Page 55 of A Bride for the Devilish Duke

Emma shook her head. “No one. Only Elsie.”

Damien was silent for a moment. Emma looked into his eyes and when she met his gaze, she saw a terrible rage there. It burned like the fires of hell. His face was tight, the face of an implacable god intent on vengeance. She suddenly felt deathly afraid for anyone who was the subject of that anger.

“I understand now,” Damien grated from between gritted teeth. “Elsie tended to your injury. You left your family to recover in privacy and Elsie was your nurse.” His fists clenched. “What did that bastard do to you?”

Emma looked down, ashamed. “I was burned. Thrown against the stove in the kitchen. The iron caught my side. I didn’t tell anyone… didn’t ask for help. It festered.” She took a breath. “The scar, I mean. I waited and then sought a place in a sanatorium where I could recover in secret. I pretended an illness to my family, kept to my rooms. By the time I reached the sanatorium, I was gravely ill. Nearly gone.”

Damien closed his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was guttural and raw.

“I will kill him.”

“And then you would hang for murder! I would not have him ruin another life.”

“But that would be justice!” Damien roared.

“I won’t give you his name,” Emma insisted.

Damien's jaw locked. The silence between them crackled again. “You should not be ashamed of a scar,” he muttered, gravelly, “it is not a badge of shame. It is a wound that did not take your life, which you had the strength to recover from. That is a mark of strength.”

She put her hand to her side, feeling the scar there.

“I cannot see it so,” she whispered.

Without another word, Damien stood and turned to face her. He stripped off his coat. His waistcoat. Then, unlaced his shirt. He pulled it over his head to reveal his bare chest.

Emma gasped.

Scars—countless, cruel—scored his chest, crisscrossing the muscles with terrible precision. He turned, and her breath caught again. His back bore worse. Livid welts, old but brutal, like lashings from some merciless hand. It was as if someone had tried to brand the soul out of him.

She rose, slowly.

Damien took her hand and pressed it to his chest, atop one of the scars. Then he moved it in a line that followed the scar.

“What… what happened?” she asked.

Damien smiled tentatively. “I have led an adventurous life since I inherited the Dukedom. I will not speak of it in detail. But I wear these marks as badges of honor. None of these wounds killed me, though I suppose any one of them could have. I am stronger than the harm they sought to do me. And, little dove, so are you.”

He walked across the room and snatched up the tape measure again, holding it up.

“May I?” he asked.

Emma hesitated, then nodded mutely.

She turned her back and lifted her petticoat up over her head. She cast it aside and stood with arms folded. She could not hide the nakedness of her derrière from him but concealed her breasts and her womanhood simply by standing with her back to him.

He could look if he wished. Emma would not stop him. She knew that her scarring was now on full display.

Her heart trembled. In spite of it all, she waited with bated breath for a snort of disgust. For the sound of him leaving the room or telling her to redress.

Instead, there was only silence.

Then came the faintest shift of the floorboards.

Her entire being jolted when she felt the brush of his lips, tender and infuriatingly careful, at the top of her scar. He did not speak. He simply kissed the place where her pain lived, and moved lower in slow, aching increments, tracing the length with reverence she couldn’t breathe through.

Her arms clutched tighter around herself.

A moment later, the cold tape whispered against her side.