Page 125 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

Burying her face against her knees, she bit down on her skirts, filling her mouth with the taste of salt and wind and silk.

The scream crawling up her throat finally erupted, muffled by the fabrics as her entire soul rent apart in onequivering, bone-shattering cry of pure, helpless,hopelessanguish.

She’d thought she was healing. That her patient, tempting husband opened her body and mind, seducing her into the world of carnality.

But no. She was broken. Damaged. Dirty.

No matter how many baths she took. No matter how many tears she offered. How much restitution she paid or forgiveness she begged. No matter how many years were put between her and the night her body had been invaded. She was damaged. Soiled. Unclean and fallen.

She would never again be innocent.

Because she was not an innocent. But guilty. Of murder.

My fault. My fault. My fault.

Another scream overtook her as she realized what happened next. Once her husband dressed and came after her, he’d demand answers.

And she’d have to confess. Confess or lie.

Either way, she was damned.

CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR

Piers availed himself of the service corridor rather than the front entrance. He could bear no more telegrams, or “Your Graces,” or, Christ preserve him, fucking archeologists.

He wound his way to the laundry, aware he still clenched his soiled towel in a death grip, and he searched for a pile of such grubby linens in which to abandon it. That accomplished, he pumped a trencher of water, and rinsed the sand from his hair over a basin, snatching up another towel with which to scrub his scalp dry.

Straightening, he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror, and was reminded of why he never did that anymore.

He still looked like a monster.

And today, with his wife, he’d acted like one.

He looked above him, as though his gaze could penetrate the stories between them and spy upon his bride in the tower suite. The urge to go to her was a physical drive, tugging and straining until his boots relented and took a step.

His conscience, however, nailed those boots to the floor.

Today had been… a disaster. In every catastrophic way imaginable. But until a few moments ago, he’d not realized the extent of the damage he’d wrought.

All this time, he’d been such a dunce. A self-absorbed ass.

He’d thought his wife shy. Or cerebral. Awkward and self-conscious, perhaps. Deliberate and overanalytical.

He assumed she feared him because he was big, mean, and terrifyingly unattractive.

It’d never occurred to him, self-obsessed duke that he was, that her behavior had nothing at all to do withhim.

Squeezing his eyes shut against the truth did little to help. The pure, unfiltered terror with which she’d regarded him was now branded on the backs of his eyelids. The frantic, extraordinary strength it had taken to shove him away. The desperate speed she’d used to escape him. He’d witnessed that kind of behavior before. In prey animals.

When they ran for their lives.

His breath rattled in and out of his chest as he drew it deep. A thousand possible scenarios barraging him with vivid and hellish vibrancy.

He hadn’t known his wife long, but today he’d learned something new. Something devastating.

Someone had hurt her.

And without realizing it, he’d reopened a wound inflicted by another man.