Chapter 12
“D o you want to tell me what happened?” Arabella asked, hating how her breath shook as she retook her place on the settee and continued to tug the curling fabric from her hair.
Silas continued to pace back and forth in front of her window, his hands clenched at his sides. “You told me before that your sisters followed you into this life.”
That felt like a change of subject from her question and one she didn’t understand. “Y-yes.”
“They never judged you for who you are, what you are? Your bond wasn’t shaken by it?”
She hesitated. What he was asking her for felt very vulnerable.
Oh, she was often asked about her relationship to Evelina and Julia.
Men who tried to seduce her into their protection were endlessly titillated by the idea of three sisters who were all in the life.
The ones who wanted to include her sisters in their sexual fantasies were always roundly rejected.
But none of them ever delved into the emotional element of their bond. What Silas was inquiring about now was real . It was truly about family.
When she didn’t answer, he turned toward her. His gaze wasn’t just intense, it was pained. And that pain called to her own, drew it from the corner where she always placed it so it would remain hidden from everyone.
Including herself.
She swallowed hard and answered carefully, “I’m sure they must have judged me at first. This wasn’t how we began, after all.
We were all raised to be gentlewomen. Raised to marry as well as possible and live genteel lives.
When I left, when I changed everything and dared to use my own name to do it, I’m sure Evelina and Julia must have resented me on some level. ”
He appeared surprised. “So Comerford is your birth name. Do you mind if I ask why you didn’t take on a new one like so many courtesans do?”
She gave a half-smile. “To make my father angry. To ruin him a little. I would perhaps do it differently now.”
She frowned as she thought of her father’s letters.
The angry, violent, desperate letters that just kept coming no matter how many years she and her sisters had been out of his control.
Would that situation be better if she hadn’t dragged him into her mud?
If when papers wrote breathless recountings of her adventures, it wasn’t his name that echoed through the scandals?
Silas let out a short breath. “Well, I certainly understand that ,” he said. “I was reminded tonight how much I’ve lived my life as a direct bollocks off to the man who sired me and the family I was raised beside. Not in, though. Never in the family. Just slightly next to it.”
There was such bitterness in his tone that she got up and moved toward him. She took his hand between her own and held it there. “What happened, Silas?”
He shivered. “Am I so obvious?”
She nodded wordlessly and threaded her fingers through his.
He let her and for a moment they both simply stared at the intertwined digits.
His breath became ragged and when he looked up into her eyes that pain she’d already seen seemed even sharper.
Her heart ached a little at the sight of it, even if she knew she shouldn’t allow it to do so.
“I’ve never belonged with them, Arabella. They made sure of it. My father made sure of it. I was in their house, but not their family, not truly.”
“You were a child when you joined them, yes?” She hesitated. “It seems an…odd arrangement.”
“To bring a bastard child into the family so publicly? Yes, entirely odd. He could have sent me to live with some family in the country. Someplace I’d have a chance to belong, but no. He wanted his revenge and his control because my mother had the gall to deny him.”
She let out her breath slowly. “I see. He was her protector, I know.”
“He was obsessed with her, at least so I’ve heard and read in his journals from before they broke.
I used to steal into his study when he was out and read them, try to imagine some fairytale life where he loved her and we were the family I so wanted.
But now, as a man, I know it wasn’t love.
Not ever. It was obsession and control.”
“Yes, that happens sometimes,” Arabella said softly. “A danger of the profession. Was he her lover all the years before he took you in?”
“Off and on,” Silas explained. “He’d go months away and then show up. Give me a gift, shuttle me off so they could be alone and she would hope again. He would crush her within a few weeks and disappear back into his real life. She would crash into despair and I would try to pick up the pieces.”
“Oh, Silas, you were so young,” she whispered.
He shrugged. “You don’t get to be young when you’re raised like us.”
She flinched, for truer words had never been spoken. Children had to become adults when they were raised by adults who acted like children. Who never considered their families before themselves.
“What happened at the end?” she asked, pushing herself back to his story so she wouldn’t linger long on her own.
“One day she refused him. He had sent word he was coming and she made sure she wasn’t at home.
She left me there with a letter ending it.
He was livid. I thought he would destroy the house around me he was breaking things and swearing and cursing her for her audacity.
And then he just stopped and stared at me.
Just stared at me until I could hardly breathe.
Without a word he left. She grew more broken after that.
Weeks of slow collapse. I found out later he was sabotaging her.
Writing her these awful letters, forcing her to be cut off at shops and with other courtesans.
And once she was at her weakest, he used it as an excuse to steal me.
And he did it publicly so she would hear about me, know about me.
See me being raised as his son out of her reach. ”
She shivered. “That was why he stared at you. He realized you were the way to hurt her the most.”
He didn’t answer for a moment. He seemed incapable of doing so.
Like the words would shatter something. She knew there was more to tell, more hidden beneath all the boldness his masks.
But if she pushed for it, she feared the consequences, not just for him but for her.
For them . The them that couldn’t be, not truly.
“That must have been difficult,” she said.
“Impossible, at least until I trained myself not to care.” He shook his head and some of the heartbreak softened a fraction. “But tonight, tonight they tried to change all that. They offered me a place there with them. To be a part of their family in a more genuine way.”
She tilted her head. “But?”
“But only if I become everything I’m not. Give up everything that matters.”
She sucked in a breath at that broken admission. At the true emotions behind it. And at the pure, powerful anger that bubbled up in her when she heard it.
She didn’t know much about the Marquess of Pentaghast and his legitimate siblings, but at this moment she could have scratched all their eyes out. Torn them into pieces without a thought because they’d made the light in Silas’s eyes dim.
And in that moment the danger of her reaction didn’t matter to her even a whit.
“If they couldn’t see your value,” she said, “If they cannot see it now, then they are all fools and they don’t deserve you. I hope you told all three of them to go straight to hell.”
His gaze became distant. “I did just that, actually. I lashed out. The likelihood that I destroyed my relationship with all three of them, including my sister, who I’ve been closest to, is almost one hundred percent.”
She cupped his cheek. “Oh, Silas. I know better than most how much it hurts to walk away. Even when you must. But you shouldn’t compromise who you are for whatever scraps of affection someone dangles on a string for you. I think you know that from experience as much as I do.”
He smiled, though there was little pleasure in the expression. “Do you know why I came here tonight?”
She returned the smile. “I imagine you wanted to fuck the pain out, make it go away. Pour it into me as passion until there was nothing left but pleasure streaking through you?”
His eyes widened. “That’s exactly it.”
“Then I’d suggest you put me on a settee or a chair or the floor and bury yourself in me until that happens.”
She grasped his lapels and pulled him in. This, at least, she could do without risking any part of herself. That was better for both of them. She couldn’t forget it.
* * *
S ilas dug his hands into Arabella’s hair and then his mouth was on her, hard and heated.
She took the heavy need of him without argument and arched against his chest. What she had suggested, what he had intended by coming here, was already working, for pleasure burrowed through his veins like molten lava. It muted some of the pain.
Of course, talking to her had done that too, releasing some of the pressure that had been building in the wound for decades. Her empathy and understanding had been a long-needed balm.
But no. He pushed that thought away and focused on this now.
On backing her across the room toward the fire.
She’d mentioned settees and chairs, but when she’d said the floor, that had sounded rough and animal and perfect for his mood.
There was a rug in front of the fire and he tugged her down onto it, covering her as her arms came around him.
He reveled in the silkiness of her locks, tangled now but no longer bound up in the twists of rags she had in them when he entered the room.
He kissed her, deeper, harder and she opened to him without hesitation.
Opened her mouth, opened her legs so he could wedge between them with his hips as he pressed into her.
She arched against him, sucking his tongue, rubbing her pelvis against his. She knew exactly what she was doing, what her role was in erasing his emotions and memories. She played it to perfection.