He stared at her stomach as he caressed her, utterly stupefied that a tiny human would be living in there for nine months—he knew that much about babies, at least.
“Hugo?”
He looked up. “Yes, darling?”
“Won’t you tell me about your family—about what happened to you?”
He groaned and rolled onto his back, the raging erection he’d been sporting already shriveling. “It’s so sordid, Martha.” Not to mention humiliating.
“Is it too painful for you to speak of it?”
For years his father’s abandonment had bled like an open wound. But now?
“No, it’s just an old ache now.”
She scooted down the bed, until they were shoulder to shoulder, and then took his hand in her much smaller one. “Please?”
Hugo sighed. “When I was fourteen my father took me on a hackney ride across London. My mother had died just the week before and—” He snorted and turned back to the ceiling; it was too difficult to tell this story while looking into her beautiful eyes. “The one thing that Bev Davies gave me was the truth about my parents—and about me. I didn’t learn until a month ago that my mother was a prostitute before marrying my father. She gave up whoring for years, until desperation forced her back. I was conceived during that time.”
“Oh, Hugo.”
“You’d have thought that I would have guessed years ago. After all, I looked nothing like my father and shared few characteristics with my siblings, or even my mother.” He shrugged. “I had always believed that my father disliked me because I was such an inconvenient afterthought. He wasn’t cruel to me. In fact, he just ignored me until that hackney ride.”
Hugo could still recall his anticipation that day. Perhaps his father might start to like him? After all, Hugo was the only one who still lived at home and Evan Dinwiddy had seemed broken by his wife’s death—maybe they would help each other through their grief?
He almost laughed as he recalled how naïve he’d been.
“He took me to a whip-maker, a man named John Caton.” Hugo chewed his cheek, wondering how to phrase what came next.
“That is who taught you to braid,” she said softly. “You mentioned once that he … whipped you.”
“Yes.” Hugo still remembered that first time, although he’d forgotten the dozens, if not hundreds, of others over the years that followed.
He turned to her again. “There are people—a great many—who find sexual pleasure in either whipping or being whipped.”
Martha swallowed, her chest rising and falling too quickly for a person at rest.
Hugo took in her signs of distress and shook his head. “I don’t think you want to hear this, darling.”
“I want to know about you, Hugo.”
He traced the graceful line of her throat down to her breast and caressed her nipple as he considered what he was about to say.
“Caton bought me because he liked men—very young men.”
“Boys,” she corrected, her eyes suddenly fierce.
“Very well, boys. But don’t fret over me, Martha—I wasn’t a virgin when I went to him and I knew what he wanted from me. My life at home had always been difficult. There was never enough food, my mother was ill for a long time before she died, and my father expected me to work. I was a slender lad until I turned eighteen or so—not good for manual labor—and it didn’t take me long to discover that I appealed to certain men.” He met her gaze, which was direct, but wary. “What I’m about to say will doubtless sound wrong—sinful—”
“It’s not my place to judge you, Hugo.”
“But you are, aren’t you?”
“I did at first. Those first few days after you told me the truth, I was angry, hurt, and—yes—disgusted,” she admitted. “I was so very shocked and caught by surprise, some of the things you mentioned had never even entered my mind. But once I stopped being so furious at you for leaving, I thought about what my father would say. You know how he was—he never judged others.”
Hugo nodded; the vicar had been a truly kind, good soul. But Hugo suspected that even he would have blanched at Hugo’s past.
“My father never believed in using the Bible as a weapon or hectoring people for their sins. He believed in loving others and doing no harm. I think the only person harmed by the things that you did—and that were done to you—was you.”
“Perhaps,” Hugo said, not in any hurry to play the victim in her eyes. “Until you, I had always viewed fu—er, sex—as a way to make money. That’s all that mattered to me: who paid the most.”
As Hugo let her absorb that, he considered the fact that he enjoyed using the word fuck when they were in the heat of passion—he adored shocking her—but that it felt wrong and crude to use it in conversation.
“Why am I different?” she asked. Her voice was steady, but he heard the pain and confusion beneath it. She was genuinely trying to understand him, but it was a lot for anyone to comprehend, especially a woman who was hardly more than an innocent.
“At first I didn’t know why,” he said. “On Stroma, when I couldn’t stop thinking about you, it bothered me. No,” he amended, “it terrified me, although I refused to admit it at the time.”
“You were scared?”
“I’d never had such strong feelings—such a relentless desire—for anyone. I wanted you, badly, but I didn’t want to hurt you or ruin your life. That was also a new consideration for me.” He gave her a wry smile. “I’m sure you remember what I was like when I arrived that night.”
She chuckled softly. “You were horrid. But also very …”
“Yes?” he prodded.
She dropped her gaze, her cheeks fiery. “I couldn’t look away from you. Your b-body was so beautiful and unlike anything I’d ever seen. And when your blanket slipped—”
It was Hugo’s turn to laugh. Amazingly, he also felt his own face heat at her compliment. “Ah, you remember that, do you?”
“You were so naughty.”
Hugo smiled down at his love.
