Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed (28 page)

She thought he might draw her down for a kiss, but he stared up at her as though memorizing every pore of her skin. He skimmed his hand across her features. Forehead. Eyes fluttering under his touch. Nose. Cheeks. Chin. Lips.

“How adventurous you’ve become,
bella
.” He sounded drowsy and reflective. In the flickering candlelight, the gray eyes were soft like morning mist.

She smiled under his fingers. “You forgive me for binding you?”

“If I can return the favor.”

“Of course.” She shivered with anticipation, then unhappy awareness punctured her excitement as she
realized their time together was now measured in hours. She slanted her lips across his in a kiss that she hoped conveyed everything she’d felt during the last miraculous days. The kiss was also a silent apology. She didn’t fool herself that he’d appreciate what she meant to do.

He intensified the kiss, shifted it into passion.

So tempting to cede. But she couldn’t. Slowly, she lifted her head and brushed his black hair back from his angular face. She’d come to know him so well. More compelling than her curiosity, compelling as that was, was the desperate need she sensed in him to unburden his lonely soul. She longed above all to give him peace.

As if he guessed her intentions, his relaxed expression leached away. She paused to repent the loss of his contentment.
Courage, Sidonie.

She sucked in a breath. “Jonas, how did you get your scars?”

Jonas’s gut lurched with horrified denial. Hell, he should have expected this. Which didn’t make Sidonie’s question any more welcome. Once she’d asked him and he’d rebuffed her, but after tonight, they’d reached a point where he could no longer deny her the truth.

Unable to hold her searching, compassionate gaze, he rolled away to sit on the edge of the bed with his back to her. In the mirrors, he watched her rise to her knees behind him. He knew that stubborn expression too well to imagine he’d avoid interrogation.

Unfortunately for his efforts to keep her out of his head and heart, determination wasn’t the only emotion she displayed. Worse than stubbornness was vulnerability in the downturned corners of her lush mouth, and uncertainty
in her deep brown eyes. Eyes that expressed no judgment, merely a profound concern for him, concern that a more sentimental man than Jonas Merrick might describe as loving.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” he said grimly, burying his face in his hands so he didn’t have to see his hideous reflection.

“I know you don’t.” Her voice ached with sadness.

He raised his head. “It’s our last night,
carissima.
We should be lost in pleasure.”

“Tell me, Jonas.” She sucked in a shaky breath, then her hands snaked around him. He stiffened even as he yearned to accept her embrace. Her hold felt protective, as if she defended him from unknown terrors. The sensation of someone watching out for him was unfamiliar and fiendishly alluring.

He flinched when she laid her cheek against his back, pressed her breasts against him. Her skin felt silky and warm. Odd how affecting these gestures of comfort were. Jonas strove to insist her gentleness meant nothing, but not even he believed that. It was a sobering reflection upon his life that he couldn’t remember anyone else offering him open affection. His father had loved him, but he’d been an Englishman with an Englishman’s inhibitions. A handshake or an arm flung around his son’s shoulders tested the heights of demonstrativeness. And his father’s affection for his son had always been a pallid emotion compared to his grief for his wife.

Sidonie’s silence and undemanding embrace wore down defenses fortified over more than twenty years. He linked his hands over hers. “It’s not a pretty story,” he said gruffly.

Sidonie hadn’t been sure Jonas would tell her. There was no real reason he should. She felt his shuddering tension. She’d known almost from the first that his scars were a forbidden area for curiosity and now she forced him to confront the events that left him so horribly marked. Dredging up words to describe past horrors would hurt him.

Heavens, it would hurt her.

Just before she relinquished hope of anything further, he spoke. “It happened when I was ten. At Eton.”

Her arms tightened. She verged so near this ultimate mystery. If he denied her now, she couldn’t bear it.

“Some older boys took exception to the baseborn mongrel in their midst and expressed their opinion with their fists.”

Horror jammed her throat. “They deliberately tortured you?”

“Boys are little barbarians,
amore mio.”

“You didn’t deserve this.” Despite her best efforts to remain calm, her voice cracked with emotion.

He turned and twined his arms around her. She no longer provided comfort; he did. He dashed away the tear that trickled down her cheek. “Don’t cry,
tesoro
. It was a long time ago.”

And every day he relived it as if it happened anew. She knew enough about him to dismiss his stoic reassurance as a lie. “That’s not the point. It was wrong.”

A strange expression crossed his face, a wryness she couldn’t interpret. “It proved a salutary experience. A lesson in not getting above myself. A bastard shouldn’t put on airs appropriate to his legitimate brethren.”

His cutting words sounded eerily familiar. Suddenly
like a fist smashing into her belly, Sidonie understood everything. And wished to heaven she didn’t. Probably nobody else would recognize that clipped, dismissive intonation. But she’d lived with William six years. She’d heard him rage against Jonas. Bemoaning his cousin’s success, he’d used those exact words.

“William cut you.” It wasn’t a question.

The silvery eyes were guarded. “That’s a wild guess.”

“But accurate.”

Expecting Jonas to pull away, she raised one hand to his scarred cheek. He remained unmoving, then with a low sound of acceptance, pressed his face into her palm. “How clever of you to realize.”

“I should have realized earlier.” Her voice shook. Curse her blindness. The clues were there in Jonas’s pursuit of revenge against a man unworthy of his time. The words telling him he was Viscount Hillbrook surged up but she bit them back. She already knew that in his vendetta against William, Roberta and her children were of little importance to him. Better she settled Roberta somewhere safe then sent Jonas the marriage lines.

“William rallied half a dozen bully boys and they waylaid me behind the chapel.”

“That’s unfair. You aren’t responsible for your parents’ sins.”

His smile was unamused. “Perhaps not. But that’s the cruelty of children, isn’t it?”

Blind indeed. Before coming to Castle Craven, she’d been so hopelessly shallow to imagine Jonas’s bastardy wouldn’t affect him. Whereas the more she discovered about him, the more she realized his disinheritance was his life’s besetting tragedy. “I’m so sorry, Jonas.”

“I didn’t guess they intended more than the usual beating until William pulled out a carving knife. He said the world needed to know I was beyond the pale.”

Sidonie shuddered and choked down rising nausea. The whole incident reeked of William. The braggadocio, the cruelty, the cowardice of attacking his enemy after mustering superior forces. Jonas would have fought like a demon. But one small boy, no matter how valiant, had no chance against a gang of older thugs. Her hand curled around his neck. “You’re lucky he didn’t kill you.”

Jonas’s grunt wasn’t exactly a laugh. “He damned near did. Thank God, two of my schoolfellows rescued me.”

“Only two?”

“They made so much noise, William and his cohorts fled. The masters might despise a bastard, but they couldn’t countenance murder on school grounds.

“The duke was one of the boys.” So much of that prickly conversation in the library with His Grace, the Duke of Sedgemoor, became clear.

“Richard Harmsworth and Camden Rothermere. Bonny fighters, although Richard looked like he’d blow away in a slight breeze and Cam always toed the straight and narrow. A brawl wasn’t his style at all.”

She discerned an unlikely trace of affection in his voice. She was so glad Jonas hadn’t always been a lone wolf. It seemed sad that the friendship had faded over the years, although she knew better than to say so. From what the duke had said, Jonas had deliberately distanced himself from his rescuers. “I’m glad you had friends.”

“I’m not sure you’d call us friends. More like orphans in the storm, sticking together for protection. Eton wasn’t kind to boys of questionable birth.”

“School must have been a nightmare for all of you.”

“Richard made a great show of caring for nothing, which lent him cachet with the brutes. Gossip about his parentage shadowed Cam but, his father’s son or not, he was heir to a dukedom so people were less eager to offend him than a mere peasant like me. He was only twelve then, but he was damned ducal ordering those mongrels away.”

“I’m surprised you stayed conscious.” She flinched to imagine the scene, shouting boys, fists thudding into flesh, blood. Was Jonas screaming? He was only a child and terrified for his life through agonizing pain.

His grip tightened around her waist. “I wasn’t for long.”

Still something puzzled her. “Why didn’t you and the other boys stay friends?”

His expression hardened. “That was hardly a shining moment for me. I doubt any of us wanted to be reminded of it, even if my abasement was etched on my face forever.”

Again she’d been blind. Shame lay at the basis of so many of Jonas’s actions. Shame made him stand alone against the world. Shame made him reject any hand of friendship. He’d interpret kindness or goodwill as a sign of condescension. However illogical it was, she understood why he considered his scars relics of humiliating defeat at his cousin’s hands. Jonas’s pride had helped him survive in a hostile world but it hadn’t made life easier for him. “Even your father abandoned you.”

She felt him stiffen. More shame. She should have realized long ago that at least some of his defensiveness stemmed from humiliations too painful to be borne. “How do you know that?”

“I wheedled it out of Mrs. Bevan.”

He sighed. “My father was a broken man. He never got over losing my mother and when the marriage was declared invalid, his spirit shriveled to nothing. He loved me, but scholarly research filled his life. After he took me to Venice, a colleague discovered a Roman encampment in Wallachia. He left me with our staff there to see if the find supported his pet theories.”

Yet again she recognized Jonas’s reasons for mistrusting personal relations. “That’s terrible.”

Jonas’s careless response didn’t convince. “He wasn’t likely to hover by my bedside and at least he stayed until I wasn’t likely to die.”

Her stomach churned with anger. “Very generous.”

“You didn’t know him.” Jonas’s voice warmed. “He was a marvelous man, clever, physically fearless, far-thinking. He taught me to stand on my own two feet. That was a lesson I needed to learn.”

It was yet another sign of his generosity of heart that he’d continued to idolize his father, who sounded to her like a fatally selfish man. “I didn’t hear that William was expelled.”

“He wasn’t. He was the future Viscount Hillbrook when all was said and done. And boys will be boys.”

Sidonie flinched at Jonas’s cynical tone. Although who could fault his anger? He’d found no help from those charged with his care.

Jonas was still speaking. “My cousin was caned and sent home for the term. As far as I know, he was accepted back into school the next year under promise of good behavior.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Yes, it is rather.” His gaze was lightless as his inner
vision dwelled upon events so long ago. “The worst of it is he showed no jot of remorse. He laughed as he sliced my face, joked with his loutish chums about his artful carving.”

Another shudder ran under Sidonie’s skin. She could so easily picture William’s enjoyment as he disfigured the cousin who excelled him in every way except birth. Jonas spoke so prosaically, but she couldn’t help picturing the gory details of his ordeal. He’d been a child. An innocent.

Inhaling on a sob, she kissed his scars. He trembled but didn’t withdraw. Tears burned her eyes but she blinked them away. If she cried, he’d think she pitied him and he’d abhor that. She didn’t pity him. She admired him more than she’d ever admired anybody.

“I’m glad you didn’t die.” She cursed the inadequacy of words.

He turned his face until his lips met hers. “Right now,
bella
, so am I.”

“I hate that you went through this. I hate it.” Outrage vibrated in her voice. She couldn’t banish the image of William crowing in triumph over his fallen cousin.

Jonas smoothed her hair away from her face with a tenderness that seared her heart. “I hate that William won.”

She grabbed his wrist hard. “You were a child fighting odds you couldn’t hope to match. You bear no blame. It’s all William. And the cowardly dogs who held you down.” Her tone lowered to throbbing sincerity. “I’m glad you’ve beaten him at everything since. I’m glad your success makes him feel half a man. Because that’s what he is. He’s less than half a man. He’s no man at all.”

This time his smile wasn’t as strained. “So fierce,
tesoro
.”

She recoiled, but his arms stopped her getting far. “Don’t mock me.”

He sounded sheepish. “I’m actually taken aback that you’re so firmly on my side.”

She stared at him, wishing she could make him see himself as she did. “I’m always on your side.”

She twined her arms around Jonas and brought him close to her body. For once the contact wasn’t sexual, but purely human comfort. She’d nurtured and protected people before. Roberta. Roberta’s sons. But the profundity of what she felt as she embraced Jonas surpassed previous experience.

I’m always on your side.

No one had ever spoken those words to Jonas. Gently she held him to her breast on the tumbled bed. Her scent surrounded him, rich with the musk of satisfied woman. By God, he’d never have these sheets washed. He wanted Sidonie’s fragrance surrounding him forever.

When Sidonie herself was gone.