Emily's Seduction (20 page)

“It would be very hard for a young man to resist such temptations.”

“That’s not an excuse, Emily.” She flinched and he realised he had spoken far too sharply. He softened his voice and continued, “A man should stand strong against temptations. But I’ve said enough and I don’t want to ever mention this part again. I mean never.”

“Of course,” she replied, her voice very small.

“He wanted something else from me. Something even more sinful and devastating to my beliefs. He had a wife, an exceptionally beautiful Venetian of twenty, the daughter of a minor merchant who had been captured on her way to her wedding in Greece. I looked very much as he did and he wanted me to impregnate this young woman. It went against everything I believed in, making a child like that. She was a pure, devout Catholic, a virgin. It destroyed her to think of having to give herself in this way. I refused to do it.

“At first he beat me—I mean, he had me beaten—given the bastinado, that is, having the soles of my feet beaten almost ceaselessly. It is exquisitely painful torture but I resisted.”

She threw her hand up to her lips. “Dear God…”

“Then he decided to have her beaten and forced me to watch. It didn’t take long. She was so frail, like she was spun from glass. She could never hold up to such torture and—and I gave in. I gave in to what that bastard wanted and I fucked her soundly by that evening’s fall. Both of us with bandaged, bleeding feet and I was so wrung out I couldn’t keep anything but wine down. But I fucked her twice so he would have no doubts as to my compliance. Thank God for youth. Within two months she was pregnant. I promised her I would find a way to get us out of there then I would bring her back to America and marry her and we would raise our child in respectability and none of it would ever matter again.

“She believed me, so deeply that when I failed her and the child came, born into this world illegitimate, she fell into a despair so deep that she lost her mind. Others had to care for the child. One morning…” His breath began to come very fast. Images rose in his mind.

Steam rising, the moist, warm air penetrating his nostrils along with the sickly sweet scent of blood. Water trickling down the yellow and blue tiles, draining down into the bath that was tinged red.
A touch on his arm startled him. But it was her gasp that pulled him out of the memory. He looked down. He was grasping her arm. Too tightly. He let her go. The white marks of his hand on her flesh turned to red. He stared at it dumbly, speaking automatically as if, once started, the flow of words must have their way. “One morning I found her dead in her private bath. She had cut her wrists with the sharp edge on a piece of her own jewellery.”

Emily pressed herself to his side, hugging his arm.

He tightened all over at the touch. “I knew the devil planned to sell our child off since she was not the wished-for son. He’d told me. I knew of no way to stop him. I had lost all respect for myself as a man. I had nothing more to live for. So I went and found that devil, soaking carelessly in his own baths, and I slit his throat.”

He began shaking all over, cold nausea in his guts at the memory of the raw satisfaction of feeling the sharp knife slicing the wet, heat-softened flesh. The gush of blood from the gasp and the fierce joy he’d known.

He had, for that moment, become everything he hated. He had become like the blond devil. That moment he’d lost the very last of his soul.

“And then?” Emily’s voice broke into his thoughts.

“And then I went back to my quarters and waited for them to come and kill me in return. But the merchant’s death caused an uproar. No one suspected me. It was assumed that Catarina did it before she killed herself. And then I saw my chance to escape. I set fire to the house and, in the increased panic, I simply left via the garden gate with my face smeared and my child hidden under my robes. Nicolo came with me.”

“Where could you possibly go in a foreign city?”

“The Jewish doctor who tended Catarina was interested in America. I had spent many hours telling him all about my life before I went to sea. We sought refuge with him and, though he was quite flustered at our arriving on his doorstep, he didn’t turn us away. He helped us to dye our hair and faces and to find a ship that would allow us to work our way to Europe. He sent us with a pocketful of money and a young wet-nurse.”

“How lucky you were that he would help you.”

“He is one of those shopkeepers who sweeps his own stoop and keeps the city clean. We can usually do little to force change on the greater world but we can help those who come under our charge or to our back door.”

“What happened then?”

“Once in Europe we—Nicolo and I—somehow managed to make our way with my child to Venice. Some of that time is not clear to me. I was living like an automaton, like I was half alive but knowing I must keep moving for the sake of my child. But Catarina’s family did not want her child. They had stricken her name from the family Bible and refused to even give me audience.”

Emily gasped.

“I know,” he said. “Catarina spoke about her family with such affection. I was stunned by their dismissal. Their total rejection of my precious child. I saw how people truly felt about illegitimate children and I vowed I would protect this child against a lifetime of that. It was my last disillusionment.”

“And then you went to France?”

He nodded. “Yes, my mother’s mother came from France. They were shipbuilders. I sought sanctuary with them, and Manon and François made me see how, if I loved my child, I must give her up and allow them to raise her. Else my dear daughter would be known to the world as a bastard, and that I couldn’t bear. Besides, they rightfully pointed out that I wasn’t in any correct frame of mind to raise a child. It broke my heart but I did this.

“But now the terror there has forced my cousin and his family to flee. I made arrangements for them to go to Montreal but their vessel was captured by English privateers and they found themselves having to gain passage on a ship bound for Baltimore. In a month they will sail for Montreal as originally planned.”

“But you cannot just let your own daughter go to live so far away from you. She is your own flesh and blood.”

“Why not? She believes her father to be François, not me. And what would I say to her? How would I explain her past in a way a girl her age would be able to accept?”

“But it just…” Her dark red eyebrows drew together, an adorable expression of confusion that tore at his heart. “I mean, she is your child.”

“Someday, perhaps, she can be told. But what will be gained for her knowing, except a disruption of all she holds dear? I bear the blame for so much in this. I cannot have her unhappiness or disillusionment on top of that. It would simply be too much.”

“But you cannot blame yourself any longer for what happened. You were captured, powerless. You were little more than a boy. Only a year or two older than that gawky Sexton boy.”

He started and stared at her blankly. “Yes, I suppose. It is hard to envision it that way.”

“Would you blame him if he were captured and tempted and forced into depraved acts for the pleasures of a madman?”

A wall of rock went up between them. His need to deny the validity of her words. “It’s not the same at all, Emily. Grey Sexton has spent his boyhood at his father’s knee and his adolescence at Harvard. In a way he was just as sheltered as you were by your grandmother. More so because he has had the luxury of his father’s wealth. I had been at sea, on a privateering ship, since I was thirteen.”

“But you had never faced any situation like this, had you? What was your life at sea really like? Did you go girling of it at the ports with the men?”

“Good God, no. I was too young—a devout Christian, I would have been appalled. I was also a cabin boy, a personal servant to the captain. He was a strict Congregationalist. He never mixed with women in that way. We often passed our time playing chess in the taprooms of the taverns.”

“So you were also quite sheltered, weren’t you?”

He inhaled sharply then came to his feet and moved away from her. She didn’t understand. She wasn’t a man, with a man’s responsibilities. He had taken Catarina‘s virginity. No matter how it had happened, she’d been his wife in all but legality. It had been his place to protect her and get her out of Constantinople and slavery and he had failed her. And the price to Catarina, himself and their child had been steep. There was no forgiving that. Ever.

However, he had also deflowered this open-hearted girl and he was now responsible for her. He was on the verge of magnifying the mistakes of his life to such a degree that he would never recover from the shame.

And yet…

“Alex, your secrets have hung between us since the start. But now perhaps we could try again, with truth between us—”

“Oh no, it’s far too late now.”

She paled and his chest grew tight. He hated hurting her. But there was no other way now. It was all ruined between them. Their love hadn’t stood a chance from the very first. He had thought he could keep his secrets from coming between them. He’d failed at that as well. His life was one failure after another. But he could be kinder and end the bleeding by making a clean break with her now.

“It’s too late,” he said more softly.

Her eyes turned glossy, making them so luminous they took his breath.

“But why?” she whispered, her voice so soft and sweet, so heartbreaking. The moisture in her eyes overflowed, running down her cheeks.

He wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms and tell her it would be all right. That they could repair this damage. But that would be a lie. A cruelty that would only drag the pain out. He forced himself to hold firm. “The moment I told you these things, I knew I was casting the gravestone on any chance that we could ever be wed. You will never be able to look at me as anything else except less than a man. Less than what I should be. You will never be able to forgive me for what I have done to my own child through my powerlessness any more than I shall be able to forgive myself.”

“Alex, that’s simply not true.”

“You have held me in contempt over my desire to forget about the slavery issue and find some happiness.”

“But I now understand—”

“No, now you pity me. I will not spend my life in a marriage based on pity. You could never be happy with a man you pitied. You deserve to marry a man you can truly love. Pity is a damned sorry substitute for love.”

 She rose up on her tiptoes and leaned into him. At her scent, gillyflower and woman, his heart began to beat faster. She wrapped her arms about his neck and snuggled her soft curves to his body. She tilted her head back and her lips parted, her sweet, warm breath teasing his face. Blood rushed instantly into his cock.

He sucked in his breath, wanting only to slide his hands down her back, cup her buttocks and press her pelvis to his. He took a deep, ragged breath, willing his heated thoughts to cool. He couldn’t use her again as he had last time. He had to be strong now. He took her wrists and gently removed her hands. “We cannot touch. We cannot get close again. It merely drags everything out, makes this ending more painful. I ought to be horsewhipped for taking you the other night. It was inexcusable of me.”

“But, Alex, you must—

A knock at the door interrupted whatever she would say. He closed his eyes and thanked God for the interruption. He moved away from her and went to answer the door. Zachariah waited there, his brown face engraved with seriousness.

“Mr Alexander,” he said with his characteristic dignity. “Mr Calabria’s servant sent word that he’s got himself into trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“A little too much belladonna.”

“Too much belladonna?” Alex repeated dumbly.

“Yes, sir, doesn’t appear to have been an accident.”

Christ. Belladonna. Poison.

“I took the liberty of sending for Dr Howe.”

“Yes, thank God you did… All right, wait here a moment, Zachariah.”

Alex went back into his study to make his excuses to Emily. As soon as she saw him, her eyes widened. “What is it?”

An urge to tell her it was simply a business matter rose to his lips. He forced it aside. “Nicolo is in trouble. I’ll have to go to him.”

Chapter Ten

In Nicolo’s bedchamber, Alex sat in a chair by the bed, taking a deep sip of his brandy and willing it to clear the fuzziness from his brain. Despite having just spent the past night helping the doctor fight to save Nicolo’s life, he had little pity for his old friend. The thought of Nicolo’s three wives and his nine known children caused anger to flare through him. He slammed his glass down on the sideboard and Nicolo opened purple-shadowed eyes.

“Alex, please, my head hurts bad enough, believe me.” His blue eyes were red and his face still pale.

It didn’t ease Alex’s ire.

“How could you do it? How could you think of killing yourself when you have three families depending on you?”

Nicolo closed his eyes. “Because I have nothing to live for. I am not a man. Even my business, you helped me to develop. You gave me money and helped me make the contacts. You still throw business my way. Your happiness was nothing more than a thorn in my side. Reminding me of my wasted life.”

Alex’s anger broke past its bounds. “Damn it, Nicolo, stop with the self-pity. I never knew you were such a selfish bastard. And, if you must know, my engagement to Emily is broken now.”

Nicolo laughed softly. “Ah, so your engagement, your own second chance is broken now. How does it feel, Alex, to know you are no better than I? All these years you have judged me.” He held up his hand. “No, please, maybe not to my face but how could you help but judge me, eh? You didn’t understand. Your way was to use too many women to avoid falling for one. But now you understand completely, do you not, my friend?”

Alex’s mouth quirked up at the corner. “And that pleases you? You’re happy that my engagement is broken. Don’t deny it.”

Nicolo shrugged. “There’s always comfort in company. Especially good company.” He took a deep drink of brandy. “What will you do now?”