Pandora paused, unwilling to relate any of the distasteful details of her ear suppurating and draining. She glanced cautiously at Gabriel, whose face was averted. He was no longer playing with her braid. His hand had clenched around it until the muscles of his forearms and wrist stood out.

“Even after I recovered from the fever,” Pandora said, “the hearing didn’t come back all the way. But the worst part was that I kept losing my balance, especially at night. It made me afraid of the dark. Ever since then—” She stopped as Gabriel lifted his head.

His face was hard and murderous, the hellfrost in his eyes frightening her more than her father’s fury ever had.

“That bloody son of a bitch,” he said softly. “If he were still alive, I’d beat him with a thresher’s flail.”

Pandora reached out with a fluttering motion, patting the air near him. “No,” she said breathlessly, “no, I wouldn’t want that. I hated him for a long time, but now I feel sorry for him.”

Gabriel caught her hand in midair, swift but gentle, as if it were a bird he wanted to hold without injuring. His eyes had dilated until she could see reflections of herself in the dark centers. “Why?” he whispered after a long moment.

“Because hurting me was the only way to hide his own pain.”

Chapter 12

Gabriel was stunned by Pandora’s compassion for a man who had caused her such harm. He shook his head in wonder as he stared into her eyes, as dark as cloud-shadow on a field of blue gentian. “That doesn’t excuse him,” he said thickly.

“No, but it helped me to forgive him.”

Gabriel would never forgive the bastard. He wanted vengeance. He wanted to strip the flesh from the bastard’s corpse and hang up his skeleton to scare crows. His fingers contained a subtle tremor as he reached out to trace the fine edges of her face, the sweet, high plane of her cheekbone. “What did the doctor say about your ear? What treatment did he give?”

“It wasn’t necessary to send for a doctor.”

A fresh flood of rage seared his veins as the words sunk in. “Your eardrum was ruptured. What in God’s name do you mean a doctor wasn’t necessary?” Although he had managed to keep from shouting, his tone was far from civilized.

Pandora quivered uneasily and began to inch backward.

He realized the last thing she needed from him was a display of temper. Battening down his rampaging emotions, he used one arm to bring her back against his side. “No, don’t pull away. Tell me what happened.”

“The fever had passed,” she said after a long hesitation, “and . . . well, you have to understand my family. If something unpleasant happened, they ignored it, and it was never spoken of again. Especially if it was something my father had done when he’d lost his temper. After a while, no one remembered what had really happened. Our family history was erased and rewritten a thousand times.

“But ignoring the problem with my ear didn’t make it disappear. Whenever I couldn’t hear something, or when I stumbled or fell, it made my mother very angry. She said I’d been clumsy because I was hasty or careless. She wouldn’t admit there was anything wrong with my hearing. She refused even to discuss it.” Pandora stopped, chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip. “I’m making her sound terrible, and she wasn’t. There were times when she was affectionate and kind. No one’s all one way or the other.” She flicked a glance of dread in his direction. “Oh God, you’re not going to pity me, are you?”

“No.” Gabriel was anguished for her sake, and outraged. It was all he could do to keep his voice calm. “Is that why you keep it a secret? You’re afraid of being pitied?”

“That, and . . . it’s a shame I’d rather keep private.”

“Not your shame. Your father’s.”

“It feels like mine. Had I not been eavesdropping, my father wouldn’t have disciplined me.”

“You were a child,” he said brusquely. “What he did wasn’t bloody discipline, it was brutality.”

To his surprise, a touch of unrepentant amusement curved Pandora’s lips, and she looked distinctly pleased with herself. “It didn’t even stop my eavesdropping. I just learned to be more clever about it.”

She was so endearing, so indomitable, that Gabriel was wrenched with a feeling he’d never known before, as if all the extremes of joy and despair had been compressed into some new emotion that threatened to crack the walls of his heart.

Pandora would never bend to anyone else’s will, she would never surrender . . . she would only break. He’d seen what the world did to spirited and ambitious women. She had to let him protect her. She had to take him as a husband, and he didn’t know how to convince her. The usual rules didn’t apply to someone who lived by her own logic.

Reaching for her, he gathered her close against his thumping heart. A thrill went through him as she relaxed automatically.

“Gabriel?”

“Yes?”

“How did you win that last hand of whist?”

“I counted cards,” he admitted.

“Is that cheating?”

“No, but it still wasn’t fair.” He stroked back the wayward strands of hair that crossed her forehead. “My only excuse is that I’ve wanted to be alone with you for days. I couldn’t leave it to chance.”

“Because you want to do the honorable thing,” Pandora said seriously.

His brows lifted as he looked askance at her.

“You want to save me and my family from scandal,” she explained. “Seducing me is the obvious shortcut.”