Read Online Redeeming a Rake by Cari Hislop - Free Book Online Page A

eyes paused an eternity on the paper before looking up at
him. “Forgive my impertinence…don’t answer!”

    “To save my sister the horror, I’d have lain
with you. If I’d cried the whole time would you have beat me for
ruining your pleasure?”

    Her matter of fact tone was like a hard
slap. Clawing his silk waistcoat was a futile attempt to ease the
burning ache. Nothing would ever make him feel better; he was going
to die a friendless wretch. “I could never insult you with such a
degrading proposition. I would have made you my Duchess. Why can’t
I keep my tongue out of the gutter? Slap me! Call me The Devil’s
Corpse. Tell me I’m a worm, but don’t hate me.”

Chapter 9

    He would have married her? As Tolerance
tried to order the thought from her head she could see herself
getting out of her parent’s carriage with the hood of her cape
pulled forward to hide her face. She would have already met the man
who’d won her. She’d know instinctively he wouldn’t hurt her. He’d
lift off her hood, take her face in his hands and kiss her. She’d
forget why she was there until he whispered in her ear that he had
a special license in his pocket and the necessary priest and
witnesses in the next room, but it wouldn’t have been like that for
the women who suffered Geoffrey’s angry lust. They would have been
terrified and if wise, barely sensible after downing a large dose
of laudanum.

    She didn’t have to imagine the horror of the
young women delivered into a strange man’s power and expected to
sacrifice their bodies for the good of their families. She could
still feel her stomach heave in fear as she was shoved into her
bridegroom’s bedchamber by her mother and told to do her duty with
only a faint idea of what that would entail. She pushed the horror
of her short marriage from her mind and reminded herself it could
have been worse; it might have lasted for decades. Glancing up she
found pale blue eyes pleading for mercy. “I don’t hate you, but…”
He covered his face with his hands and bowed his head. Was it an
act? How far had the devil fallen into hell? Could he even climb
out? “…what you’ve done… Have you known fear Geoffrey? Fear you can
taste; that bitter taste of sick that burns your throat and makes
you feel faint, fear that makes you wish you were dead? That’s what
they felt on finding themselves in your power.”

    “I told you, I wish I’d never touched them,
never met them. I hate myself for what I did. Isn’t that
enough?”

    “Do you know the taste of fear?”

    “Yes, I know fear! The sound of my father’s
footsteps…”

    “That’s what you made them feel. You might
as well have been wearing your father’s shoes.”

    ‘No! I’m not my father. He was an evil
bastard. I wouldn’t beat my infant son for being afraid of me. My
children wouldn’t need to be afraid of me; I wouldn’t marry someone
who’d sit there without saying a word as her child screamed for her
as he was pummelled in the next room. She just sat there doing her
bloody embroidery.”

    “Your mother doesn’t strike me as a woman
who doesn’t care.”

    Geoffrey snorted in contempt. “The Duchess
wouldn’t raise a toast to my passing; she’d probably say it was
rude to celebrate the devil. Well I don’t care if she hates me, I
hate her. She nearly killed me smashing a large vase on my head
when I was a youth. I have a large scar on my head to prove it. She
never loved me. Why would she? I’m my father’s son. She gave up on
me before I was out of nursery skirts. I hate my family. They’ve
taken every opportunity to grind my face that I don’t deserve to
breathe let alone be the Duke of Lyndhurst. Everyone thought my
father was a God. He was so handsome, so intelligent, so charming,
the salvation of the Lyndhurst inheritance. He was a heartless
bastard! When I got up the nerve to tell him I wasn’t going to be
treated as an inferior to my older bastard brother he rang the