Time to Heal Read online

  For a time after the attack her mother and father had left her alone. Emmeline heard rumors through the servants that they still hoped they might find a match for her. Perhaps a foreign Duke or Count—an older man who would not care that he was not the first with a pretty young girl of great fortune and an excellent family name.

  But now her courses had stopped and Emmeline stood shaking before her mother—completely uncertain as to her future.

  “Why did you not tell me you had stopped bleeding?” her mother demanded. “And Lydia says you’re sick every morning like clockwork, the moment you wake up.”

  “I…I didn’t know I was supposed to tell you,” Emmeline faltered. “I do not even know what it means, mother, though I do feel strange inside.”

  “Of course you feel strange,” her mother snapped. “You are with child! A child which might have been a future Earl but now is nothing but a bastard who will besmirch our family name!”

  “With…with child?” Emmeline’s voice broke on the last word. “You mean I’m expecting? But…but how?”

  Despite the servants’ whispers, she had not dreamed that this could happen to her and she had no idea of what might have caused it. A sudden dawning realization came to her, along with a growing sense of horror.

  “Is this to do with…with what Jack did to me?” she asked, the words sticking in her throat.

  “Do not pretend ignorance with me, missy!” her mother exclaimed angrily. “You knew perfectly well what you were risking when you spread your legs for Jack Torrington in the park that day!”

  “I…I never!” Emmeline gasped. “Mother, he forced me! I never asked for it—never invited it!”

  “So you say,” her mother sniffed, disbelief written plainly on her severe features. “But whether you gave what he took willingly or not, the result is the same—you are unwed and with child and now it is impossible to find you a husband.” She frowned. “Unless we take you to a wise woman I have heard of who is adept in the use of a knitting needle.”

  Instinctively, Emmeline covered her still-flat belly with both hands. She might not know much, but she understood by the look on her mother’s face what she was suggesting. Though the child inside her was the product of rape, she felt a great surge of protectiveness for it come over her.

  “No!” she cried. “No, I won’t let you hurt my baby, Mother—I won’t!”

  Her mother’s face snapped shut like a trap on a hapless mouse.

  “Very well—then you must go. I cannot have an unwed mother under my roof. The reputation of Hastings Hall would be ruined beyond repair—just like your reputation.”

  “Go?” Emmeline had asked, aghast. “But…where? I have no place to go, Mother.” For she knew none of her former friends would allow her to stay with them. Not a single one of them had come to call since the attack. They had cut Emmeline neatly out of their life, like snipping off a troublesome extra thread whilst doing needlepoint.

  Nor could she beg to live with Richard—his wife and her horrid mother hated Emmeline and would have nothing to do with her. She would never be allowed to stay there, even for a moment, once they found out her shameful condition.

  “I do not know and I do not care where you go,” her mother had snapped. “All this could have been avoided if only you’d married Jack Torrington. But as it is now, we will all of us be ruined if you stay. So get out, Emmeline, and do not come back.”

  She had called two burly footmen who had hustled Emmeline out the back door of Hastings—the servants’ door—and sent her on her way…

  * * *

  And it was through this very park and on this very path that I walked, Emmeline thought now, remembering again as she stepped over an especially big pile of slush. And it was here that the second attack nearly happened…

  * * *

  She had been shivering and crying and stumbling along the path. Night was falling and she had on a simple, short-sleeved afternoon dress suitable only for indoor-wear. She had been cast out of the house without even a shawl and she had no idea of where she was going.

  Suddenly, out of the growing darkness, a figure had appeared.

  “Now, now girlie,” a male voice said. “What’s to do, eh? Why all the tears? Are you lost? Can’t get home?”

  “I…I have no home. Not anymore,” Emmeline answered through her tears and then looked up at the man who was talking to her.

  To her instant discomfort, she saw that he was obviously not a gentleman. He was wearing ragged worker’s clothes which had been torn and not mended very well—a rough blue jerkin and trousers so grimy they might have been any color at all—it was impossible to tell.

  His face was scarcely less grimy and his eyes were squinty and little and mean. When he grinned at her, Emmeline saw that he was missing three teeth and the rest were gray.

  “Who are you?” she asked, taking a step back. “Leave me alone!”

  Unfortunately, she stumbled over an uneven spot on the path and nearly fell. The man’s dirty had shot out, quick as a snake striking, and gripped her by the wrist.

  “Now then, girlie,” he said, pulling her in to him until she could smell the rotten-teeth odor of his breath blowing across her face. “Is that any way to talk to a nice gentleman as was asking after your health?”

  “You are no gentleman,” Emmeline informed him breathlessly. “Let me go!”

  “In a minute, girlie.” He looked at her appraisingly. “Out all by yourself, are you? No blasted servants around to interfere.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Emmeline had exclaimed, but she was terribly afraid she did. It was the same sort of thing Jack Torrington had said before he attacked her. He had gotten her alone, in a secluded part of the park, and then grinned at her wolfishly as he pushed her down into the patch of brindle daisies he had claimed to want to pick.

  “All alone out here,” he’d said to her, giving her that smile which made her so very uneasy. “No blasted servants to bother us and no one else to interfere either.”

  Emmeline hadn’t known what he meant—or what he intended—but she knew this time. As the dirty man with the gray teeth dragged her off the path and towards a copse of trees on the edge of the park, she knew exactly what he wanted—and what he intended to do to her.

  In her head, she relived the first attack. The feeling of uncertainty and helplessness. The fear that it would be rude to stop Jack Torrington and demand an explanation of what exactly he was doing to her.

  A lady keeps her mouth shut unless asked a direct question, her mother’s voice had whispered in her ear. He is an Earl’s only son—you must remember his rank and be cognizant of the honor he does you in paying you any attention at all, Emmeline!

  As the man with gray teeth pushed her through the trees, Emmeline remembered it all. The way Jack had thrown her skirts over her head so she couldn’t see…the roughness of his thigh between hers, forcing her to part for him…and then the stabbing pain as he fumbled himself into her and drove inward, piercing her to the core, making her scream…making her bleed…

  And the worst thing was, she had let him. She had frozen in place, her mind a blank as it happened. She hadn’t voiced so much as a single word of protest as Jack Torrington did as he pleased—used her like a cheap handkerchief he intended to toss away as soon as he was done with it.

  Until it started to hurt, she hadn’t even begun to scream and beg him to stop. Screams that he ignored until he got exactly what he wanted and finished what he had set out to do.

  Why hadn’t she said anything? Emmeline wondered now. Why had she frozen in place? Why couldn’t she move? Why not protest before the deed was done? Why? Why? Why?

  She had no answers but suddenly the numbness which had fallen over her broke—shattered like glass in a high wind. As her would-be-attacker dragged her thought the trees, Emmeline suddenly found the will to fight back.

  No, was the thought in her brain. No, not again. Never again!

  She began to scre