her as strongly as his state of undress. It was too intimate for a woman of Marianne’s undeserved reputation.
‘No, I must go.’ She tried to step around him, but he moved first, agile for a man of his robust build. The dog watched them as though he were bored.
‘Please, I’d like it if you’d stay.’
‘Why?’ He wasn’t the first gentleman to try and corner her alone in a room. If he dared to touch her, he also wouldn’t be the first to feel her knee hitting his unmentionables. She’d learned fast how to defend herself against the lecherous gentlemen who used to haunt Madame de Badeau’s. She’d had no choice. The awful woman hadn’t lifted a finger to protect her.
‘I wish to apologise for leaving you so abruptly at Lady Cartwright’s. You were concerned about me and instead of thanking you, I was rude. Please, forgive me?’
She blinked, stunned. No one, not even Madame de Badeau when she’d been dying of fever in Italy, had ever asked for Marianne’s forgiveness. To Hades with his state of undress, she’d stay for this and savour the moment. It would probably be the last time she’d receive an apology from anyone outside Lady Ellington’s house.
‘It’s been quite some time since I’ve attended to a patient,’ he continued in the face of her silence, something of the shadow from the portrait darkening his expression. ‘It brought back a number of painful memories and made me forget my manners.’
‘What memories?’ She didn’t usually pry. People were all too eager to tell her their business and everyone else’s without any entreaty, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking. He hadn’t rushed to condemn or insult her like so many others did. It made her curious and less wary about him than she should have been.
The bang of a dropped board echoed on the floor above them. She thought he wouldn’t answer, but to her surprise, he did.
‘During my time as a surgeon in the Navy, I saw horrors so awful, if I wrote them into my novels, readers would think I’d exaggerated for titillating effect.’ He snapped his fingers and the dog strolled to his side. He dropped his hand on the dog’s head and ruffled the silky fur. ‘For a year or two after I left the Navy, the memories used to trouble me. Usually it would happen at night, but once in a while a familiar smell or something equally trivial would bring them back during the day. Eventually, it stopped and I thought myself past such episodes, but it happened again when I attended to your friend. It’s why I left so quickly. I didn’t wish to explain it to you, or anyone else. It’s not something people outside my family are aware of, or something I’m proud of.’
‘Then why tell me about it?’ It was insults people usually heaped on her, not confidences.
‘You remind me of my sister, someone who might understand and not mock me for it.’
The faint connection they’d shared outside the study at Lady Cartwright’s whispered between them once more. Sir Warren was offering her honesty and respect, treating her like a real person, not a tart to be pawed or derided. It was how she’d always longed to be viewed by strangers, especially gentlemen.
‘No, I couldn’t.’ She fingered a small embroidered flower on her dress. ‘It makes me a little ashamed of how much I pore over my own troubles. They’re nothing compared to yours.’
‘What troubles you, Miss Domville?’ His voice was low and strong, like a physician trying to sooth an anxious patient.
‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about me?’ She flicked her hand at the study. ‘I’m sure the neighbours rushed over to tell your mother the stories the moment the removers left.’
‘We weren’t here when the removers left and they didn’t remove much. I bought the property lock, stock and barrel.’
‘And no one informed you at Lady Cartwright’s?’ At times, it seemed as if the only topic anyone could discuss.
‘I was delayed and missed the dinner. I left the party as soon as I finished with Lady Ellington. Why don’t you tell me the real story, then I’ll know the truth when Lady Cartwright gives me the exaggerated version.’
Honesty. He was holding it out to her again except this time it would be her sharing instead of him. She shouldn’t, but she was tired of dragging the past and the secret of her lineage around like a heavy chain. Perhaps with this gentleman who treated her like an old friend instead of a pariah, his concern for her as genuine as Lady Ellington’s, she could take the first step to being free of it. ‘You’ve heard of Madame de Badeau?’
‘She was the French courtesan who tried to ruin the Marquess of Falconbridge.’
She nodded as she twisted the slender gold band encircling her little finger. She should leave him as ignorant as everyone else of the truth about her relationship to the woman. She didn’t know him, or have any reason to trust him, except for the strange calm his presence created in her. It reminded her of the first day she’d arrived at Lady Ellington’s after Lord Falconbridge had stumbled on her trying to run away from Madame de Badeau’s. The gracious woman had taken Marianne in her arms as if she were a long-lost daughter. Not even Mrs Nichols or Mrs Smith had ever hugged her so close. Marianne had earned Lady Ellington’s affection by helping her nephew and his wife avoid ruin. Sir Warren owed Marianne nothing, yet he still looked at her as Lady Ellington had that first morning, as if she was as deserving of care and respect as anyone else. She should stay silent, but under the influence of his sincerity, she couldn’t hold back the story any more than she could have held back the tears of relief in Lady Ellington’s embrace.
‘All my life, I and everyone else thought she was my sister. What few people really know is she was my mother. She had me long after her husband, the Chevalier de Badeau, died. She passed me off as her sister to hide her shame. I don’t even know which of her many lovers was my father.’ Her stomach clenched and she thought Mrs Steven’s lemon cakes might come up. She shouldn’t have told him. No one outside the Falconbridge family knew and there was no reason to expect his discretion. If he repeated the story, then the faint acceptance Lady Ellington provided would disappear as everyone recoiled further from the illegitimate daughter of a whore.
She waited for his reaction, expecting him to curl his lip at her in disgust or march into the sitting room and demand his mother have no further dealings with her. Instead, he nodded sagely as if she’d told him her throat hurt, not the secret which had gnawed at her since she’d riffled through Madame de Badeau’s desk four years ago and found the letter revealing the truth.
‘Your mother isn’t the first woman to pass her child off as her sibling,’ he replied at last.
‘You’re not stunned?’ She was.
‘No.’ He turned back to his desk and slid a book off of the top of the stack, an ancient tome with a cracked leather cover and yellowed pages.
His movement left the path to the music room clear. Marianne could bolt out the door, leave him and her foolishness behind, but she held her ground. She wouldn’t act like a coward in front of a man who’d been to war.
He flipped through the book, then held out the open page to her. ‘Lady Matilda of Triano did the same thing in 1152.’
Marianne slid her hands beneath the book, running them over the uneven leather to grasp it when her fingers brushed his. She pulled back, and the tome wobbled on her forearms before she steadied it. It wasn’t fear which made her recoil from him as she used to the men at Madame de Badeau’s. It was the spark his touch had sent racing across her skin. She’d never experienced a reaction like this to a gentleman before.
She stepped back and fixed her attention on the beautiful drawing of a wan woman holding a rose, her blue and red gown a part of the curving and gilded initial, trying not to entertain her shocking response to Sir Warren’s touch. She stole a glimpse at his hands, wondering what they’d feel like against her bare skin. She jerked her attention back to the open book, wondering what she was going on about. She’d spent too many years dodging the wandering hands of Madame de Badeau’s