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‘Okay,’ she said.
‘I am not jesting. I will take you under my hand, and I will do so firmly, but if you do not tell me when you have been pushed to your limits, there can be no trust between us. And if there is no trust between us these games do not work. You and I must have the utmost respect for your limits or we cannot push you to them at all.’
‘I promise,’ she said, thrilling at being able to offer him this promise. At telling him the truth. He was very proud of her for all of the times that she had been truthful with him before. And she would continue to please him in this way.
‘Then we will see one another again at dinner.’
She wanted him to stay. She wanted it to happen now. To push forward and get it over with.
She wanted the mystery unlocked. She wanted all to be revealed.
But he was going to keep her suspended in the rapture of anticipation, and she could not decide if it was brilliant, or a sort of torture. Perhaps both.
‘Your brother cannot know,’ he said.
‘Do you honestly think that I’m going to speak to my brother of such things? He cannot even speak to me of the sorts of medical procedures that I have endured. For it all involves breaking open my skin and bleeding and things of that nature. And I dare say he does not wish to know so much about his own sister’s body. He would not like to know what his friend wishes to do with it.’
To her surprise, Briggs chuckled. ‘Yes. I suppose that’s true. But I have no wish to be called out.’
‘You’ve married me.’
‘Your brother knows what I am. He knows how I am. He tolerates me, though he finds me to be debauched beyond what he personally would ever...’
‘My brother is no saint, though he might conduct himself as one in public. I’m not a fool, Briggs. He could not maintain a friendship with you and remain a spotless lamb. It is only us ladies that are expected to be so.’
‘By comparison to your father, Beatrice, believe me when I tell you that Hugh is exemplary.’
He defended her brother with great ferocity.
‘Yes, I know.’
‘I apologise. I should not have spoken out of turn about your father.’
‘It is true, though. My father was a libertine. And perhaps... If I’m very honest, Briggs, I believe that there was more than enough information to be found around my house, and if one looked too deeply into the nude nymphs in the books at Bybee House, to educate me well enough.’ She saw the real truth in that now. She had brushed against it earlier, but it hit her deeply now. Along with the reality of what her mother must have felt.
I want him and despise him in equal measure...
That made her ache, for she knew what it was to want now.
What her mother had lived with, always, was the reality of what she’d felt when Briggs had abandoned her for the brothel.
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sp; But Beatrice had been too sheltered then to know.
Her mother had known.
No wonder Beatrice had done her best to shield herself then.
She breathed out, a shaking sigh. ‘But when it came to anything my father was involved in, I did not want to know. I sensed somehow that whatever capacity he... He disrespected my mother greatly. He disrespected the title. It is something that Hugh has worked a great deal to undo.’
‘You are correct,’ Briggs said. ‘He has worked very hard to fix what your father has done, but it is not why I hold him in such esteem. I went to school late, as you know.’
‘Yes.’ She confirmed this with some hesitance, for he had mentioned it before but she could see now that she had missed something.
Something of what he had been trying to tell her.
‘I did not know the other boys. I was the son of a duke, it was true. But I had not been raised around children, and I did not... I did not find it easy.’
