But he couldn’t look into her eyes and lie.
“Yes.” The word was choked. He battered back memories of month after month chained to rotting corpses. Through the humid airless heat of an Indian summer. Through the savage cold of winter. The unrelenting stink, the decay of once-healthy flesh.
Horror dawned in her expression. And a compassion that stabbed at his pride.
Because he couldn’t bear her to imagine even a hundredth of what he’d been through, he spoke quickly. “It was almost a relief when the Nawab exhibited me for general mockery. He loved having a captive sahib who stank like carrion and could hardly cover his nakedness. I was quite the highlight of his divans until the stench got so bad, even he couldn’t stomach it.”
“How did you escape?” she asked huskily.
“British troops ousted the Nawab. Akash entered Rangapindhi with the invading forces. He knew if I was alive, I must be in the palace. He found me in the lowest depths of the Nawab’s prisons.”
“Thank God for Akash,” she whispered, closing her eyes briefly as if the words were a prayer.
“I was burning up with fever, barely able to walk, half-mad.” More than half-mad. He’d spent a long time convinced his rescue was another sick fantasy.
Charis’s brow creased in a thoughtful frown. Her voice was stronger, although still thick with emotion. “Your health has improved since.”
“I can walk and talk without humiliating myself. Most of the time. Quite an achievement.” He bit back the sarcastic edge. It wasn’t her fault he was a wreck.
He crossed to stoke the fire again. The flaring flames revealed her somber, troubled expression. Unfamiliar shadows swam in her unblinking gaze. Shadows he’d put there. He cursed himself for a selfish swine. He should have found a room, slept off the drink, left her to innocent dreams.
Except he couldn’t bear staying away from her.
“Charis, I’ve had months to recover.” She was better facing the bleak truth than nurturing the smallest hope that he’d ever offer her a whole body and mind. “My physical health is as good as it will get. Nothing has shifted the devils in my mind. Nothing will.”
She swallowed again. He expected a protest, but she spoke with perfect calm. “You believe you’ll never touch another person?”
“Not without difficulty.”
Her expression was unyielding. “Then how can you hope to consummate our marriage?”
He tensed. The attack was unexpected. He dredged his response from the deepest part of him. “I must. I will. I can.”
Something in his face must have alerted her to the shame roiling in his gut. “Gideon, what is it?”
He swung away although she didn’t approach him. Confound it, why didn’t he hold his ground? He acted like he’d done something wrong. “Nothing.”
Her voice was sharp. “Where were you tonight?”
Why did she have to be so damned acute? “I told you. Drinking. I got into an altercation with a couple of ruffians. They came out the worst, I’m pleased to say.”
Then she did step closer, her skirts rustling. Christ, don’t let her touch him. Not now. After telling her about Rangapindhi, he felt like he’d scraped off several layers of skin.
She exhaled in a long, impatient breath. “There’s more.”
Oh, she was damned right about that.
His guilt surged. Fought with the absurd urge to confess, to receive absolution. When he knew there was no real absolution for him ever, for this sin or his other, more heinous transgressions.
She waited for his answer. Strange how he’d withstood agonizing interrogations in Rangapindhi without cracking, but his wife’s bristling silence made him frantic to spill his secrets.
Oh, hell, why shouldn’t she know what he’d done tonight? Perhaps it was best she recognized what a craven she’d married. He’d tried to tell her so often, but she refused to heed him, devil take her foolish stubbornness.
He drew himself up to his full height, turned, and surveyed her down his long nose. “I paid for a tart,” he said harshly.
As her expression darkened with hurt, his gut clenched in unwelcome remorse. She came to a trembling halt a few feet away. “What…what did you do with her?” she asked shakily.
Abruptly Gideon’s guilty defiance evaporated. He felt utterly sickened. With himself. With the world. With every bloody thing in Creation.