“Atone?” She felt a chill crawl along her spine.
“For causing death,” he said, “and untold suffering. For surviving.”
“But was it not your duty as an officer to lead your men into battle?” she asked him. “Were you not under orders yourself from superior officers? Do men not die in battle?”
He raised his eyes to hers. She expected them to be full of pain. Instead they were expressionless. Empty.
“I took three men to war with me,” he said. “They did not want to go. They would not even have thought of going for themselves. And none of them was designated by his family for a military career. Quite the contrary. Their families fought their determination to go with me. But my power and influence over them was greater than that of family. I convinced them and they came. And died.”
“Your three friends from school, do you mean?” she asked.
“Thomas Reynolds, son of Viscount Harding,” he said. “Maxwell Courtney, son of Sir Marvin Courtney, and Rowland Hickman, son of Baron Janes.”
She remembered their names from a long-ago past, though Graham had not talked about them as often as he had of Ralph Stockwood.
“But the decision was theirs,” she said.
He was still looking with chilling blankness into her eyes.
“It was,” he agreed. “That is what I learned to accept during those three years. What degree of blame must we share for the decisions and actions of others? All of it? Some? None? It is an interesting question, and everyone concerned would no doubt answer it in a different way depending upon the perspective each brought to bear on it. In three years I learned to change my answer from all to some. I never progressed to none. But I stopped trying to kill myself. I stopped boring everyone silly by talking about it ceaselessly and alarming them by threatening it. I was healed and I went home.”
She gazed at him, appalled.
“But did you stop wishing you were dead?” she asked and could have bitten out her tongue as soon as the words were out.
He half smiled, though it was perhaps more grimace than smile.
“Fate played a cruel joke on me,” he said. “Instead of killing me and assigning me to hell, where I no doubt belonged, it saved me and gave me hell on earth instead. But all things can be endured, given time. One adjusts to the circumstances in which one finds oneself—one’s own small revenge upon fate, perhaps. We all adjusted, the seven of us. We are all living our lives in a more or less productive manner. And I must apologize for speaking so depressingly and so self-pityingly. It will not happen again, I assure you.”
“Do their families blame you?” she asked.
He released her hand and stood up abruptly.
“I do not doubt it,” he said, extending a hand to help her to her feet. “You need not concern yourself.”
But she could not leave it alone. Not yet.
“Have you asked them?” She slid her hand free of his when she was on her feet.
He startled her by leaning forward and setting his mouth to hers. Hard. She had no time to decide if it was a kiss—or if it was merely a way of silencing her. She stared mute and wide-eyed at him when he lifted his head again.
If it had been a kiss, it was her first. How utterly absurd! She was twenty-seven years old and she had been married for almost a week. But she did not believe it had been a kiss. It had silenced her, though.
He was frowning. Then he raised both hands, removed her cap, and dropped it to the chair behind her.
“Have you always worn a nightcap?” he asked her.
“No.”
“Have you ever worn one before this past week?”
“No.”
“Why now, then?”
She could not think of any reason to give except the truth. “I did not want you to think I was trying to . . . to entice you.”
His eyes, which had been directed at her braid, were suddenly focused upon hers.
“You were hoping I would merely go away?” he asked her.
“Oh, not at all,” she said. “I would have hated that. But I did not want you to think . . .” How could she complete the sentence?
“That you are beautiful?” he said. “And desirable? But I had thought both and still do think them. Is your hair a dreadful trial to you?”
Baron Cornell, her beau during her first Season, had once laughingly told her that with her hair she could pass any day for the most luscious and flamboyant of courtesans, and the highest paid to boot. He had apologized when he realized that he had deeply shocked her, but she had never forgotten. And then, last year . . .
“Yes.”
It was the simplest answer she could think to give. Every woman wants to be thought beautiful, and she was no exception. But she did not want to be looked upon with . . . with lascivious hunger, as she had been looked upon too many times for comfort.
His hands were drawing out the pins that held the coils of her braid to her head. When it fell, like a heavy pendulum against her back, he reached behind her, removed the ribbon that bound the end, and unraveled the braid. He pushed his fingers through the hair and brought two locks of it over her shoulders.
“We made our bargain,” he said. “We each know what to expect of the other and what not to expect. We did not speak of desire, however. I hope I do not offend you by desiring you and by admiring your beauty and the glory of your hair. And indeed, I hope you desire me, that the marriage bed is not in any way repugnant to you.”
“It is not,” she assured him.