Home>>read The Secret Pearl free online

The Secret Pearl(53)

By:Mary Balogh


He stopped at the end of the bridge.

“What is it?” he asked her.

It was not Matthew after all. It was him. The thought crossed her mind that under almost any other circumstances she would have been terrified, as she had been two nights before—alone with him like this in the night, far from the house. But there was no point in feeling terror. Only the one inevitable end could hold terror for her any longer.

“Nothing,” she said. “I wanted some air.”

“And abandoned Pamela in the drawing room?” he said.

She turned her head to look at him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I did not think.”

“What is it?” he asked again. “Was it my brother? Do you know him?”

“No,” she said.

“Lord Brocklehurst, then?”

“No.”

He walked slowly along the bridge toward her. “Was either of them a customer of yours?” he asked.

“No!” Her eyes widened in horror.

“I am the only man to be feared in that particular way, then, am I?” he asked.

She turned away to look down into the foaming water.

“Was it me, then?” he said. “Am I the one you were afraid of? Were you afraid that I would maneuver just such a meeting as this? Were you afraid of a repeat of two nights ago?”

“I was not afraid,” she said. “I was just weary and faint. I needed air.”

He leaned an elbow on the parapet beside her and stood looking at her. “You are such a mystery,” he said softly. “I do not know you at all, Miss Hamilton, do I?”

Her chest was tight with pain. “You don’t need to know me, your grace,” she said, and could hear her voice shaking. “I was your whore and now I am your daughter’s governess. You do not need to know me in either capacity. I merely exist to provide a service to you.”

“I wish you could know that I am not your enemy,” he said. “I think you need a friend.”

“Men do not make friends with their whores and servants,” she said.

“If you are a whore,” he said, “I am an adulterer. We are equal sinners. But you at least had good reason for doing what you did. For one night you were a whore. Don’t let it blight your whole life. You survived. That is what matters.”

“Yes,” she said bitterly, “survival is everything.”

She felt his fingertips resting lightly against the back of her hand on the parapet. Revulsion sizzled up her arm and into her throat. Her first impulse was to snatch away her hand and back away from him. But she was so alone, so much without hope, so utterly in the grip of despair.

She kept her hand where it was, though she knew that it was trembling beneath his fingers. She wished it were anyone but him. She wished she could take the two steps that separated them and lay her body against his, her head against his broad chest. Oh, she wished it and despised her weakness. She had always stood alone, ever since the death of her parents and her realization that she was not wanted by the strangers who had come to live in their home. She had always been proudly independent and had never allowed self-pity to destroy any chance of happiness that she might have.

She wanted Daniel. She closed her eyes.

His fingers slid across her hand and curled beneath hers. He held her hand in a warm clasp—with those long fingers that had touched her and held her. She could not prevent her deep shudder, and yet she did not pull away. She leaned against the parapet and kept her eyes closed as she had when they had waltzed together.

And he lifted her hand until she felt his lips, warm and still, against the back of it.

God. Oh, dear God.

After a few moments he turned her hand and held her palm, first against his mouth and then against his cheek—the unscarred cheek.

“I know that I am the last person in the world to be able to comfort you,” he said. “I know that what I did to you and my appearance make me deeply revolting to you. But if it ever comes to that, Fleur, if there is ever no one else to whom you can turn, then come to me. Will you?”

“I can stand alone,” she said. “I always have.”

“Have you?” he said. “Ever since the death of your parents when you were eight?”

She was silent. And aching with the sound of her name, the first time anyone had called her Fleur since her parents.

“Come back to the house,” he said. “You are cold.”

“Yes,” she said.

And she allowed him to draw her hand through his arm and lead her slowly and silently on the long walk back. And she wished and wished he were someone different. She longed to lay her head against the broad shoulder beside it, to turn into his arms, to beg him not to leave her alone that night—her last night of freedom. If only he were Daniel.