? ? ?
“I don’t think she’s sustained any serious internal damage,” Gibson said, keeping his voice low. “Although it wasn’t for lack of trying on someone’s part. Who did this to her?”
“That would be her husband, the younger son of the Third Duke of Linford, and brother to the current Fourth Duke.”
They were standing just outside the door to the darkened chamber where Lady Peter lay beneath a pile of warm quilts. Her eyes were closed, although Sebastian didn’t think she was sleeping. Hero had carried off the boy, No?l, to the morning room, where she was plying him with milk and cookies and trying to coax the disgruntled black cat into being sociable.
Gibson said, “I tried to get her to take some laudanum, but she refused. Perhaps you can convince her to change her mind.”
After Gibson left, Sebastian went to sit beside her. He watched her throat work as she swallowed and opened eyes that were swimming with unshed tears. Then she blinked, and one tear escaped to slip sideways into her hair.
“It’s all right,” he said. “You’re safe now.”
She shook her head, although whether it was to refute his statement or to deny her need for safety, he couldn’t have said. “Peter . . .” She swallowed. “He never beat me like this before. Not this bad. In the past, he was always careful to hurt me where it wouldn’t show. But this time . . . I thought he was going to kill me.”
“What set him off? Do you have any idea?”
“He was out drinking most of the night and came home in a rage. He’s badly dipped, you see, and his brother is refusing to pay his debts. The last time the Duke rescued him from dun territory, he swore he’d never do it again. I knew he meant it, but Peter refused to believe it. Now he’s getting desperate. He ran through everything I brought to the marriage years ago, and he wants to get his hands on what my father left for No?l. I told him I wouldn’t help him do it—that I’d rather die. That’s when he started hitting me.”
She was silent for a moment, then said, “He called me . . . such names. Said he had put up with my bastard all these years, that the least I could do was help him now, when he needed it.”
“He knows No?l is your son?”
She nodded, the tears sliding freely down her cheeks. “I never deceived him.”
“Did you tell him Damion Pelletan was the boy’s father?”
“No. But I think he might have guessed.” Her fingers picked at the lace trimming of the sheets. “When Damion first begged me to go away with him, I told him I couldn’t do it. I wanted to, but I’d made a vow and I believed I owed it to Peter to honor it. But then . . .”
Her voice faded away. Sebastian waited, and after a moment she swallowed and started up again. “Last Wednesday, No?l left one of his boats lying in the entry hall. Peter tripped over it, and he turned around and backhanded No?l so hard he made his nose bleed. I couldn’t believe it. Peter had never hit him before. But that’s how it started with me; one day he lost his temper and slapped me across the face. He swore he’d never do it again. But he did. So I knew . . . I knew it would be the same all over again with No?l. That’s when I realized I had to leave—with or without Damion.”
“So you told Damion you’d go with him when he left for France?”
“Yes.”
“Is it possible Lord Peter discovered what you were planning?”
“I don’t know.” Her face crumpled with the force of her sobs, splitting open the cut on her lip so that it began to bleed again. “He may have. Oh, God. Has this all been my fault? Did Damion die because of me?”
Sebastian knew most people in their society would blame her, whether Damion died because of her or not. She had borne a child out of wedlock, then conspired to leave her noble husband for her former lover.
But he could not find it within him to either judge or condemn her for the tangle her life had become. She had been young and vulnerable when she gave in to her passion and the enchantment of love, and unwisely created a child. Torn from the future that might have been hers, she was forced by her parents and the dictates of their society’s stern, unforgiving sense of propriety to disown her own child and marry a man who agreed to give her a veneer of respectability in exchange for her father’s wealth. It was a contract she entered into in good faith, determined to honor the vows she made to a man whose easy geniality and practiced charm hid an angry, self-indulgent, and ultimately abusive petulance.
He said, “Lord Peter claims he was home with you the night Damion was killed. Was he?”
She shook her head from side to side against the pillow. “No. He was supposed to meet Brummell and Alvanley at White’s for dinner that night, but he never showed up. He said he spent the night drinking in some low tavern in Westminster and ended up getting into a brawl there. When he came home early the next morning, his clothes were covered in blood.”