She was wild with terror.
“Do you think,” he said slowly, “that you are the only one who has ever felt shame?”
He said this with a wondering sort of coolness that brought her up short. She jerked her head toward him.
“Are you perhaps acquainted with a certain bastard who knows a thing or two about shame?”
She was silent.
He took a step toward her. “Do you think, Angelique, that one can survive it?” His voice was gentler now, but still ironic; he pressed gently, relentlessly. Seeing, perhaps, a little bit of give in her. A clearing in the maelstrom of emotions.
He took another step toward her. As if he would touch her. Perhaps take her in his arms.
She stepped back from him.
For a moment she heard nothing but the hoarse saw of her own breathing in her ears.
But all of her senses were painfully raw. The air all but flogged her skin. Even the color of the carpet seemed to pulse.
“Angelique.” Her name was an ache, a caress. It cracked in the middle, her name, as though she was his heart and it was breaking now.
She closed her eyes. She wished she could cover her ears. Perhaps cover her heart, so he never could have seen into it.
“All this talk of forgiveness, Angelique. And yet you have not forgiven yourself. If I could undo everything that ever hurt you, I would. I want to bear all hurts for you, fight all battles for you, because I feel that it was what I was born for. I do not know myself anymore. I am sorry. I am... I am at your mercy.”
His voice had gone hoarse. Precisely as though he were asking for mercy now.
She measured the words out like a punishment.
“They arenotyour hurts to bear. You may have destroyed all of us here. It is not your battle to fight. And I donotneed you.”
His head went back hard, as though she’d struck him.
And then his expression went carefully blank.
The silence was hideous and echoing. It was akin to the second of realization that one has inadvertently stepped over the edge of an abyss, before the endless black plummet begins.
“Then I am afraid I can no longer be your friend, Mrs. Breedlove.” He said this quietly.
She turned away from him. She could not bear to look at him. He was proof that she’d been foolish enough to participate, yet again, in her own destruction.
She heard the door open.
But she stood alone in the middle of the carpet, feeling flayed outside and numb inside, and listened until she could no longer hear his boot heels in the foyer or on the stairs.
Chapter Sixteen
BOLT BLOWS!
Lord Bolt was bound to blow and blow he did at White’s! Seems his devil’s blood got stirred when Lord Hallworth dared to reminisce about a certain Mrs. Angelique Breedlove, dead Derring’s former mistress and current mistress of a boarding house called The Rogue’s Palace on the Thames. Hallworth was pinned against the wall with his own cravat for the trouble. No duel was fought and Hallworth croaked out an apology. But there is one doxie in the world who can rest easy knowing Bolt will rush to her defense. Probably because he took Derring’s place.
Suffice it to say, no one readthataloud in the kitchen.
Instead Dot read in a hush to the maids as they all gathered in the scullery.
But only for a moment, because Helga wouldn’t tolerate motionlessness for long.
“They got our name wrong,” Dot said indignantly. “The Grand Palace on the Thames!” She’d been there the first moment those words were uttered. It was sacred to her.