had been intelligent enough, determined enough, to accurately guess as to the reason for her marriage to Martin. If she denied it now he would only need to ask any who had been part of society seventeen years ago to discover—to confirm—that the Earl and Countess of Carlisle’s daughter had been born not quite seven months after their wedding had taken place.
Her chin rose challengingly. ‘Yes, I was with child when Martin and I married.’
Those intelligent green eyes continued to look down at her, searching, probing, as if Wolfingham might pluck the answers to the rest of this mystery from inside her head.
Outwardly Mariah withstood the probe of that astute green gaze, her chin raised in challenge as her turquoise gaze returned his unflinchingly.
But inwardly she was far less secure in her emotions. In being able to withstand these probing questions, coming so soon after they had visited Aphrodite’s Temple together. Not just because of those erotic and disturbing paintings and statues, but also because her body was still deeply aroused from Darian’s kisses coming so soon after, and the manner in which he had touched her, aroused her, between her thighs.
An arousal, a desire for more, that she knew had already battered her shaky defences.
‘How was such a thing possible?’ Darian breathed softly.
Mariah gave a humourless laugh at the incongruity of the question. ‘I believe Christina to have been conceived in the same manner in which all children are!’
Darian reached out to grasp the tops of her arms, relaxing his hold slightly as he instantly became aware of the way in which Mariah was trembling. ‘You are avoiding answering the question directly, Mariah.’
Her gaze also avoided meeting his. ‘No—’
‘Yes,’ he insisted gently. ‘You did not love Carlisle. Your manner when you speak of him implies that you did not even like him. You have stated that he was indifferent to you and did not love you any more than you loved him. There have been no other children in your marriage. If those were the true circumstances—’
‘I do not tell lies, Darian,’ Mariah bit out tautly, her chin defensively high, while inside, much as she fought against it, she felt those walls about her emotions slowly but surely crumbling at her feet. ‘I abhor it in others and will not allow it in or to myself.’
‘Then why, young as you were, would you have given yourself to a man such as Carlisle—’ Wolfingham broke off with a gasp, his cheeks taking on a shocking pallor. ‘Carlisle took you against your will.’ It was a statement, not a question.
It was too much. Darian was too much. And Mariah could no longer bear it. She could not look at him any longer!
‘No.’ Darian’s hands tightened on Mariah’s arms as she would have pulled away from him, with the obvious intention of escaping. Of possibly returning to the house without him. ‘No, Mariah,’ he repeated softly, even as he released his grip to instead gather her into his arms as he cradled her close against him. ‘We have come so far in this conversation, now we must finish it.’
‘Why must we?’ She held herself stiffly in his arms.
‘Perhaps for your own sake?’
She gave a choked laugh. ‘I already know the events of the past, Darian, I certainly do not need to talk of them in order to remember them with sickening clarity.’
‘Please, Mariah,’ Darian encouraged gruffly, holding back his need to know the truth as he sensed the emotions now raging within her.
He could sense her anger, certainly. Her pain. And perhaps still a little of the desire they had felt for each other earlier? Which, he realised ruefully, was perhaps the only reason that she had not already issued him one of her icy set-downs before marching back to the house. Alone.
Darian’s arms tightened about Mariah. ‘Was I right when I said that Carlisle took you against your will?’
She drew in a ragged breath. ‘Yes.’
‘Oh, Mariah,’ he breathed out raggedly.
‘Carlisle was— I told you, he was in need of funds,’ she continued forcefully, as if to ward off any show of compassion from Darian. ‘He knew, all of society knew, that my father was extremely wealthy.’
‘And?’ Darian encouraged gently.
She drew in a ragged breath. ‘Can you not leave this alone?’
‘No more than I can leave you alone,’ he assured tautly.
Mariah sighed softly before answering him. ‘The Season was only weeks old and Carlisle had danced with me several times at various balls. He could not have failed to know I did not—that I had no particular liking for him. Nor would I ever willingly accept a marriage proposal from him. No matter what his title,’ she added ruefully.
Darian was now ashamed of himself for ever having suggested that might have been her motive for marrying a man so much older than herself. ‘It was a natural, if insulting, assumption to have made.’
‘Perhaps,’ she allowed flatly before continuing. ‘Carlisle was not a man to accept a refusal, most especially not from the daughter of a man he, and his family, considered as being so inferior to himself.’
‘His family were cruel to you?’ If that was so, then it explained Mariah’s overprotectiveness towards her daughter’s future husband and family.
‘They considered me beneath them and treated me accordingly,’ Mariah confirmed huskily, licking the dryness of her lips before speaking again. ‘Knowing of my aversion, Carlisle lay in wait for me at one of those balls, trapped me alone in a room and—and then he— I will leave you to draw your own conclusion as to what happened next!’ She shivered in Darian’s arms.
‘Mariah?’ A black haze had passed in front of Darian’s eyes at all that Mariah had not said. That she could not say. ‘Why did your father not deal with him? Call him out? Expose him in society for the beast he was?’
‘I did not— I dared not tell either of my parents what had happened.’
‘Why not?’ Darian scowled darkly.
Mariah shook her head. ‘My father was very wealthy, but even so he was only a minor landowner, had made his money in trade and was only accepted into the fringes of society, as was I. Carlisle, on the other hand, might not have been rich, but his title made him extremely powerful in society. And if my father had challenged him, or Carlisle had called him out for making his accusations against him, I have absolutely no doubt as to which of them would have walked away.’ She gave a shudder.
Nor did Darian; Martin Beecham had been known as an excellent shot and swordsman.
‘Besides,’ Mariah continued in that same flat voice, ‘Carlisle had made it clear to me after—afterwards...’ a little colour flared briefly in her cheeks before as quickly fading again ‘...that if I told my father what had happened, then he would deny my accusations, claim that it was just my own guilty conscience regarding our having acted on our desire for each other. And that the only outcome to my confession would be the one that he wanted anyway, our immediate betrothal and marriage. He also threatened—’ She breathed shakily. ‘He said he would do that again, and again, until I carried his child, so leaving me with no choice but to marry him.’
‘The utter and complete bastard!’ If Carlisle had been alive today then Darian knew that he would happily have thrust a sword or knife blade through the other man’s cruel black heart, for what he had done to Mariah. Or put a bullet in that same warped and twisted heart.
Mariah pressed her face against Darian’s chest, causing him to bend lower in order to hear her next words. ‘When I discovered just weeks later that I was indeed expecting his child, I wanted to die, to run away. I even thought of ending my own life. And yet I could not do that either, not with the babe inside me. It would have been nothing less than