Hadrian (29 page)

And he wanted her, for his wife—that boon she could not grant.

“The morning was beautiful as only spring can be here,” she said softly. “Bright, clear, and cold, but not winter-cold, only spring-cold. For a number of reasons my mood wasn’t sanguine. I was facing the female complaint in all its uncomfortable glory, and my mood was irritable and unsettled. In that situation, exercise can help. Alex probably picked up on my restlessness and suggested we go ridinge.”

She fell silent again, mesmerized by the steady rhythm of Hadrian’s hands, so warm, while her mind turned to a pervasively chilling memory.

“We wanted to race in your deer park,” Avis said, and thank heavens, Hadrian seemed to grasp the nature of the indisposition she alluded to. He had been married, after all. “The park is level and free of rabbit holes. We knew that, because Harold kept the footing in good repair. Sometimes, I’d watch you race him.”

“You never made it to the deer park,” Hadrian pointed out, no pause in the movement of his hands.

“We decided to see if there’d been any foals first,” Avis recalled, “so we detoured toward the mare’s paddock, even though…” She faltered, and still he maintained his slow, easy caresses. “We detoured, even though Alex protested we should have brought a groom.”

“One groom wouldn’t have stopped a half-dozen drunken louts. So you were nearing the mare’s paddock?”

She’d told herself the same thing. One groom against six young lordlings far gone with drink would have become another casualty of the day.

“We found a new foal.” Avis’s voice grew smaller. “Still wet, the mare was licking her colt as he steamed in the bright morning sun. I nearly cried, it was so wonderful—spring is like that, at least for me. Alex had dismounted, the better to see the foal, and needed the fence to climb back on. She managed, but Collins and his men had emerged from the trees by then, and I recall feeling even at that first moment a sense of doom, of dread. A sense I would never be happy again.”

An accurate premonition.

“Alex was on her horse, and you were still mounted as well?”

Avis knew what Hadrian was about, guiding her back to her recitation with his questions, not allowing her to wallow in the emotions when he wanted the facts. She knew it, and was grateful for it.

Because twelve years later, the emotions still had the power to destroy her, and the facts still eluded an orderly assembly.

“We were both in the saddle,” she said, “and like the polite fool I was, I didn’t want to depart without offering a civil greeting. Hart was our neighbor and my intended, at least for the present. I owed him manners and hoped we might be cordial.”

“You were innocent.” Hadrian corrected her for the first time. “You and Alex were both innocent.”

She took a slow breath. “There were six of them, though one galloped off as Collins grabbed my reins and another of his cronies took Alex’s reins. I recall smelling liquor, even from several feet away, and Alex fought them with her whip. She was smarter than I.”

“She wasn’t engaged to anybody,” Hadrian pointed out. “She wasn’t concerned with maintaining civilities with a man she wanted to hoist from her future.”

“I failed in that, failed to evict him from my future. Hart Collins has occupied some part of nearly every waking hour of my life since.” She closed her eyes and focused on the sensations evoked by Hadrian’s slow hands, by the warmth of his body beneath hers, by the powerful, steady beat of his heart next to her own.

“Alex fought with her whip.” Hadrian repeated Avis’s words. “And then?”

“Then they hauled us over to the cottage at the far end of the paddock,” Avis said. “The daffodils were blooming, and Alex was still cursing the men. Collins pulled me off my horse and carried me bodily to the cottage, while his cronies called encouragement and one of them sang a bridal march.”

“Where was Alex?”

Avis pressed her face to Hadrian’s chest. “When she wouldn’t stop yelling, one of them slapped her, and she yelled all the louder.” Quiet ladylike, bookish Alex, bellowing her rage and fear.

“And then?”

“Collins set me on my feet long enough to backhand me. That blow woke me up, so to speak—confirmed that he was not intent on a simple prank—but Alex fell silent, as Collins directed that she be tossed into the cottage with us.”

“What did she do next?”

“She was quiet,” Avis said, her voice barely above a whisper, “but she looked at me, Hadrian, right in the eye, and she’s my sister. I could tell she was planning something heroic, something dangerous. I tried to convey to her not to attempt anything rash, because drunk and rapacious men would not quibble at much.”

“A sound assessment. Then what happened?”

“The cottage was musty, and like Collins’s hand across my face, the unpleasant smell galvanized me, and I began to struggle. He laughed, and when Alex heard that laugh, I saw her courage falter. Collins enjoyed the pain and fear and debauchery. He told her to watch and be still as he tied my hands, or it would go worse for her when her turn came.”

Avis drew in a breath, clearing her mind of that closed-in, stuffy cottage and replacing it with the fresh summer air and Hadrian’s clean, spicy scent.

“Where were you when he tied your hands? Inside the cottage?”

“Inside, yes. He’d brought strong twine with him. I recalled seeing it tied to his saddle and wondering at it. With my hands tied before me, he dumped me on the edge of a table, like a sack of grain. There was no other furniture, not even a chair, which struck me as odd.”

She’d forgotten that stray thought—why have a table without a chair?

“When I struggled to sit up, he got his hands around my throat and told Alex to watch that too. I tried to kick at him, tried to keep my legs together, but he wedged his body between my knees and pushed at my habit. He was prodigiously strong, and I could not get my breath.”

In a sense, she still hadn’t.

“Where was Alex?”

“By the door,” Avis said. “I could see her, and she, God help her, could see me. The place was dim, but had a window, a single, small window, and I wanted to look at the window, at the way out, but I couldn’t look away from my sister’s face.”

And still the rhythm of Hadrian’s voice, his breathing, and his infernal questions remained calm and steady. “What was Collins doing?”

“He’d got his falls undone, ripped the buttons, I think, and outside, his friends all sang some jaunty college boy’s song, in harmony.”

“What did you see as you lay on that table, Avie?”

She’d seen the end of every good thing in her life, the end of a desire to live, even.

“I saw the horror in Alex’s expression, and I knew she was being brutalized vicariously, and Collins was enjoying that too. When he put his hand around my throat, Alex started screaming, but he merely told her if she tried to interfere, he’d ensure I suffered the consequences.”

And though Collins’s brutality had been momentary, the retelling was aging Avis years and years, shriveling her to a string of ugly, miserable words.

True words, though.

“What happened then? What did Collins do?”

“He tore my habit and drawers, or cut them,” Avis said. “Alex fell silent, and I recall hearing the sound of tearing fabric, even as my ears roared.”

“Why were your ears roaring?”

“I couldn’t breathe. He was choking me with one hand as he threatened my sister. He was touching me between my legs with his other hand, shoving his body against me.”

He’d been everywhere at once, a foul, ranting miasma of inebriated male malevolence that still clouded her heart.

“And then?”

And then the first thread of courage had trickled through her, the first drop of rage. “I refused to faint,” Avis said, her voice stronger. “I refused to leave my sister alone with him like that, but I
was
fainting, and then I heard another rip—my bodice—and he laughed again and said something about my breasts.”

“Do you recall what he said?”

“I couldn’t hear him at first.” She rested her forehead against Hadrian’s sternum. “He grabbed at me, at my breasts, and that meant I could breathe for a moment. He hurt me, bruised me, and the pain helped me not faint, but then I caught Alex’s gaze. Hadrian, she had a knife.”

Fenwick typically wore a knife, but not until that moment had Avis realized why the sight of it made her uneasy.

“You’re sure?”

“She was younger than I, less of a useless lady, and she carried one in her riding boot. She was advancing on Collins, murder in her eyes, and I’ve never seen anything so frightening as my baby sister bent on taking a life.”

“She did not kill him.”

“No.” Avis said it very softly, and for Alex’s sake, Avis rejoiced in that answer. “No, she did not. As much as it pains me to know my sister saw me assaulted, at least she did not take a life.”

“She escaped.”

In some regards, Alexandra had escaped. In others, she’d sentenced herself to banishment, to the south and to spinsterhood.

“Collins sensed her movement. Right as he would have spotted her, I shook my head at her, and she must have read the desperation in my eyes. She did what I wanted her to do instead.”

“Which was?”

“The latch on the cottage was old-fashioned, the simplest mechanism, but it worked on two sides of the door, two latches, really. We were locked in, but all it took was something slender inserted between the door and the jamb to lift the outside latch, and because we had brothers, Alex had the knack of it. She used her knife to lift the latch and pelted right into Collins’s group of accomplices.”

“What did Collins do?”

“Hit me again. And raped me.”

Confession might be good for the soul, but it was hell for the hearts of all involved. Hadrian didn’t have to be a former vicar to know that.

“Tell me exactly what happened, Avie.”

Had Hadrian not been soothing himself tactilely with his hands on her naked body, not been reassuring himself that Avis was real and whole in his arms, he could not have asked that question. Her recitation battered his faith in a benevolent God, and how much more must it buffet her?

“I don’t want to say the words.”

She’d spare him those words, daft woman. Hadrian’s hands stilled, and his courage damned near deserted him, until he recalled all the missteps, wantonness, and maliciousness attributed to Avis, and by the very people who ought to have shown her compassion.

“You need to say the words, love. I need to hear them, and you need to say them. You haven’t said these words once in twelve years, and yet, within you, they’re never entirely silent.”

“Nobody wants to hear them. They’re ugly.” Her tone confirmed that she believed these words made
her
ugly, and hopeless, and eternally ashamed.

“What happened to you is ugly. You are glorious.”

She was silent for a moment, as if weathering yet another blow. “I’ll tell you this once, but then you must not ask it of me again.”

Hadrian was demanding, not asking. “Tell me.”

He resumes his caresses, his hands wandering over her face as well, mapping her features and trying desperately to fortify her with tenderness.

“He poked at me, between my legs, and as horrid as the entire situation was, because my belly had been aching, that made it even worse. I was on my back, on the table, and he stood between my legs, jabbing at me. I could hear him as if from a distance, and he was cursing me, telling me I was selfish, and stupid, and no man would want a great cow of a girl like me, and how was he to get sons on such a brittle, mewling stick, and it hurt as if he were stabbing at me blindly, Hadrian.”

“How did he touch you?”

“Between my legs,” she said, her breath hitching. “He jabbed at me even as he was cursing me, and he squeezed my breasts, one after the other, hard. I wanted to faint then. I wanted to die.”

Why hadn’t she wanted Hart Collins to die? Why had she never, ever allowed herself to wish for that? For Hadrian purely wanted to murder the bastard, slowly, after he’d subjected him to intimate, disfiguring violations—plural—before witnesses.

“What ended this?” To the extent that it had ended.

“Alex got away. She clambered onto a horse and made a dash for it, and she must have made it as far as the home wood before she was tossed. The men outside yelled for Collins to get the hell on his horse.”

A man could hurt a woman intimately without entirely destroying her innocence, but Avie’s recitation was not yet complete.

“Did Collins set his clothing to rights?”

“He couldn’t, not properly.” She rose up enough to peer down at him in puzzlement, her forearm pressing against his chest. “He’d torn off some buttons in his haste to sin, and he cursed vilely when he got my blood on his clothes.”

Why would a man triumphant from despoiling his intended curse? “Did you see his member?”

“I did and I recall wanting to laugh, for it was the oddest-looking little dangle of flesh I’d ever seen. I’d spied on my brothers, of course, but never at such close range, and not for years. Then I realized I must be mad, to laugh at anything ever again, no matter how bitterly—and I did not care that I was mad. I also did not laugh.”

She settled back down against him. “Gran Carruthers explained to me, years later, that a man will be stiff when he’s in the act and soft immediately after.”

Hadrian made silent promises to his beloved that in addition to inspiring her to passion, some day he’d inspire her to laughter—real laughter, the healing kind.

“Dangle of flesh, Avie?”

She buried her nose against his chest, blushing the blush of all blushes, judging by the heat next to Hadrian’s skin. “Like a small boy. Not like you.”

Hadrian shifted to kiss her temple, because Avis knew more than she grasped. “He had your blood on his clothes?”

“From when he’d tried to button up,” Avis explained. “His fingers were bloody—I could smell the blood along with the spirits he reeked of—and it was like the musty smell, and his slaps, and all the other unpleasantness. The scent helped me not faint.”

Unpleasantness.

“His fingers were bloody,” Hadrian reiterated. “Think carefully, Avie. Was his cock bloody?”