Already His (The Caversham Chronicles - Book Two) (38 page)

“Have I done something to displease you? Was I not a willing partner? Is there something I could have done to please you more?”

“Yes.” The simple word choked him as it rolled off his tongue.

She sat up, bringing a pillow to cover her body. “What is it? What could I have done, Michael, to make it better for you?”

“You could have been honest with me, Elise.”

Her soft voice rose along with the growing fear in her expression. “I have never been anything but honest with you, Michael.”

He sat up, leaning against his headboard. “Come now, Elise, you know that I am a man of the law. I deal in facts and evidence on a daily basis. You needn’t pretend any longer.”

Those beautiful amber eyes began to lose the warmth he’d witnessed just minutes earlier. “Good God, Michael, you’re frightening me. What have I done?”

“I have but one question Elise, and I want an honest answer from you.”

“Michael?” Pulling the sheet around her, she shifted positions, resting back on her ankles and backed away from him, bewilderment marring her beautiful features. “I have always been open and honest with you. I have never lied to you.”

“How many others have there been? If it’s just one, I might be able to stomach it. More and I might be sick.”

Her face blanched. She’d been found out and she knew it. Before he could react, she slapped his face so hard, his head rang like a bell. “How dare you!” she hissed.

He yanked her arm when she moved to strike him again. “I’ll tell you how I dare! You had no maidenhead. There was nothing for me to breach when I entered you. Someone else had done the job for me.” He tossed her arm aside and rose from the bed. Finding his banyan robe folded on the bench at the foot of the bed, he shoved his arms through and tied the belt.

In an instant, Michael had turned Elise’s world upside down. What should have been a beautiful interlude between two lovers had become a sick, disgusting accusation regarding her virtue. Or rather, her lack of it, according to him. Her entire body shook with blood red anger and unspeakable pain, like none she’d ever known before, and she now found herself defending her own honor.

“I have never, ever in my life even kissed a man before you. I cannot control whether you choose to believe me or not. What I can control is being in your presence, for suddenly you disgust me!”

“The facts are the facts, Elise,” he said calmly, still rubbing his cheek, her palm print an angry red stain.

She wanted to hit him again. “I don’t know how I can prove to you that I’ve had no lover before you.”

“There is a way, Elise,” he stated.

“How?”

He threw her a folded and pressed linen from his washstand. “Wipe between your legs and tell me, is there blood?”

As perverse as it sounded, she did so, and she drew forth only the essence of their lovemaking. No streaks of blood at all. His accusations crushed her heart and showed her a dark, unyielding and judgmental side to the man she once loved. But she realized now, as she looked at the linen in her hand, why he made the accusations, and how he’d arrived at his conclusion.

She clenched the sheet tighter around her. “This proves nothing, Michael. Nothing.”

“Quite the contrary, my dear. It proves I am right.”

Elise couldn’t look at him.

“I rest my case,” he said, and left the room through the connecting door without ever looking back at her. She heard the lock click as he shut her out of his life forever.

Elise sat on the bed and cried. How dare he question her virtue? All her life she’d wanted no one but him. Had dreamed of nothing but this night—or rather, how this night should have been.

She hated him. What a fool she’d been all these years. Never had the world seen a bigger fool. She’d been such a simpleton, thinking that by waiting for him and by keeping herself chaste and irreproachable, that one day he would come to love her as she loved him. But he didn’t now, and never would.

In fact, he knew nothing of love. She gave him everything she had—her heart, her honor, her honesty. Even her very soul. And what did he give her in return? He broke her heart, maligned her honor, questioned her honesty, and tore her soul from her.

She didn’t know how long she sat on Michael’s bed but the more she thought, the angrier she got. She had to leave. Leave his bed and his home before he changed his mind and came back to inflict more pain to her now fractured heart.

Her mind made up, she cleaned herself and dressed. She opened the door and looked both ways before entering the hallway. She was certain he’d retreated to his study, so after descending the servant’s stairs, she stopped in the library she’d waited in earlier to put her stockings and boots back on, then sneaked out through the kitchens and into the small mews behind his house. She had to give her eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness within, but was soon leading out his big gelding. “Attila,” she whispered lovingly. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it my friend?” As luck would have it, the horse’s bridle hung on a hook near the stall door. She didn’t bother with the saddle, Attila went well without one.

She climbed onto the horse’s back from the stone block, adjusted her seat and cued the beast forward. He stepped gingerly into a walk and she held the horse back until they were in the park. At this time of night, there would be no one on the track and once there, she leaned forward and gave the beast his head. The gelding flew around the Row with only the fog-shrouded, crescent moon to guide their way.

Elise raced her demons, each and every one bearing the name Michael. Each lap around, she cursed him for something different, for every wound he’d inflicted, every hurtful thing he’d said, until both she and the animal beneath her nearly dropped from exhaustion. And she came to a conclusion.

Her life went on. Without him.

M
ichael stood at the window of his office and watched her leave on his favorite horse. If anyone other than he could control the beast, it was Elise. She’d be fine, of that he had no worries. Dressed as she was no one would recognize her. In the morning, he’d send a lad to Caversham House to retrieve the animal.

Right now he had a bigger concern than his horse. Or Elise.

What would he say to her brother—his best friend—to explain what had come between Elise and himself? Knowing Ren as he did, Michael expected he would call him out. He would show, of course. But he’d never raise his weapon toward the man whose friendship meant the world to him. Ren had a family now and a wife who loved him.

No, if anyone deserved to die over the events of this night, it was him, for he never should have taken her to his bed. Never should have believed her when she said she’s loved him for forever. Would love him forever. He thought she was different. That what they could have had was different.
He should have known better.

Yes, there were women who would gladly have married him for the title. Chaste, pure women who would sire heirs in exchange for a position in society. But he had believed that with Elise he had a chance at happiness that had been denied his uncle. Happiness that his parents had but a fleeting taste of.
He should have known better
.

That type of love, that type of happiness, was so rare he was foolish to have hoped he could have a piece of it, even for a short period of time. No matter what she’d said about loving him. No matter that she’d led him to believe it possible.

A soft feminine voice, speaking clear and sure, pierced through the shield encasing his heart.
I have never been anything but honest with you, Michael.
The image, the expression on her face at the moment his accusation registered—the deep pain and anguish he caused—burned in his brain. He couldn’t escape the sound of her voice, and the sight of her tears. The sound of her voice grew louder and louder in his head.
I love you, Michael
. She’d whispered the words as he punished her with sex. She loved him and he just broke her heart.

He poured himself a scotch, as a silent cry burst forth. And without taking a sip, he threw the crystal glass against the wall, shattering it and sending shards throughout his study. He just made the most grievous accusation against a lady a man could make.

Dear God, what if he was wrong?

W
ith the gelding beneath her blowing hard, Elise dismounted and walked him back to the Caversham mews, leaving Attila with a trusted stable lad. She slipped onto the property through the alley without anyone in the house the wiser. Elise knew what to do. It was amazing how clarity came easier to her while on horseback.

She was not going to marry Lord Camden. In fact, she prayed for his soul to burn in hell.

H
owever, the morning papers didn’t know this.

The next day, the
Morning Post
claimed that according to a source close to the couple, an announcement would be made soon regarding the impending marriage between a certain earl and a sister of a duke.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

E
lise’s breakfast tray sat untouched on the table in her room. She didn’t want to upset her grandmother with her red, puffy eyes and swollen nose. The woman had an intuition like a falcon on the hunt for a rabbit. She’d know there was something wrong, and until she spoke with Beverly and could invent a plausible reason for her upset, Elise thought it better to avoid her.

While she waited for Beverly to arrive, she’d alternately cried and cursed, sometimes both at the same time. Already a footman had returned Michael’s horse to his residence in Hanover Square, and delivered her note to the Hepplewhite home. Sitting cross-legged in the middle of her bed, linen kerchief in hand in case tears fell yet again, she thought through her plan once more.

She wiped her nose as Bridget entered with Beverly trailing behind her. Her maid lifted the untouched tray, looked at her again, then left the room shaking her head.

Beverly sat on the bed next to Elise and placed an arm about her shoulders, the sincerity of her action bringing on a fresh bout of wracking sobs. She cried on her friend’s shoulder and, being the dear friend she was, Beverly let her get her new muslin day dress wet with her tears. After several minutes Elise took a shuddering breath and looked her friend in the eyes.

“You look like hell.” Beverly never believed in mincing words.

“Thank you,” Elise muttered. “I love you, too.”

“I take it then, that he refused you.”

She wiped her nose as she shook her head. “No. It’s much worse than that.”

Beverly straightened with a frown, and asked the next question. “What did he do to you?”

“He didn’t do anything I didn’t
let
him do.”

Her friend straightened, a concerned expression forming in her brow. “Did he hurt you? If he did, I’ll....”

“Not in the physical sense,” she reassured.

“Perhaps you’d best tell me everything.” Beverly fluffed the pillows Elise wasn’t using and sat against the headboard, settling in for Elise’s tale of the night’s events.

Ever since they were children Elise and Beverly shared every confidence. Beverly was like a sister to her, even closer than her own sister Sarah, who was still a child. Elise needed her friend’s sympathy and wisdom right then. She needed to know what to do next.

But she also felt there was a line she could not cross. It was a line that changed the boundary of their relationship. So for the first time in their years of friendship, she couldn’t tell Beverly
every
detail. Elise could only confess so much, leaving out a few intimate details, because to tell another person of the pleasure she found in Michael’s arms felt like a violation of her brief happiness. Elise resumed the tale with his disgusting accusation and what he believed was proof of her not being a maid. She told her friend about the slap, taking his horse and racing through the park in the middle of the night, then finally sneaking home in the small hours of the morning.

“That... that... dirty cur!” Beverly stuttered, visibly struggling to find the worst possible names for him. “Why... that... knave!”

“He’s worse, Beverly. Much worse.” She blew her nose again. “And I never knew. Strange, but I never thought the fantasy of him would be so much better than the reality of him. I truly believed he cared for me, might eventually come to love me, else I never would have offered myself up like a Christmas goose waiting for him to carve out my heart.”

“Well, I’m sure there’s a way to prove to him that you were, in fact, a virgin when he took you to his bed.”

“Not according to him.” Elise snorted, and repeated his words with a mocking tone. “‘...
I am a man of the law. I deal in facts and evidence on a daily basis
.’ He said there was no barrier,” Elise whispered with humiliation. “He accused me of having had not just one, but perhaps more before him.”

“I can talk to him. No one has known you as long as I, and we truly have no secrets between us.”

“It will do no good.” Elise stood and began to pace the room. “Besids, we have a much larger, and potentially more disastrous problem than my ruination.”