CHAPTER ONE
London, 1819
17 years later …
iall leaned forward in his chair, elbows resting upon his bent knees. His gaze never wavered from the slight figure he watched from his post like a sentinel, for fear he’d miss something, his eyes closing at the exact moment the tiny woman swimming beneath the bedclothes got it in her head to do something rash. In the years since Olivia had been brought back to Scotland in pieces, her mind a destroyed wasteland of horrid memories tinged by madness, he had learned that leaving her to her own devices could prove dangerous … fatal, even. He knew better than to turn his back on her, or leave her alone at any time, even if she were bathing or sleeping. No one ever knew when her memories would trigger spells of paranoia and anguish. No one ever knew when she might find something sharp and decide to gouge her skin, drawing rivers of blood.
His gaze drifted down to her arm, which rested atop the coverlet. The clean, white bandages wrapped around the limb taunted him with the evidence of his failures as Olivia’s protector. He should never have let his master convince him to travel to London and leave her in the care of servants. It did not matter that he was also a servant, or that the people who had been entrusted with her care were reliable and loved Olivia as if she were their own family. He was the one who could calm her with nothing more than the touch of his hand. The only one whose voice could take her from screaming in rage to sobbing in despair, then to peaceful silence. The only one who could reach her when others could not.
In the past, before this malady of the mind had claimed her, he might have been gratified at such power. To know that the girl he’d loved his entire life responded this way to him and only him might have brought a heady satisfaction. However, their circumstances made it a stark responsibility, one he considered with grave seriousness.
Scraping a hand through his hair, which already stood on end as a testament to his frayed nerves, he released a weary sigh. He had let himself be convinced to leave Scotland for London, to assist his master in a revenge plot against the person who had laid Olivia low. He’d come willingly, desperate to do whatever he could to ensure that the person who’d hurt his Livvie had paid with everything he owned. It had been the force driving both him and Lord Adam Callahan, the earl who also happened to be Niall’s best friend and Olivia’s elder brother. The two of them had vowed that they would care for her, even when the physicians claimed she ought to be put in an asylum. They’d made a pact to see the man who had hurt her repaid in kind, and with interest.
However, upholding his end of said pact had begun to stretch him thin. He could not occupy two places at once. He could not do battle at the side of his friend and master while also watching over Olivia. That had been proven when he’d opened the door to Adam’s London townhouse to discover her held in the hands of a footman, arms wrapped in those white bandages. The lady’s maid who had been tasked with her care had related the news to him; how his Livvie had sunk into a state of despondency after they’d left, how it had only taken the blink of an eye for her to break a mirror and use a shard of glass to tear her wrists open.
He had almost lost her, and not for the first time. He’d lost her when they’d been children and her stepfather had seen fit to send her to a school so far away from Edinburgh, she could only return home a few times a year. She had come back after her final term, only to turn around and leave him again to go to London for her first Season. As seemed fitting with the course of their lives, she’d come back to him again, but this time as shattered as the little statue he’d broken in her stepfather’s study all those years ago.
Thinking of that bit of porcelain he’d taken for himself, he took in her pale skin and dark hair, her slender, waif’s body. He had been entranced by that bit of porcelain for reasons he still did not understand, awed by its beauty, as well as its delicacy. He’d carried it in his pocket for years, and it now rested on the washstand in his little chamber back in Scotland, where he looked at it frequently. Just as he’d treasured it—still the finest thing he’d ever called his own—he treasured this woman, even in her state of brokenness.
Reaching into the pocket of his waistcoat, he retrieved his watch. It was quite late; Adam should soon return from the soirée he’d left hours ago to attend. Olivia had been brought to the house in his absence, and he had yet to be informed of what she’d done to herself. Niall dreaded being the one to tell him.
He perked up when Olivia whimpered, the sheets rustling as she shifted in bed, her head turning this way and that. Sweat had begun breaking out over her forehead, her brow furrowing as if she wrestled with her own mind even in sleep.
Leaning forward, he reached out to touch her—slowly, carefully, lest he make matters worse. She’d never shied away from his touch, but sometimes, sudden movements put her on edge. By the time she realized she was safe, her body would have reacted, recoiling or lashing out.
“Wake up, mo gradh,” he murmured. “Ye’re only dreamin’. I’m here.”
The Gaelic endearment from his lips stilled her in an instant, and her eyelids fluttered open. Her gaze was unfocused for a moment, and she seemed to stare straight through him instead of at him. He never knew where her mind went when her eyes glazed over, the pupils dilating so wide, the dark brown of her irises appeared black. He wondered if she thought of the past, of stolen kisses in the stables, and whispered conversations behind closed doors where no one could disturb them. His insides roiled as he wondered whether her mind traveled back to her time locked away in an asylum for unwed mothers, or giving birth while screaming in pain, or lying underneath the bastard who’d ruined her and gotten her with child. His hands clenched tight, shaking as he fought to get his temper under control. The things Olivia had been through haunted him daily, just as they did her. A constant reminder of all the ways he’d failed her.
“Niall?” she whispered after a while, her eyes clearing a bit as her gaze shifted to him.
“Aye,” he replied, his hand falling heavy on her head, fingers curling in her mussed hair. “It’s me.”
She had been unconscious upon arriving in London and likely had no idea where she was. Closing her eyes, she sighed, relaxing under his touch.
“Where are we?”
Relief flooded him at the evidence of a clear mind. A full sentence, coherent words … signs that she was completely and fully with him. This could last for hours or days before she retreated again, losing herself in a world only she seemed to see. One of ghosts and tortures that kept her from healing after the things that had been done to her.
“London,” he told her. “Don’t ye remember? Maeve brought you here after …”
She shifted a bit, coming upright in the bed and staring down at her bandaged arms. Her chin trembled, and a lone tear trickled down her cheek. He left his chair, moving to perch on the edge of the bed beside her.
“Ye scared us half t’ death,” he told her, trailing a finger over the white linen wrapped around her arms. “It’s my fault. I knew better than t’ leave ye. It willnae happen again.”
Shaking her head, she met his gaze, another tear wetting her face and trailing down her neck. “You cannot be with me every hour of every day.”
“I can, I have, and I will.”
With a sigh, she placed a hand over his, stilling his absent caresses against the bandages. He had changed the linen himself while she slept, the ugly wounds making bile rise up in the back of his throat. If she’d dug into her skin just a bit deeper with that glass, she would have been lost to him forever.
“Did ye want to die, mo gradh? Is it yer wish to leave me?”
His throat constricted as he dreaded hearing her answer. This would not be the first time she had hurt herself, each incident seeming like an attempt at escaping life, getting away from the torture inflicted upon her by her mind. So much time had passed since the last occurrence, he had begun to hope she’d decided to fight, to cling to life.
She reached up to touch his face, her fingers stunningly soft against the slash of his jaw and the prickle of two days’ worth of stubble. “No … Niall, look at me.”
He lifted his eyes, which stung with tears that would not shed. He’d wept for her so often over the past five years, he did not think he had another tear left in his body.
“I was not trying to escape you,” she declared. “I did not want to die. I only …”
He inclined his head, studying her, trying desperately to understand. She still presented a mystery to him, even after all these years, even as he realized he knew her better than anyone else.
“Only what, Livvie?” he prodded.
She shook her head, brow furrowed as if she tried to put her muddled thoughts into words. “I went numb. After so many years of constant pain and fear, it all went away.”
He frowned. “I dinnae understand. That’s a good thing, eh?”
“No,” she replied, her hand falling back into her lap. “Pain and fear are better than numbness. They are better than nothing. It was like the early days, Niall. When I couldn’t even put my thoughts into words.”
He stiffened at the reminder of the weeks following her return to Dunvar House in Edinburgh, after Adam had rescued her from the asylum. He’d been far too late to save her from the madness, from the demons that seemed to plague her constantly. In those first days, she’d been unable to form complete sentences, her words coming out as disordered as he assumed her thoughts must have been. It had taken her weeks to communicate with them, her listless gaze worrying the entire household to no end as she’d stared across the room without so much as a sound.
“I know you do not understand,” she went on. “But I needed to feel again … even if it were pain. Even if it killed me.”
He edged closer to her on the bed, taking her face in both hands.
“And now?” he urged, his thumb stroking her cheeks, swiping away the remnants of her tears. “What do ye feel now?”
“Pain,” she whispered, closing her eyes and causing a fresh flood of droplets. “It hurts.”
His chest ached, the deep twinge caused by knowing he could do nothing to alleviate her suffering nearly unmanning him. “Where, mo gradh? Where does it hurt?”
Reaching up between them, she pressed her first finger to her forehead, indicating her head … or rather, what lay inside her head … a mind riddled with torment.
“Here,” she whispered. “It hurts here.”
Leaning forward, he pressed his lips against the place she’d touched and closed his eyes. It was something he’d done for her several times before, an almost childlike belief that his kiss could banish her pain, her fear. It had worked, once, when he’d been a boy, and she only a girl. Now, he would give anything to be able to put his lips upon her and make it all go away.
Edinburgh, 1804
15 years earlier …
Niall backpedaled away from the épée thrusting toward his face, lifting his own weapon in defense. Metal clashed against metal, and he chuckled to know he was besting the boy attacking him with renewed purpose. A pair of hazel eyes—a flashing mixture of brown and green—twinkled with mirth, an overgrowth of dark brown hair surrounding a face split by a wide smile.
The master’s son stood as tall as Niall and was nearly as big, his frame comparable to a man several years his senior. One of the few people in the world who did not make him feel like an ungainly giant. Adam, the son of the earl, had been taught to fence by a grand master—some man with a list of qualifications who had come to Dunvar House three days a week for two years to instruct him.
In contrast, Niall had learned in this little paddock, using a secondhand épée given to him by the lad who would someday become his master, but for now was his very best friend. He and Adam had begun playing together years ago, one sneaking off after finishing his duties, the other dodging his nurse after leaving his governess. They’d spend hours romping the house grounds, Adam even going so far as to sneak him inside when no one was looking, taking him into the nursery and sharing his toys.
Those exploits had turned into this—Adam coming to find him after his lessons and dragging him to this paddock to pass down his fencing knowledge. In the past year, Niall had become nearly as good as his friend, and without the benefit of an expensive tutor.
“Niall! You can do it, Niall! Beat him!”
He grinned at the sound of the little voice calling out to him from across the paddock. Olivia sat perched on the wooden railing of the enclosure, legs swinging beneath her fluffy skirts as she observed their bout. Adam often brought her along when seeking him out, and because the little porcelain doll in human form fascinated him to no end, Niall did not mind. Such a sunny little thing, smiling and giggling as she ran about in their shadows, always close, reveling in the attention of the two boys who were big and strong enough to protect her from anything.
“Two great knights with swords,” she would often say as they walked to the paddock for practice. “Just like in the stories Nanny reads me!”
For some reason, being a knight in her mind filled him with pride and a sense of purpose. When he mucked out stalls and groomed horses, he was nothing, no one … a piece of flesh for his father to beat and hurl epithets at. But when he was with Adam, he became the brother the young lord had never had. When Olivia looked up at him with those round, awe-filled eyes, he became a knight. It was the most a lowborn servant was ever like to have, so he clung to those two parts of his identity, finding succor from the drudgery of his everyday life.
When he went to bed each night, his hand under the pillow clutching that broken bit of porcelain, he could pretend it would never end—that he would not leave the stable one morning to discover Adam had left him to go off to university, or that Livvie had been sent away to marry. Just now, at the age of twelve, he had nothing to worry over. He had years before either of them would set out into the world, leaving him behind. He would not allow himself to dwell on the possibility.
His mind had wandered for a moment, allowing Adam to strike his thigh with the épée. Muttering a curse under his breath, he recovered, launching an aggressive attack and pushing Adam back. The two battled for what felt like ages, trading blows and taunting one another as Olivia cheered for him from her place on the fence. So intent were they on their bout that at first, they didn’t realize Olivia had toppled from her place on the fence. It was not until they heard her sharp wail that he and Adam both halted, épées dropping to the ground at once, startled gazes meeting for a fraction of a second before they both went running to her.
“Livvie!” Adam called out, skidding to a halt and dropping to his knees beside where she lay, flailing and crying on the ground. “Livvie, what happened?”
Niall crouched on her other side, heart in his throat as she began to cry, the high-pitched sobs tearing at him like the sharpest of blades. The fall would not have seemed like much to anyone else, but at only eight years of age, she had only grown so much, barely larger than she’d been on the day he’d come across her in the corridor. The height would have been high to her, the fall knocking the wind from her before she’d been able to cry out.
“Are you hurt?” Adam urged, raising his voice to be heard over her cries. “Show me where!”
She continued to scream, writhing on the ground, her face reddened from the force of her sobs. Unable to take it any longer, Niall pushed Adam aside and leaned over her, bracing both hands on either side of her body so that he loomed in her line of sight, blotting out everything else.
“Livvie, look at me,” he said, his voice firm but gentle—much the way he calmed skittish horses for grooming. “We cannae help if we dinnae know where ye’re hurt. Can ye sit up?”
Her sobs calmed to whimpers and sniffles, her chin trembling as she allowed him to help her sit upright. He gave her an encouraging smile, and that stopped the trembling.
“There now,” he crooned, using his own hand to swipe her tears away, then pluck bits of grass from her hair. “I think the fall scared ye more than anything. Show me where it hurts.”
Bending her arm, she lifted it, displaying the place where the sleeve of her gown had torn, revealing her scraped elbow. The wound looked as if it stung like the devil, but he judged it to be minor. She didn’t seem to have hit her head or injured her neck, which had been his fear upon seeing that she had fallen.
“Do ye know what my maw always does when I hurt m’self?” he asked, gingerly lifting her arm and examining the scrape.
Sniffling again, Olivia blinked, her tears seeming to have abated for now. “What?”
He smiled at her again, before dipping his head and pressing his lips ever so lightly against her marred flesh. “There. All better, eh?”
When he glanced up again, she was watching him, open-mouthed. It was true, his mother had done the same for him when he’d been a small lad. He was far too old to believe a kiss could heal a wound now, but being the one doing the kissing just then, he could see why such a tactic had worked. It was the seeming faith of his maw that a kiss could heal and soothe. It had been her confidence when she’d kissed his scrapes and murmured ‘all better.’ She had made him believe it.
Now, it seemed Olivia believed, as well, the expression of pain upon her face melting into one of awe.
“Yes,” she said breathlessly. “Yes, it is all better now.”
“Good,” he said. “Can ye stand? Or would ye rather I carry ye back to the house on my shoulders?”
Her eyes lit up at his suggestion, and she silently reached up, allowing him to lift her off the ground. Adam laughed, standing back as Niall swung her up onto his shoulders, holding tight to her little legs. His friend did not seem to suffer from any sort of envy or scorn at seeing his sister respond more readily to Niall than him. Perhaps that was because Adam never seemed to want anything more than for Olivia to be happy and safe. With two of them to see to that, instead of just one, her moments of sadness or pain were few and far between.
As they made their way back to the house, Olivia clinging to his hair and giggling when he broke into a run over the grass, he felt deep in his heart that he would do anything for the little doll sitting on his shoulders. If he had any say, she’d never fall, never break. She seemed confident in his unspoken promise, arms raised and head tilted back as she embraced the sun.