Page 27 of Sir Hugo Seeks a Wife (Cinderellas of Mayfair #1)

Her gaze turned bleak as she clawed back some control.

“No, not yet. Papa wanted to keep me chained to home and under his thumb as long as he could. At some stage, I’d have to spend a season in London to find a husband, but he wasn’t in any hurry.

My father was always a bad-tempered martinet, but he got worse after Mamma died when I was ten. ”

He touched her arm in sympathy. “I’m sorry you lost your mother.”

“So am I.” Athene’s voice softened. “She was wonderful. I still miss her.”

Hugo suspected that had her mother lived, Athene’s life wouldn’t have taken its disastrous turn. She stared sightlessly at the fire and when she resumed speaking, her voice resumed its brittle tone.

“Papa was an army man, and he ran the whole family like a troop of unpromising recruits. While he and Mamma indulged me too much when I was a child, once I started growing up, he came down hard on me. He granted my older brother a little more freedom, but because I was a weak-minded female, I was caged on the family estate like a pet canary.”

Hugo huffed in disbelief. “You’re not weak-minded.”

“Am I not?” Her hands dug into her lap. “I’d say my actions proved him right.”

“No wonder you kicked over the traces. You’re a vital, curious woman.”

Self-disgust firmed her lips. “I was curious about boys, that’s for sure.”

His grunt was dismissive. “Of course you were. You were seventeen years old and bored out of your brain. And I suspect of a romantic bent. You were desperate for kisses.”

“I was a trial to my family, even before I ran off with George. You’re being far too kind to me.”

“No, I’m not. Stands to reason. I’d give half my fortune to knock some sense into your father’s thick skull.”

His vehement defense of her caught her attention.

When she frowned down at her hands, he understood that she weighed what he said.

He could tell that she’d always believed she was wholly at fault.

Something told him that despite her denials, she now started to look at her past from a different viewpoint.

“He was terrifically strict,” she said with a hint of uncertainty.

“Well?” Hugo didn’t pursue the subject further, but at least he’d planted a seed of doubt about her interpretation of events.

She directed a curious stare at him. “How do you know I was a romantic?”

“You’re still a romantic, Athene.” He couldn’t help smiling at her, as if she were a star fallen to earth purely to light up his life. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have to fight so hard to keep the world out.”

“You’re frightening me.” She regarded him wide-eyed, and she didn’t sound like she was joking.

“Because I see too much?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll get used to it.” Hugo didn’t only see her romantic heart.

He saw that she was halfway – perhaps more – in love with him.

Although he doubted that she’d ever admit it.

Nor would her romantic nature work to his advantage.

He could already tell that her capacity for self-sacrifice might bring her to abandon him forever, just because she believed it was for his own good.

Bugger that for a joke.

“So what happened once you took off with George? Did he promise a quick wedding at Gretna Green? I can’t think, even when you were a girl, that you went without planning marriage.”

“No, he promised a quick wedding in Italy.” Her voice was wry, although it was clear that she didn’t find any of this genuinely amusing.

“But somehow we never got out of Vienna. At first, that was enough. I was so excited to visit the Continent. I’d never been beyond York, and I was agog to see the world. ”

So George took her to Vienna and waited for Napoleon to invade. The man’s harebrained decisions beggared imagination. “What the devil was that bastard doing, taking you into the middle of a bloody war?”

Hugo’s vitriol surprised her, although he couldn’t imagine why. “You hate George.”

“Of course I do. And not just because I’m jealous.” He wanted to carve the oaf up into little pieces and feed him to the sharks. “He was a selfish brute.”

Even more surprising, her expression warmed. “Thank you,” she said softly, taking his hand.

Puzzled, he surveyed her. “For what?”

Her clasp tightened. “For…for caring, I suppose.”

His frown turned disapproving. “You know I care, lass.”

More than that, God damn it.

His declaration didn’t do much to cheer her up. “I know you do. It just makes everything more difficult.”

Given that she meant to desert him in the end, he was sure it did. While she viewed him with troubled eyes, he firmed his grip on her hand to stop her pulling free.

Athene didn’t withdraw. He waited for her to tell him that he was wasting his time with her, but after a charged silence, she returned to her story.

“I’m not quite sure how we ended up in Vienna.

We landed in Stockholm because of the blockade, then George fell in with some people who were going to Austria. ”

“You could still have got married in Stockholm or Vienna.”

“He kept putting it off, which was proof enough of his intentions. Or lack of them.” She made a helpless gesture. “I was criminally na?ve.”

Hugo growled. “For God’s sake, Athene, you were a seventeen-year-old girl. Why the blazes would you be up to a rake’s tricks?”

“Maybe.” She squeezed his hand as if in apology, although the blame lay with her feckless seducer.

“Anyway, by the time we reached Vienna, I’d realized how wrong I was about George.

He wasn’t a dashing hero who risked all for a great love.

Instead, he was weak and self-indulgent, and he drank and gambled.

Although to be fair, when his father cut his allowance, I’m not sure how else I expected us to live, except off his gambling.

So I suppose I must excuse his card sharping. ”

This got worse and worse. “The lummox didn’t even think how he’d pay his way?”

“He assumed he’d still receive his money. He had through all the other scandals attached to his name. But running off with the neighbor’s virginal daughter crossed a line.”

“By Jupiter, I’d like to knock his parents’ heads together, too. They gave him the inaccurate idea that the world owed him a living.”

Athene didn’t seem to hear him. He could tell she was lost in sad, old memories.

“We might even have managed to come out ahead, if George hadn’t drunk most of the profits.

And of course drinking meant that he lost more often and more heavily at the tables.

It didn’t take me long to decide that I didn’t want to tie my fate to a petulant sot. ”

“That was sensible.”

“Too little too late,” was her dry response. “Lord, how I hate a man who whines. He wasn’t even faithful. Within the month, I caught him rogering the chambermaid. Worse, he was childish and demanding and expected me to run after him.”

“Athene, I’m so sorry.”

Another of those unamused grunts that broke his heart a little every time. “I picked a prize.”

The acrid self-contempt in her words had Hugo sitting up straight and speaking in a vehement tone. “You were an innocent, unworldly girl kept on far too short a rein. And he was a treacherous snake who took advantage of you.”

Dull eyes focused on him. “You’re still being too kind.”

“No, I’m not,” Hugo forced out between his teeth.

“You know, I don’t think George ever meant to marry me, despite all his promises. I wasn’t used to liars, you see, so when he offered me a life of passion and adventure, I believed every word. It was the escape I longed for.”

“What if he’d got you with child?” Hugo didn’t even want to think about how Athene would have coped if she’d had a baby to worry about.

She shrugged. “He didn’t, so we’ll never know. The irony is that toward the end, he begged me to marry him. He was terrified I’d leave him to wallow in his own filth. He was too feeble by then to do much damage when I said no.”

Appalled, Hugo regarded her. “He hit you?”

“Once. The day I left him.” For the first time, a glimmer of a smile lit her brown eyes. “That was the day I met Sylvie.”

“Who was English, too.”

“Not a good thing with the French occupying the city.”

Hugo was sick with rage, so sick his belly churned with nausea. He’d guessed long ago that Athene had suffered with her useless swain, but the truth surpassed belief. “I’d give my soul to have saved you from all this.”

Astonishment shuddered through him when she lifted his hand and kissed his knuckles. She was passionate in his arms – gloriously so – but expressions of affection were rarer. “I know.”

He’d muse on that later, as well. Right now, he needed to know how Athene had escaped the besieged city. “What was Sylvie doing in Vienna?”

She shook her head. “That’s her secret. I promised I’d never tell.”

He admired Athene’s integrity, even if it roused inevitable curiosity. “So what happened?”

“I ran into a party of French soldiers while I was out trying to barter for food.”

The stark terror fraying her voice sharpened Hugo’s queasiness. He found it almost impossible to frame his next question. “Athene, were you attacked?”

She raised blind eyes. Painful memories held her in a talon-like grip. “No.”

Titanic relief left him dizzy. The idea of her suffering such a desecration made him want to smash something. “Thank heaven.”

“Thank Sylvie. She’d started making bonbons by then, although I’ve no idea how she got hold of the sugar.

Food was short across the city. Anyway, she was delivering some to a customer when she stumbled upon the drunk cuirassiers who had cornered me in an alley.

” Athene’s monotone betrayed how harrowing the encounter had been. “She convinced them I was her sister.”

“They didn’t find out you were English?” Good God, imagine if they had.

“No. It was lucky that I’d had a French governess, so I spoke the language. Sylvie shared out the bonbons and managed to get me away to the house where she worked as a pastry chef.”

“Good for her.”