I felt hollow as a broken relic as I lay there used, corrupted, and discarded, worshipped and warped by a heretic. There were no more tears at the backs of my eyes, but there was sorrow so deep in my bones I feared it would remain a part of me forever.
At some point, I might have slept because before I could comprehend the change, it was light outside the massive windows, and golden light was spilling across my body. I shivered at the warmth of it, then noticed how it highlighted the bloody smears on the floor, and the arrival of blackberry-coloured bruises on my hips.
Noel had told me the day before that the amount of floor-to-ceiling windows in Pearl Hall were an extravagance meant to highlight the family’s wealth.
I hated them.
“It’s time to get up and leave this place, dearie,” Mrs. White’s voice floated to me through my haze, and a moment later her soft, plump hands were smoothing back my hair.
I blinked into her face.
“Come, come,” she urged. “Let me help you get clean.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be clean again,” I told her in a hoarse whisper.
Her eyes shuttered briefly, but she turned her head before I could read the full extent of her expression. “You will, I swear it. Now, do as I tell you, and come with me.”
My body ached so wickedly as I moved that I couldn’t hold in the ragged moans as I gained my feet. I was a gutted building, my framework swaying in the wind.
Mrs. White wrapped her arm around my hips, cooing sweet nonsense as she led me slowly out of the ballroom.
I didn’t ask where we were going because I didn’t care.
The fire in my soul had gone out.
I was merely a body now, a vessel for Master Alexander’s cock.
I shivered so hard it pinched a nerve in my spine, but still, I walked on down the hall into the opposite wing where we stopped before a large red door painted with gold leaf. The knob was delicate red blown glass shaped like a bloom, and I gasped softly at the beauty of it before Mrs. White’s hand moved over it and opened the door.
The room inside was the colour an oyster with gold cornices, sheer red draperies over the huge windows, and a bed covered in wine-toned satin coverlets and pillows. It was a room fit for a princess from the four-poster bed to the ornate gold vanity with its oval mirror.
My feet sank into the plush white, red, and pink rugs layered over each other in a way that was artless and beautiful, and I couldn’t resist the urge to wriggle my toes. When I looked up from doing so, Mrs. White was smiling softly at me.
“This is to be your room for the duration of your stay here at Pearl Hall,” she told me as she went to the bed and pulled back the plush covers to reveal satin sheets.
“Scusi?”
She fluffed a pillow, stood back to survey the bed, and nodded contentedly. “Master Alexander had the room prepared for you. This is where you will sleep.”
Tears bloomed in my throat, but I swallowed them down. “You mean I don’t have to stay in the ballroom anymore?”
“Oh, darling girl,” she cooed, rushing forward to take my hands even though I flinched away from her kindness.
Noel’s kindness yesterday had only bought me pain.
“You won’t believe me, but I do empathize with your plight. The Davenport men can be… mercurial at the best of times, and they are absolute demons once angered.”
“I was with his father playing chess. I was hardly doing anything wrong,” I muttered.
“So much is not what it seems. I would imagine a girl so oft judged like a book by its cover for her beauty would understand the deeper meaning of things.”
I blinked and looked away from her, ashamed and confused by her words.
It was easy to judge Alexander, and I felt I’d been given more than a cover to do it by. I’d spent hours with the man now; I lived in his home and had taken him into my body.
Wasn’t that enough?
But then, what did I really know about him?
He was an earl, heir to the Dukedom of Greythorn and the master of Pearl Hall, an estate that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to run.
I knew the way he looked, admittedly well. His aristocratic feature crowned by the thick, silken gold of hair, overlong slightly at the top and pushed back from his broad forehead. There was age in the creases there and beside his eyes, bracketing his firm, masculine mouth that was only a few shades pinker than his golden skin. He was so symmetrical I could not find fault with any of his features, and each time I looked him in the face, I found I didn’t want to.