Springtime Pleasures (29 page)

The Hon Mrs George Griffin could have done so.

If his brother had lived; if his sister had not been maimed through his fault; if he did not owe his parents reparations after the scandal and all the pain he had brought them.

If if if…

If he had been worthier of her, he could have made Charlie his.
This
was what kept him awake at night, what drove him to seek the oblivion of alcohol: it was all
his
fault, not hers.

His fault that they could not be together.

His fault that she had run away and that he would never see her again.

“Would you have preferred if she had an attack of the vapours instead?” his aunt asked scathingly, seemingly intent on stripping off layers upon layers of his skin. She looked… angry, he realised with some surprise. Murderous, even. “Respectable!” she now spat. “Surely it would have been more
respectable
had she let this man cut your mother’s throat and hers.”

The image she conjured made Griff flinch. Charlie’s lifeless body, her dress soaked in blood, the gaping wound…

Nausea rolled in his stomach. “Aunt—”

But she was not yet finished. “Oh, but I doubt he would have killed her that fast. She is a pretty girl, after all. Perhaps he would have taken her in the dirt of the road first, having a bit of
fun
before he would have slit her throat.” She stood, her body quivering with rage. “Would she have made you a respectable viscountess then, Chanderley?” She searched his face, her own eyes as hard and cold as ice. “What a hypocritical bastard you are.” With these words, she turned and made as if to leave.

Hypocritical bastard? At this, Griff’s own temper snapped. Goaded beyond endurance, he growled at her retreating back. “I don’t know what the devil has put you out of countenance like this, ma’am, but you must be well aware that after the blow I dealt them, my parents expect me at least to form a respectable matrimonial connexion.”

She stopped. “Blow? What blow?” she asked, her back still turned towards him.

He gritted his teeth. “I killed my own brother. Or have you forgotten?”

“Nonsense!” She whirled around to glare at him. “You did not kill William. He was quite capable of doing this himself.”

The ghost of a smile lifted a corner of his mouth. “That’s what Carlotta said.”

Cocking her head to one side, she regarded him thoughtfully. “I knew she was an intelligent girl. And she is right, you know. From what I have heard, you were not even
in
the carriage when the accident occurred.”

He sighed. “But it was mine.” His responsibility.

“That is true,” she conceded. “But William was a terrible whip. He should have known better than to attempt to drive a high phaeton—and take his kid sister. Irresponsible and idiotish.”

William
had
been a bad whip. As Boo had pointed out, he must have known that the high phaeton, coupled with Griff’s lively greys, would be beyond his abilities.

“He killed the horses, too, did he not?” his aunt cut into his reveries.

“Yes,” he said. Unthinkingly. Instinctively.

Horrified, he clapped his hand over his mouth. “No, I did not mean that,” he finally forced out, his voice hoarse.

“Yes, you did.” She smiled a little sadly. “Because it is the truth. You are not to blame for the accident, nor for your sister’s injuries. And particularly not for your brother’s death.”

Boo had said the same. Charlie had said the same. Even more so: she had tried to
show
him. Had spared no effort.

Vividly, he remembered the feeling of her thigh and arm pressed to his side as she handled the horses with ease and competence. Remembered sea-green eyes sparkling at him from behind those ridiculous brass-rimmed spectacles, her wide mouth smiling and talking.

And now, she was back in Scotland.

For a moment, he had to close his eyes against the pain that threatened to engulf him.

His aunt had been watching him all the while. When he opened his eyes again, she repeated emphatically, “You are not to blame for the accident, Chanderley. If your parents, if my brother tries to tell you otherwise—” She stopped, her brows coming together in a frown. “Tell me again about your respectable marriage, George. Has your father—”

Alarmed, he saw how the colour came and went in her face, leaving it deathly pale. “Aunt Burnell!” He stood, ready to dash towards her.

With a wave of her hand she bade him stay. “Who said that Miss Stanton would not make you a suitable wife, George?”

He frowned, at a loss to understand why this was so important to her. “In April the earl summoned me to the town house to tell me I was expected to find a suitable wife. A respectable girl from a good family.”

“Lymfort.” And more heavily, “Lymfort.” As if she had suddenly aged ten years over the last ten minutes, Aunt Burnell walked slowly back to the chair she had abandoned and sat down abruptly.

“It has been made clear to me that Miss Stanton does not fall into the category of respectable young females,” Griff added cautiously.

“By Lymfort.”

“Yes,” he said, even more cautiously.

In answer, his aunt uttered a curse so vile it shocked him.

“That goddamned bastard!” she added for good measure and then sat quietly, so quietly that Griff started to worry. Should he offer her a brandy to restore her wits?

Finally she lifted her head. Her face was ashen, her eyes like dead marbles. “Shall I tell you about my respectable marriage, Chanderley?”

Uncomfortable, Griff squirmed in his seat. “Aunt—” Yet her voice overrode his and she continued as if he had not spoken at all.

“Just like you, I was told to form a suitable match. My father and brother both impressed upon me the importance of respectability—oh, they had much to say on the topic. And then they sold me to the highest bidder, a friend of your father’s. Nouveau riche, he was, stilled smelled of trade, but he had impeccable manners and, more importantly, was fantastically rich.”

A grimace made her mouth twitch. “You must know, your grandfather was in some dire straits back then. For all the usual reasons, of course: gambling debts of some kind or other, unnecessary extravagances, and mismanagement of the estates. If it hadn’t been for Burnell’s money, the Earl of Lymfort would have lost his precious town house. A marriage of convenience for a daughter obviously seemed a small price to pay, especially when the gentleman in question was so very respectable. In public, at least.” She looked down at her hands, which she kept always, always covered with gloves, even when she ate or drank tea.

Indeed, Griff could not remember ever having seen his aunt
without
her gloves. It was one of her eccentricities, like her fondness for travel and foreign countries.

Very slowly she began to undo the buttons on her right glove and then those of her left glove. “When I was a young girl, I used to love playing the harp—very much like your sister loves the fortepiano. I was a good player, I was told. A very good player.” She looked at her hands, now lying in her lap, the gloves now unbuttoned.

Griff cleared his throat. “I have never heard you play,” he said awkwardly.

She lifted her gaze, and a sad smile flickered across her face. “Of course you haven’t.” She slipped her gloves off, one after the other, and laid her hands on the dark wood of his desk. They fluttered briefly like pale little birds, before she stilled them.

Griff felt all blood leave his face. “Good God!”

The white skin was covered with a myriad of scars, thin, vicious lines, bisecting one another, and what looked like—

“Are these
burns
?”

Round marks, old enough for the scar tissue to whiten and become almost translucent.

Aunt Burnell contemplated her disfigured hands. “Yes. From cheroots. The lines are from whippings. In case you wondered.”

“
Whippings
!” he exclaimed. If anything, he felt his face go even paler. “Who would do such a thing?”

“My very respectable husband, of course. Who else has the right to beat an errant wife?” She lifted her shoulder in half a shrug before her gaze fell on her hands once more. “Did you not know? The whipping and burning of palms is most effective when the wife loves music. The scar tissue will tighten the skin until she will never ever play an instrument again.”

A choking sound emerged from Griff’s throat. With abject horror, he stared at his aunt.

“These were not the worst injuries he dealt me,” she continued, her voice almost complacent. “Naturally, he made sure not to mark my face—that would have been difficult to cover up. As for the rest of my body…” She shrugged. “I never knew when the beatings would start, what would trigger him. Sometimes it was the dinner he did not like and which I had told the cook to prepare. Sometimes it was the dress I wore. And with time, he did not need any provocation at all. Blackening my body became his sport, especially when it became clear that I could not give him the heir he wanted.”

Griff sat in his chair as if frozen to the spot. Bile rose in his throat. “The servants must have known,” he managed.

“Naturally.” She regarded him steadily. “I screamed, I believe. And there was the blood, of course. But none would lift a finger in my aid. How could they? I tried to tell my family, my parents, even my brother. And they told me I was being missish and warned me against embarrassing them. I should be grateful to them for having found me such a respectable man to wed. And did I not live in all comfort in a grand house?”

Griff tried to imagine it. The horror she must have lived through. The pain and humiliation of the beatings. And if her husband had tried to get her with child, he probably would not have been gentle either.

Griff flinched.

If a man found pleasure in beating his wife, he would also find pleasure in raping her. Repeatedly.

“They did not believe me,” she said. “My brother, my father, not even my mother. My own
mother
did not believe me. Because he was such a respectable man. When he found out I had tried to tell them—your father, I believe, gave him a hint—he became even more angry.”

More violence.

Aunt Burnell was a sturdy woman, but not tall. A man could very easily overpower her, press her to the ground and do to her whatever he wanted.

His stomach heaved.

“Dear heaven,” he muttered. “Dear heaven.” He looked up and found her watching him. “If he hadn’t—” He shook his head, then he reached out and tentatively touched the back of her poor hand. “If he had not died, he surely would have killed you.”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes never leaving his. “And so I killed him first.”

His eyes widened. “Wha—”

“The gun that exploded into his face, that was no accident. He thought it was not loaded, you see. But it was. It
was
. I had made sure of that.” Calmly, she put her gloves back on and buttoned them up. “It was the only chance I had to survive. My family would not help me. There was nobody else I could turn to. I could have killed myself, I suppose. I was desperate enough. But I did not want to give the bastard the satisfaction. So I chose a different route. And now you know about my very respectable marriage.” Gloved once more, her hands lay on the table. “Before I married Burnell I did not understand how one human being could kill another. He taught me to understand—quite.” She gave him a humourless half-smile. “Have I shocked you very much, Chanderley?”

Griff swallowed hard. “Yes. Yes, but not in the way you think. I am saddened and angry that you had to go through all this. If Burnell were still alive, I would gladly kill him for you.”

Leaning forward, she patted his arm. “You are a good boy, Chanderley. So now you see why I cannot let your father ruin your life the way my father ruined mine.”

His throat worked. “It would not be quite the same.”

“No, it would not. But there would be unhappiness, wouldn’t it? I have seen the way you look at Miss Stanton.”

“Yes,” he said in answer to her silent question.
Yes, she is more dear to me than words can describe. Yes, she holds my heart in the palm of her hand. Yes, I would give anything—anything to call her mine.
Yet guilt and duty had held him back and had compelled him to let her slip away, even after she had shared her body with him, so sweetly, so ardently, so everything he had ever hoped to find in a woman.

A sudden knot seemed to have formed in his throat.

Fumbling, he got up and went to the window. Blinking rapidly, he tried to regain control of himself.

From behind him came her voice, inexorable and hard as glass. “When I needed him most, my brother would not help me. Lymfort chose to put respectability, a mere show of respectability at that, above the life of his sister. And he chose to put a burden of guilt on the shoulders of his remaining son, to cripple him with recriminations, to bind him with talk of respectability and duty and culpability. He does not deserve your loyalty, George.”

Griff thought of what she had told him, of the pain and humiliation she must have endured in the course of her hellish marriage. Impotent fury made his hands curl into tight fists.

If it had been
his
sister, he would have taken the bastard apart limb by limb. He would have gladly killed him even if he had to flee to the Continent afterwards to escape from a trial for murder. Her brother, however, had decided to ignore her plea for help. Indeed, if her conjecture was correct, he had blown the gaff about her and had thus added to the escalation of violence against her.

For the first time in his life, Griff felt contempt for his father, who used the words
honour
and
respectability
in the most hypocritical fashion imaginable. How could he have done such a thing? How could he have left his own sister in the hands of such a monster?

Griff shuddered to think of the anguish and despair she must have felt when she realised that she was all alone and nobody would help her. But instead of giving up, she had taken her fate into her own hands—unlike himself, who had given in and thereby sacrificed the woman he loved before all others.

“You must think me such a dreadful coward,” he said eventually, his voice not quite steady.