Walking on Air (15 page)

“I tried sleeping drops once. That was even worse. The dose the doctor prescribed was so strong, I’d go to sleep, still dream, but couldn’t wake up.”

“Did you try a lesser dose?”

She nodded. “And I was still good for nothing the next day, so rummy I could barely take care of Laney, let alone run my shop.”

“Probably laudanum,” Gabe ventured. “And you’re lucky it didn’t agree with you. People get addicted.”

“I hated the way it made me feel.”

Gabe sighed, recalling how relieved he’d felt when he’d told her why he sometimes cried inside where no one could see. It had been as if a huge weight had eased from his chest and shoulders, flowing out of him with the words. He wished Nan would talk to him about the incident with Barclay. She’d never been able to tell anyone about the assault, he felt certain. She’d fled from Manhattan and never uttered a word about it to anyone for fear she’d be turned in and hanged for murder. The only exceptions had occurred yesterday morning when he’d invaded her life, and then again last night when he’d stupidly brought up her father’s incomprehensible treatment of her.

That outburst from Nan had been about Martin Sullivan, though, not about Barclay. Gabe studied her pale face and hated himself a little—no, a lot—for what he was about to do. But if there was anything he’d come to learn about Nan, it was that she held her cards way too close to her chest. She would never speak of Barclay’s attack on her person unless Gabe got her so riled that she forgot to guard her tongue. And, dammit, she
needed
to talk about it.

“Explain something to me,” he said. “Not much really happened with Barclay. Right? The fat slob was so clumsy that before he could do you any real harm, he tripped, fell, and skewered himself. So why does something so . . .” He deliberately let his voice trail away as if searching for words. “Why does something that inconsequential still bother you so much all these years later—so much that you can’t sleep at night? I mean, well, it was mostly just an unpleasant tussle. The man never actually raped you or anything.”

As he knew she would, Nan shot up from the bed, turned to face him with her hands knotted at her sides, and cried,
“
Inconsequential?
”
She laughed bitterly. “Spoken like a man. No
harm
?”

“What did he do that was so terrible?” Gabe jabbed.

She threw up her hands. “I was
completely
naive about things like that!” she cried in an outraged voice. “After living with my father all my life, do you think I eagerly accepted the attentions of men? No! I wanted no part of the courtship business, and even when my father forced me to entertain potential husbands in the sitting room, I let each of them know, straightaway, that I abhorred the institution of marriage. Prior to Barclay’s attack on me, I’d never even been kissed!”

That tidbit of information shocked Gabe—and made his heart hurt for her. “Never? Not even innocent pecks on your lips?”

“Innocent?” She shuddered. “I knew what those men wanted, what
all
of you want, when it comes right down to it. I wasn’t born blind and deaf, after all.”

“I’m not following.”

She pierced him with a stiletto glare. “Do you think I never heard my mother’s cries of anguish when my father demanded his conjugal rights? Do you believe me to be so stupid that I didn’t know—or at least imagine, in my girlish mind—what he was doing to her? Or that I was oblivious to the beatings he meted out when she refused him for fear the next miscarriage might kill her?”

Gabe saw that his wife was shaking now, with anger or horror.

She pointed a quivering finger at him. “Don’t you
dare
speak to me of what is inconsequential and what isn’t! My mother died giving birth to Laney. She
died
because my father insisted that she get pregnant again and again and again to give him a son. And God help her if she didn’t pretend to be glad when her courses stopped. A
son
, mind you; that’s all he wanted from her. Daughters were lesser beings.” She spread a slender hand over her waist. “
I
was a lesser being, a bit of brainless fluff and completely without worth to him.”

Though Gabe was glad he had her talking, he hated the way he’d gone about it—and he hated even more that he needed to steer her off the topic of her father and back to Horace Barclay. “I know your father was a bastard, but he’s not the person haunting your dreams.”

“It’s all tied together!” She bent slightly forward at the waist. “Barclay and my father were in cahoots! They
planned
what would happen to me that night. It was all about
control
. I wasn’t happily falling in with my father’s wishes. I was protesting the union with Barclay, not openly defying my father yet, but coming close. In truth, even open defiance wouldn’t have saved me. My father could have forced me into the marriage.” She flung out a hand, but she was so upset she didn’t see him duck. “And, oh, my, what if I had turned the wedding into a public spectacle? What if, at the very last moment, I refused to say, ‘I do’? My father prized his social connections. No one in his circles knew the
real
Martin Sullivan. In most wealthy families of Manhattan, it was common practice to arrange advantageous marriages for sons and daughters, but it rarely happened that a young lady protested at the altar. What would his friends have thought if they witnessed him forcing his daughter into marriage with a disgustingly fat man nearly three times her age?” She grabbed for breath. “It’s all one
thing
, not separate instances. What did you say to me last night? Oh, yes, you told me not to sort men into cups as if they were beads of the same color and size. Well, don’t
you
sort the incidents of my past into cups, either! It’s all related—my father, the marital arrangements, Barclay’s attack on me. You’re trying to make light of what happened to me that night? Damn you to
hell
!”

Gabe was very close to going there, without her wishing it on him. And he was not unaware that goading her like this might doom him to that fate. She wasn’t likely to forgive him for this anytime soon, and he had only twenty-nine days left to make her fall in love with him.
No matter.
He’d been given a second chance down here to save Nan, not himself. Granted, a side benefit, if he was successful, would be salvation for himself, but he couldn’t allow that concern to cloud his thinking to the point that he tossed away chances to make Nan’s life less conflicted. If talking about Barclay’s attack could possibly set her free of the memory, he’d be a heartless, conscienceless skunk if he didn’t push her to do it. Even though she had one hell of a right hook.

“If what happened with Barclay was all that bad, explain it to me. From where I’m standing, it sounds fairly trivial.” He silently congratulated himself on the use of
that
word. It would push her right over the edge.

“Trivial? Why, you . . . you—” She broke off, but he had a feeling it wasn’t because she couldn’t find the right words. Rather, it was because the words she was finding weren’t ones that a lady would ever dream of using. “Being thrown to the dogs by your own father? He gave all the staff the evening off, which he’d never done before, to set me up! And then he left me in the sitting room to be raped!”

“But you weren’t raped. Barclay roughed you up a bit, and I’m sure the knitting-needle business must have shaken you up. Killing someone . . . Well, let’s just say I understand how you must have felt when you realized the fat bastard was dead, but all in all, he barely touched you before he cocked up his toes.”

“Barely touched me? Ha! When I tried to avoid his slobbery kisses, he made a fist in my hair and held me still.” Her throat worked as if she might gag at the memory. “He didn’t care if he ripped my hair out. His lips were as fat as the rest of him, hot and slimy with saliva. And then—” She gulped. “Then he shoved his tongue so far into my mouth, I swear he swabbed my tonsils. It was disgusting. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I thought I was going to throw up. It wasn’t so much his strength that overpowered me, but his breadth and weight. I couldn’t have set him off his feet if I’d dived at him in a full run, hitting him with everything I had.”

Gabe made a mental note to teach her a few tricks about how to take a man down. With proper training, she’d never be so defenseless again. The bigger the bastards were, the harder they fell. “If he was that fat and ungainly, why the hell didn’t you run? He never could have caught you.”

Indignant rage sparked in her eyes. “You think I wanted it to happen? I tried to run. Perhaps, with luck, I could have gotten around him, but I’ll never know, because I couldn’t move.” Her eyes went bright with tears again. “I froze. He set down the snifter of brandy my father had poured for him and smiled at me—an awful, leering, victorious grin. I knew then what he meant to do—what my father had given him permission to do. I
knew
, but for some reason, I couldn’t make my feet move. Even as he lumbered toward me, I just stood there, helpless to save myself.”

“Ah, honey.” Gabe winced. He was playing the evil inquisitor in this scene, and he couldn’t afford to slip out of character, no matter how sharply her words struck chords within him. Nevertheless, he understood how it felt to be frozen with fear. As a boy, he’d been so terrified a few times that it had felt as if bags of bricks were tied to his feet. Clearing his throat, he forced himself back into his role. “So you just stood there and did absolutely nothing to fend him off?”

As if her legs threatened to fold, she sank onto the edge of the bed, one hip angled so she still faced him. Tightly hugging her waist, she rasped, “I wanted to run. I
tried
. I don’t know why I just stood there.” Her voice lifted a notch. “But it wasn’t because I
invited
what came! And before I could collect my senses and get my feet to move, he was upon me. After forcing his disgusting tongue halfway down my throat, he ripped my dress open, baring me clear to the waist.”

Gabe settled back to listen. It was coming now, spewing out of her as if a small volcano inside her were erupting.

“He wasn’t out to merely
deflower
me,” she said in a cold, flat voice. “Oh, no, he was establishing his dominance over me, determined to train me up the way he wanted me to go, much as it says in the Bible, only his way was
evil
. I would be cowed. I would perform my wifely duties without complaint. If he wanted to beat me, I would accept it as my due.
That
was his aim, to put me in my proper place.” She dragged in a shaky breath and slowly exhaled. “I struggled, but he only laughed at my attempts to escape. He didn’t merely
touch
m-my feminine protrusions; he laid claim, digging in hard with his fingers to cause pain. Months later, I still had purple marks on my skin, left there by his fingernails cutting into my flesh.

“I don’t remember how I broke his hold. Maybe horror lent me strength. I only know that I somehow wiggled free, and because he stood between me and the door, my only choice was to find a weapon to hold him off. I ran for my yarn basket, snatched up a needle, and whirled to threaten him away with it.” She paused to swallow. “He only laughed. He wasn’t afraid of me and my pathetic weapon. As he came toward me, he said he would teach me a lesson I’d never forget, and I saw in his eyes—they were little and beady in his flabby face, as cold and unfeeling as a lizard’s—that he intended to punish me in private, personal ways that I would never forget or risk inviting again.”

Gabe’s heart twisted.

“Then, just when I thought he’d grab me again, he tripped. It happened so
fast
. I would have tossed away the needle, I swear. I never meant to kill him!” Her chest began to rise and fall rapidly, and by the cadence, Gabe knew she was no longer with him in the bedroom, but in the past, with Barclay nearly upon her. “He was so close when he tripped that he came down on top of me. I fell backward under his weight. When we hit the floor, my breath was knocked out of me. I couldn’t breathe. Every time I tried, it was as if cotton batting had been shoved down my throat. I panicked, felt like I was suffocating. I couldn’t see. Black spots bounced before my eyes.

“When I could finally drag in breaths again and my senses began to clear, I realized that the mountain of flesh on top of me was deathly still. It was then I f-felt the blood—sticky wetness all over my bared skin. I
knew
then. I knew. He was
dead
. Killed by my knitting needle. Who would believe that I hadn’t meant to stab him? Or that he had sexually assaulted me? He was Horace Barclay, a man of sterling character and reputation, a deacon at our church who kissed babies and sang baritone. He was big and jolly. Everyone who knew him loved him. My side of the story would never be believed.”

She turned a haunted gaze on Gabe. “The rest comes to me in nightmarish bits and snatches. Trying to roll his immense weight off. Praying for a miracle as I felt to see if his heart was beating—if he still breathed. And then the hysteria that came over me when I knew for certain he was dead. I remember huddling on the floor with my arms crossed over my nakedness, saying, ‘No, no, no. Don’t let him be dead. No, no, no.’ But God wasn’t hearing my prayer.” She closed her eyes and tipped her head back, treating him to an unimpeded view of her arched neck, which put him in mind of a swan’s. “I finally collected myself and had the presence of mind to know I had to run. Run and never look back. Only I couldn’t leave Laney. She presented nothing but complications for me, but I couldn’t abandon her. I knew my father would treat her just as badly as he had me. I had no choice but to make off with her.”

She’d gotten all of it out now. Gabe felt almost as exhausted and drained as she probably did. “Of course you couldn’t leave Laney. Your father would have had her on the auction block at thirteen, hoping to marry her off and form an empowering alliance with her husband’s family.”

“Yes, and then
she
would have been a victim. Perhaps her attacker wouldn’t have been Barclay, but sure as rain in March, it would have been someone. Growing up under my father’s rule, Laney would have come to hate men, just as I did, and she would have resisted any arranged marriage. My father does not countenance rebellion, not even a hint of it.”