Page 57 of Sinfully His

I just didn’t know if Luc or Lucian would help. What if they tried to influence Father Manwarring, and it backfired? What if he was in fact beyond their reach, and instead he just punished me for opening my mouth?

Or what if it worked, and he stopped?

Did I want this to stop?

Immediately my first answer was yes, but when I thought about it, I wasn’t so sure.

Had Father Manwarring really done anything terrible?

Yes, I was fairly certain that he at least had some type of involvement in Raul’s death, but could I be mad at him for that? Raul was going to use me. He had these plans that would have destroyed my entire life only to make a quick buck. Not to mention Raul had slept with my mother. That may not have been his fault, but it curbed my sympathies.

Father Manwarring stole from Mother, but I did not know what was in that safe deposit box. Maybe she shouldn’t have had it at all?

Then there were the sinful things he did to my body.

What did he do, really? There was no irrevocable damage. Sure, I was a little sore, but he showed me things my body was capable of that I had never known was even possible. I would have never even known that sex… there… could feel so good. My one time with Raul didn’t show me what my body was capable of, or what I could feel. No husband from a match negotiated by my mother would feel any obligation to ever make me feel that way either.

I wasn’t even a virgin when he took me. So it wasn’t like he stole my virtue.

Then there was the way he put his mouth on my body to soothe away the pain from the injuries to my face… Even thegirls I hung out with in college whispered about men doing that because it was a rarity.

“Hey, you. To what do I owe the pleasure?” she said as she hung up the phone and gave me a bright, warm smile.

I rushed to her and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her into a tight hug.

“Are you okay?” she asked, petting my hair.

I couldn’t do it. Father Manwarring was my problem to figure out. Thankfully, Amelia understood the challenges of dealing with our mother.

“Mother is on a rampage, and I just couldn’t be in that house,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. Amelia ran her fingers over the bandages around my eye and nodded. The bruises were practically gone, only a little green remained under my eye and that was easy enough to cover with concealer. The scabs, however, were taking longer to heal.

“Rings?” she asked.

“Rings.” I nodded, knowing that Amelia was also intimately familiar with the drag of those diamonds across her skin.

“So tell me what’s going on.” She sat behind her desk, relaxing in her chair, and she just looked so content.

“Do you remember our gardener Raul, the son of our gardener at the Hamptons house?”

“Yes, I heard about that. It’s so tragic. Didn’t you have a crush on him?”

“I did,” I admitted. “We dated for about six months.”

“Oh, my.” Amelia covered her lips with her hand. “I am so sorry. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I felt like if I told anyone, Mother would somehow find out.” I shrugged.

Amelia nodded, knowing exactly what I meant.

“If she found out, it would have been…”

“Exactly,” I said with a bitter laugh.

Amelia and I sat in silence for a moment, both reliving our childhood trauma, mine far more recent than hers, just because I still lived in the house.

“Why don’t you get away for a while? With everything going on, Mother is only going to get worse. Why don’t you go up to the ski chalet for a break? Take your paints with you. It’s been so long since you’ve picked them up. I know that it’s disappointing not to hear from those programs, but that doesn’t mean you give up. You can always apply again next year.”

She was trying to be supportive, and I really appreciated it. The truth was, I had picked up my paints, but the only thing I had been able to draw was Father Manwarring. Maybe that was what I needed to do to get him out of my system?

---