“Yes.” Sarah paused, then continued with a reluctance he could hear. “My mother passed away not long after she married my stepfather. Her choice hadn’t been a happy one. Her new husband was a drunkard, a gambler, and a wastrel. From the first, he was openly unfaithful.”
Gideon’s gut clenched as he read the pain she tried so hard to hide. If he was any sort of man, he’d take her in his arms and offer comfort. But of course, he was no man at all. “Have you lived in that bears’ den since you were sixteen?”
Sarah shook her head and tossed the scallop shell to the ground with a disgusted gesture. “To them, I was just another useless mouth to feed. After my mother’s death, I went to a great-aunt in Bath. She’s the one who tried to instill some manners.” The desolation faded from her face, and real affection tinged her smile. “Great-aunt Georgiana was determined to find me a brilliant match. Bath in the season is a social whirl.”
“I’m sure you didn’t l
ack for suitors.” Absurd to be jealous of these unknown men who had flirted and danced with her.
She shrugged and looked toward the waves, her color rising. He studied her profile. Those men had seen exactly what he saw now. Innocence. Generosity. Beauty. And a fresh and fragrant sensuality that drew him like a bee to honeysuckle.
Gideon had believed himself immune to female allure. Good God, the merest contact with anyone’s skin set him shaking like a windblown leaf. Yet this girl promised such passion, even he couldn’t resist.
She began to walk up the beach. Silently, he joined her, pleased to note she moved more easily now she was on flat ground.
“My stepfather fell down the stairs in a drunken stupor and broke his neck.” Her tone deepened with contempt, and her hands tangled in her skirts. “My stepbrothers inherited nothing but crippling debts. And whatever they could wring out of being named my guardians in the will.”
Ah, this was the crux of the problem. As her legal guardians, her stepbrothers had every right to compel Sarah back into their custody. No wonder she’d been so reluctant to confide the details of her dilemma to a stranger. Gideon broke the law by sheltering her. That fact alone would cause many people to hand her over to the authorities, whatever the personal issues involved.
Gideon kept his voice even, much as he wanted to rage and curse the mongrels who had hurt her. “So legally you’re at their mercy.”
“Yes, unfortunately. After they took me from my great-aunt, they launched the scheme to marry me off.” A wayward gust blew a long strand of hair across her face, and she absently brushed it back. Her tone developed an edge. “When they realized I wasn’t so gullible, they tried to put me completely in their power. No letters in or out of the house. No newspapers. If I tried to visit the village, they stopped me. At first with excuses. Later with threats.”
Poor chit, relying on spirit and cleverness, in a situation where only brute strength counted. “Couldn’t you bribe a servant to take a message?”
She shook her head. “The servants knew any chance of wages relied on my marriage.”
A scorching need to smash her stepbrothers into jelly filled him. Almost as scorching as his urge to sweep this girl into his arms and kiss her senseless. And what a damned disaster that would be. “I suppose as your birthday approached, they became desperate.”
She stopped and sent him a stark look. With one hand, she held her hair away from her face. The freshening breeze finished the destruction of her plait. In her thin gown, she must be cold although she showed no sign of it.
“Naïvely, I thought some code of gentlemanly behavior would constrain them.” She went on in a curiously flat tone as though she distanced herself from what she said. “They cut back my meals. They locked me in my room. At first the violence was casual, and they made sure the bruises wouldn’t show. I can’t imagine why they troubled. It wasn’t as though the servants didn’t know. And I saw nobody else.”
She paused as if waiting for Gideon to comment. But he was too angry to trust himself to speak.
“At least the violence was honest.” Her voice scraped into rage and her fists curled at her sides. “It was worse when they insisted the marriage was for my own good. That made me sick to the stomach.” She looked over the waves again but not before he caught a flash of fury in her eyes.
“Damned curs,” Gideon muttered under his breath. An inadequate response. But everything was inadequate against what she’d been through.
“That last day was the first time they set out to beat me into obedience. Before Hubert started hitting me, Felix said I should save everyone trouble and give in before they made things really tough.”
Gideon could imagine how she’d responded to that. “Of course you sent them to the devil.”
“Yes. But then…” For the first time, she faltered and stared down at the sand in front of her. “Felix said…”
Nausea knotted Gideon’s gut. He could imagine what came next. No wonder she’d been frightened out of her mind in Winchester. “You don’t have to tell me.”
He shrank from the trust he read in her gaze as she turned to him. She looked as if she believed he could move mountains. With bone-deep sorrow, he wished to God he was the man she thought he was.
Her color rose in a tide of shame. “Felix said they’d drug me and let my suitor take my maidenhead. I said they could do what they liked. Nothing would ever make me marry him.”
His eagerness to murder her stepbrothers ramped higher, blocked his throat. “That was foolhardy.”
She swallowed and continued in a toneless voice. “I knew they wouldn’t kill me. If I die, the money goes to my second cousin, a bluestocking spinster who’s lived all her life in Italy. I’ve never met her.”
She spoke almost expressionlessly. Gideon’s belly knotted with horror as he contemplated what she’d been through. He could hardly bear to formulate his question. “Did they force you?”
“No.” Except for two hectic flags of color along her slanted cheekbones, she was pale. “But Felix said all three of them would take turns. Hubert wasn’t in favor of the plan, but Felix always gets his way.” She sucked in a shaky breath and spoke quickly as if that was the only way she could get the words out. “The idea of the three of them raping me, it was…”