Page 90 of A Figure of Love

It was his turn to gulp. Several times before he could speak. But he was still confused. “Then why are you ashamed?”

She sighed and he rolled off her, taking her with him. “Tell me, Serena. You will always need to speak plainly and be direct with me. I am not good at guessing what you are thinking or why.”

“I know. I’m not trying to be obscure on purpose. It is just—” She threw up her hands. “Bardot is Oliver’s father.”

Gareth felt like she’d just hit him again, but hard this time. “But you said—”

“I know what I said—he wasn’t my lover.” She rolled onto her back and shoved her hands through her river of hair, pulling so hard it made Gareth wince. “I don’t know how to explain war to somebody who hasn’t lived it.”

He could have told her he knew a little about war, and someday he might. But not tonight. Tonight he waited, giving her time.

She heaved an enormous sigh. “Bardot led a band of criminals and they terrorized our small village. He came to the old chateau, found me, and raped me. Again and again for five months.”

The word rape echoed in his head, over and over. Gareth’s brain seized, the blood in his veins so hot it might have been boiling.

She shook his shoulder. “Gareth? Gareth?”

He saw her, but it was as if she stood at the end of a long, narrow tunnel. A red tunnel.

“Gareth, please, I didn’t tell you so that you would be enraged. I didn’t—”

“I’ll find him and then I’ll kill him.” He did not recognize his own voice.

She flinched away, shaking her head. “No, please, let it end now.”

“He is an animal—a mad animal that needs to be put down.”

“Somebody will kill him, but it will not be you.” She wrapped her arms around him, raining kisses on his ear, neck, cheek, and even his nose. “My love, my lover, please.”

The words had a power he would not have imagined: he was her love.

She must have felt the tension go out of him because her own body relaxed. “I love you too much to risk anything bad happening to you, Gareth. Please promise me you’ll forget all about this?”

“I promise,” he lied. For her peace of mind he would let her believe he’d forgotten.

He saw she was waiting for him to speak. “Will you tell me how you got away?”

She nodded and lay back on her pillow. “There were always soldiers from half a dozen sides passing through our area. Robert Lombard was one example. He was a messenger to some general or other, and he wore the uniform of an officer. Even so, Bardot would have killed him. They caught him riding through the woods and shot him off his horse. They brought him back, thinking to make sport of him, but I convinced them he must be rich, that his signet ring bore the seal of an aristocrat. I told them that they should keep him alive and ransom him. So, they had Robert write a letter to the duke.”

Gareth nodded, it was a clever plan.

“He lived for a few months, but he was badly injured—we wouldn’t know just how badly until later. In the time while we waited, I began to know him. I did not love him, but I greatly admired him. He saw what Bardot did to me and despised him for it. It was he who came up with a plan. The priest in our village knew what went on at the chateau, but he was old and frail and could do nothing to stop the raping and stealing. But he did agree to write marriage lines for us, even though they would need to be smuggled from him to Robert and then back, so he could put his seal across our signatures.

“The letter Robert wrote to the duke went down in a packet, although I did not know that until later. But Bardot must have suspected something had happened and he was becoming restless as Robert became weaker and weaker. I think Robert knew he would die, although we always spoke of him getting better, of us escaping together. Not long after Bardot sent the second letter, Robert became very ill from something wrong inside him—something our village doctor could not fix—and he died. Bardot thought to keep up the fiction that he was alive long enough to collect the ransom.” She stared up at the ceiling, lines of tension around her eyes as she recounted the story. “But real French troops arrived in the area—hundreds of them. They came while I was out with the priest waiting for him to finish the marriage lines. Word swept through the village that everyone at the chateau had been arrested for sheltering known deserters. Father Bastian gave me all the money he had, even the little he’d collected for the church. I left with only the clothes on my back, the money he gave me, and the marriage lines. Robert had written a letter for me that I’d hidden in the house—it would explain things to his parents if he could not.” Her eyes were glazed with tears. “I could not go back for the letter, but Bardot did. You know the rest of it.”

Gareth felt drained just hearing her story. It was no wonder her eyes looked haunted sometimes. He pulled her closer, holding her tight.

“You have nothing more to worry about. Steele made it clear to Bardot that his days of blackmailing you were over.” And had driven the point home with his fists, according to the Runner’s report earlier in the evening. Gareth could only regret he’d not told him to detain the man. Now they’d have to find him all over again. And what Gareth did to him this time would make the beating seem like a pleasant memory.

Serena yawned, hugely. She looked up at him and blushed. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why, but I’m suddenly dead tired.”

Gareth knew why. She’d been carrying around her fear for years. It would not surprise him if she slept two weeks straight. He would make sure she got all the rest she needed.

He nuzzled her neck. “Go to sleep.”

“But I want—”

“I know what you want. Trust me, you will soon be getting more of that than you will be able to bear.” He pushed his hips against her to illustrate his point.