"Several days after the funeral, I gave my mother the note. It seemed she should know—certainly the knowledge was more than I could bear alone. I think she had guessed why my father killed himself, but when she saw the proof, complete with dried bloodstains, she broke down, crying that it was all her fault.
"She hadn't gone to Count Vyotov that day, but to the house of a female friend. After she had calmed down, she came home prepared to forgive my father if he was suitably chastened. Instead, he was dead. She told me that passion was the culprit, that it was a viper that destroyed all that was good and true. That she would never let herself be ruled by passion again, because it was a form of madness."
"You are not your parents," Ian said firmly. "Your mother married again, but there was no disaster the second time around."
"Tatyana had learned from what had happened. Also, my stepfather was too steady—too sane—to allow another tragedy. But that doesn't mean that I am a safe person." Laura shivered. "The blood of both parents runs in my veins, and I carry the seeds of violence in me."
"That would be a heavy burden to bear, if true." He shook his head. "Why are you so sure that passion will turn you into a madwoman? You have a temper, but I've seen nothing that suggests that you could be a danger to yourself or others. Pushing me off a dock was hardly a homicidal act."
She gave a twisted smile. "The proof is in the last of my nightmares. I've never told anyone this, but when I was sixteen, I became infatuated with a student at Haileybury College. Edward said that because my stepfather was one of his teachers, we must keep our feelings secret until he finished the course. I was stupid enough to think the situation was wonderfully romantic. Edward was the younger son of a viscount. Later I learned that his family had sent him to Haileybury in the hopes that India would cure his wildness. Or if not that, at least he wouldn't be causing scandals in England."
"He tried to seduce you?" Ian said, his face like granite.
"Yes, and very nearly succeeded." She stopped, hot color flooding her face as she remembered what easy prey she had been for a handsome face and sweet, lying words. She had melted like wax at his touch, bewitched by her discovery of desire.
In a torrent of words, she continued, "I fancied myself in love with him, and with the arrogance of a sixteen-year-old, I was sure that I knew exactly what I was doing. I was different from my parents—wiser, my love more true." She shuddered. "Even though I knew it was wrong, I finally agreed to meet Edward in the woods one afternoon, because I trusted him. That was when I discovered how powerful, how dangerous desire can be. All my judgment, all of my knowledge of right and wrong, dissolved when he kissed me. I very nearly ... let him have his way with me.
"Fortunately, before it was too late, I made some idiotic remark about how we really should wait until we were married. He was so startled that he blurted out that foreign-born dollymops like me were for play, not marriage."
Her voice failed again as the humiliation of that moment came back to her. "I realized immediately what a fool I had been. I don't know what he saw in my face, but he drew away as if I'd turned into a cobra. Then he stood and ran off. I never saw him again. I found out several days later that he had dropped out of Haileybury. Not long after, I heard that he was killed in a brawl in London."
"Which the swine obviously deserved," Ian said grimly. "It was a horrible thing to happen to a young girl who gave her trust and her love. But the fact that you made a youthful misjudgement doesn't mean that passion will doom you."
"No. It was my response that did that." Her hands clenched, the nails biting into her palms. "At first I was numb. My main desire was to conceal what had happened from my parents, because I was afraid of what they might do. I had a horrible vision of my stepfather challenging Edward to a duel. Or, more likely, the possibility that they might insist that he marry me.
"The next day, I was doing some embroidery in my room, pretending everything was normal. But I couldn't help thinking about what he had done to me—and how much I had enjoyed it...! A kind of madness came over me, like a furious scarlet fog. The next thing I knew, I was kneeling on the floor with my sewing scissors in my hand. In my rage, I had slashed the upholstery of a wing chair into ribbons."
She closed her eyes for a bitter moment. "I wanted to kill Edward. If he had been there, I would have. That's when I realized that I was truly my parents' child. I swore then never to allow myself to get into such a situation again. Then I met you, and it seemed like it might be possible to have a marriage that would be safe." Raising her gaze to her husband, she said, "But it hasn't worked out that way. Once, briefly, I considered telling you that you should seek physical satisfaction elsewhere. The very thought of it made me murderous. I'm dangerous enough now. If I surrendered to the wild, Russian side of my nature, God only knows what I would be capable of."