Sacrifice (Fashionably Impure Book 3) (14 page)

“But
that’s not how it happened and now you face arrest for his murder.” The words
tore from her. Her ears burned and she still shook with rage. At him. For all
his secrets. Secrets that may well have ripped him from her side.

Forever.

They
still might.

He still
had to face judgment. Could he possibly escape the hangman’s noose?

He came
and took her hands. “Do you think me that witless, Miranda? To just shoot your
father like the mad dog he is, within hearing distance of his servants, and
think that I could simply walk away unscathed?”

“I don’t
know what to think.” She tugged her hands away from his. “You told me that you
would only be gone for a couple of months. Then months later, you write to me
from Louisiana. Then Mr. Sexton tells me that you have suffered a bad fever and
then Drake comes to me and he says—”

“Why
don’t you let me tell you exactly what happened?” He recaptured her hand and
brought it to his lips, briefly. “Come, let us sit here, together on the bed
and I will tell you everything. Would you like some wine before I begin?”

“I think
that I had better have some.”

He
brought her some wine and she drank, barely tasting the richness of fine claret
or the burn as it went down, whilst he donned his trousers.

It
seemed as though a thousand pins and needles assailed her. Soon, in moments
now, she would hear the complete truth.

Finally.

Would
she be able to bear it once she knew?

Her
stomach knotted and she gulped down the remainder of her wine.

He
returned and took her glass and sat it on the night table. The bed ropes
creaked as he sat beside her. She could sense the heaviness in him.

Sensing
it only added to her apprehension.

“I did
go to America, intending to hunt Winterton down and challenge him. I had to
chase him all the way to New Orleans and even then, I missed him by a day.
Sexton was with me. He thought that I wanted a tour of America’s port cities.
Imagine his dismay when I left New Orleans for Natchitoches. But he did come
after me. His father had made him attest that he would watch over me. The
senior Sexton did not want to have to answer to Jon should I come to harm.

“I
checked into that hotel where Winterton was staying. Hotel? Nay, more like a
place where if a man pays enough, no one asks what he is doing. I challenged
Winterton. We agreed on pistols, despite the fact that he said he had an
aversion towards them ever since that night with your Mama—”

“When I
shot him.”

Adrian
quickly took her hand. “He deserved it and more, much more, my love.”

“Sexton
agreed to train Winterton with the pistols, to work with him to cure his
aversion, to make things more sporting, more gentlemanly. I agreed to this. It
didn’t matter. I was determined to kill the duke. No amount of training was
going to save him from that.” Adrian’s face was set in hard, tight lines, his
eyes glowing with relentless intent.

Miranda
shivered. She had a fairly good image of what he must have been like in those
not-so-distant days.

Grim as
death.

And she
had a difficult time reconciling that with her image of her gentle, loving
husband.

“The
night before our appointment, when I was coming back from dining out, I was
climbing the stairs and suddenly, I felt what I thought might be a wasp
sting—God, Miranda, you should see the size of the wasps and hornets in their
country!—then I felt the burning spread through me. The weakness. My feet
faltered, it seemed strange, like the wall was moving towards me. Then it was
all black.”

“Oh
God,” she whispered, sliding closer to him. With her heart in her throat, her
chest constricted with pain for his suffering, she touched him.”

He went
rigid and flinched away.

He was
that consumed with memory. “I awoke in bed with the doctor and Sexton peering
down at me. The pain, the bone-racking nausea, it was anguish. And then that
doctor told me that I would surely die, within the next two days at most.
Despite their abject protestations, I told that doctor to dose me with the most
opiate I could stand without losing consciousness. Then I forced myself from
that bed and I donned my dressing gown. I went down the corridor to Winterton’s
chamber. I was lucky; the man was dead-drunk. The little whore in bed with him
screamed, the sound so shrill, it was like to split my ears. And he still did
not awaken.”

Miranda’s
chest was so tight that she could barely breathe.

“Miranda,
I thought I would die, right there at the foot of his bed, my wound had begun
to bleed again and I felt myself growing weaker, faint. But I was determined
that he would never, ever be a threat to you again. I put the pistol to his
nape and I pulled the trigger.” He paused, compressing his lips, his eyes
filled with that deadly grimness she had sensed in him earlier. “But I did not
die. Somehow. Now, I face the gallows.”

“Oh my
love, no.” She shook her head. “They cannot sentence you based on that.”

“Winterton
has many powerful allies and my father alienated a good deal of the Mayfair
husbands. Both Jon and Drake did assure me that my chances are not good to
receive a fair judgment. I understood the sacrifice I was making when I left
here. I did it for you. I did it for my sons. To keep all of you safe.” He
frowned. “And whilst I was gone, you were sporting with Rebecca and Drake in
their bed.”

He put
emphasis on the Drake’s name.

Her mind
was still spinning with all that he had told her. The emotions in his voice
still resonating within her heart. She shook her head, trying to clear it and
think rationally, to find the correct words to make him understand. “I wasn’t
in their bed. I watched from a special mirror, where I could see them and they
couldn’t see me.”

“Ah,
yes, the tricks of Drake’s dubious trade.” He compressed his mouth, so hard
that white showed around his sensual lips. “But Drake knew that you watched?”

“Yes,”
she said, her heart pounding, her stomach sicker than ever.

“It was
his idea?”

“No! Of
course not.”

“Well,
how could such a thing have possibly come about?”

“Adrian,
please, you don’t—”

He leapt
from the bed and began to pace.

“Adrian,
please!”

He
whirled to face her. “Elucidate me, my lady, how did such a thing possibly come
to pass, because I can’t even begin to imagine it.”

“I was
upset, I’d had a nightmare about your being dead. I was sick from it. Rebecca
found me and took me to the kitchen and we drank. I-I confided all of my fears
and worries to her. I ended up telling her about that night with Mama and
Winterton and about my dis-distaste for that act. She assured me that I merely
had no better memory to compare it to and that if I watched them—”

“My
God!” He gaped at her, white-lipped once again.

“She
reasoned that if I saw that act performed in a loving fashion that I-I I…” Her
voice faltered under his withering glare.

“I don’t
understand, Miranda.”

“I am
trying to explain!”

“Are you
indeed?”

“I am
trying hard, to think of how to explain.”

“I did
for us. And I am not sorry.”

“You are
not?” He gaped at her, disbelief stamped upon his face. “I thought that you had
reconciled yourself to leave the courtesan’s life behind. To stop engaging in a
courtesan’s ways.”

“It
wasn’t like that. Watching them, it was so—”

“Christ,
Miranda, have you no shame?”

She ran
to him and took his hand. He continued to gape at her, with that same
disbelief. She pulled his hand to her cheek and pressed it. “I am not sorry. My
friend gave me a precious gift and I saw how beautiful that act could be.” She
took a deep, shuddering breath. “I want that for us. I want to experience that
for us. I am determined to overcome my distaste.”

He
jerked away from her. “How Miranda? By continuing to watch them?” He chuckled,
a harsh, mirthless sound. “By
joining
them.”

“No, no!
Stop twisting this into something it is not.”

“What
isn’t it, Miranda? Do you pretend that it wasn’t a most dire breech of our
trust?”

“I
didn’t think of it that way,” she replied, stricken.

He
nodded. “Because of the debauchery of your former life.” He came to her and
stroked the backs of his fingers over her cheek. “It’s not really your fault.
It was Cassandra Jones and Carrville. They debauched you when you were too
young to know better.”

“You
still don’t understand. It wasn’t like being at one of the orgies. I know the
difference. I do have discernment.”

He shook
his head, moving it slowly as though the motion pained him. “You’ve broken my
trust and you’ve done it for nothing.”

Coldness
seized her inside. “Why do you say that?”

“I have
no wish for that act as you call it, from any woman. Not even you.”

Chapter Eleven

Adrian
turned from Miranda, unable to keep staring at her white, stricken face. He
focused on setting out his shaving materials but he was so angry with her that
his hands shook slightly. He couldn’t possibly shave himself without nicking
his face. He cursed having decided not to bring his valet and he debated
whether or not to ask to borrow Drake’s valet.

No. He
would ask for nothing, ever again, from Drake.

He would
send Miranda to stay at Jon’s cottage in Devon, Jon wouldn’t mind. Jon would
keep her safe.

A flash
of white in the washstand mirror caught Adrian’s attention.

Miranda
straightening the bed.

Miranda
so gloriously, unselfconsciously naked.

I
love her. God, how I love her.

That
love made what she had done all the harder to bear. The actual fact of what she
did, that wasn’t so bad. But it was the greater knowing that she still clung to
the reasoning and habits of her previous life. The life that Cassandra Jones
had taught her.

It
wasn’t Miranda’s fault that she’d been forced into a courtesan’s life. It also
wasn’t her fault that he happened to despise a courtesan’s licentious,
mercenary ways.

“You had
secrets too, my lord.”

He
turned and found her sitting on the bed, wrapped now in a bright green woolen
shawl. “Aye, I did, my lady.”

“Your
secrets had the power to destroy us.”

He
crossed his arms over his chest. “There’s no way to rationalize this away,
Miranda.”

She
hugged her shoulders. Her hurt, lost expression seared him to the bone. He
might never be alone with her like this again. He was letting his hurt and
disappointment spoil their last moments of intimacy.

He
couldn’t help it.

She
deserved to know why he reacted so harshly. He had withheld so much from her.
He went and sat on the bed, again. But he made no move to sit close to her or
to touch her.

She drew
her legs up and hugged them, as though protecting herself against him. She
rested her chin on her knees. “What now, my lord?”

“I told
you that Cassandra Jones was my father’s long-term mistress and, unfortunately,
his love.”

Miranda
bobbed her chin against her knees.

“I’ve
told you of her mercenary greed, how she drained him, both financially and
emotionally, and drove him to drink and to an early grave.”

“Yes.”

“I told
you all of that but I never told you the real reason that I despise her so
much.” He paused. How would she take what he was about to reveal to her? Would
she think less of him? Perhaps. He needed to take that risk. Because despite
his great anger and disappointment with her, he loved her. He didn’t know,
right at this moment, how he would possibly reconcile his love with his
newfound realization about Miranda’s character.

But he
owed her a full explanation.

He
forced himself to continue. “The day I turned eighteen I drank a little too
freely. I made advances to a housemaid who was, understandably enough, repulsed
when I cast up my accounts in the gardens before I could consummate our new
friendship. I wandered in the gardens for a while. It was here that Cassandra
Jones found me. She—” Distaste washed over him. He took a deep breath. “She
offered herself to me.”

Miranda
looked up, her eyes wide with shock.

“Aye,
she offered herself to me. As I stood there, staggering on my feet and my cock
harder than an iron spike, she knelt and unfastened my trousers and she took me
into her mouth. God, Miranda, she was beautiful. The most beautiful woman I’d
ever seen. I don’t think I saw a woman more beautiful until you. I was young
and very lusty. But this was my father’s mistress. His love. How could she come
to me, knowing that he loved her? It took everything inside me, all my
self-control and well, that was fairly scant in those days, but I pushed her
away. I despised myself. I despised her. But more than anything else, I
despised our world where women sold love with mercenary intent and men so
gladly paid.”