Page 67 of Sir Hugo Seeks a Wife
“You know, I don’t think George ever meant to marry me, despite all his promises.I wasn’t used to liars, you see, so when he offered me a life of passion and adventure, I believed every word.It was the escape I longed for.”
“What if he’d got you with child?”Hugo didn’t even want to think about how Athene would have coped if she’d had a baby to worry about.
She shrugged.“He didn’t, so we’ll never know.The irony is that toward the end, he begged me to marry him.He was terrified I’d leave him to wallow in his own filth.He was too feeble by then to do much damage when I said no.”
Appalled, Hugo regarded her.“He hit you?”
“Once.The day I left him.”For the first time, a glimmer of a smile lit her brown eyes.“That was the day I met Sylvie.”
“Who was English, too.”
“Not a good thing with the French occupying the city.”
Hugo was sick with rage, so sick his belly churned with nausea.He’d guessed long ago that Athene had suffered with her useless swain, but the truth surpassed belief.“I’d give my soul to have saved you from all this.”
Astonishment shuddered through him when she lifted his hand and kissed his knuckles.She was passionate in his arms – gloriously so – but expressions of affection were rarer.“I know.”
He’d muse on that later, as well.Right now, he needed to know how Athene had escaped the besieged city.“What was Sylvie doing in Vienna?”
She shook her head.“That’s her secret.I promised I’d never tell.”
He admired Athene’s integrity, even if it roused inevitable curiosity.“So what happened?”
“I ran into a party of French soldiers while I was out trying to barter for food.”
The stark terror fraying her voice sharpened Hugo’s queasiness.He found it almost impossible to frame his next question.“Athene, were you attacked?”
She raised blind eyes.Painful memories held her in a talon-like grip.“No.”
Titanic relief left him dizzy.The idea of her suffering such a desecration made him want to smash something.“Thank heaven.”
“Thank Sylvie.She’d started making bonbons by then, although I’ve no idea how she got hold of the sugar.Food was short across the city.Anyway, she was delivering some to a customer when she stumbled upon the drunk cuirassiers who had cornered me in an alley.”Athene’s monotone betrayed how harrowing the encounter had been.“She convinced them I was her sister.”
“They didn’t find out you were English?”Good God, imagine if they had.
“No.It was lucky that I’d had a French governess, so I spoke the language.Sylvie shared out the bonbons and managed to get me away to the house where she worked as a pastry chef.”
“Good for her.”
“She’s always been a faithful friend.I owe her my life several times over.”
“Sylvie shouldn’t have been saving you.George should.”
That evoked a hiss of contempt.“George couldn’t even save himself.I got back to the slum we lived in to discover it ransacked and George dead in his bed.”
“Athene…”
That terrible flatness resumed.“I couldn’t mourn him.”
“Neither you should.”
“I stood there staring down at him and I didn’t shed a single tear.Yet for this man, I’d thrown away my future and shamed my family.I think his fever did for him, not the beating.If you want a debt repaid, you don’t kill the man who owes you money.Or perhaps the thugs were too rough with a sick man.I’ll never know.”
“Thank the Lord you weren’t there when they came.”Or else they’d likely have forced her into prostitution to pay off the debt.
“Yes, thank the Lord,” she said on a thread of sound and he realized that she’d always understood just how close she’d come to sexual slavery.
He ran his free hand through his hair, battling to comprehend the torments that she’d endured.“You must have been so afraid.Alone and unprotected in a war-torn city.No money.No friends.”
