Addicted. Charlotte Featherstone

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СКАЧАТЬ Her father’s friend was there, waiting. Her mother had fallen into his arms before the door had even closed behind them. The last thing Anais heard was her mother pleading with her lover. “Take me away from all this hell,” she’d begged. “Erase the touch of my husband, a man I despise. Treat me like a woman, for my husband never has.”

      Even at eight, Anais had known what her mother was. A social climber. A fraud. An adultress. That incident, Anais had admitted, was unlikely the first for her mother. It was certainly not the last.

      Years later, when Anais had been in her early teens, she had discovered her mother in the attic with a young, handsome footman who had just been taken on. Anais hadn’t run away like the other times she had seen her mother betraying her father. She’d confronted her.

      That was when her mother had told her the truth she’d long suspected. That marriage to her father had brought her riches and social status. That was the only reason she’d married him. His money brought her happiness and lovers. His physical affection made her ill. So, too, did looking at the children she had to produce in order to keep her husband appeased. She hated her children for what they had done to her body. She loathed the time she was forced to spend with them, even though it was minimal. And she despised Anais the most, she had told her, because she out of her two sisters most resembled her father, both in looks and personality.

      Morality, her mother scoffed, was not a trait worth a pence. It gave you only misery, and the feeling of a noose closing ever tighter around your neck.

      Anais had left the attic room, which at one time had been her nursery, a thought that disgusted her. Seeing her mother engaging in such debauchery in a room where she and her sisters had slept as children sickened her and made her realize just what sort of a heartless tart her mother was.

      She had not confided the news to her father because it would destroy him. She had not told her oldest sister, Abigail, because in truth, Abby was more like their mother than any of them. Ann, the youngest, had still been a child. So she’d turned to the only person who she trusted. The only soul she had ever confided in. And like always, he’d been there waiting for her at the stables, her horse had already been saddled and both Lindsay and her mare had watched patiently for her arrival.

      Anais had fallen into his arms sobbing, just like her mother had fallen into the arms of her lover all those years ago. Lindsay kept her safe. Had held her close to him and allowed her to dampen his shirt with her tears. He’d been eighteen then. More man than boy. He could have left her; she was, after all, still considered a child, even at sixteen. But he hadn’t, and she’d clung to him like the ivy on the walls of her home as he stroked her back with his palm that she recalled felt so strong and warm along her spine.

      Confiding in Lindsay had taken the pain away, but the realization that her mother’s cold and ruthless blood swam in her own veins was something that always terrified her. She still had not made peace with the knowledge.

      She did not want to become her mother. She would not become her mother, she vowed as she listened to Lord Weatherby spew his venom. Venom she knew was the truth.

      “What exactly is it you don’t want to hear, boy?” his father taunted, drawing her gaze away from the muscle that flicked in Lindsay’s jaw. “What is it that makes you so irate? The fact that I can’t stand that little bitch you call a friend, or the fact I pricked her mother?”

      “Stop it,” Lindsay demanded.

      His father chuckled and slapped Lindsay’s shoulder. “Don’t act all honorable, son. You’re not, you know. I know all about you and your habits. So, tell me, how does it feel to be a chip off the old block—nine and twenty and friggin’ all the household help?”

      “Thirty,” Lindsay snapped before reaching for his evening coat.

      “What’s that?”

      “I turned thirty last month. But you cannot be expected to remember that. After all, you’ve spent the last years in a drunken haze in London with your mistresses and your cronies.”

      “Well, thirty, then,” his father said unrepentantly. “How does it feel to be a man, to take some comely little maid in here and give it to her hard against a wall?”

      “I have been a man, with a man’s responsibilities for many years, Father,” Lindsay growled as he shrugged into his jacket. “While you have been whoring and drinking the years away, I have grown up. I have become something you are not—a gentleman.”

      His father leaned forward and winked, unaffected by Lindsay’s rebuke. “Was it that buxom little Sally? I had her the other day. Lively little thing, and skilled, too. Beautiful wide mouth. Oh, come now.” His father grinned wickedly when he saw Lindsay’s scowl. “You were doing what comes natural. At least what comes natural to you and me,” his father teased, elbowing him in the ribs, then staggering to the left. “What man doesn’t enjoy a woman’s mouth around him from time to time? Best damn release you can find, my boy, a willing mouth eager to please. A mouth—” his father sneered “—you won’t have to marry or have harping at you for the rest of yer days.”

      “You disgust me,” Lindsay said with a snarl.

      “I’m happy, boy,” his father declared, heedless of Lindsay’s censure. “I’m right happy with the reports I’ve been getting from Town. Seems it’s true, apples really don’t fall far from the tree.”

      Anais watched the color drain from Lindsay’s face. He was now a ghastly, ashen color. She had never seen Lindsay looking so discomposed. Was it because his father had talked of his previous conquests, and she was present to hear it? Was Lindsay concerned for her feelings, especially after what they had shared?

      She knew, that at Lindsay’s age, he had knowledge of other women. She wasn’t naive to believe that he had saved himself for her. Besides, she’d known his skill by the first touch of his hands on her body. And while she felt jealous and hurt, she believed that what they had shared was more than what he had with other women.

      She had to believe that, because to believe anything else would be too painful to bear.

      “Well, then, I’m off, back to the house to tell that pompous ass Darnby that his shrew of a daughter is not out here with you—I knew you had more taste than to go tupping someone like that—but your mother,” he scoffed as he staggered away, “your mother wouldn’t be appeased until I left my port and hand of cards to search for you. That damn woman, I don’t know what I ever did to deserve her. And,” Weatherby snapped as he whirled around, “you might consider being a trifle more civil to the Grantworth chit. She’s worth a fortune and far prettier than the Darnby girl. She’s got one of the biggest dowries on the marriage mart this year and she fancies you. See to it you make arrangements to go driving or attend that blasted fair. I want an heir from you before I die. Do I make myself clear?”

      When the stable door closed, Lindsay looked back at Anais, an expression of shame marring his handsome face. “He was drunk,” she murmured quietly while pulling stray bits of hay from her hair. “He didn’t know what he was saying.”

      It was the same excuse she had heard Lindsay use for his father since they were small children. She despised the words even as she said them. There was no excuse for such a wastrel. The marquis was always in a state of grotesque inebriation. She had seen him falling down drunk and groping women who were not his wife more times than she cared to admit.

      But then Anais could not fault Lindsay for trying to soften the embarrassment of having such a father. She did much the same with her mother. СКАЧАТЬ