Tempting the Bride - By Sherry Thomas Page 0,68

not tell whether Helena assumed the stage was but the venue from which his mother sold her favors, but enough people had done so in his life that he reflexively leaped to the latter’s defense. “She was very good at her craft.”

“I don’t doubt that. I am only shocked that your father’s family allowed the marriage to proceed.”

“My uncle was sixteen years senior to my father and quite indulgent of his little brother. No doubt my father convinced him that my mother would settle down to become a good little hausfrau, and that in time her past on the stage would be forgotten like last year’s news.”

It felt strange to speak of his family history—almost as if he were disrobing in public, right down to his underlinen. He’d never had to do it before: Everyone either already knew or soon found out from someone else. And when boys at school had, the only explanations he’d given had been via his fists.

“So did Belinda Montagu ever become the domesticated Mrs. Hillsborough?”

“Her real name was Mary Wensley. And no, after two years she returned to the stage. She and my father were in the middle of an annulment when he died—and I was born eight and a half months later. My uncle was convinced my birth was a shameless ploy on my mother’s part to gain a portion of his fortune, since he and his wife were childless.”

“But I thought your uncle was your guardian.”

“I lived with my mother until I was seven. Then, one fine day, we came across my uncle. And within weeks he’d assumed guardianship of my person.”

Looking back, he realized it was quite possible his mother had engineered the meeting—she’d known she didn’t have long to live and she’d wanted him to have everything his uncle could offer. But Hastings had wanted nothing of what his uncle could offer, not when his uncle was determined to repent for his earlier permissiveness with Hastings’s father by denying Hastings every freedom and pleasure under the sun.

For as long as his mother lived, he’d run away to visit her every time his governess turned her back. After his mother died, he lived with a band of Gypsies for almost six months until he was caught and brought home. He didn’t bother running away from Eton—even with all the bullies it was better than living at home with his uncle. And eventually the bullies had learned to leave him alone, because he was a far nastier fighter than they, and no one came away from a brawl with him unscathed.

Helena frowned, but her eyes had become softer, as if she were beginning to understand something about him that she hadn’t before.

“Don’t,” he said immediately. “Don’t excuse me for having been an ass simply because my mother’s profession might have caused me difficulties with my uncle and at school. You never did it before and I’ve always liked that about you—I earned your disfavor not by the grace of my parentage but by dint of my own hard work.”

She stared at him, this dunce who would turn down her sympathy. “Well, then, if you say so. You were a complete ass and your lovely mother would have been ashamed of you.”

For some reason, the way she handed down her reprimand, with a roll of the eyes that was half wonder, half exasperation, made him smile—the first genuine smile that had come to him since she remembered that, indeed, he had been a complete ass.

The corners of her lips also lifted, but she turned away before he could see whether that seed of mirth became anything more. “Good night,” she said. “And you may leave your smutty story here. I may look at it when I’ve finished with all the other books you own.”

As promises went, that was quite good enough for him.

It wasn’t until he’d opened the door that he remembered to tell her, “By the way, you spend most of the story tied to a bed. I hope you enjoy.”

CHAPTER 14

Helena circled the end table on which the envelope lay, tapping her chin, clearing her throat, regarding Hastings’s manuscript askance. It was late; she ought to be resting, and she didn’t have much of an appetite for erotica—or at least, she hadn’t developed a great appreciation of it by the time she turned nineteen.

But, as it turned out, one did not simply leave unperused a smutty love letter in which one was fastened to the bed for one’s husband’s pleasure.

The manuscript, titled