Chapter 18 #2
She did face him then, feeling the truth bubble up in her.
Strain against her restraints in ways she had never experienced with any other man who had tried to pry it from her.
This man, this beautiful man, he hardly even had to pick the locks on her heart and her past and her pain. He was the key, wasn’t he?
Even if she didn’t want him to be.
“It’s not because of you,” she finally burst out. “You weren’t the villain in my story and you didn’t turn me to or from any path. That was my…my father.”
His lips parted. She’d told him just the tiniest hints of this, given him the fuzzy edges, but now he would know the whole picture, because she couldn’t stop it anymore.
“How?” he asked gently.
She bent her head. “I think you’ve guessed that he was cruel and callous. But he was also violent. Toward me and toward my sisters. I tried to jump in front of his wrath as often as I could to protect them.”
His expression softened. “Because you always do, don’t you? Try to stop the bully or the cheat like the way you played pranks on people as a girl.”
She shut her eyes. “Only I couldn’t change him just by mucking up his cordial or pretending to be a forest spirit. He hated us for being girls, and he wanted to use us for his own gain as soon as it was socially acceptable.”
Silas shifted. “To marry you off, you mean?”
She nodded. “He started when I was hardly more than a child, trying to haggle for me with men four or five times my age.”
He flinched and she continued so he wouldn’t say something more and break her when she already felt on the edge of tears.
“He decided seventeen was the number. The time when he could marry me off without facing judgment. My birthday was the worst day of my life. And when he dragged me to London so I could get my trousseau, I knew I wouldn’t come back again.
He would sell me to someone just like him or worse. ”
“Arabella, I’m sorry,” Silas said, his voice low and rough. “You must have been terrified.”
“I was.” Her voice broke and to her horror, she felt a tear she never let herself shed sliding down her cheek.
She wiped and it hurriedly, wishing he hadn’t seen it when he obviously had.
“My aunt, my father’s sister, was the only shining light.
She tried to reason with him to no avail.
So she switched her tactics. She tried to give me some little taste of joy before the inevitable.
We went to exhibits and plays and when she heard of my obsession with Vauxhall, she arranged for tickets even though my father grumbled about the expense. ”
“And you saw me with Simone,” he breathed.
She nodded, flashing back to that night just as she often had over the years. To the passion, to the pleasure. To the hope that had flared in her in that moment that she’d realized Simone was a courtesan.
“Yes. I snuck away and went to Simone the next day. I begged her to help me, to train me. To help me escape and regain some autonomy over my body and my future.” She moved toward him.
“To escape my father, the real villain in my story, I stepped onto this path and I’ve never looked back.
And yes, it’s been complicated. And yes, there has been pain.
But that wasn’t your fault, Silas. It wasn’t because of you. ”
There was relief that washed over his features then. “I’m sorry you had to endure that. I know a little about fathers who harm. But what about Evelina and Julia? How did they come to join you?”
“You must see how.” Now the tears fell again and she couldn’t stop them.
“He turned all that energy on them. All that cruelty, and it was even worse. I ached when I read the letters they smuggled out with the help of our aunt. I had no means to save them. And then one day Evelina appeared on my doorstep. She had run just like I had.”
“And Julia?” he pressed. “Did she run, as well?”
“No, she had to be saved. She wasn’t even seventeen when we realized he had made a match for her with a man in his sixties.
A lecher who could overlook her two whore sisters.
We rushed to her rescue and stole her from our father.
Evie and I tried to keep her from this life.
She’s so gentle, so romantic, I feared she wouldn’t survive it.
But she made her choice when she turned eighteen.
And so here we are. All three of Albert Comerford’s daughters are courtesans. Publicly.”
“That must have enraged him,” Silas whispered.
She nodded. “Oh, his rage has no bounds when it comes to me. He believes me the architect of his demise. His vitriol comes in the form of threatening letters twice monthly. Sometimes more when I’m unprotected.”
Now his gaze grew sharp. “He threatens you?”
She shrugged even though the thought of the hat box filled to the brim with his threats made her shiver. “It doesn’t matter. He can’t reach me. It’s over. He has no power. And it’s meaningless. I feel nothing about it.”
Silas stared at her a long moment and then he crossed to her. He took her in his arms so gently that she fought so she wouldn’t sag against him. Then he wiped her cheeks, showing her the wetness on his fingers after he had.
“Sweet, it’s very clear that isn’t true.” Then he folded her into his arms and held her.
And with shocking power and unexpected speed, a dam Arabella had been trying to shore up for years…
broke. She shook as she began to weep in his arms, all the fear and pain and disappointment and loss rolling out of her in long, agonizing waves as she cried into the shoulder of a man who simply smoothed her hair and let it all come.
Let it pour into him like he was strong enough to bear it.
And when her knees gave out, he didn’t hesitate. He swept her up and carried her from the parlor, up the stairs, down the hall to her bedroom. She was aware of him putting her on her bed, removing her slippers gently.
She tried to pull herself back together then. He would want to have her. That would be the way he’d comfort her, that was what any other lover in her past would have wanted, if they lasted through the painful story at all.
But to her surprise, he didn’t take off her clothing. He didn’t take off any of his own except for his boots. Then he joined her on the big bed and drew her up to him. He curled his body around her, cocooning her in the protection of his body heat.
“You’ve been so strong to carry all this, Arabella,” he whispered at last, she had no idea after how long. “Please put it down tonight. Just tonight.”
She let out her breath in a shaky sigh and clung tighter to him. When she dared to look up into his face, she found him watching her. In the firelight, he almost glowed, like he was some heroic knight from some medieval story, sent to slay all her dragons.
And she knew in that moment that she wasn’t just falling in love with Silas Windham. She was already there. It was too late. No matter what she did next, no matter how she managed whatever was to come, there would be no surviving it. Her heart would be broken.
But not tonight. Tonight she cuddled closer, reveled in the way his arms tightened around her, and let herself drift to sleep. Perhaps the first truly good sleep she’d had since the night she’d run from her father’s home and into the life that had led her to Silas.