Trial by Desire (Carhart #2)

She sniffed once, and nodded. “That would be it.”


“And by it, you mean…” The world slowed, and Ned swallowed. It didn’t clear the damnable dryness in his throat. “You mean the fact that he hit you.”

It was not a question, but she nodded anyway.

“How long?”

“Never more than fifteen minutes at any one time,” she replied earnestly. “I know. It could have been much worse.”

Ned met her gaze, unable to look away. “That wasn’t what I meant. Has this been going on since I first met you?”

“Oh. It started after our first year of marriage. It wouldn’t have if I had been a better wife. You see, there was a gentleman—a friend, only, but…”

She trailed off, and Ned shook his head. She’d been sixteen then, for God’s sake, and newly married. Harcroft had shaped her entire adult existence. He must have tried to do so forcibly.

He would have flinched himself. He understood all too well how her thinking went.

How many times had he wondered that about himself? What if he had been different? If he had been better? If he hadn’t been betrayed by his own weaknesses? Those doubts would debilitate him if he ever gave them full sway. It had taken him years to learn to discard them, to keep going in the face of his own fears. He could imagine all too well how Lady Harcroft must have felt.

Her husband had been Ned’s friend—and it was unsurprising how quickly that sentence properly became phrased in the past tense. But Harcroft could not have understood the degree to which Ned would find himself in sympathy with his wife.

He knew what it was like to feel powerless, at the mercy of others. And he didn’t like seeing it in anyone else.

It was a sentiment as idiotic as kicking her door down would have been. After all that, he still saw himself as some sort of a hero—a strange and useless one, no doubt. He was no Bow Street Runner, no knight in shining armor. If he’d had chain mail, it would all have rusted at sea. But Ned wasn’t the sort of knight who perished in glorious battle for the sake of a poetic ending.

He had prevailed. He’d beaten back those doubts. He’d found his place and he’d learned to stand on his own two feet, free from that cloying hint of bitter dependence.

It looked as if Lady Harcroft—and by extension, Ned’s own wife—needed a hero. If he could bring Lady Harcroft the kind of peace he’d found, it would prove once and for all that his victory had not been temporary. It would be proof that he’d truly won, that he’d tamed his own response. It would be like a medieval tourney, his very own trial.

She looked at him with quiet eyes. “I should have been different.”

“Hold that thought.” Ned couldn’t touch her, not without risking another flinch. Instead, he knelt before her, making himself seem small and harmless. He looked up in her eyes from his vantage point on the floor. “Hold that thought tightly, with both hands. Can you feel it?”

She clasped her hands together.

“I believe what you just said was that if you had been a different person, your husband might not have hit you.”

She gave a second jerky nod.

“Well, let me show you something I’ve learned. Now, are you still holding on to that thought? Gather it all up in your hands—don’t leave any of it out. Have it? Good. Now stand up.”

She stared at him suspiciously. “Is this some sort of trick?”

“Lady Harcroft, if I wanted to betray you, I wouldn’t need any tricks. I would have come here with twelve men and your husband. I’ll stay here with my knee on the floor for now—you stand up.”

Warily she clambered to her feet; as she did, she started to drop her hands to her waist.

“Careful,” Ned warned teasingly. “You’ll drop the thought, and I specifically told you to hold it with both hands.”

“But there’s nothing there.”

“Nonsense. You can feel that thought in your hands, even if you can’t see it. You’re holding it, all one great weight. It’s bowing your shoulders. And if you run your thumbs over it, you can feel the surface. What does it feel like?”

Lady Harcroft glanced down at her empty hands. “It’s a harsh, spiked thing,” she said softly, “full of bitterness and recrimination.”

“I’m going to stand up now.” Ned did, and then, giving her a wide berth, he walked to the door and threw it open. He took three steps back, so that she could stand in the doorway without coming too close to him. Then he motioned her forward.

She crossed over to him.

“Now this is the hard part. Draw back your arm—yes, like that—and throw the thought as far away as you can.”

“But—”

“Just toss whatever you were thinking right out the door, like the slimy piece of refuse that it is. That sort of thinking has no place in your life. It wasn’t your fault. It’s never your fault if a man hits you.”

She glanced at him in hesitation.

“Go on. Throw it.”

“But I’m not holding on to anything.”