The Secrets of a Lady

Audrey.

Choking out a laugh, he said, “Mourn for Luci? I can barely keep myself from cursing her to everyone who offers me condolences.”

Drawing in a sharp breath at Griffin’s sudden outburst, Audrey stumbled away from him.

And Griffin realized the time had come to finally tell her the truth. Even if it changed the way she felt about him forever.

Chapter Seventeen

“Oh yes, that horrifies you, doesn’t it?” Griffin asked with a shake his head. “As well it should. One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, especially one’s wife, and yet I hate her. I despise her with every fiber in my being.”

Audrey stepped closer and blinked back the tears that threatened to overwhelm her. They weren’t for the anger in Griffin’s voice, but the anguish in his eyes.

“What you see in me isn’t horror. This is just the first time I’ve heard this from your own lips. Others have implied you weren’t happy, but I didn’t know if that was idle gossip. I know how the ton can be, finding reasons to malign when there are none.”

Closing his eyes, Griffin lifted his head to face the ceiling high above. From his pained expression, it was clear his emotions tormented him. She had never felt such sharp waves of pain emanating from a person before.

“No,” he whispered. “They weren’t gossiping. It’s the truth.”

Sucking in a short breath, she finally dared to touch him, very gently, on the top of his hand. His eyes flew to where her fingers rested, but he didn’t flinch away. For that she was glad. Somehow she needed to touch him, to comfort him while he told her the truth he’d kept hidden for so long.

“Was it always that way? From the beginning?”

He shook his head. “Not from the beginning. When I married her, I believed I cared for her and that she cared for me. After you kissed me, I couldn’t stop thinking of you, but I convinced myself time would change that.”

Resisting the urge to stagger away again, Audrey stared at him. He’d spent the years thinking of her? She couldn’t believe that was true.

“Of me?”

“That’s right.” His voice was strangely distant as he reached out to draw his palm across her cheek. She shivered at the heat of his hands on her skin. “I had to force myself not to think of you. I did everything I could… riding, gambling and socializing with Luci and our friends. During the day, I could control my thoughts. But the nights… I couldn’t stop the dreams that haunted me.”

Audrey bit her lip and dipped her head, her breath coming in shallow little gulps as she digested what he’d revealed. A shudder rippled through her. All these years Griffin had been obsessed with her while she’d been yearning for him.

“Why did you think of me?” She didn’t dare to look up at him for fear he’d see how much his words affected her.

“Don’t you know?” He slipped a finger beneath her chin to force her to tilt her face toward him. “When you kissed me all those years ago, you woke something in me. Perhaps it was a desire I’d always felt for you, but suppressed because we were so young or because you’re Noah’s sister. But once I realized my desire, I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t keep from wanting you.”

The breath she drew in was ragged, more like a little cry than a breath at all. Her head was spinning with the words he said to her. Obsession, desire, a need to be with her. They were concepts she’d never dared to think of before. That Griffin would want and need her as much as she’d always wanted and needed him.

“But what happened with… Luci?” she asked, barely choking out the question as she tried to remain focused and rein in her out of control emotions. It was nearly impossible.

He dropped his hand back down to his side with a small sigh, as if her question brought him back to an unpleasant reality he didn’t want to face.

“Things began to change between us.”

“How?” Her voice cracked.

“Though I tried to keep my feelings for you a secret, Luci was jealous of everyone around us. Even her friends became targets of her suspicion. She grew more and more distant from me and the acquaintances she’d had all her life. She took up with new people, people I didn’t care for. She’d go out and not come home until very late, well past a reasonable hour. Even at events we attended together, she would slip away for hours at a time.”

Audrey frowned as a sense of premonition filled her. Yet Luci couldn’t have been untrue! How could someone be married to Griffin Berenger and not be satisfied with only him? After just two nights with him, she knew for a fact that she could be more than satisfied with him for the rest of her life.

Taking a deep breath, he moved away and returned to his seat. “I encouraged her to start a family. I thought becoming a mother would settle her down, that we’d be brought closer. I believed that with children we would become a real family. No more anger or fights between us. No more late hours and lies.”

Closing his eyes, Griffin drew in a long breath, as if it pained him to say what he said next. “She laughed.”

“Laughed?”

Stricken by Luci’s viciousness, Audrey crossed the room to sit down on the chair beside his and cover his hand with her own. Luci’s betrayal had devastated Griffin, and she hadn’t even cared. So he’d suffered. Greatly.

He lowered his voice to a dangerously quiet level. “She told me I would never be entirely certain if any child she carried was my own. She told me there was nothing I could do about it unless I wanted to bring shame upon myself and my family.”

Tears stung her eyes before Audrey managed to blink them away. This wasn’t her pain, it wasn’t her story to cry about. Griffin looked up when she was silent.

“I’m so sorry, so very sorry, Griffin.”

The words weren’t enough. She felt stupid saying them to him. He’d been hurt. Hurt more than she could even imagine. Saying she was sorry was little more than putting a tiny binding on a gaping wound.

“Don’t be,” There was a harshness to his voice, though she didn’t feel it was necessarily directed at her. “You were right. You told me on my wedding day I would be unhappy and I was.”

“Oh, Griffin.” This time she couldn’t control the tears that began to run down her face. “I never wanted you to be unhappy. I never wished for it! I hope you know that. I wanted you to find peace and love in your marriage.”

He caught one of her tears on the tip of his finger and wiped it from her cheek. “I know. You were always kind. Even if you believed I wouldn’t be happy, you would have hoped for it regardless.”

There was a long pause, but finally he seemed to gather his resolve and spoke again. “After that, our marriage disintegrated entirely. We never shared a meal. We never spoke unless it was forced by a societal or family obligation. We didn’t share a bed. So when she told me she was carrying a child, I knew for certain the babe couldn’t be mine.”

Audrey’s hand came up to cover her mouth as she bit back another cry of shock and anguish. What the man beside her had gone through during their years apart. While she had spun around foreign ballrooms in fancy gowns, thinking she was alone, Griffin had truly been isolated. He’d had no one to turn at the lowest point of his life.

“How horrible,” she gasped.

He shrugged one shoulder. “Still, I was surprised by how deeply I mourned for her baby when Luci died.”

Audrey smiled sadly. Not many men in the ton would have felt the same way. In a world where bloodlines ruled, Griffin Berenger cared more for a child’s lost life than his true parentage. His compassion reminded Audrey how much she loved him.

“You’re an amazing man, Griffin Berenger. A true original,” she said softly, leaning forward to place a gentle kiss on his warm cheek.