closed white door mocked her brave intentions. Glancing back at the stairs, she tightened her arms around herself. The hall was empty.
The floorboards creaked, and Mercy jumped. A maid bustled out of the room down the hall, carrying a pile of white laundry, her eyes red and puffy. She passed Mercy without acknowledgment. Invisible, as servants should be, unlike Mercy, who stood in the hallway like a beacon of shame.
Her curiosity poked and prodded until she took tentative steps to the open door. An opulent bedroom, fine furniture and lace doilies cast in shadows.
Then Mercy noticed the bed and gasped.
A black puddle stained the bare mattress. Mercy had witnessed enough slaughters of sheep and cows to know what it was. Blood.
Had her father done that, too? It seemed…impossible. But then, she knew how violent he became in his cups. And she’d done nothing. That dried blood was on her hands, too.
She returned to the third door. Rochford was hurting. She might not understand his grief, but she understood solace. This much she could do for him. In this way, she could begin to pay penance.
She took a deep breath, turned the knob and slipped inside.
This room was smaller than the last. Mercy blinked, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Rochford slumbered peacefully on the bed. She took a step closer. Though with his face relaxed in sleep and his slender shoulders showing above the sheet, he looked closer to a boy.
He had looked fearsome in the barn, invincible, but he was just a young man. Only a few years older than herself, maybe one and twenty. And handsome. She had never let herself notice before. She could have dreamed of him, if she’d had any will left to dream. She could have loved him, if she’d had the strength to hope. As it was, she had always been beneath him, a village girl to the landed lord.
It had been easier not to think of him at all, than imagine what could have been.
Well, she was still far beneath him, warming his bed. Or supposed to. He was sound asleep. No matter her determination to carry this through, or to get it over with quickly, she was not bold enough to climb in while he slept.
She considered returning downstairs to wait, but she didn’t want to risk running into Nathaniel again. Besides, the tall chairs in front of the hearth looked so inviting.
Rochford flung an arm above his head. Mercy froze. He turned and then blinked at the ceiling. With a sigh, his gaze lowered until it met hers.
“You,” he breathed. He sounded accusatory, but he had been the one to bring her here.
She shivered. “I wasn’t sure if I should knock.”
“Get out.”
Her courage fled. She turned to leave, but a rustle and a rush of air warned her of his approach. Breath escaped her lungs in a quiet burst of shock. She didn’t move a muscle, barely breathed, waiting for him to touch her.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” he whispered against her temple.
Soft pressure drifted down the side of her body. She swallowed hard.
“You don’t belong here.”
It was true. She was sorry. She wanted to tell him but the words would not form. A breath blew across the back of her neck, raising the hairs there.
Hardness pushed against her behind. She knew what it was. His lips danced down her neck. Her fingernails scraped the door.
“Tell me no,” he said. “Tell me I’m a brute, not to touch you.”
Her hands curled into fists, impotent against wood panels. And go where?
This whole night lined up before her like some sort of a test, but she didn’t understand the rules. She feared there were none at all, just that she would lose.
“Please,” she said.
The hand on her breast fell away. “Get on the bed, then.”
Mercy scrambled onto the bed and huddled in the center, wrapping the dress tight around her. He was naked, and she looked quickly away. The bed creaked under his weight. He pushed her back onto the sheets.
It had been two years since she’d barred the door to her father. Two years since she had threatened to poison his food if he ever touched her sister.
Endure, she told herself, and live. She was out of practice.
Air brushed her thighs as her nightgown lifted. She clenched her eyes and fists tight. Warm weight pressed along her body.
“Mercy,” he whispered, but it did not sound like something that needed a response.
The gentlest of touches feathered her face, so light she was not even sure whether it was his fingers or just his breath. Soft caresses trailed down her neck.
They stopped, probing. Sharp pain lanced her shoulder. Her bruise, and not a pretty sight. She had the most inappropriate urge to laugh. She doubted whatever women he had seen in London were marked like this.
“What is this?” he asked.
It is a bruise, she wanted to say, but her smart mouth had gotten her in trouble in the first place, so all she said was, “Doesn’t hurt.”
“Who hit you?”
Her father, of course, but she was loath to bring up the man he had just killed when she lay so helplessly under him. His tone demanded an answer—he was the lord here and her master of the moment. She tensed, waiting for reprimand, wondering if her disobedience would earn her another bruise.
He might have read the answer from her body, for a choked sound came from above her, then the weight lifted. Footsteps stumbled across the room and then silence fell, amplified by the quiet crackle of the fire.
Was he finished, then? He had only touched her, not taken her virginity. But then, that was all her father had ever done. Maybe that was all they ever wanted with her.
She opened her eyes and sat up. Rochford hunched over in a chair by the hearth, head in his hands. Spasms shook his naked body, though he was completely silent. He wasn’t weeping but she almost wished he would. It would be easier to bear than these deep, wrenching jerks of his whole body, as if it could not even express the grief, as if it would tear itself apart trying.
Though surely he would not want it, she felt sorry for him. It was like looking into a deep well, black and endless. Some part of her still hoped this night was a dream—a nightmare—but her mind could not have conjured up his genuine despair.
A cleverer girl might take the reprieve and run, but she could not leave him this way. He had this whole house full of servants and an earldom, every advantage a young man could hope for, but she had never seen someone so desolate except maybe herself. And for all the trappings, he was so very alone.
She crossed the room and knelt beside him. The deliberations of her ruined future clattered to the floor, eclipsed by his grief. His need for solace gaped like an open wound. If her body could be an instrument of healing,
