The Unthinkable Read online

  Was allowing Genie to marry Hawk the way to atone for his mistakes? And could he let her go… again?

  He heard a sharp intake of breath and followed the direction of Fanny’s gaze. Like two players on an intimate stage, Hawk and Genie stepped out of the shadows and into a small circle of light.

  Neither he nor Fanny moved. With painstaking slowness, the farce unfolded before the captive audience of two. Although Huntingdon couldn’t hear what they discussed, both seemed upset. Genie appeared to be pleading with Hawk. Consoling her, Hawk pulled her under his arm and gently kissed the top of her head.

  Huntingdon’s heart pounded, knowing what was going to happen next, but trying to stave it off by sheer force of will. His fingers gripped the unyielding stone until his knuckles turned white. Incapable of speech, his lungs constricted as he held his breath.

  Hawk led Genie farther into the shadows. But not far enough. Silhouetted against the moonlight, Hawk pulled her into his arms, tipped her chin and kissed her. Not with mindless passion, but with infinite tenderness.

  Tenderness that seized Huntingdon’s chest in a vise.

  The kiss lasted only for a minute, but it was long enough to alter his good intentions. His reaction was swift and unequivocal. He knew exactly what he had to do. For Fanny.

  No, he admitted, for himself.

  His attempts to put the past behind him were finished. The past was not over. He knew it with every inch of his body, a body that now shook with a primal rage. He would not stand aside and let her go without a fight. And maybe not even then. He would do whatever it took to win her.

  Even if she hated him for it at first. He told himself in the end it would be all right.

  With a soft cry of utter despair, Fanny turned and ran.

  Before Huntingdon chased after his sister, he stole one last look at Genie. Fanny’s cry must have carried across the still night air, because both Genie and Hawk had turned their surprised faces up toward the balcony. But it was only Genie who interested him. Their eyes met and held. His uncompromising stare burned into hers, promising one thing and one thing only: The Duke of Huntingdon, a man now revered for his trustworthiness, was about to break another promise to her.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Biscuit?” the Countess of Hawkesbury offered, breaking the uncomfortable silence. She held the silver platter piled high with the mouthwatering morsels directly under Genie’s nose. So tantalizingly close, Genie could almost taste the rich creaminess of the butter and the deep caramel of the warm sugar.

  There was a time when Genie would have been unable to refuse. A time when she had delighted in food, especially in sugary cakes and pastries. No longer. Genie’s body was a finely honed weapon of war with no room for indulgences.

  “No, thank you,” she answered, though her stomach rumbled with hunger. Hunger she’d learned to control ever since she’d known what it meant to truly be hungry. So hungry that you’d be willing to do anything for something to eat…

  Still feverish, it had taken Genie some time to fully comprehend their meaning.

  “Poor dear, you mean she has nothing?” A feeble high-pitched voice stirred her from a deep slumber.

  “Nothing. The villainous maid took every last halfpenny, fleeing the ship as soon as we docked.”

  A man’s voice, Genie realized. A voice of authority. The captain. That’s right, they’d landed in Boston Harbor a few days ago. Why was she still on the ship? What had he said? Then she remembered. Her fortune. Her future. Gone.

  Cold fear gripped her heart. She wanted to go home. She wanted her mother. What would she do? How would she survive when she couldn’t even lift her head from the lumpy pillow?

  “And to lose her child when she has just lost a husband, what a tragedy! Of course we must help her. She’ll come home with us.” Another high-pitched voice. Similar, but distinct from the first.

  Two ladies. Sisters. Sisters who occasionally helped the ship’s doctor with nursing his patients while in port. The kind, elderly spinsters had taken pity on a poor soldier’s widow and brought Genie into their humble one-room home in a boarding house to recuperate. They’d tended her, cared for her, fed her, brought her back from death’s door with their gentle ministrations. Without them Genie would have surely died.

  Just as day by day she had been surely killing them.

  Genie had to save them from their own kindness. Kindness that would have left them all starving. For each morsel of food that they put in her stomach was taken directly from their own mouths. The nursing, supplemented by the extra sewing and embroidery work that the sisters took on, was barely enough to support two. Three mouths stretched the meager income to a mere pittance.

  Pride again had been Genie’s downfall. She should have accepted their assistance while she got back on her feet. But she hated feeling helpless. Hated the knowledge that she was repaying their kindness with suffering. Surely, an educated woman of good breeding would have no problem finding employment as a governess?

  And she hadn’t. Especially, as her face and emaciated form, ravaged by sickness, did not provoke undue attention. So she moved from the boarding house to a comfortable private home in Harvard Square.

  In the beginning, Genie had truly loved her work, welcomed the anonymity of her position and the obscurity of her destroyed beauty. Adored instructing her young charges. Lavishing the love and devotion on the two girls that she would have on her own child. Burying her memories in hard, honest work. Thoughts of home grew more distant. More filled with fear and shame. Should she write them? Would her family even want her? Questions that were irrelevant as she was still far too sick to travel on such a long, arduous journey.

  As the months passed, her health returned. As did her voluptuous, flaxen beauty. The beauty that had at one time seemed such a blessing now became the source of her downfall. No longer could she take refuge in obscurity. Along with the bloom in her cheeks and extra flesh on her limbs, returned unwelcome attention from men. Attention that forced her to seek new employment again and again. Attention that quickly depleted her small savings.

  Fending off unwelcome advances from her employers began a vicious cycle of hiring and discharge, with each new post a substantial step down the social ladder of respectability. Taking her farther and farther from her dreams of returning home.

  Thinking to appear sickly, Genie starved herself. But it didn’t work. Nothing worked. They kept coming after her…

  She’d been utterly powerless. Genie had never understood precisely what it meant to be a woman in a man’s world until she found herself alone in a strange country, without funds, and with no family or connections to protect her from the lasciviousness of men. Vile, base creatures who saw an unprotected woman alone in the world as nothing more than easy prey.

  What choice did Genie have when there was none? Find work or starve. It was as simple as that. Strength of character did not put food in your belly. Moral righteousness did not prevent men from taking what they wanted. A slimy kiss here, a lewd grope there. They cornered her, used their physical strength to overpower her objections. She hated them. But most of all she hated him for putting her in this position.

  Hatred had enabled her survival. Dreams of revenge had fueled her will to live.

  Genie had learned by living the alternative that money and position were the only power that mattered. Everything else was illusory. As fleeting as innocence.

  She’d vowed never to be without choices again. She controlled her own destiny. Money, land, position—those were the only things that mattered. Those that called such goals mercenary had never experienced the desperation of hunger and poverty.

  “You know, dearest,” the countess broke into the memory. “I’ve never asked you about your past.”

  There it was, Genie thought. Her worst fears voiced. Buying time to think of an appropriate response, Genie lifted the teacup to her lips and sipped. The hot liquid scorched a long path down her chest, plummeting like a burning river into the sn