Duke of Scandal (27 page)

“Until we meet again, Edmund,” Sam said lightly, his mind already centered on the lengthy discussion with Olivia to come.

“Until we meet again,” Edmund replied sarcastically.

Sam expelled a long breath, then gazed down to Brigitte for a final time. “Mademoiselle, you have my sympathies.”

And then clinging to Olivia's hand, he turned and led the two of them out of the drawing room and toward his waiting carriage.

S
he still hadn't said a word to him. She'd made almost no sound at all, in fact, since she so gallantly defended him in front of Claudette, lying with such bravery to protect him from ridicule. To protect them.

Now she sat across from him in the darkened coach, moonlight reflecting her flowing, silent tears as she leaned against the cushion, staring out the window.

It absolutely crushed him to see her like this, to know how deeply hurt she was from learning something of his ignoble past from anyone other than him. He just didn't know exactly how to broach the subject now, when she seemed so utterly devastated.

His nerves ate away at his gut. The longer she took to say something—anything—the more concerned he became.

Finally, after the coach had left the Govance estate
and turned onto the main road toward town, Sam decided her silence had lasted long enough.

“Olivia—”

“Don't talk to me,” she spat in a forced whisper.

Her quiet rage cut him deeply. “We have to talk,” he replied soothingly.

“Not here,” she breathed, refusing to look at him.

His confidence started to rapidly diminish by the second. He leaned back against the seat, studying her in her striking gown, seeing the stunning face, remembering each incredible thought, each intense feeling that soared through his body and mind when she had confessed her love for him. He'd never felt anything so extraordinary in his life. And he'd be damned if he was going to lose that now.

Closing his eyes, he leaned his aching head back against the cushion, allowing her the time to contemplate all the remarkable things that had happened to them, and between them, this day. And there were so many. She'd met Edmund alone and had proudly stood her ground; she'd been made love to for the first time; she'd danced, declared her love for him, and then had no choice but to be confronted by Edmund and Claudette and learn that the man she finally knew she loved had a bastard child with a relation she'd never particularly liked and now despised. All that, and then discovering the people she trusted the most had cheated and lied and withheld information with absolutely no consideration for her feelings.

Sam had never hated his brother more.

At last the coach slowed as it pulled up to the Maison de la Fleur. Out of his seat before it stopped, he
opened the door himself and reached out a hand for Olivia, but she ignored it, brushing by him and down the steps, proceeding swiftly inside the hotel. He followed with haste, afraid to allow her to leave his view for even a moment, catching up to her as they climbed the stairs to their second-floor suite.

Unlocking the door, she entered first and walked straight to her bedroom in total darkness, slamming the door in his face.

That made him mad, irrationally mad because they had so much to discuss, he had so much to tell her, to explain, and she knew it perfectly well.

Drawing a deep breath for resolve, he opened the door, his eyes quickly drawn to the bed, now bathed only in moonlight, Olivia sitting on the edge of it, ramrod straight, staring at the floor.

“Olivia—”

“Get out.”

He set his jaw, hands on his hips. “We're going to talk.”

“I never want to talk to you again.”

God. Females. He wiped a palm down his face, then in two strides was upon her, grabbing her wrist and yanking her to her feet, fairly dragging her to the center room. He plopped her on the sofa, then turned to the table and lit the oil lamp.

Without looking at him, she tried to stand to head back to her bedroom. He wouldn't allow it, as he grasped her upper arm and shoved her down hard.

“Sit.”

“Go away, Samson,” she said, her tone coarse and commanding.

She used the same phrase Edmund had, and that stung him.

Pulling out one of the wooden chairs, he sat heavily, his body tense, his thoughts controlled, unbuttoning his shirt at the collar and cuffs. “We are going to talk, Olivia,” he murmured, the words coming out harsher than he'd intended. “Or rather, I am going to talk and you are going to listen and respond.”

“No,” she replied, lifting her head to look directly at his face for the first time since they'd danced together at the ball. “We're finished.”

The coldness he witnessed in her defiant eyes at that moment nearly overwhelmed him, and he swallowed hard to keep from choking up in front of her.

“I need to explain some things to you,” he said gently, running his hot palms over his thighs to help ease his growing agitation. “And even though they're not going to be easy for you to hear, you're going to hear them anyway.”

“I don't want to hear them at all,” she replied abruptly, matter-of-factly. “I want to go to bed.”

Sam felt his irritation nearing the boiling point. “What you want isn't up for discussion right now. You're going to listen to me if I have to hold you down to do it.”

She glared at him, her lips thinned to a straight line of absolute fury. At least that was better than ignoring him altogether, he supposed. Though not much.

After a moment to collect his thoughts, to gather his nerve, Sam began the tale that had so changed his life forever.

“Claudette came to England twelve years ago with her husband, Count Michel Renier,” he said, his tone
cool, controlled. “I met her at a ball, naturally, as she attended all of them. I won't bother trying to convince you that she seduced me, because she didn't have to. I was quite taken with her and wanted her in my bed.”

Olivia started crying again, silently, and it startled him because he hadn't even gotten to the difficult part. He carried on anyway, knowing she needed to hear the truth from him and to hear it all at once.

Leaning forward in the chair, he placed his elbows on his knees, interlocking his fingers in front of him.

“We had a love affair for several months, and I truly believed we loved each other. Yes, she was married, but at the time I didn't concern myself with that. I was young and arrogant, and she was beautiful and French and…exotic to me, different from the young English girls who played coy with me, if they talked to me at all. Claudette seemed to want me desperately, and I was willing to step in and be her lover.”

Olivia cupped her mouth with her palm, squeezing her eyes shut as she shook her head in denial, tears streaming down her cheeks now, ripping him apart inside.

In a suddenly shaky voice, he maintained, “I was naive, Olivia. Naive and stupid and blinded by a beautiful woman who actually pretended I was the only man in the world she'd ever loved.”

“Where is the child?”

He'd barely heard the words as she spoke them into her hand, but her disgust filled the room like a tangible thing.

“There is no child,” he whispered in return, his panic continuing to mount.

She dropped her hand to her lap with a thud and
stared at him, her features hard and cold as marble in winter. “Now, which liar am I supposed to believe?” she purred sarcastically.

Her animosity took him aback. She'd jumped ahead of him, but he should have realized she'd be most upset about him fathering a bastard and would want those answers first. Trying to remain calm, he stared at the floor, squeezing his hands together because they'd started shaking.

“There is no child,” he repeated gravely. “Claudette and I were lovers for about a year. I knew she couldn't marry me, and frankly, I never really thought about it. I was just…obsessed with her, I suppose, and didn't want it to end.”

He drew in a sharp inhale and closed his eyes to the memory.

“Claudette became pregnant and came to me with the news. I was…stunned, I suppose, but then I rationalized that many an aristocrat had bastard children, and I would simply accept it because I loved her, or thought I did. At the time, I considered the baby to be nothing more than a nuisance for which I intended to always remain financially responsible.”

“That's disgusting,” she interjected.

His head shot up. “Yes, it is,” he agreed irritably, “but then I was young and pompous and had my whole life ahead of me, Olivia. I also knew without question that because of duty I would have to marry one day to produce legitimate heirs. I could not be bothered with a bastard child. I was privileged, and privileged people often do disgusting things they're later not proud of. I'm one of them.”

She had nothing to say to that as she turned her head away from him, resting her elbow on the arm of the sofa, her fist on her mouth as she closed her eyes.

Sam rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the tension, his head pounding with every fast beat of his heart. Deciding he could no longer sit, he shot to his feet and began to pace the floor.

“When her husband learned she carried a child that wasn't his—and he knew it wasn't because he hadn't bedded her in months—he appeared on my doorstep. I took his arrival in stride, of course. Men and women have extramarital affairs all the time, especially in the aristocracy, and I just assumed he'd tell me he expected me to reward him financially for raising the child, which I was prepared to do.” He laughed bitterly. “That's not what occurred. He instead informed me that he was leaving her, that he'd had enough of her antics, that he would return to France posthaste and live as a bachelor. To say I was appalled is an understatement.”

“No more appalling than your escapades, apparently,” she quipped.

Sam shot a quick glance in her direction, noting how she hadn't moved a muscle, refused to look at him. And the most difficult part for him was knowing he couldn't go to her and offer comfort, to murmur his love and the tumult of emotions he felt right now, because she'd surely reject him. And rejection was the one thing he could never take from her. It would utterly shatter him.

With resolve, he stopped pacing in the middle of the room, deciding he'd simply tell her everything before he made any attempt to win her trust anew. His hands
shook badly now, so he shoved them into his coat pockets.

“That was the day my innocence died, Olivia,” he revealed, his voice barely above a whisper as he stared at the carpeting. “Claudette's husband told me—and with great pride and delight, mind you—that she had been my brother's lover for almost as long as she had been mine. That she had been using us both and loved nobody but herself. Being the fool I was, I didn't believe him and more or less tossed him out of my house. Then I went to see Claudette.”

Sam inhaled deeply, trying to remain composed as all the anger and humiliation of that time long ago came flooding back to him as if it had taken place yesterday.

“Claudette had a town house in London then, and I marched up the steps in the middle of the afternoon, as I hadn't ever done before because we'd been so discreet, and walked into her home.”

“You found her in bed with Edmund,” Olivia said for him, wiping a palm across her cheek.

Sam's heart ached for her, for the sweet innocence he so cherished in her that he was about to destroy of necessity, just so she could understand him better. No lady of her beauty and upbringing should be so exposed to the degradation of human nature, but he could think of no other way to explain his actions without revealing the blacker side of life.

He walked to the chair again, quickly turning it around to sit on it backward so he could face her and be able to place his arms somewhere. He stretched his legs out a little and rested his forearms on the hard
wood running lengthwise at his chest, studying her carefully.

“I did find her in bed with Edmund, but they weren't alone. Two other women were with them, and all four were engaged in the sex act while two other men, half dressed, watched them from the corner. I—I was shocked, and appalled. But more than anything I felt suddenly lost and alone and ashamed because the woman I thought I loved had not only lied to me, she had laughed at me as she did it. Not only was she Edmund's lover, she was everybody's lover, apparently.”

Slowly, as he'd confessed his disturbing revelation, she'd opened her eyes to look at him, her face now deathly pale, her brow furrowed in an odd stupefaction. He waited for his words to sink in, for her to come to an understanding of what he must have felt at that moment.

“I don't believe you,” she charged quietly, her tone spilling over with revulsion.

He looked directly, intently, into her eyes. “It happened, Olivia. It happens all the time, in every country and in every walk of life. There are people in the world who can be very base with their desires, very loose with their morals, and very indifferent toward the true nature of lovemaking. And again, those of the privileged classes often have the time and money to appease their sexual fantasies. Some of them will do just about anything with anyone.” He sighed, and added in a soft murmur of regret, “One of the great dangers to the love between a man and a woman, especially in marriage, is uncontrolled lust and the desire for self-gratification at any cost. I learned this by having it slapped in my face.”

She shuddered, shaking her head. “This sickens me,” she whispered.

Rubbing his tired eyes with his fingers, he returned, “It should.”

“And you were…bedding her the entire time.”

She said that so flatly, with so little emotion, he wasn't sure how to react. Instead of meaningless words that would do nothing to appease her, he simply nodded.

A long silent moment passed between them. Then she pulled her legs up and onto the sofa, tucking them under her gown, hugging her knees into her chest.

“Have you ever done that?” she asked, her gaze locked on the carpet at her feet.

He should have expected the question. “No, I never have, and never want to.”

“But you've bedded other women,” she stated rather than asked.

He wasn't about to lie to her now. She wouldn't believe him anyway. But he could give her the details gently. “Olivia, it's complicated—”