A Very Highland Holiday - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,44
doglike befuddlement. “What? Ruined?”
She breathed in a deep breath through her nose, preparing to lose his respect and regard. Mourning it already. “This is why I am not with my family at Christmas. Or any holiday, really. I’m persona non grata in the eyes of society. My reputation couldn’t be lower if I actually sold myself on Whitechapel High Street.”
At that, he became impossibly still.
“It happened long ago,” she explained, already exhausted. “I fell in love with William Mosby, Viscount Woodhaven. He gave me a ring with the largest diamond I’d ever seen. We made love beneath the Paris sky…”
“And then?” he growled.
“And then he married Honoria Goode, the daughter of my father’s shipping rival, for her dowry was ten thousand pounds more obscene than mine.”
“He broke his word to you.” The statement was murmured softly, almost without inflection. “Did he break your heart?”
Vanessa couldn’t bring herself to look at him.
“Well…not irreparably at first. Not until he—until he published a pamphlet scoring the lovers he’d had. Prostitutes, mostly. But I was on the list, and my score wasn’t very favorable. Pathetically eager, but impossible to please, he said. He called my… my um…” She looked down, wondering why it was so difficult to say. Why she’d stopped feeling ashamed so long ago, but was suddenly afraid of the opinion of a dead man. “Well he said I am broken.”
The rickety chair at the bedside shattered against the far wall.
“Have you no brothers?” John thundered. “Your father didn’t kill him in a duel?”
She stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment for a moment. He was magnificently angry. His muscles seemed to build upon themselves as he heaved in breaths to a chest she could still mostly see through to the fire on the other side.
The effect was rather apropos, as the flames licked at his chest, seeming to ignite the scarlet coat with the same inferno that blazed in his eyes.
“Well,” she answered somewhat demurely. “Duels have been illegal for some time now.”
He gaped at her. “You’re joking.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“You mean to tell me, there is no recourse to besmirched honor?” He gestured broadly as if he couldn’t comprehend the idiocy. “Any blighter can walk around and say whatever they might to defame an innocent, and others do what… believe them?”
It did sound rather ridiculous the way he said it. “If they’re a man of influence, they are believed,” she answered. “That seems to be the way of it. I mean, there are libel laws, but…that recourse is rarely taken.”
He made a disgusted face and threw a gesture at the door toward the chaos on the other side of it. “This age isn’t enlightened, it’s barbaric.”
“I don’t know about that. Fewer people die in duels, so…I suppose you might call that progress.”
“Not in my opinion. Not this bloody—” He whirled on her. “What was his name again?”
“William Mosby.”
“William… I’d cheerfully murder the ponce myself. I’d strike his entire legacy from the annals of time until—”
“No need.” Vanessa held her hand up against him. “Truly. He’s…well, he’s met his fate. What’s done cannot be undone.”
Suddenly. Miraculously. His features softened as he looked down at her, his arms dropping to his sides as he lingered close. Closer. His hand reached out as if to lift her chin, but he never quite managed. “I am sorry that you suffered.”
She summoned that false-bright smile for him. The one she’d learned so well. “I am lucky, in many respects. I still have a generous stipend from my father, to assuage his guilt, I imagine, for keeping me away from them socially. And with it I plan to see the world. I go on adventures like this one. And, reputation-wise, I’ve nothing to lose, so I may do what I please.”
His brow furrowed in consternation. “But you’re alone. Why not have a companion to take on such adventures with you?”
She let out a very unladylike snort. “The idea of compelling someone to keep me company with coin never appealed to me. Besides, then I’d be responsible for them, wouldn’t I? And, if I’m honest, very few would consider an association with one as besmirched as I a very desirable position. No one would consider my references a boon.”
The look on his face caused her own to fall. She couldn’t bear the tenderness. Or the pity.
“It is not so much suffering,” she all but whispered. “When there are so many in the world who know such pain, my bit of shame and isolation seems rather small in comparison.”