Chapter 24

                                    

                                          
"What happened that night?"
                          
Vincent's  face lost its color, and Georgie wanted to take the words back. The  question was unwelcome between them, but low in her belly Georgie knew  the seriousness of the question. The intimacy of the moments before had  given Georgie a taste of how it could be, and she thought back to her  connection with the duke and knew it fell short by thousands of yards.  It could never compare to the intimacy she had shared, naked before  Vincent, with him buried to the hilt inside her and leaving her so full  and cherished that tears stung her eyes.
                          
What a fool she had been.
                          
After  they shared what had happened that evening; what had kept them apart  for so long, then she would let the chips fall where they may. If she  was to be abandoned a second time, at least she had had this one  evening. This sincerity between them.
                          
It  didn't make the question any less harsh or the answer any less  important. The fire, which had cocooned them in coziness, had turned  sinister. The light of the flames licked against Vincent's heavy brow  and circled beneath his eyes. His stubble glowed thick and dark on his  jaw.
                          
Georgie's  hands shook and she knew with stunning clarity that at any moment she  would burst into tears. She was nothing more than a fragile sheet of  foolscap and one stiff wind would blow her away. Perhaps she never would  get back again.
                          
Laying  her palm over Vincent's chest, Georgie gloried in the steady, beating  thump of his heart. Maybe if she listened hard enough, if she were to  focus long enough, reality would cease to rip him from her grasp.
                          
Vincent's arm wrapped tight around her, and his thumb settled against her side, swiping against the flesh of her breast.
                          
"I  was on my way to see you, Georgianna." Her head twisted up at the raw  words, but Vincent wasn't looking at her. as if he found it easier to  tell his tale without the intense scrutiny of her stare. "I would have  found you. I would have. But..."
                          
She  watched his Adam's apple bob, and if she wasn't mistaken, his voice had  broken off as if he were close to tears himself. A pang of sympathy  settled deep within her chest. She would do battle for this man, would  do anything he asked of her.
                          
The twins' words from the carriage the other day rattled loose in Georgie's brain. "Did something happen with your father?"
                          
A  smirk twisted his lips. "Leave it to you to delve straight to the  point." Vincent sighed, his thumb never halting its soothing stroke.  "Randall was never kind to my mother." He choked on a bitter laugh. "But  that night, I knew I wasn't the only one under Randall's fist. That  night, he didn't hide his contempt."
                          
Georgie  didn't know how to help him, so she pressed her lips into his chest,  soaking in his soft shudder and the ever-tightening of his arm about her  shoulders. He picked up a strand of her hair and worried it between his  fingers.
                          
"I'm  my mother's bastard with an unknown father, and it hardly mattered to  Randall that it happened before they were married. I was a stain on the  family name and my mother was no more than a whore for what she had  done."
                          
Georgie  flinched. Closing her eyes, she breathed him in. If she could she would  go back in time and give Randall the thrashing he deserved. While her  own father had been sparse on his physical affection, Georgie had no  doubt that he cared greatly for their mother and for them as well. To  think a father would act so to those under his care...
                          
It was unfathomable.
                          
"I  made it my mission to be invisible," Vincent continued. "To be the best  lad I could and for the most part, his disgust lie with me. Or at least  as much of it as I was aware. Though now that I think back on it, we  didn't see mother for days at a time and when we did see her..." Vincent  blew out a harsh breath and his fingers tugged on her hair absently.  "She always had excuses. She had been too clumsy that morning or had  taken a spill. How carless of her."