Suzanne gripped her hand, hard. When Kendra met her gaze, she realized that Suzanne had her own bitter experiences of male violence toward women.

That knowledge encouraged Kendra to reveal more. “Denshire’s bullying and occasional brutality was why I spent most of my time in the country with Christopher. I reached my breaking point several months ago when Denshire came to the estate to demand money.”

“What happened then?” Suzanne asked, her green eyes steady and understanding.

“When I told him I would never give him money again, he attacked me in a drunken rage. This time I fought back and he knocked me into the fireplace. My left leg slammed into the hot grate and at first I was too numbed to escape,” Kendra said in a rush of painful words. “So he left me there to burn.”

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 7

Kendra’s words produced shocked silence until Suzanne exclaimed, “Dear God, how ghastly! Your clothing caught on fire?”

“I screamed and rolled onto the carpet and used my shawl to smother the flames. Luckily my hands weren’t badly burned.” The iron bars of the grate had branded a pattern on her lower leg and the pain had been excruciating. “I vaguely remember Denshire babbling that he hadn’t meant to hurt me before he bolted back to London.”

“He didn’t even wait to see how seriously you were injured?” Lucas said incredulously.

“He doesn’t like unpleasantness, even when he’s the one who created it,” Kendra said dryly. She bent and raised her hem to her knees. The viciously red parallel scars on her left calf were visible even through her silk stockings. She supposed they’d lighten with time, but they’d always be with her.

Her companions stared at the scars, shocked. Kendra dropped the hem of her skirt and straightened up. “This isn’t necessarily proof that my husband assaulted me. I could have just been clumsy and stumbled into the fireplace all on my own.”

“What about the servants?” Lucas asked. “Was a doctor called?”

“My maid heard the commotion and found me collapsed on the floor, but she didn’t actually see what happened. A doctor was called and he bandaged the burns and gave me strong doses of laudanum for the pain. When I recovered my wits several days later, I found that Denshire had taken Christopher with him.”

There was another frozen silence before Suzanne whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

The pain of losing Christopher had been even worse than the physical agony Kendra had suffered. Doing her best to keep her voice steady, she said, “I decided to seek a legal separation. Denshire and I hadn’t been husband and wife for years, and since Christopher was young, it was reasonable to leave him in my care until he was old enough to go to school. So I traveled to London to speak to Denshire.