Page 65 of Crying Wolfe
“Did he touch you…where he shouldn’t?” Eli asked from between clenched teeth.
She exhaled slowly, and his heart shriveled at the stress he heard in the sound. “Not in the way you mean. Not really. He’d a cane we all detested by the time he was killed, and he used it on me the most. As a rapping reminder against my shoulder blades to remind me to keep my posture. As a painful snap against the hand if Emmaline or I were to eat more than he’d portioned for us. Sometimes, he’d lift my skirts with it, claiming to examine whether or not I’d properly situated my underthings.”
Eli didn’t allow his teeth to unclench, so he couldn’t threaten to kill the perverted fuck. Again.
“He made it clear every single day that he was crafting me into his idea of the perfect woman,” she continued. “Assiduously clean. Endlessly elegant. Words never above a whisper. Footsteps never heavier than an autumn leaf’s fall. He spoke to me of things he ought not to. Happened upon me while bathing or dressing, and then punished me for impropriety. He never touched me. Not with his hands. He treated other people as if they were filthy, and shrank from physical contact. I suppose I should be grateful… But therewasa malevolent light in his eyes when he punished me. And it was not unlike the sexual interest of other men.
“He enjoyed it, my pain. My humiliation.Thatwas what he craved. What he lusted for. He watched me so very closely in order to catch me in any crime against the family’s extraordinary strictures, so that he could be the one to mete out my consequence.”
Eli realized now why she’d such an intense reaction to his threat to do the self-same thing.
“Living under such intense regard seems to exacerbate my proclivity. Indeed, often the anticipation of punishment would drive me to steal. Little things. His shaving brush. A favorite Bible. A pair of spectacles. The black bishop off the chess set in his study. He’d caught me once, at seventeen, swiping a brass button from a shop in town. Rather than have me return the pilfered item, he gave me five sharp swats with the ruler on the open palm of my hand. When my skin broke and bled upon the final blow, I noticed how…” Her breath hitched and she swallowed convulsively. “I noticed how aroused he’d become, and I fled the house.
“I was caught, of course, and became little better than a prisoner in my own home. I’d taken to stealing things from my siblings, from the staff, and from Uncle Reginald when I had no alternative and could no longer stand it. I hardly ate. I never slept. I was a ghost waiting for this…this monster inside me to finally do me in for good. My mother died, and then my father and his counterfeit Baroness, leaving everything to Felicity. Uncle Reginald was so livid, he enacted a plan to murder Felicity, and was subsequently thwarted and…killed by her husband, thank God.”
“Jesus…”
“After all of that, I’ll admit I was perilously close to…to giving up. I’d a plan to climb to the top of Fairhaven and pitch myself off the roof. But then, the Goodes gave Emmett his title, and invited us into their house. Into their family. And for a while, I was happy. I wasbetter. I was better, until Emmett’s fiancée and her mother stayed at our home. She is so hateful to poor Emmett. So critical of everything and…that night when I crept into the observatory, I really did only mean to use the telescope. But my demon scratched and scratched at me, and as I looked over your treasure, I took the thing that seemed the least valuable. And then I lied about it so no one would find out. So that Emmett wouldn’t lose everything. And that…that is how we came to be in this predicament.”
By the time she finished, Eli felt as if he’d swallowed an entire sack of nails, so cutting was his guilt. So sharp was his rage.
“Perhaps I should have pitched myself off the roof of Fairhaven, after all,” she whispered.
Reaching for her, he opened his mouth to protest at the exact time someone opened the door to the closet, startling them both.
“I thought I heard voices in here.”
Whirling, Eli found himself eye to eye-patch with the one and only Dorian Blackwell. Sleek as a witch’s black cat, and every bit as sinister, the so-called King of the London Underworld sized up the tableau before him immediately.
Likely aided by the undergarments clutched in his wife’s hands.
“Mr. Wolfe,” Blackwell said with a mischievous half-grin. “And Mrs. Wolfe, I presume?”
Eli glanced over his shoulder in time to see his wife whisk her torn underthings behind her back. “Oh,” she gasped breathlessly. “Pardon the intrusion, my lord, we’d heard something was missing and—erm—thought to help search for it.”
“Indeed?” Blackwell lifted the dark brow over his one good eye. “Well, that’s terribly kind of you, Mrs. Wolfe. My wife also has a penchant for pulling me into a hidden corner for athoroughsearching.”
Eli coughed, his cheeks heating even through the shared look of approving masculine commiseration.
“Speaking of searching,” Blackwell continued. “There has been a theft…though the owner of the item has decided not to divulge what exactly was taken. The story is it was pilfered by a woman, and so the ladies are gathering in the great hall to be searched before they are allowed to leave. In case the story is false, the men will be searched in the kitchens and expelled through the servant’s entrance. We’ve decided to call off the auction for now.”
Dark suspicion threaded through Eli’s guts, and he turned slowly, afraid to find guilt splashed all over his wife’s face.
What he found, was something so brilliant and terrible, he couldn’t decide if it was pain, fear, or anger.
“I’ll, erm, leave you two to compose yourselves,” Blackwell said as the light disappeared behind the closed door.
Eli waited for the footsteps to recede before asking, “Rosaline, was it you?” He needed to know in order to protect her from the consequences and get her away from here as quickly as possible.
“Yes,” she hissed in the voice women sometimes used that made it impossible to tell between truth and sarcasm. “Yes, Eli. Iaman insatiable thief, after all. But out of everything I’ve taken, I regret this most of all.”
With that, she dashed around him and burst through the door, but not before shoving her undergarments into his hands.
Stunned, Eli watched her march down the hall with her head held high, even as so many of her tresses had been loosened by his rough grip and cascaded down her back.
Still half-drained of sense after such an ecstatic interlude, followed by the intensity of her recollection, he gaped down at the garments in his hands, blinking with bewilderment. He went into that closet a martyr, and emerged the villain… What now? How did he fix this?
As if by magic, Blackwell appeared with something that looked like a doctor’s satchel. He opened it, offering the empty space to him. “It appears that in your hasty—were we calling it a search?—you’ve relieved your poor wife of her entire…rigging.”
