Wicked Torment (Regency Sinners 1) by Carole Mortimer

Author:Carole Mortimer [Mortimer, Carole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carole Mortimer
Published: 2017-04-27T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Her expression was stricken. “It is not as bad as it looks—”

“Do not move,” Darius instructed harshly, his earlier promise of no consequence to this situation as he held Bea firmly in front of him with one hand, her back toward him. He used his other hand to slip the straps of her camisole down her arms before allowing the garment to fall to her waist.

The scars, more than a dozen of them, covered the whole of her back down to the natural indent at the top of her buttocks.

Darius could only stare at them, the tightness in his chest barely allowing him to breathe. “Who did this?” he finally demanded. “What did this?”

Deathly pale, she glanced over her shoulder at him. The expression she saw on his face no doubt warned her against even attempting to evade answering him truthfully. “My husband with his riding crop.”

“Dear God…” Darius muttered, knowing Hanwell must have struck her very hard and broken the skin to have left these scars on her back. “He whipped you in the stables for everyone to see?”

She shook her head. “Right here, in this bedchamber.”

Darius had never heard of anything so barbaric. A deliberate act of barbarism when Hanwell must have had the foresight to bring his riding crop with him into Bea’s bedchamber. “Why?”

She gave a choked laugh. “I had failed to give him his heir.”

Darius had expected an affair with another man at the very least. “And Hanwell whipped you for that?”

Bea felt thoroughly humiliated at having Darius see the evidence of her failure as a wife. She had hoped—prayed—keeping her camisole on would hide the scars, but obviously it had not. Now, Darius had seen them and knew of some of her humiliation, if not all.

She blinked back the tears and wrapped her arms about her bared breasts before turning to face him. “He felt justified—”

“There is no justification for this. None,” Darius repeated fiercely, his eyes glittering with cold anger. “There were no children in Hanwell’s first marriage either, so he could as easily have been to blame for— No?” He frowned as Bea shook her head.

“He has…several illegitimate children, born to him by women living locally.” Humiliated color burned in her cheeks. “Children I have made sure are well cared for.”

“He bedded these other women during your marriage?” Darius lived his life by his own code, which might or might not coincide with those of Society, and very often did not. But his views on fidelity in a marriage were unshakable: a man did not show disrespect to his wife by taking a mistress or getting another woman with child. Under any circumstances.

“Oh yes,” she sighed. “One of the children is less than two years old. So you see, it must be me who cannot conceive. Which is not a bad thing if the two of us are to… But perhaps you no longer wish to continue?” She chewed her bottom lip. “I know the scars are unsightly…”

“They are not unsightly.

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