Page 48 of Bargaining with the Devil

During his time in the Service, he’d run across plenty of rotten schemes by corrupt men. Hell, in the army, for that matter. Wellington’s army was far from squeaky clean no matter what the officers tried to enforce. But this was different, one difference being he’d never had to look a woman in the face as she recounted such a tale. The biggest part, of course, was that ’twas Lucy doing the telling.

“As for why I’d been targeted to begin with . . . I was ideal.” She laughed again, but ’twasn’t a happy laugh by any means. “I was quite proficient on violin, which in Compton’s mind meant I was cultured. I spoke French fluently, being half French, which was of course a huge advantage given everything in which he’d involved himself in France. I had manners and deportment too from being raised well but without the visibility of being a society lady who would be missed.” Her hands curled tight, the knuckles stark and white. “I went to Teddy’s bed untouched, so I was disease-free.”

He wanted badly to hold her, to offer comfort, but she looked a bit like she might break if she was touched at that precise moment. He left his hands where they were, in fists on his thighs.

“All of that made me . . . valuable. Ideal. And once I was newly fallen, I was so burdened by my own shame that even once I knew the truth, trying to make my way home did not seem a viable option. It was. I know that now. It would have been. But I couldn’t see that at the time. I felt myself—irredeemable.” Her voice cracked.

She’d swayed towards him slightly, an arm fluttering out like she was seeking him. ’Twas all the sign he needed to gather her up in his arms, being careful of the newly bound wound.

She rested her face against his neck, breaths broken. Eventually she continued, voice thick. “After Compton told me the truth about Teddy on the crossing to France and just what that meant going forward, I did think about jumping overboard. I can swim, rather well even, not that I’d have had good odds. Any odds at all, really, jumping into the Channel. It’s so cold, and I was in skirts . . . But jumping over didn’t seem like a worse choice, even knowing death was likely. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it.”

“Survival instincts,” he murmured into her hair.

“I suppose.” She was silent for a long time. “But I chose it. Everything that came next.”

“You chose to survive, a mhuirnín. ’Tis the most important choice a person can make when all else feels hopeless.”

“Yes.” She gave a brittle laugh. “I survived. So Compton offered my next set of options when I chose not to jump overboard. When we reached France, he’d let me go my own way at the docks—but with no money, no jewelry, wearing the clothes of a cheap whore. He’d already put me in those once we boarded the ship. So that was one outcome, if I chose it: my freedom, but the freedom was an illusion. The other option was to stay with him. His property, essentially. Not for his own use and not for his brothels if I agreed to what he wanted from me. I was too valuable to waste there, he told me, like it was some sort of accolade I’d been given. I was cultured, as I said.” Her voice was bitter again. “And he already had someone in mind who would be more than happy to have me as mistress.”

He’d heard that part of this story in France. “That drunken French baron.”

“Yes. Cuvelier.”

“Was Cuvelier bad to you?” Was that what was still behind her eyes? Something ugly lurked there, something she wasn’t wanting to say.

She shook her head. “No. He was never unkind. I believe he truly cared for me in his own . . . confused way. It was Compton who handed me over to him, but I believe Cuvelier invented a story in his mind where we’d met honestly and truly were a match. Not that he actually believed it—just that he wanted to, and so he ignored reality. He cared about me, just not enough to look beneath the circumstances of how we met. On the rare occasions when he wasn’t too drunk, he even tried to please me in bed rather than simply seeking his own release.” She laughed, another dry, brittle little laugh. “Sometimes he even succeeded. I have never been sure how I feel about that part of it. I didn’t desire him as a partner, and yet I do think it made some of it more bearable that it was sometimes . . . pleasant.”

He wanted to tell her ’twas better that way, that she’d not hated every single moment, that Cuvelier had been a kindly drunk rather than a violent one and one who’d even tried to make her feel good, however misguided. But he’d never been in a situation with a lass that wasn’t purely of his own choosing—or where the lass wasn’t there of her own free will as well—so he said nothing. What Lucy felt on the matter was her own, whatever had helped her to bear it, and ’twasn’t his place to say if it was or wasn’t better that way.

“He was never cruel,” she continued. “He never once inflicted physical pain on me. He was as much a pawn as I was in some ways. Caught in their web, the same as I was. It’s just that I understood I was trapped, and he believed himself there freely. He didn’t know he was caught, and I pitied him. I did not respect him and wouldn’t have sought any sort of relationship with him, real or invented. But I felt sorry for him, and I didn’t hate him. Is it strange that I can’t hate him? I feel as though I ought to after nearly five months with him, but I just . . . don’t.”

“’Tisn’t so strange. Not when you had to deal with the man every day, not when he wasn’t cruel.” He was no great scholar of the mind’s workings, but she’d had to live with the situation day in and day out. If scraps of sympathy for the man helped her bear it, helped her to survive it, then ’twas good she’d found them.

Didn’t mean he couldn’t be angry on her behalf. Hate was too strong because aye, she had the right of it. Cuvelier had been a pawn to Compton and to that vile French brothel owner, Dubois—but Cuvelier could also have chosen differently as a man. No matter what story Cuvelier invented, he’d known the truth deep down.

Himself, he couldn’t envision ever forming a connection with someone who didn’t come to him fully willing. Enthusiastic, even, because what fun was it getting up to things in bed if the both of them weren’t enjoying it?

A much stronger flash of anger burned through him. Cuvelier would have seen Lucy’s mark unless he never undressed her fully. He had to know what that fucking sparrow meant, and he’d ignored it.

He breathed away the anger; his anger wasn’t what Lucy needed in this moment. And if not hating Cuvelier helped her move past that time in France, ’twasn’t for him to tell her she should any more than ’twas his place to say what it meant that Cuvelier had managed to give her some fleeting moments of physical pleasure.

But the mark, that was Compton’s work. She’d get back to it; her trembling said she hadn’t forgotten where the conversation started, only that she’d edged away from it momentarily.

“Compton might have—paired me to someone who would have hurt me,” she said. “I thought about that more than once. Then and afterwards. I suppose I should be grateful in a way.”

Grateful wasn’t the word he’d use himself, but he understood what she meant by it.

“I didn’t fight it because I was aware, constantly, that Compton could at any time put me with someone worse. Or somewhere worse.” Her eyes glinted. “With this marking, I was his to do with what he wanted.”

There were worse scenarios with a man like Compton; ’twas true, that. Keeping her for himself, for one.

What she’d told him last night about Teddy and today about Compton marking her and about Cuvelier, ’twasn’t all of it. He’d wager anything. There was something else, had to do with Compton and the gunpowder mark; that ’twas in her eyes now she’d come back around to that.

He had two choices himself just now: accept that she’d said all she intended at the moment or push to get it out of her, to let loose that pain, but risk losing her trust if she wasn’t ready.

He wouldn’t push, not today. But sometime before he left for good, he’d lance that wound proper. Mayhap she’d hate him for it ever after, but if it drained some of that poison out of her at last, he’d do it and accept her hatred because right now ’twas still slowly killing her, whatever still had her dead behind the eyes when she spoke of Compton.

She had wounds, just nothing the world could see. Bleeding them proper might finally let her heal clean.