Page 59 of Broken

“I’m dying, Giles.”

“Dying!” he exclaimed. “I don’t think so, my girl. You will feel better in a day or so.”

“A day or so? Will it take that long? I don’t think I can bear this.”

“Well, in my experience, most women find these first few days unpleasant, but I have never heard of anyone dying from it,” he assured her, rubbing his thumb across the back of hers, pleased by her increasing color.

“Are you telling me that all women go through this? That pleasure produces this weakness?”

“Weakness? What the devil are you talking about?” Giles settled to his knees. “Your monthly courses have nothing to do with pleasure, my darling. They have to do with producing children.”

She looked at him in horror and an abhorrent idea took hold.

“Did no one ever explain women’s matters to you?”

She shook her head very quickly.

Giles clenched her hands tight. “Poor darling, what a wretched morning you must have had. I would berate your father for this, if I did not think he would shoot me for knowing such personal details about you.”

“Children?”

“Ah, I see I am going to take this from the very beginning. I promise you are not dying. Here, let me see if I can explain this. Just remember that my point of view is from the man’s side of things and a woman could explain it better.” He deliberately chose not to say her own mother, but she should have been the one to educate the girl long before the accident.

An hour later, he summoned Mrs. Osprey to fetch tea and arranged for Lilly to dine with him and Carrington so the necessary introductions could be made. Her color grew better. A lot better. His explanations had caused a lot of blushing on her part, and a fair amount of tension on his.

They had told her nothing. Everything she knew about women came from him. First from watching him bed others, and the rest from today’s frank talk.

“And I’ll bleed every month.”

Giles pulled her against his shoulder. “Until the time your body grows too old to bear children.” He kissed the top of her head, imagining her holding an infant in her arms. He slammed the door shut on that kind of thinking.

In all the years of her illness, she had not been aware of her own monthly flux. Perhaps this was the first time Lilly had ever been lucid enough to recognize it. It was also possible that it had been completely absent, too. He would dearly like to know the answer, but satisfying his curiosity would end in a meeting with a smoking pistol.

“You must think me a complete imbecile, Giles. I am so sorry Papa brought me here to trouble you.”

“I am not sorry at all. You are very sweet and delightfully innocent, Lilly. Better to blunder with me than someone else. Better to hear the truth from a friend, I think.” Giles squeezed again and she wrapped her arms around his waist, gripping him tightly without provoking a feeling of suffocation other women had. Yes, they were good friends indeed. She needed someone on her side. Eventually Carrington would see she expected nothing more than that.

* * *

If Giles had whispered that she had two heads instead of one, Lilly would have an explanation for the cross looks Lord Carrington directed at her across the well-set mahogany. Odd to say, but she was uncomfortable with the most charming man in London. She didn’t care for him. He didn’t look the least bit friendly.

“Just how long will you be staying in Northamptonshire, Miss Winter?”

She glanced at Giles’ impassive expression before answering to the viscount. Given the belligerent stare Carrington offered in return, she put her fork down, quite losing her interest in food. “Until my father returns. As I believe I mentioned already, I don’t know when that will be.”

Carrington turned to Giles and quirked an eyebrow. He said nothing, but some form of private communication passed between them. Lilly couldn’t determine initially what a raised eyebrow might mean. But, as the silent exchange lengthened, she had a horrible feeling that look was about her and her unchaperoned state.

“Winter will return for his daughter in due course, Carrington. Never fear.”

The viscount snorted at Giles’ words, and she realized that the viscount did, in fact, think she had plans to entrap the earl in another betrothal. Shocked, she turned to Giles again, but his only response was to nudge her leg under the table.

Giles took a sip of his wine, rolling the taste in his mouth, as always. “Did you receive the same curtly worded invitation to Warwickshire for Christmas as I did, Carrington?”

“Yes,” Carrington replied, settling back in his chair with ease. “Ettington’s letter arrived last week. Mother has one as well.”

“Will you be attending?”

Carrington pursed his lips. “That will depend, of course, on when my intended becomes my wife, but I fear I may distress the new marchioness if I fail to put in an appearance. Pixie seems a managing sort. She’d not like her plans thwarted.”