The Veiled Heart (The Velvet Basement Book 1) (20 page)

Her hand rubbed over him in his trousers. The hardness of him. She wanted him despite who he was. It was just them and he was the one he always was. The only man who made her lose herself with pleasure. The man who would always catch her when she jumped.

Max turned her around to face the chair.

On the wall was a large gold framed mirror. The look of them reflected back. Her eyes hooded, her cheeks and décolletage flushed. Max looked at her as his hands moved behind them, as he hefted all her skirts up, pushed her to bend forward, and slipped in with one hard thrust.

His hand curled under her chin, held her head up so he could hold her gaze in the reflection. He pushed into her and the chair rocked forward inch by inch with each thrust. His face pulled taut, teeth bared as he moved in her, held her to him, and held her face up to watch them.

“Max!” It was too much. To see him, to want him, to love him, and to try to reconcile that he could be just like Freddy. How would she know? She never did back then. Not a single instinct had warned her she was walking into the den of a monster.

“Come on, Lily.” His hand came around her throat. “Slip your hand between your legs.”

“No.” Damn him for making her want him. Damn him for giving her everything and then taking it away.

“Do it, Lily. I can’t reach.”

Her hand moved anyway. Her folds were damp. She let the tips of her fingers feel him as he moved in and out of her. Her mouth dropped open, gasped, as the thick hardness of him slid back and forth past her fingers with each thrust. Then she touched herself, the hard nub, and moved it left and right, and then her breath pulled in, held. Her throat let out a groan.

“Oh, sweetheart.” He pushed in, holding her so tightly up against his chest that she could hardly breathe. Holding her still as he flexed his hips. Her mouth dropped open and she panted, her head dizzy as pleasure coursed through her, building and rippling with each thrust.

He yelled out, the sound echoing in the spaces. It triggered her, the hoarse sound, the hard need that rolled out of him. Senseless pleasure crashed through her and she lost her footing. His hand came around her waist, held her up as he panted in her ear.

“This is us, Lily. This. Don’t throw us away. Please, I implore you.”

“I’m confused.” It was a whisper. The anger was there; she was just too exhausted to express it. This was them; she felt that too. If she could just be who she was right now, not the beaten and abused Mrs. Rothbury, and if he was anyone else but Freddy’s long-standing friend.

“Can I see you tomorrow? A chance for us to talk this through.” Max straightened them both to standing.

“I’m not sure.”

Max looked annoyed as she started to fix her clothes.

“I need time, Worthington.” The sound of his name in her mouth was distasteful and her face screwed up.

“Damn it, Lily. That look is most offensive and undeserved.”

“Well, I can’t help it. How could you possibly have grown up with Freddy and not known what he was like? How could you have stayed with him, if you knew any of what he was capable of? Surely, you would have seen what he was capable of? Oh God, or even been a part of it.”

She tugged out of his hold. He grabbed her again, shook her by the shoulders.

“I most certainly was never a part of any of his depravity, Lily. Never!”

“So you did know what he was like. “

He let her go. His hand ran through his hair.

“This is not how I wanted our discussion to go.”

“Oh, blast you. I’ve had enough.” He reached out and she stepped back. “No, that is really enough. I will not be manhandled or pleasured into believing you are a decent man. No decent man would have stood by and let Freddy do the kind of things he must have already been doing before he married me. By the time I got him, he was well versed at his cruelty, believe me.”

She started to move toward the door then stopped.

“I want to know one thing. Were you at any of Freddy’s annual dinners?”

Max shook his head. “No. He never invited me and if he had, I wouldn’t have gone.”

Miriam narrowed her eyes. It looked like he was telling the truth.

“Freddy used to put me in a metal box, naked, under the table. No one knew I was there. He made sure every depraved thing came up during the night. I look at the faces of men whose voices I recognise and I know what they are like. See the soft looks they give their wives and daughters and know them for the misogynistic shams they are.”

Max stepped forward and Miriam raised her hand. “Stop. I don’t need your pity or comfort, Max. I just need to know if you were there.”

Max pulled up straighter and looked her in the eyes. “Never, Lily, never. I swear.”

“He left me in there until I soiled the box. Then he had the box carried downstairs. He’d hose me down with ice water, beat me, and then sodomize me. The best way to finish a great night, he’d say every time.

“Do you have any idea the things he’s placed in me, the things he did to me, pushed into my mouth? How I have been so totally defiled? Is this the lovely
Lily
, you want? The
wife
you dream me to be?”

Max moved a single step then gauged her response and stopped.

Miriam couldn’t move. Telling him, really letting him know the depravity that had been her life, should turn him away. He could see her now for who she was, a broken and sullied woman fighting for some semblance of a meaningful life.

“You would do yourself a favor to go get one of those debutantes your mother wants for you.” Her voice was hard. She made it hard.

Max took the few steps needed to stand in front of her. Her heart was pounding overly hard but every other part of her was frozen.

He tucked some of her hair back into its pins. Looked at her clothes and straightened her some more. All perfunctory and without the usual softness in his eyes. She found herself looking for it. Hunting it down behind the closed screen that sat in his gaze for the first time since The Velvet Basement.

“I will call on you tomorrow.” His voice was firm, emotionless.

She nodded. Perhaps she owed both of them this explanation.

Yet, in her mind, there was little he would be able to say. How could he explain how he had stood by a man like Freddy and done nothing? He had come to her wedding, for heaven’s sake, and watched her be handed over to the full control of a monster.

Maybe by tomorrow he would have thought about the broken woman she really was and would change his mind.

A few dazed minutes later, Miriam made her way to the restroom to refresh herself. She would tidy herself up, find her aunt and go home.

She was almost there when she saw her brother, Maurice. The night was just getting worse.

“Lily, I had no idea you would be here tonight. You must let me know when you head out to events like this. I am more than happy for you to tag along with my party.”

That was absolutely the last thing she wanted. She felt very little warmth for him after he had refused to support her shelter, and then of course there was his absolute disbelief when she had hinted at the trouble she was having with Freddy.

“Maurice.” She kissed him on both cheeks. “Is Cynthia here?”

“Yes, as is Baron Digby.”

“Marry him yourself, Maurice. I’ve done my filial duty.”

“Always the selfish one, Miriam.” Maurice tried to make a joke of it, but it was quite clear that he was annoyed with her. He wanted her to remarry and wanted it to benefit him.

Cynthia came back from the dance floor and joined them.

“You look flushed, Miriam; are you all right?” She kissed Miriam on both cheeks.

“Yes, I have been dancing.”

Maurice was already looking over her shoulder, his mind already moving on to the more important people in the room. People who would move the family position further. Freddy had effectively stopped the family slide into bankruptcy, but his early death had thrown a spanner in the works and obviously, other means were still needed.

Miriam had always thought that family meant that no matter what she would be pulled into the fold and looked after. But that hadn’t happened when she needed them. She was pushed back out to do her duty. And when Freddy had finally died, they were indignant at the inconvenience it was going to cause all of them.

There were no visits to see how she was other than the obligatory visits around the funeral.

“Worthington.” Maurice looked up and scowled.

Max came up next to her.

Stood much too close. The heat radiated off his hand. All she had to do was lift her finger and she would touch him. God help her, she wanted to, but he wasn’t who she thought he was. He was buried under the weight of his sins, of omission and association, of inaction; no amount of pleasure would eradicate that.

She looked up at him and scowled, but it was a wasted effort as his full gaze was on Maurice.

“Hickford, I hope you are enjoying the ball.”

Maurice tilted his head as if to say it could be better. It was a ridiculous response. This was the grandest ball London had seen in the last half decade. Anyone would want to be here or feel they were not a part of London’s most influential.

“You’ve bolstered the coffers since we last spoke. Did Miriam mention Lord Digby’s suit? Very favorable.”

Next to her, Worthington stiffened. The air around him seemed to expand and increase in tension and he stepped towards Maurice. Maurice took a quick step back.

The ball was not a place for violence. In fact, because they were gentlemen, they were not prone to violence, at least not in public. Nonetheless, the threat from Worthington to her brother was clear.

Worthington reached out and flicked some non-existent lint of her brother’s jacket. Maurice flinched and shied away.

“You, it seems, still have the same priorities.” Max stepped back, turned to her, his face hard. Something passed across his eyes behind his social mask, a hesitation that was unmistakable. “Mrs. Rothbury.”

He then bowed and left.

Miriam looked at her brother who was moving in an agitated way.

“Has Worthington been bothering you tonight? I have a mind to tell him he’ll be as unsuccessful as last time, if he comes around looking for you!” Maurice stepped forward tightly grabbing her arm. “Stay away from him, Miriam. He had a thing about you. Not healthy at all.” Then he strode off.

He had a thing about you.
What did that mean?

It was all too much; she had to leave. She had to find Auntie D and leave.

Worthington waved his carriage away. He had to walk; and in less than twenty minutes, he was where he should have been all those years ago. But this time he was armed.

Worthington walked up the steps and knocked.

The ball had ended in the early hours of the morning. Everyone had left and he was trotting around London in his carriage. Four times past Lily’s house and he knew he was in serious trouble. The dawn couldn’t come soon enough. The trouble was he had never been as furious in his life.

He’d backed off pressing her. He’d pulled away after she’d told him about the box. He was worried that he would never be able to let her walk out the door if he held her.

Then Maurice, the money-hungry bastard, had brought up Digby. Digby was very wealthy and one of the meanest men in London under what looked like a reasonable facade. And Maurice wanted Lily to consider Digby’s suit. It was all he could do not to pound Maurice into the very marble where he stood. All that even before he’d gone to his study and found the package from his investigators.

Worthington knocked on the front door again and yelled.

“Maurice! Maurice, open the damn door.”

To hell with the neighbors. He didn’t care who saw him. He said he was going to champion her and he would whether she would have him or not.

After some debate with the butler, Worthington was finally let in. Maurice came down the stairs in his dressing gown; his wife clutching hers closely around her at the top of the stairs.

“Damn it, Worthington, what is this about? Are you mooning over my sister again because you can’t have her?”

In two steps, Worthington was in front of the weasel and slammed his fist into Maurice’s face. Once, twice, and on the third swing the butler grabbed his arms and pulled him back.

“Send them away, Maurice.” He looked up at Maurice’s wife, Cynthia, as she rushed down the stairs towards them. “How much of what I have to say about you and Freddy, do you want to share Maurice?”

Maurice motioned for the butler to leave.

“Perhaps we can finish this in my study like gentleman.” Maurice motioned for his wife to leave as well and the two of them moved into Maurice’s study. The gaslights hissed on.

Every part of him wanted to tear this smarmy, self-serving prat to pieces but he had something else to achieve first as well as a point to make.

“She was in your care. Your care, Maurice. You knew Freddy better than any of us did, and you fed her to him. You knew him.”

“So did you!” Maurice’s reply was a mixture of sulk and agitation as he stalked over to the sideboard and poured a drink, slamming it back as soon as it was poured. “You knew him, Worthington; we all did. It was inevitable he would marry someone’s sister. So why not Miriam? She had everything as a girl. It was time for her to earn her keep and do what the family needed. She never wanted for anything; she traveled the continent and was by all accounts London’s luckiest woman in love.”

“Those bloody papers. I read all of that. I damn well believed them. I thought he’d kept his proclivities away from his wife. God, you managed it; why couldn’t he?”

“I’m not under scrutiny here, Max.”

“So tell me, did you ever check if he was doing the right thing by her? Did you?” his voice lowered as he spoke, Worthington moved so he stood close to Maurice. Made sure he loomed over the smaller man. If they were in Canada. If they were on the frontier, Maurice would be beaten to a pulp and left for the bears.

“She came by with some nonsense from time to time, and I sent her on her way.”

“So she did tell you?”

“We all have to suck something up. That was hers.” Maurice sneered at him and red flashed across his mind.

“You fucking bastard.” Worthington was on Maurice in a heartbeat. The pain as it shot through his fist, up his arm, as he hit Maurice in the side of the head, didn’t make him stop. Oh no, he was just getting started. Worthington straightened and dragged Maurice by his hair to his desk and threw him on it.

“You will write enough funds over to Miriam that she will be able to walk away from Rothbury’s family and any obligations she has to them. And you will sign over one of the houses you have in the city for her refuge. You will do it now.”

“Now hang on, Worthington. I see no need for that. She is well taken—” Pain shot up his arms as he took hold of Maurice’s dressing gown and slammed Maurice’s face into the desk.

“I gave you a chance to own up Maurice, to be a man. I have enough money and enough influence to keep you in poverty for the rest of your life and I will not hesitate.”

His hand shook as he reached into his coat and pulled out the papers, which had been sitting on his desk after the ball. The detective service had finally delivered on his request for all the information about Lily while he had been gone. He was determined to track down every bastard who knew what her life was really like and did nothing to help a woman of breeding in such a despicable position. What he found made him sick to his stomach.

“You inherited a sinking ship. You handed over your sister for that bastard to do with as he pleased and were fed the funds and connections in business deals to make it a very lucrative exchange.”

“That’s not true.” Maurice squirmed to get out of his grip. The papers slapped down on the desk in front of Maurice’s gaze.

“Here is the evidence, Maurice, letters to Freddy from you, and Freddy’s responses. You blackmailed Freddy with Miriam, settling on an open slate access to her with your guaranteed blind eye… for sufficient funds. Tell me, Maurice, how much is it worth to have your sister bolted into a metal box? Beaten, raped? I hope you are a rich man because I want to see a substantial amount written out to her. Right now!”

After a few more fist to face exchanges, Maurice had the paperwork done at the appropriate level of generosity. Worthington put it in his pocket along with the letters that incriminated Maurice.

“I will deliver this. If I find out you have reneged on this agreement, I will bring you down. I know what happened that night when you and Freddy went and played.”

“You promised to stay quiet.”

“And you promised that Freddy would do the right thing.”

“You are just sore I wouldn’t let you have her.”

Worthington walked up to Maurice’s bloody face; he had to give him credit, he didn’t step back.

“Yes, Maurice, I fucking am.” The head-butt was the most satisfying he’d ever given and watching Maurice crumple went someway to placating the absolute fury pumping through every cell of his body.

Fury at Freddy and Maurice’s sick agreement, at his own naivety. If he hadn’t been such a lovesick fool, determined not to see her with someone else, he would have been around and he would have watched, and he damn well would have known.

She had every right to reject him. Even if she didn’t realize she rejected him for not being there for her.

That was the real sin.

Somewhere in all that confusion and anger, she knew as well as he did that he was the one charged to protect her even when it was unsaid. Even though there had been nothing between them as adults, some things just were, and her belonging to him and him needing to see her safe was one of them.

However, he had failed and she had paid the price.

At least he could do this for her.

Set her free from all of them.

Give her the power of knowing the truth, of knowing where her suffering had truly come from. Allow her to release the need to disconnect from everyone, the need to separate herself from those that would strengthen and support her as a valued member of their society and rank.