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But it was his face, showing that refinement of feature and an expression of aloof disdain, surely brought about only by generations of fine breeding, which held her mesmerised. He had a high intelligent brow with perfectly arched eyebrows over piercingly cold silver-grey eyes. His nose was long and aquiline between high cheekbones, and he’d sculptured unsmiling lips above an arrogantly determined jaw.
He was an intimidating and grimly intense gentleman, with a haughty aloofness that spoke of an innate, even arrogant, confidence. Whereas she...
Her lips felt suddenly numb, and the bedroom began to sway and dip in front of her eyes.
‘You must stay awake!’ The Duke rose sharply to his feet so that he could take a firm grip of her shoulders, his hold easing slightly only as she gave a low groan of pain. ‘I apologise if I caused you discomfort.’ He frowned darkly. ‘But I really cannot allow you to fall asleep again until I am sure you are in your right mind. So far I have resisted calling the doctor but I fear that may have been unwise.’
‘No!’ she protested sharply. ‘Do not call anyone! Please do not,’ she protested brokenly, her fingers now clinging to the sleeves of his jacket as she looked up at him pleadingly.
Griffin frowned his displeasure, not in the least reassured by her responses so far. She seemed incapable of answering the simplest of questions and had now become almost hysterical at his having mentioned sending for the doctor. Had last night’s bump to the head caused some sort of trauma to the mind? Or had her mind been affected before?
Griffin knew the English asylums for housing those pitiful creatures were basic at best, and bestial at worst, and tended to attract as warders those members of society least suited to the care of those who were most vulnerable. Admittedly, some of the insane could be violent themselves, but Griffin sincerely doubted that was true in the case of this young woman. She was surely too tiny and slender to be of much danger to others? Unless her jailers had feared self-harm, of course.
Distasteful as that thought might be, Griffin could not deny that it was one explanation for both the bruises on her body, and those marks of restraint.
Except, to his certain knowledge, there was no asylum for the mentally insane situated within fifty miles of Stonehurst Park.
‘At least tell me your name,’ he said again, more gently this time, for fear of alarming her further.
‘I cannot.’ The tears now flooded and overflowed, running unchecked down her cheeks and dampening her hair.
Griffin frowned his frustration, with both her tears and her answer.
He was well aware that women cried for many reasons. With pain. In fear. Emotional distress. And to divert and mislead.
And in this instance, it could be being used as a way of not answering his questions at all!
But perhaps he was being unfair and she was just too frightened to answer him truthfully? Fearful of being returned to the place where she had been so cruelly treated?
It would be wrong of him to judge until he knew all the circumstances.
‘Are you at least able to tell me why you were running through the Shrawley Woods in the dead of night wearing only your nightclothes?’ he urged softly. He was not averse to using his height and size to intimidate a man, but knew only too well how easily those two things together could frighten a vulnerable woman.
‘No!’ Her eyes had widened in alarm, as if she had no previous knowledge of having run through the woods.
Griffin placed a gentle finger against one of her bandaged wrists. ‘Or how you received these injuries?’
She looked blankly down at those bandages. ‘I— No,’ she repeated emotionally.
Griffin’s frustration heightened as he rose restlessly to his feet before crossing the room to where the early morning sun shone brightly through the windows of the bedchamber, the curtains having remained undrawn the night before.
The room faced towards the back of the house, and outside he could see the stirrings of the morning: maids returning to the house with pails of milk, grooms busy in the stables, feeding and exercising the horses, several estate workers already tending to the crops in the far fields.
All normal morning occupations for the efficient running of the estate.
While inside the house all was far from normal.
There was an unknown and abused young woman lying in the bed in Griffin’s guest bedchamber, and he knew that his own mood was surly after the long days of travel, and the upset of the collision followed by lack of sleep as he’d sat at her bedside.
Griffin was a man of action.
If something needed to be done, fixed, or solved, then he did, fixed or solved it, and beware anyone who stood in his way.
But he could not do, fix or solve this dilemma without this woman’s cooperation, and, despite all his efforts to the contrary, she was too fearful at present to dare to confide so much as her name to him.
He knew from personal experience that women often found him overwhelming.
He was certainly not a man that women ever turned to for comfort or understanding. He was too physically large, too overpowering in his demeanour, for any woman to seek him out as their confidant.
No, for their comfort, for those softer emotions such as understanding and empathy, a woman of delicacy looked for a poet, not a warrior.
His wife, although dead these past six years, had been such a woman. Even after weeks of courtship and their betrothal, and despite all Griffin’s efforts to reassure her, his stature and size had continued to alarm Felicity. It had been a fear Griffin had been sure he could allay once they were married. He had been wrong.
‘I am not—I do not—I am not being deliberately disobliging or difficult, sir,’ she said pleadingly. ‘The simple truth is that I cannot tell you my name because—because I do not know it!’
A scowl appeared between Griffin’s eyes as he turned sharply round to look across at his unexpected guest, not sure that he had understood her correctly. ‘You do not know your own name, or you do not have one?’
Well, of course she must have a name!
Surely everyone had a name?
‘I have a name, I am sure, sir.’ She spoke huskily. ‘It is only—for the moment I am unable to recall it.’
And the shock of realising she did not know her own name, who she was, or how she had come to be here, or the reason for those bandages upon her wrists—indeed, anything that had happened to her before she woke up in this bed a few short minutes ago, to see this aloof and imposing stranger seated beside her—filled her with a cold and terrifying fear.
Chapter Two (#u6dc3a30a-29a3-5b98-9167-147d94a8b035)
The Duke remained still and unmoving as he stood in front of the window, imposing despite having fallen silent after her announcement, those chilling grey eyes now studying her through narrowed lids.
As if he was unsure as to whether or not he should believe her.
And why should he, when it was clear he had no idea as to her identity either, let alone what she had been doing in his woods?
What possible reason could she have had for doing something so shocking? What sort of woman behaved so scandalously?
The possible answer to that seemed all too obvious.
To both her and the Duke?
‘You do not believe me.’ She made a flat statement of fact rather than asked a question.
‘It is certainly not the answer I might have expected,’ he finally answered slowly.
‘What did you expect?’ She struggled to sit up higher against the pillows, once again aware that she had aches and pains over all of her body, rather than just her bandaged wrists. Indeed, she felt as if she had been trampled by several horses and run over by a carriage.
What had Griffin expected? That was a difficult question for him to answer. He had completely ruled out the possibility that she’d sustained her injuries from mutual bed sport; they were too numerous for her ever to have enjoyed or found sexual stimulation from such treatment. Nor did he particularly wish to learn that his suspicions of insanity were true. And the possibility that this young lady might have been restrained against her will, possibly by her own family, was just as abhorrent to him.
But he had never considered for a moment that she would claim to have no memory of her own name, let alone be unable to tell him where or from whom she had received her injuries.
‘You do not recall any of the events of last night?’
‘What I was doing in the woods? How I came to be here?’ She frowned. ‘No.’
‘The latter I can at least answer.’ Griffin strode forcefully across the room until he once again stood at her bedside looking down at her. ‘Unfortunately, when you ran so suddenly in front of my carriage, I was unable to avoid a collision. You sustained a bump upon your head and were rendered unconscious,’ he acknowledged reluctantly. ‘As there are no houses in the immediate area, and no one else was about, I had no choice but to bring you directly here to my own home.’
Then she really had been trampled by horses and run over by a carriage.
‘As my actions last night gave every appearance of my having known who I was before I sustained a bump on the head from the collision with your carriage, is it not logical to assume that it was that collision that is now responsible for my loss of memory?’ She eyed him hopefully.
It was logical, Griffin acknowledged grudgingly, at the same time as he appreciated her powers of deduction in the face of what must be a very frightening experience for her. He could imagine nothing worse than awakening in a strange bedchamber with no clue to his identity.
Nor did he believe that sort of logic was something a mentally unbalanced woman would be capable of.
If indeed this young woman was being truthful about her memory loss, which Griffin was still not totally convinced about.
The previous night she had been fleeing as if for her very life, would it not be just as logicalfor her to now pretend to have lost her memory, as a way of avoiding the explanations he now asked for? She might fear he’d return her to her abusers.
‘Perhaps,’ he allowed coolly. ‘But that does not explain what you were doing in the woods in your nightclothes.’
‘Perhaps I was sleepwalking?’
‘You were running, not walking,’ Griffin countered dryly. ‘And you were bare of foot.’
The smoothness of her brow once again creased into a frown. ‘Would that explanation not fit in with my having been walking in my sleep?’
It would, certainly.
If she had not been running as if the devil were at her heels.
If it were not for those horrendous bruises on her body.
And if she did not bear those marks of restraint upon her wrists and ankles.
Bruises and marks of restraint that were going to make it difficult for Griffin to make enquiries about this young woman locally, without alerting the perpetrators of that abuse as to her whereabouts. Something Griffin was definitely reluctant to do until he knew more of the circumstances of her imprisonment and the reason for the abuse. Although there could surely be no excuse for the latter, whatever those circumstances?
He straightened to his fullness of height. ‘Perhaps for now we should decide upon a name we may call you by until such time as your memory returns to you?’
‘And if it does not return to me?’ There was an expression of pained bewilderment in her eyes as she looked up at him.
If her loss of memory was genuine, then the collision with his carriage was not necessarily the cause of it. Griffin had seen many soldiers after battle, mortally wounded and in pain, who had retreated to a safe place inside themselves in order to avoid any more suffering. Admittedly this young woman had not been injured in battle, nor was she mortally injured, but it was nevertheless entirely possible that the things that had been done to her were so horrendous, her mind simply refused to condone or remember them.
Griffin did not pretend to understand the workings of the human mind or emotions, but he could accept that blocking out the memory of who she even was would be one way for this young woman to deal with such painful memories.
For the moment he was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
For the moment.
‘Bella.’
She blinked her confusion. ‘Sorry?’
‘Your new name,’ Griffin said. ‘It means beautiful in Italian.’
‘I know what it means.’ She did know what it meant!
Could that possibly mean that she was of Italian descent? The hair flowing down her shoulders and over her breasts was certainly dark enough. But she did not speak English with any kind of accent that she could detect, and surely her skin was too pale for her to have originated from that sunny country?
And did the fact that the Duke had chosen that name for her mean that he thought her beautiful?
There was a blankness inside her head in answer to those first two questions, her queries seeming to slam up against a wall she could neither pass over nor through. As for the third question—
‘I speak French, German and Italian, but that does not make me any of those things.’ The Duke was obviously following her train of thought. ‘Besides, your first instinct was to speak English.’
‘You could be right, of course,’ she demurred, all the while wondering whether he did in fact find her beautiful.
What would it be like to be the recipient of the admiration of such a magnificently handsome gentleman as Griffin Stone? Or his affections. His love...
Was it possible she had ever seen such a handsome gentleman as him before today? A gentleman who was so magnificently tall, with shoulders so wide, a chest so muscled, and those lean hips and long and elegant legs? A man whose bearing must command attention wherever he might be?
He was without a doubt a gentleman whom others would know to beware of. A powerful gentleman in stature and standing. A man under whose protection she need never again know fear.
Fear of what?
For a very brief moment she had felt as if she were on the verge of something. Some knowledge. Some insight into why she had been running through the woods last night.
And now it was gone.
Slipped from her grasp.
She frowned her consternation as she slowly answered the Duke’s observation. ‘Or maybe because you spoke to me in English I replied in kind?’
This woman might not be able to answer any of Griffin’s questions but he had nevertheless learnt several things about her as the two of them had talked together.
Her voice had remained soft and refined during their conversation.
She was also clearly educated and intelligent.
And, for the moment, despite whatever experiences had reduced her to her present state, she appeared completely undaunted by either his size or his title.
Of course that could be because for now she had much more personal and pressing things to worry about, such as who she was and where she had come from!
Nevertheless, the frankness of her manner and speech towards him was a refreshing change, after so many years of the deference shown to him by other gentlemen of the ton, and the prattling awe of the ladies.
Or the total abhorrence shown to him by his own wife.
He had been but five and twenty when he and Felicity had married. He’d already inherited the title of Duke from his father. Felicity had been seven years younger than himself, and the daughter of an earl. Blonde and petite, she had been as beautiful as an angel, and she had also possessed the other necessary attributes for becoming his duchess: youth, good breeding and refinement.
Felicity might have looked and behaved like an angel but their marriage had surely been made in hell itself.
