Page 23 of The Duke's Price
She shouted as the culminating peak stretched across moments, and slowly drained from her body, leaving her limp.
Perry was moving, coming over the top of her, shifting her legs apart so that he could lie between them, nudging the focus point of those wondrous feelings with the blunt tip of his male organ. “May I enter you, dear Ruth?” he asked, polite as ever. She said, “Mmmm-huh,” even as she wondered whether she could make him as mindless as he made her.
“I need a ‘yes’, darling,” he coaxed.
Ruth found the energy to lift her body against him. “Yes.”
He brought her back to mindlessness, but this time, he came with her, and it was even better.
It was only afterwards that she remembered her father’s teachings. How disappointed he would be with her.
Perry had never felt sowonderful. Their coupling had been spectacular. Ruth was spectacular. He couldn’t wait to do it all again, to show her more of the magnificence they had wrought together this first time. He chuckled to himself—waiting was aphysical necessity. His age might have given him greater staying power, but it took him longer to recover.
Or perhaps not. With Ruth in his arms, he was already beginning to feel the first stirrings of interest. He pressed a kiss to her hair. What a woman! He wanted to never let her go. And for once, he let the thought settle in his mind without shying away.
It was then that he realised the reason for the growing dampness on his chest, too much for perspiration. Ruth was crying, without movement or noise, weeping silently into his chest.
He twisted his neck to try to see her face, but all he could see was her hair.
“Ruth? Ruth, darling, what is wrong? Did I hurt you? Dear God, Ruth, why didn’t you say something! I would never have… But I could have sworn…” Surely, he had felt her reach her culmination? Heaven knew he was experienced enough to tell when a woman was faking it. Not that Ruth was the sort to fake anything.
“You must know it was beautiful.” The sob was obvious in her voice as she spoke. “Don’t mind me, Perry. I am just being silly.”
This unaccustomed feeling was panic. Perry wanted to slay whatever villain had upset her, and he had a growing sense it was him. “I don’t believe it. You are not a silly woman. Tell me, darling. What is wrong? What makes you cry?”
When she did not answer him, he cradled her head gently in his hands and pulled back far enough to look into her eyes. Tears kept welling up and sliding down her cheeks. “Tell me,” he begged. “How can I fix it if I don’t know what is wrong.”
“You can’t.” She gave a watery chuckle. “It is well and truly broken. Oh, Perry, do not worry so.” She brought her hands to cup his face so that they lay there, him half over her, both holding one another’s heads. “I am fine. Truly.”
Something that was well and truly broken. Her maidenhead? If she’d had one, which was unlikely, given her age, it had not presented any barrier to his entry. Something less tangible? “You are still a virtuous woman, Ruth. If we have done wrong, I am to blame.”
Something in the way she sighed told him he was on the right track. “Is that it, Ruth? You think we have done wrong?”
“Not you, Perry,” she assured him. “You have acted the way you always act, the way I expected you to act. It is I who have allowed you to change me, to weaken my will. I cannot deny I gave myself to you gladly. I, who resisted so many who would have assailed my virtue. What would my father say if he saw me now?”
It stung, to be dismissed as a careless rake. She expected him to seduce her and he had done so. There was nothing wrong with that. They were both adults, and though she had been a virgin, what use was her virginity to her? And yet he felt guilty, as if he had broken something precious.
He rolled away from her. What right had he to touch her when he had made her cry? “Tell me about your father,” he said, hoping to give her time to calm herself.
“He was a vicar,” Ruth said. “He raised me on his own after my mother died, and then he left me all alone when I was seventeen. A heart attack, they said. A broken heart, I think. He was never the same after my mother died. I think he knew it was about to happen, for I had just started in my first position—as governess to the Stocke sisters, though I was only a year older than Anne Stocke. The Earl of Selby, their father, was a friend of my father, you see. I think they arranged it between them so I would have a home.”
That would have been the uncle of the Selby Perry had known. As Perry remembered it, the uncle and his wife had died in an accident, leaving a son and three daughters in theguardianship of his brother. “I am sorry,” Perry said. “Lord and Lady Selby died too, didn’t they? And then their son, the new earl?” One of his partners in debauchery, a man called George, had brought the son to an orgy at Perry’s place in London, once. Then a disaster had ruined their friendship.
Out at the Selby country estate on a repairing lease, George had humped someone he thought, in the dark, was the governess. He later discovered it was one of the sisters. When his friend, their brother, challenged him to a duel, the drunken fool accidently shot and killed the brother.
After that, the three sisters disappeared, too. And the governess. Perry hadn’t made the connection, though he should have. After all, he knew that the Countess of Chirbury, Ruth’s beloved friend Anne, was also Countess of Selby—holding that earldom in her own right.
“So you went into hiding,” Perry mused. “The sister who was attacked had a baby, and your friend Anne pretended to be a widow.”
“I forget that you must have known that awful man,” Ruth said, frowning at him.
“Selby, too,” he admitted. “I had to ban Selby from my… ah… parties. I don’t allow violence or forcing the unwilling. But George was mainly just a drunk. He was truly sorry, you know. About the rape and about his young friend’s death. I’ve always believed that is what he meant by his suicide note.” It had been three words, written over and over until it filled the page. “I am sorry. I am sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t put what is broken back together,” Ruth responded sharply.
Broken. It was how she had described herself. Or her maidenhead. Or her virtue. Perry was not quite sure what was broken, but he had done it.
He hardly dared ask his question. “Did I force you against your will, Ruth.”
