For all intents and purposes, Chloe and Leo might as well have been any other respectable couple.
Nay, rather, more.
They might as well have been any happy, devoted husband and wife. Through the unveiling of the new establishment, they remained at each other’s side, meeting children, speaking with patrons who arrived to assess the newly resurrected establishment. And when Chloe was called off to see the chambers the young ladies would call home, leaving Leo to his own devices, she found herself restless to return.
A short while later, Chloe located him in one of the classrooms. Hovering on the edge of the doorway, she freely observed Leo as he spoke to Faith and Violet. By their motions and movements, they were in the throes of a discussion about their last fencing round.
Something Violet said earned a booming laugh, and he ruffled the top of her niece’s black curls.
Another portion of Chloe’s heart wiggled free and slipped dangerously outside her grasp.
“I will admit,” Philippa murmured, joining her in the doorway, “I have been skeptical and fearful of Lord Tennyson’s intentions.”
Chloe stiffened.
“But seeing him with Faith and Violet and hearing them speak of the night he visited, I must acknowledge the wrongness in my own prejudices.”
Yes, everyone had judged Leo—Chloe included—a man who flaunted his indifference at all those opinions. Did he do so in a bid to protect himself? It was as though he embraced the derision. Why? “There is more to him,” Chloe said softly. He might insist otherwise. “I do not say that because I need to see it, nor because I wish to reassure myself that I’ve not made an egregious mistake, but because I see it,” she said to her sister.
Philippa smiled and called out a greeting. “The children are assembling for desserts. I thought—”
Faith and Violet squealed and took off running, knocking into Chloe and Philippa in their haste to pass by. Laughing, Philippa hurried after the girls.
Alone in the newly constructed classrooms, Chloe called out to her husband. “I’ve been looking for you, my lord.”
Grinning, he strode over. “Alas, my attentions were stolen by two lovely ladies. Two faithless ladies who prefer treats,” he added, pulling a laugh from Chloe.
“One may say you even enjoyed your first foray into respectability.”
He set his features in a somber mask. “I’ll deny it to the end of my rakish days.”
Through the teasing, Chloe was filled with regret that the day had come to an end. Oh, it had been a success, and yet, she’d enjoyed the interlude of pretend. “We should have the carriage called,” she said quietly.
As they wandered the lengthy halls to the foyer, not another word was spoken.
Chloe waited off to the side as Leo conversed with one of the footmen. Just then, another set of patrons entered through the massive double doors—the gentleman strikingly handsome and the crimson-haired lady at his side a stunning perfect counterpart. The Earl and Countess of Montfort. The countess had gone from being one of Philippa’s instructors to being a great benefactor.
The couple froze. Their expressions ran a gamut of surprise, horror, and then outrage.
Frowning, Chloe searched for—and found—the source of their fury.
An ashen-faced Leo stared back at the pair, and then a quick grin was firmly back in place. “My lady—”
The Earl of Montfort lunged. “Not another word,” he thundered.
The countess cried out and made an ineffectual grab for her husband’s arm.
Leo took a blow to the chin. Through a resolute strength, he managed to maintain his feet.
Jerked out of her dazed shock, Chloe went sprinting forward. Holding her palms up, she placed herself between Leo and the earl’s wrath. “Stop,” she cried out.
Or was that the countess? Everything had become a blur of noise and confusion.
Fury burned from the earl’s eyes, and for a terrifying moment, she believed he’d knock her down. Palms sweating, Chloe rooted herself to the floor and glowered at him.
“Chloe,” her husband bit out, making an attempt to push her behind him.
She fought off his efforts, locked in a silent battle with Lord Montfort.
“We’re leaving,” the Earl of Montfort seethed.
“No need, Montfort,” her husband smoothly supplied. “We were just leaving.” Wordlessly, Leo tugged a cloak-less Chloe through the gaping doors and into the London streets.
Not a word was uttered until they were ensconced in their carriage.
Leo sat on the opposite bench, his gaze firmly trained on the window at the passing scenery.
“Well?” Chloe finally shattered the quiet.
With bored movements, he glanced over. “Well?” he drawled in tones she’d learned early on were false.
“Are we going to speak about what happened?”
“No.”
She dropped her brows. “No?” Did he think they’d say nothing about the fact that another gentleman had dealt him a violent blow at nothing more than a glimpse… and the fact that he’d made no attempt to deflect or fight back?
Leo reached inside his jacket and withdrew a flask. “Nothing to talk about. Montfort and I used to be friendly, and now we’re not.” He removed the stopper.
Chloe leaned over and plucked the drink from his fingers just as he’d raised the silver flask to his lips. She set it beside her on the bench.
He frowned and opened his mouth.
“Do not ask or demand your spirits back.”
Leo’s lips instantly compressed into a tight line.
Chloe folded her arms. “What happened?”
“We had a falling-out.”
There. At least he hadn’t pretended to misunderstand whom she’d been speaking of. Chloe waited for him to say more.
And waited.
Leo hummed the discordant tavern ditty he had broken into at her family’s dinner party.
As a small girl, she’d had a tenacious tooth that had refused to fall out. The dratted thing had hung by a bare thread, and no amount of wiggling or yanking or pulling had managed to snag it free. Her husband, with his secrets, was very much like that stubborn tooth.
“Is he the same gentleman who sent you home bloodied two days ago?”
He gave a brusque nod.
“And yet, both times you made no attempt to defend yourself.”
Leo grunted. “You don’t know that.”
“I know what I saw today, and I know the effects of one lifting one’s fists to defend oneself. I know a single punch will land a man with bruised or cracked knuckles, and yet, yours were not.”
He brought his eyebrows together. “How does a young lady come to know so much about prizefighting?”
Chloe faltered as the tables were abruptly and unexpectedly turned. “We’re not talking about me, Leo,” she neatly sidestepped. “We are discussing the history between you and the Earl of Montfort.”
Her husband wiped a tired hand over his face. “Let it go, Chloe.”
She shook her head. “No. I will not.”
The carriage hit a large bump, and she caught the upholstered bench to keep steady.
“Do you have a history with the countess?” Her question slipped out on a shaky whisper. It was a question that she, in her cowardice, didn’t want an answer to.
“Don’t do this, Chloe,” Leo entreated, pleading when neither God nor the devil himself could coax a grin that Leo didn’t wish to give.
Chloe sank back on the squabs. The metal springs pinged noisily under the pressure added by her weight. “You do,” she answered for him. “You seduced the Countess of Montfort.” A leading patroness, who was a friend to Philippa and had earned a reputation as kind, clever, and tenderhearted, had been one of Leo’s lovers? That realization soured her mouth and knifed at her belly. “You don’t deny it,” she blankly noted. It had been easier to imagine a caricature of a rake than one who had lovers… like Lady Daphne.
“You’ve already figured it all out, Chloe.” He turned his face away, but not before she caught the glimmer of some emotion, stark and indistinguishable, in his blue eyes. “Why should I bother you with any of the other predictable details?”
“Is she the innocent you seduced?” Whom did Chloe seek to torture with this questioning? Him? Or herself?
All the color bled from Leo’s cheeks, leaving him a sickly shade of white. And that was when she knew that it wasn’t a rake’s seduction that had left an indelible memory upon him and the Winterbournes. “You care for her.” Chloe worked her gaze searchingly over his face.
“I don’t care for her.” He paused, that beat of silence meaningful and significant. “I did.”
All the air went out of Chloe, exhaled as a breathless, “Oh.” His revelation knocked into her chest and pinned her to her seat. “She is… the one.” The one innocent he’d confessed to having debauched. Only, he’d cared about her… which was not altogether the same thing.
“I was young,” he murmured. “A pup just beginning to sow my oats, and she was recent to London.”
He went silent.
“That is all you intend to say?”
“There’s nothing else to say. It was a long time ago, Chloe. Let us leave it at that.”
She would not. She could not. The carriage hit another uneven cobble, knocking her against the wall. Chloe planted her feet and steadied herself. “If you cared about her, why did you not wed her?” she persisted.
Her husband raked a hand through his hair, tousling those curls into an endearing golden disarray. “We came from different circumstances, but our interests were the same. She enjoyed literature, and I’d recite poetry.” He grimaced. “I was young.”
The pair had shared a love of literary works, which was a bond greater than mere lust and physical passion. A little niggling of discomfort worked around her breast. “What happened?”
His mouth hardened. “I was unable to marry. My… family did not approve.” Did she imagine the slight hesitation there? The tensing of his mouth, the muscle that jumped by his eye? “They made it clear that it would not be in the lady’s best interests if we wed. Hers would not be a comfortable life.” Ahh, so that had been the reason. They had been young lovers separated by the expectations placed upon a young heir.
It was another glimpse he’d offered up about his family, and she despised the lot. She’d wager that the man he’d become would have flipped a finger and his nose to any of those dictates on whom he should or should not wed. As a young man? Well, Chloe knew enough from her own experience what one would do in the name of self-preservation. She reflexively reached for his hand and then forced her palm back to her lap. “And so, you set her free.”
Leo stared through her. “All our meetings were clandestine, a secret that I had to keep from her. I was warned that she would pay the price of our relationship… I had to end it. She was innocent, tenderhearted, clever—stolen meetings were far less than she deserved.”
That intimate recounting of the character of his first—and no doubt only—love left a mark upon Chloe’s heart. “Wh-what did you do?” she asked, a pressure weighting her chest as she imagined a young Leo and Lady Daphne stealing away, young lovers with stars in their eyes and happiness in their hearts.
Leo blinked and looked to Chloe as if he’d forgotten her presence. A spasm contorted his face, a rippling of grief so stark that it sent her pulse skittering. “I asked her to meet me in our host’s library with the intention of severing our connection,” he whispered. “I took her in my arms, telling myself I sought a final embrace. But I was young and lacked the restraint I do now. Everything happened so quickly.”
Oh, God. She silently begged for him to withhold the details of him making love to another. It was even worse so because this was a woman he’d loved. One who clearly mattered to him still. “You do not have to tell me anything more,” she said quietly, selfish and cowardly in that request.
“And deny you the true depth of my ugliness?” A coarse laugh shook his frame. “Do you know what I did?” He didn’t pause a beat for an answer. “I took her against the wall like a whore.”
He hoped to shock her with his crudeness, and yet… “Lord Ackerland’s libraries,” she murmured as understanding set in.
He gave a curt nod.
Of course. That was why he recalled the precise room where he’d taken a woman’s innocence… because the act had been significant to him.
Leo sucked in an uneven breath. “And then in the cruelest of ways, I assured afterward there would never be any warmth or forgiveness left when I walked out of her life.”
Her heart sped up, and she braced for whatever horribleness that had unfolded that accounted for resentment all these years later. “What did you do?” she whispered.
His face hardened, and he stared directly at Chloe. “After we made love,” he said as her heart spasmed, “I told her that I’d never rutted with a cripple. I laughed at her.”
A gasp burst from Chloe’s lips.
He grinned. That empty, macabre rendition of mirth left a coldness in the carriage as he turned his stare out the window.
He’d painted an image so clear of that long-ago day between him and a woman he’d loved. There could be no doubting, by the pain that seeped through the weak veneer of cynicism, that he regretted that day, that he was haunted by it, still.
Chloe sank back in her seat. “You were trying to protect her.”
Leo whipped his head back. “Don’t do that,” he rasped.
“And you hurt yourself as much as you hurt that young woman,” she continued.
He surged forward, gripping her by the shoulders. “What manner of woman are you that you’d make excuses for that?” he asked hoarsely, giving her a slight shake. “For who I was? For what I did?” His voice rose, echoing around the carriage.
She winced.
His body recoiling, Leo released her. He flexed his fingers. “What will it take to make you see I’m a man who doesn’t care about anyone’s well-being or happiness other than my own?”
Chloe gathered his hands in hers and squeezed. “A man that was truly soulless wouldn’t remember the lady all these years later. And he certainly wouldn’t feel guilt for what he did… and said, Leo.”
They continued the remainder of the way home in silence, and through it, Chloe sat contemplating her husband and all he’d revealed.
It was as she’d once said to him… Not all men were born evil, but rather shaped by life. Now, how to make her husband see that and help him return to the carefree young man he’d been long ago?