his name—Greymont, French in origin but styled with proper English pronunciation, that being a hard
T
rather than silent.

Making his decision, he wrote a brief but terse decline to Therese Blufette. He explained he was recently wed and could not leave his new bride unattended and that he really had no interest in anything to do with family he’d never known and was unlikely to ever know. He wished her well and expressed his hope that she would honor his request to remain uninvolved.

Setting the letter on the tray for posting, he was interrupted by shouting and commotion coming from the front of the house. He went to the window and saw Mills giving terse direction to the stable hands, a look of immediacy on his face, his hands waving wildly. Jeremy knew something was very wrong, Mills was cool and reserved all the time.

Racing out to the front steps, he was greeted with words that were never welcome. “Bad fire, sir! Rawles’s cottage. Their boy’s been burned. I fear the worst.”

His gut twisted as he sprang into action, directing all available hands and equipment to the scene of the disaster. He called for his horse and headed out with Mills, grateful that Gina was occupied with Marianne Rourke on a shopping excursion.

He smelled the acrid smoke before he sighted it, bracing himself for the dreadful prospect of the loss of a young life. This would no doubt be a very long day.

Chapter Twenty-Six

A shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead.

—W.B. Yeats, “Leda and the Swan”
(1928)

Georgina arrived home to a solemn and nearly empty house. Mrs. Richards provided details on the fire and discussed what arrangements would be needed for the Rawles family. Burns were deadly more often than not, and everyone was well aware of the likely outcome. They could only pray for the boy.

All on her own and in gloomy spirits, Georgina ate a light dinner then retired to her chambers. She had a bath and unpacked the things she had brought home from Madame Trulier’s.

Many dresses and gowns had been ordered, but a few items she had been able to take with her today. Among them, two silk nightdresses, more like chemises really, very French, very alluring, and sleeveless. One in green and one in yellow. That French modiste knew a thing or two about dressing a woman to incite her husband, Georgina realized. She thought Jeremy would like them and had made the selections with him in mind, the whole time remembering how he’d hated admitting his very experienced past to her this morning. Yes, he’d hated telling her, but the fact remained that he did tell her. He told the truth, painful as it was for them both. His honesty was one of the traits she admired in Jeremy. When a person was honest, she knew where she stood and could count on trusting them at their word. Jeremy said he only wanted her, and she believed him. He insisted that his old life was well in the past, behind him forever. And she believed that, too. Georgina had mulled his disclosures over enough times during the day, and she was ready to put it away for good.

She wrote a long letter to her brother and a short one to her father before getting into bed. A headache had plagued her for the last hour, and with Jeremy still gone, she figured sleep was the best thing she could do for herself. She hoped he was well, wherever he was, and that he would have some good news to report about the burned little boy.

Lying alone in the big bed, she lay awake for a time. When she did finally sleep, it was a restless slumber, awash in images, dreams, and terrors her subconscious mind had buried away for a long time…

* * * *

Jeremy went straight to his study and poured a double scotch. It was the only thing for him right now. The fire’s devastation had been pretty complete, right down to taking the life of the Rawles’s youngest son. The boy had gone into the burning cottage to retrieve his puppy and had been lost when a falling beam had struck him. Ironically, the dog had not even been inside.

He looked down at his empty glass and refilled it. The auburn liquid burned his throat, but he hardly felt it.

Sweet Jesus!
The looks on their faces had just crushed him inside. How would they bear the loss? He’d seen how Mrs. Rawles had reached out to touch the blackened skin of her child and how her husband had held her back, his eyes utterly empty, as dead as little Tim Rawles’s young life. The father had loved his son. He grieved for his boy.

The two older children had just stood, so stoic in their pain and probable guilt for not keeping their brother safely back from the fire.

Time to top his glass again.

Yes, destruction had come for the Rawles family tonight and had triumphed brutally. What a horrifying waste, he thought, as he kept communion with the bottle until he’d emptied the damn thing.

There were some other reasons for the drinking as well. The way Gina had stared at him this morning. Her shock at the number of women he’d had. It was exceptionally painful because Gina was the only one who had ever thought of him as an honorable man. She was always going on about how he was such a gentleman and so considerate. He’d bet his ballocks she didn’t think so now.

And then that goddamned letter from Therese Blufette and the dredging of memories he wanted no part of. His father hadn’t loved him or his mother. Henri Greymont was a selfish bastard who had walked right out of their lives without a backward glance. His father had let them go.

Staggering up to bed, he felt positively wrecked. There was only one thing that could fill part of the gaping wound he had right now. Or only one person. His Gina could heal his heart. She made everything good and happy and right. If he could just hold her, and maybe kiss her, and touch her, and—

* * * *

“Where is my beautiful Gina? Gina? There you are. You are so soft and smell so sweet. I need you…”

Georgina was brought to wakefulness by insistent hands and warm breath smelling strongly of scotch. “Jeremy? Are you foxed?” she mumbled, trying to make sense of him.

“Mmm, yes. Foxed and desirous of a fuck!” He undid his kecks and pushed them down, his erection high and hard. “See? My prick always leads the way straight to you, my sweetheart!”

Georgina gasped at the coarse words and the sight of him naked with his cock looking to devour her. He never spoke to her like that. She had never seen him drunk before either.