Bound By Temptation by Lavinia Kent Page A

seventeen,” he repeated the words. This time he opened his eyes and stared up at the elaborate frieze on the ceiling. It was better than seeing his mother’s beautiful face laughing in the candlelight as she left that final night. He hated that he’d loved her despite everything.
    Clara answered softly. “You were much too young—not that there is ever a right age.”
    “What has Violet told you of their deaths?”
    “Only that she was not there. She spent the night with a friend and returned the next day to find the maids draping the house in black.”
    “Isabella was still little more than three or four. I don’t believe she even remembers their deaths or them.”
    “How did they die? Violet has never said.”
    “They were shot.” He waited for her to ask questions. She stayed silent. He lowered his head and looked at her.
    She stared straight at him. Her eyes were honey now, soft and glowing, but filled with sadness. Still she did not speak.
    “They were returning from a ball. It was one of those things that never happen. Men with guns stopped the carriage. The driver and the grooms could do nothing to prevent the attack. The driver survived, injured. The groom did not. That is all that is known.” He closed his eyes again.
    He felt a gentle pressure on his knee, felt her delicate fingers grip him. He didn’t know if she sought reassurance or offered it.
    “My life changed in a minute. One moment I was thinking of university and of mischief with my friends and the next I was alone and didn’t know how to proceed.”
    “When Michael, Lord Westington died, the feeling was the same.” Her voice was halting. “I remember being angry that he was late returning from his ride. He’d wanted me to go with him and I was sure it was a petty revenge.”
    “But you were not left penniless with two sisters to raise, one still in the nursery. I do not mean to sound irreverent, but I do not see that you can know what I faced.”
    “No, Robert was almost eighteen and had already learned much of what he needed to knowabout running the estates. I still felt so alone. I knew Robert had just lost his father, but all I could feel was my own pain, that a piece of me had been lost.”
    “It was the same with Violet. I knew she grieved, but I was too preoccupied with my own mourning—my own mourning and the creditors. They scarcely gave me a day before they appeared in droves.” He could not believe he was discussing this with her. One never discussed such things—not even with family—and Lady Westington was certainly not family.
    “Perhaps that is what you never allowed Violet to understand—your need to deal with your own pain before you could see hers. Perhaps I am lucky that Robert and I never had such problems.”
    He dropped his glance to the small hand that still gripped his knee. He wondered if she had forgotten it. Her thumb moved rhythmically across the thick velvet of his robe, sending small tingles up his leg.
    Ignoring the desires her touch woke, he answered. “I am not sure that Violet and I did either until the matter of her marriage arose.”
    Her finger gripped him once tight and then relaxed. He placed his own hand over hers. The unfamiliar intimacy felt both awkward and comforting.
    “Ah, yes, her marriage. When you forced her to marry a man in his seventies.”
    He started to defend himself, and stopped. He was telling her far more than he had ever intended. This whole matter was none of her business. The thought shook him and almost had him pushing her hand away. He was not about to share the closest-held details of his life with a near stranger, no matter how she drew him in. She hadn’t even given him permission to use her Christian name despite the increased intimacy between them.
    He brushed her hand off, then he swung his feet off the ottoman. He rose hurriedly and turned from her, afraid that his face said too much.
    “I cannot do this.”
     
    “I didn’t suppose you could.” Clara