Devil in My Arms by Samantha Kane

succeeded.”
    He had so many questions that he had to take a moment to sort them out by priority. He finally settled on, “Deprivations?”
    “Yes,” she said, looking up at him. She didn’t move away and he didn’t remove his hands from her arms. “His favorite form of punishment.”
    “Eleanor,” he said, crushing his anger before it could overwhelm him. He’d indulge that later. “How many times did you try to run away?” he asked, moving on to his next question.
    “Three times,” she answered. “The first time I had no plan, nowhere to go, just a desire to get away. It wasn’t enough. I was gone barely three hours before I was found and dragged back.”
    “The second time?” he asked.
    “I ran to Harry’s,” she said. “Or, more correctly, to Mercer’s. He sent me back. Never even let me see Harry or the baby. Harry says she didn’t know I was ever there.”
    “So close,” he murmured.
    “Yes.” She didn’t sound the least perturbed by their conversation. He supposed she’d had years to be angry. “And the third … well, this is the third. Success.” She smiled, but there was more pain behind it than joy.
    Hil wrapped his arms around her and held her as he had last night, when she had melted into him. He understood her reaction now. Had any man ever held her thus? He wished there had been hundreds, thousands before him who had, rather than none. He wished she’d known nothing but care and passion instead of pain and hate. Because it was hate. No man treats a woman like that if there is love between them. “Why?” he asked.
    “Why?” Eleanor sounded confused as she stood in his embrace, her arms still wrapped around herself. She was accepting his warmth, but still closing him out. He didn’t want that. But he had to proceed as she wished.
    “Why did he hate you?”
    She laughed and laid her head against his shoulder. He felt as if he’d won a great prize. “Because he is a stupid, graceless baboon, that’s why. He knew I was smarter thanhe was. That I was born above him and raised a lady, and he didn’t deserve me. And it ate at him. He hated to hear me speak, because my speech reminded him of his lowly origins. He hated my conversation, because he couldn’t converse on intelligent subjects. He hated the very sight of me when …” She paused and he waited. “When it was discovered that I was barren. The only reason he married me, you see, was to have children that would be considered gentry. My father sold me to him so he could enter society, and create a dynasty or some such rot. He was a bastard.”
    “Yes. Yes, he was.” Hil really didn’t know what else to say on the subject. He didn’t tell her that eventually, sometime in the future when he wouldn’t be expecting it, and couldn’t tie it to Eleanor, Hil would ruin him. He had men watching Enderby, just as he had them watching Eleanor, and soon he’d have enough information to do it. He did have Prinny’s ear, after all. What was one more favor owed?
    “What if he discovers I’m alive?” she whispered. Hil held her tighter. “We don’t know whose body he produced at the inquest, or how he came by it. Now he has remarried and rumor says a child is on the way. If he finds me, I am all that stands between him and his new life. I hate to put Harry and Roger and the children in the middle of this, but I have nowhere else to go. The authorities already believe me dead. What is there to stop him from making that lie a reality?”
    “Me.” He rubbed her arms. She seemed to like that last night. She snuggled closer and uncrossed her arms, resting her palms on his chest. Progress. But he wasn’t going to take advantage, not this morning. Not ever. It was obvious she was skittish of men and intimacy. Who could blame her? She needed time to adjust to the idea. So he would give her time. “He can’t get to you, Eleanor,” he said softly. “I won’t let him. I am not without connections. Even if he tried to get