CHAPTER NINETEEN
“What a lovely and unusual room, your grace.” This marveling comment came from Liam’s wife, who stood in the middle of Jules’s drawing room, turning full circle to admire the ebony furnishings and sculptures of sandalwood and marble that sat in niches along the walls.
The early evening light, slanting through the carved wooden screens that shielded the tall windows, cast a bluish cluster of stars onto Anna’s bare nape. That line, where her long neck curved into her shoulders, was the greatest wonder in this room of priceless rarities.
He had not touched her in six days.
“Oh, please do call me Emma,” said Miss Martin. Or, no—she was the Duchess of Auburn now. Jules had wed her in some abrupt private ceremony a fortnight past. “In fact, most of these furnishings come from the royal family of Sapnagar. They are great friends of Julian’s, and sent several new pieces only last week . . .”
He could not touch Anna. He could, at times, barely stand to look at her, for what she saw in him was so clearly a figment of her imagination. She saw some kind of hero. She overlooked the festering flaws that would infect her, too, if she insisted on lingering.
“It is very kind of them,” the duchess was saying. “But not the greatest kindness they’ve ever done us, I assure you.”
A pause fell. The newlyweds exchanged a long, intimate look, redolent of private memories.
Some men caused their wives to bloom. The new duchess glowed, her cheeks rosy, her formerly ashen hair seeming to glimmer in the lamplight.
Other men did not have such happy effects on their wives. Liam watched Anna step backward, out of range of the Auburns’ entangled gazes, and stare disconsolately at a sculpture of a dancing god. There were shadows beneath her eyes. At night, in her bedroom, she paced more than she slept.
Lying awake in his own room, Liam would listen to her footsteps, slow at first, then faster and louder, as though anger drove her to stalk. Sometimes she knocked at his door, but he never replied. He had no face he wished to show her now. Since their ill-fated meeting with Stephen, the panics had come more often. Perhaps they were fed by his fury with himself. He had let the bastard touch her.
Abandoned, then, she stewed, a trapped animal walking the boundaries of her cage. He listened to her misery in the dark as his own heartbeat escalated, as his breath came short, as a bitter knot choked his throat and brought bile into his mouth.
What a husband he was! Each night he expected to be dead by morning: no man’s heart could gallop and stumble as his did, and continue to labor on afterward.
Yet each morning he woke gritty eyed, having fallen asleep at some point before dawn. Still alive, but not relieved by it.
This purgatory in which he now lived was not more bearable than the tortures of Elland. In Elland, only he had been at stake. Now, his weakness could cost her.
“The entire house is a marvel,” the duchess told Anna. “Shall I show you around?”
Liam did not feel insulted by how readily Anna agreed, or with what visible relief she followed the duchess from the room. He, too, felt it easier to breathe when she was gone.
If only she would go. Leave London. But she refused. She had made her choice, unwisely and stubbornly, from a surfeit of emotion he did not deserve and would not allow himself to contemplate.
The door closed behind the women. Julian took a seat, his fond gaze lingering on the door. Liam, remembering himself, retrieved his brandy and proposed a toast. “In belated congratulations,” he said, with the proper wry cheer that Jules would expect. “And here’s my wedding gift to you: I meant to overlook your failure to invite me to the ceremony.”
Julian grinned and kicked out his long legs, crossing them at the ankles as he raised his own glass. “We had the footmen for witnesses, no one else. In honesty, I feared she might change her mind, should I hesitate.”
That scene with Stephen had snapped something in Liam’s brain. It felt rusty these days, as though he were never quite awake. It balked now at the requirement of manufacturing a charming reply.
“No,” he said finally. “That’s over.” Emma Martin, at Liam’s first meeting of her, had been ghostlike and withdrawn, hidden behind the shocking camouflage of her vivid and violent artwork. But even then, he had sensed the chrysalis-like quality about her: whether or not she’d known it, she had already been straining toward the light.
That light, for her, had always been Jules, who was looking at Liam now, his head tipped in a quizzical attitude.
“She wouldn’t have changed her mind,” Liam said. “She always felt you were her . . . fate.”
Fate.
Anna had thanked fate for their marriage. The notion made him feel wild and dark.
If fate had brought them together, then fate had also directed what followed. No, he would not credit God with that travesty. His soul could not bear it—for he would not worship a god so cruel, nor trust in such a god for future justice.
Julian, frowning, set aside his drink. “All right, what’s wrong? I was gladdened when you said the countess would be joining you, but . . .”
But he’d taken one look at them and sensed that their presence would not redouble the lovestruck haze in the air here.
“My apologies. Do I dim the newlywed glow?” Hearing the bitterness in his own voice, the goddamned churlishness, Liam held up a hand—“Forgive me”—and then used it to press his eyes until he saw stars. “I should not have come tonight.”
“Nonsense,” Julian said sharply. “After all you did for me and Emma—Christ, man, let me return the favor for once. What weighs on you? You got my note, I hope. The Commons appointed a select committee to investigate that railway fraud. Devaliant will be finished soon enough.”
“Yes, so I heard.” Some make-believe railroad company had bilked investors out of their hard-earned money, and Jules had uncovered proof that Stephen had helped to promote the company, perhaps even to found it.
“Over five thousand investors defrauded, Liam. He could go to prison, as soon as next year—”
“Not enough.” He took a breath to dispel the tightness in his chest, to persuade his heart not to pound. “I can’t wait any longer.”
“Oh?” Julian hesitated. “What changed?”
“He’s more ragged than he seems. Coming into the open at last. We had words last week. He all but admitted he knew of Elland.”
“Ah.” Julian studied him a moment. “Well, good.” His smile was hard and unpleasant. “I’m amazed he’s still breathing. What happened?”
He opened his mouth to manufacture some story—then abruptly found himself too exhausted to lie.
Julian saw it. “What happened?” he asked more quietly.
Liam had imagined himself intimately familiar with degradation. He’d even believed himself immune to it—inoculated, by a sustained and concentrated dose, to all the other more mundane versions. But this confession felt like a scouring shame. “We met in public. Hanover Square. He grabbed her. And I did nothing.”
Julian had known him since boyhood. Their friendship ran deep. But even he could not prevent a frown at this news. “Nothing? What do you mean?”
“I mean”—say it—“he took hold of her. He could have snapped her neck. Slipped a knife between her ribs. And I would not have been able to stop him. I simply . . . stood there. Gripped by something.”
“Gripped,” Julian murmured. “I don’t . . .”
“Understand?” The laugh crawled out of him like a worm. “Nor do I. It’s a sickness of the brain. Ever since my return, it comes over me at odd moments—a baseless dread, choking, paralyzing.”
“You never told me.”
A snarl took control of his mouth. “How might I have shared that news? What ho, Jules, I’m losing my bloody mind?”
Instantly he regretted his temper. But Julian seemed not to notice; he steepled his fingertips, frowning. “This . . . grip, as you put it . . . what provokes it?”
He blew out a long breath. “In the early days, I thought I knew. Loud sudden noises, anything that took me off guard. Crowds, sometimes. Dreams of the . . . ” Say it. “Dreams of the hole.”
Julian’s face darkened. No doubt he was recalling their conversation at the club, in which Liam had mentioned exactly how Sadler had died in that hole. “Well,” he said. “Yes. That makes sense.”
Liam’s laugh felt harsh. “Sense? What sense does madness make?”
His friend offered a brief, lean smile. “Classic dilemma of the critic: he never excels at self-judgment. You were always mad, even as a boy—I won’t argue that. But there’s nothing deranged, or even rare, in feeling oneself thrust back into a dark memory.”
This felt like kindness rather than honesty. “Don’t disappoint me,” Liam said. “I have always counted on you for truth.”
Julian grimaced, then sat back. Making a fist atop his thigh, he flexed it hard, seeming to study the glint of his own signet ring before he shrugged and said, “All right. At Cawnpore, I witnessed—horrors. Men executed by cannon fire. It took me a very long time, afterward, not to flinch when it thundered. Not to feel my breath come short, and my heart pound. That did not make me mad, Liam. It made me human.”
Liam understood the generosity of this admission. Jules very rarely spoke of the Uprising, and then, only in vague detail.
But . . . “I wish to God it were only a flinch. These recent episodes are full-bodied incapacitations. And . . . they’re coming more and more often. Every night,” he said quietly.
“With no incitement?”
“None.” He bit his tongue against the frustrated urge to curse, or to smash something. “Lying in bed, I’ll see his goddamned hand on Anna. The next moment, it starts: locked in my own brain, my body beyond my control.”
Julian nodded slowly. And then he abruptly shook his head. “On the contrary, there does seem to be an incitement, then: your cousin.”
“Of course,” Liam bit out. “But—”
“And loud noises, and crowds?”
Liam paused, the question startling him. “No, in fact. I’ve had no trouble there, recently.”
“Then perhaps your cousin has done you a favor. For if he’s now the sole cause, then there’s a simple solution to it.”
Liam allowed himself a brief, dark smile to match Julian’s. “To him, yes. But . . .” Throat tightening, he spoke his greatest fear: “For my brain, perhaps not. For I cannot guarantee that once he’s gone—”
“Listen.” Julian sat forward, eyes narrowed. “I have heard of such things. Sometimes, in survivors of violence . . .” He hesitated. “Emma cares for you. She would not mind me telling you this. In the early days after her return, she often had no memory of putting brush to canvas. She painted as though in a wild trance. And afterward, she awoke rageful, in tears. But those episodes did eventually pass.”
Liam mulled this. He did not know if Emma wore physical scars. But her paintings were scars; he’d recognized that from the first, and her courage in showing them had called to him. “They went away completely? Even now that she’s painting again?”
“Yes. And she says that even the act of remembering—remembering the worst—feels different now. Tranquil, and within her control.” Julian tipped his head. “Have you confided in the countess about these moods?”
“She says I only need time to heal.”
Julian’s expression eased. “Yes. Good. I think she’s right.”
Liam picked up his drink, took a measured sip. His hand was shaking slightly.
There’s a simple solution to that.
Jules was wrong. Ending Stephen would not cure the problem of his brain.
The thought shocked him. It felt odd and electric, like an illicit confession. Liam turned it over in his mind, marveling at how it made his muscles tense, his body brace as though for a violent collision.
Here, he abruptly realized, was the truth he’d not wanted to face—and which he had avoided by refraining from putting an end to the business of Stephen. Ending his cousin would not cure him of all his troubles. He would never again be the man he’d been before Elland. There was no way to undo the changes that Elland had wrought in him.
Yet this insight, as it faded, left a weird lightness in its wake. His hand steadied, and he felt his throat ease. His heartbeat began to slow.
So what if there was no magic cure? It did not mean he was beyond hope.
Neither Anna nor Julian thought him beyond hope. They did not even think him mad. They both believed that healing was possible. Emma was proof of its possibility.
But healing could not occupy him so long as his cousin remained a danger. Stephen had shown his hand in Hanover Square, which meant that he felt desperate or bold enough to do any number of rash and unwise things. Before anything else, Stephen must be handled.
A breath slipped from him. And then came a smile, faint but real. Easy, even. The course was so simple, after all. “It’s time to end this.”
Julian followed his meaning perfectly. With a swift hard smile of his own, he said, “Only tell me what you need.”
• • •
“And this is my studio,” said the Duchess of Auburn. “Forgive the mess. I had all my paintings fetched over, but I haven’t yet uncrated most of them.”
As Anna followed her hostess into the spacious white-walled room, a canvas caught her eye. Poised on an easel in the corner, reached by weaving through a maze of unopened crates and boxes, it showed a mundane country scene: a rolling field bounded by a low stone wall, from which a basket of flowers had just been knocked. Both the basket and its contents—a shower of bright flowers—had been caught midfall, as a long, slim hand reached into the frame, unsuccessfully, to catch them.
The subject might have seemed ominous. But the sunny setting, the bright clear sky, and the lush vivid realism of the flowers—their scarlet and saffron petals still gleaming with dew—combined to create a mood of whimsy, even optimism. Things got knocked over. There was beauty in that, too.
“New work,” Emma said, joining her side. She made a warm and gracious hostess. When touring Anna through the fine appointments of this house—cunning hallways of inlaid and mirrored paneling, a glass-walled hothouse, paintings by old masters and Mogul portraitists—she had marveled alongside Anna at the fineries, clearly taking no credit for her husband’s exquisite taste.
But now, her cheerful serenity fractured. She twisted her hands at her waist as she said, “It’s very different from my old style, of course.”
Anna had been struggling to keep her manner light; to reflect her newlywed hostess’s conspicuous happiness, rather than douse it with her own dark mood. But this remark drew a genuine, amused laugh from her. “Indeed. They could not be more different.”
Too late, she feared that her retort would be taken as rudeness. But Emma relieved her by smiling.
“Thank goodness for that. I had begun to wonder if my brush was limited to gray scales.”
A proverbial gray scale, Anna assumed. Emma’s earlier paintings had not spared the viewer from vivid rivers of blood.
“Well, those fears should be laid to rest now.” The flowers were so lifelike that she found herself taking a deep breath, in search of their perfume. “This painting could not be more lovely.”
“But is it good?” Fretfully, the duchess sat on a nearby stool. “That is what concerns me most. You know that Liam—” She flushed. “Forgive me, I hope you don’t mind the informality.”
“Not in the least.” But it had drawn claws through Anna’s gut earlier to watch her husband greet Emma with such apparent and uncomplicated pleasure. A strange poisonous brew of jealousy and despair had coursed through her then. She did not know if she could ever hope to receive such looks from him.
“Liam wishes to mount another show,” Emma explained. “For the little season, he says, in December. I told him it was too soon—that I couldn’t be sure I would maintain this pace.” She laughed. “Happiness—a novel inspiration! I can’t trust it just yet. But he insists. And as you’ll know, one rarely wins an argument with him.”
“Yes,” Anna murmured. “He is certainly headstrong.”
Now that he had decided to entomb himself within his mask, he would not be persuaded or harangued to alter his course. She did not think she had seen his true face since the day of the lecture. He was slipping away to a place she had no skill to reach. Her own panic was strangling her.
She realized that Emma was studying her, those artist’s eyes, a strange smoky blue, too perceptive for her comfort.
“I had wondered what kind of woman would be married to Lord Lockwood,” the duchess said. “I was very curious to meet you again.”
Anna managed a smile. “And do I meet your expectations?”
But Emma did not return the smile. “I don’t know if Liam ever told you what he did for me. I was very alone when we met. Hiding from the world. He forced me out into it. He persuaded me to believe in my talent, to believe these awful things I had committed to canvas should—must—be seen. And because he showed me a way into the world, I found Julian again.” She took an audible breath. “So you see, I’m in great debt to him.”
Anna hesitated, uncertain how to reply. “I believe he feels the debt is all his. He thinks the world of your talent. He has always had an eye for genius, but your work—”
“Genius!” Emma pulled a face. “Who knows about that? What he had an eye for, I think, was a fellow survivor.” She glanced at the painting, looking pensive. “And enough courage to spare me some of his, when I most needed it.”
Anna swallowed hard. How was it that all the world saw Liam’s courage, his strength and his worth, save he? “You should tell him so. He . . .” She did not want to violate his confidence. But a gut-deep instinct told her that a crisis was upon them. He refused to touch her. They barely spoke. He moved through his own house like a ghost, and when she found him looking at her, he wore an odd expression, remote, as though she were already a memory, lost to him for good. “He would profit by hearing your view of him,” she said hoarsely. “Please do tell him.”
Emma rose from the stool. “Then I will do. But . . .” Her hand came gently to rest on Anna’s arm. “Why are you crying?”
“Am I?” Appalled, Anna dashed her hand over her eyes. “Goodness.” She turned back to the painting, this bright promise that even misfortunes could be beautiful, and tried to compose herself. “Forgive me, I suppose it’s your art that moves me—”
“Gammon.”
She bit her tongue. The silence extended, becoming conspicuous, uncomfortable. She did not know this woman. She could not unburden herself, and her wits felt too sluggish to compose an excuse for her distress. “Shall we join the others?” she asked at last as she turned.
But Emma stood in her path and did not step aside. “I care for him,” she said quietly. “And from the start, I have seen the unhappiness in him. Tell me what I might do to help.”
“You can’t.” The words ripped from her, lent force by her miserable conviction. “He thinks—” Oh, God forgive her. “He thinks his brain is deranged somehow. He was abused, terribly, and he feels he is broken by it, with no hope of healing.”
“Ah.”
This calm reply, paired with a thoughtful nod, quite disconcerted Anna. And then it angered her. “He is wrong, and if you believe otherwise—”
“Of course he’s wrong,” Emma cut in evenly. “But—shall we dispense with formalities and speak bluntly? Julian told me what happened to him. The broad facts, at least. The kind of violence he survived . . . it leaves marks. It does damage a person. One cannot ever forget what happened, or return to how one was beforehand. But that doesn’t mean healing is impossible, or happiness unreachable. Even if one feels unworthy of it—it comes like a gift, if one allows it to approach.”
Fine words. Anna had tried to tell him much the same. “He won’t believe it.”
“With time—”
“He has episodes.” She blurted it out. “Moments in which he panics, beyond all proportion. His body fails him. And he blames himself for it. He thinks himself broken.”
“Yes.” Emma glanced toward a set of crates, still unopened. “All of those”—she waved toward them—“were painted in such states. I don’t remember creating half of them.”
Anna felt staggered. She sat down on the stool. “You had such fits?”
“Perhaps not identical to his. But similar enough to recognize the shape of what you describe.” Emma sighed. “Doctors might not agree . . . but I have come to believe that the body remembers grave danger long after it has passed. Strange things, small things, can persuade the body to respond as though one were still in peril.”
She did sound as though she understood intimately what Liam endured.
“But . . .” Anna glanced back to the scene of the flower basket, upended—and Emma, following her look, laughed softly.
“Oh, I remember painting that one,” she said. “How I cursed when trying to blend that shade of violet! The terrors passed, Anna. They lost their grip on me.” Perhaps Anna looked doubtful, for the other woman took her hand. “They were terrible, yes. The doctors could not help me. But then they began to fade.” Her grip tightened. “Since the time when Liam persuaded me to put those paintings in the light, I have never had a terror again.”
“But he does not paint,” Anna whispered. “And I don’t know . . .” True justice would help. The thought of Stephen Devaliant bloodied her vision. Oh, Liam would have his justice, she would see to that. But would that be enough to enact an exorcism?
“In such moments,” Emma said quietly, “when the terror is upon him—what do you feel?”
The question startled her. She pulled her hand free. “What does it matter what I feel?” She scoffed. “If you imagine he turns to me for comfort—”
“No. He wouldn’t. One feels unable to look for help. But I will tell you another fear I had—above and beyond the terrors.” Her face open and calm, Emma waited until Anna met her eyes. “I feared that Julian would see me in such a state, and it would replace all else he’d known of me. That he would look at me and see only the darkness in me.”
“I would never judge Liam so,” Anna said through her teeth.
“No. You love him. You would never judge him so. But he doesn’t know that. He fears you have no idea who he truly is, and if you were to find out—”
“Rubbish. I know him better than anyone alive.”
“Are you certain?” Emma paused. “He’s a consummate actor. I have seen him wear a dozen faces in one evening, depending on what was required.”
“And I cherish all of them, if they are what he requires. But his true face”—she swallowed—“is mine. The one he has shown to me . . .” On the cliff side on Ben Nevis. In the great hall at Rawsey. In his bedroom, the night she had forced him to strip. “He is mine,” she said in a hushed, raw voice. “And all his faces, too. And his changes. And his scars. And his true face, which I know in my heart.”
“Then be his mirror,” Emma murmured. “He loves you, I think. Otherwise he would have smiled at you below as easily as he smiled at me. For you alone, his mask threatens to crumble. But if he forgets what lies beneath it, then show him that truth. And never let him turn away from it.”
Anna felt abruptly dizzied. So often she fancied herself the sharpest wit in the room. But this woman radiated a serenity and wisdom that she could not find in herself. All at once, she was desperate to believe in it.
“I pray you are right,” she whispered. “I won’t let him turn away anymore.”
Emma looked musingly down at her. “I have not long been a grand lady,” she said, “so I hope you’ll permit me this.” Without further ceremony, she pulled Anna up into a hug.
• • •
Anna did not believe in witchcraft. But five minutes after unburdening herself of her fears, she and Emma rejoined the men’s company and found the mood transformed. The Duke of Auburn caught his new wife at the door and twirled her in his arms; and as though he had not spent almost a week withholding himself, Liam greeted Anna with a kiss, and then escorted her into dinner with charm and jokes.
Remembering Emma’s advice, Anna decided not to question the sea change but to be thankful for it. And so the evening passed delightfully, with good conversation and exquisite French cooking, and plans for supper again next week, this time out of doors, on Auburn’s yacht harbored near Greenwich. It was past midnight by the time she and Liam boarded the carriage for the drive home, but it still seemed that they had left too soon.
Indeed, as the coach pulled away from the lamplit curb, casting them into the darkness of late evening, Anna found herself suddenly prickling with superstition—holding her breath, lest the shadows put an end to that warm and celebratory atmosphere that had grown up between them in the Auburns’ house.
As though he sensed it, Liam moved off his bench and came to sit beside her. “Cold?” he asked, and did not wait for her answer before tucking the lap robe more closely around her.
Laughing, she shoved off the blanket. “If I’m cold now, then heaven help me when I go back to Scotland. These southern climes will make me soft.”
“Oh, that cold is bred into your blood, I expect. English winds may chill you—but a good Scottish squall will bring you alive.”
She smiled at him, his silhouette amid the deeper darkness, for his fanciful theory charmed her. “The cold does seem different here. Sharper, but less damp. I expect the winters are quite pleasant.”
She caught the shine of his eyes as he gently touched her cheek. “And what of a winter in France?”
“France?”
“That honeymoon we’d planned. Better late than never, don’t you think? We could reach Paris by the end of July. Remain there through October, then slowly wend our way south to Naples.”
Her breath caught. Here was what she’d been waiting for—mention of the future, a future to be spent together. She found herself gripping his hand, holding it in place against her cheek. “Yes,” she whispered. “I would like that very much. I still remember—you wanted to show me the Rubens collection in the Louvre, the painting of the two ladies . . .”
“Well, I’ve a soft spot for a man who admires redheads.” His voice was husky, tender with amusement. “But there is more to France than Paris and portraits. We might pay a call on Monsieur Boussingault, who would be very glad, I think, to hear all your tales of ammonia and nitrogen.”
She laughed, a sound that struck her belatedly as both giddy and incredulous.
Feeling as though she were coming awake from some beautiful dream, she said, “What has changed, Liam?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your mood, all this week . . . But now, suddenly, you’re full of good cheer and plans—”
“Ah. Yes, that.” In the darkness, suddenly he was kissing her, a deep and languorous and drugging kiss that lasted long enough to scatter her wits entirely and leave her somewhat forgetful of the subject when he at last lifted his head and continued. “I have been dwelling on the past, haven’t I? The past that cannot be changed. But many things still remain in my power. I am no longer constrained. It was my mistake to feel otherwise.”
“Of course,” she said. “But . . .” She hesitated, not wanting to risk ruining his happy mood with another question.
Yet what kind of marriage would they have if she felt constantly compelled to guard her tongue lest his temper sour?
She needed to understand him. Emma had advised patience. But patience and probing could go hand in hand. “What made you realize it?” she asked.
“You,” he said. “You left the drawing room and took the light with you. Next time, I mean to follow.”
She bit down on a happy sigh—amused and a little unnerved by how easily she was flattered. His answer explained nothing, though. “Gammon. Tell me truly what—”
His mouth came against hers again. “Truly, Anna,” he said very softly into her lips. “You carry the light with you.” His hand slid delicately through her hair, his mouth moving to her ear as he murmured, “Of course, the sun would continue to burn if the planets fell away. But without the sun, the planets would be lost. And I would be a fool to abandon that orbit.”
Some vague uneasiness stirred in her belly, at odds with the warmth of her blush. These words, though romantic, did not sound like him. She gently laid her hand across the firm curve of his skull, testing the softness of his hair. Poetry wasn’t what she most wanted from him. “I know you’ve had trouble,” she said. “But whatever you feel, Liam . . .”
His lips drew a lazy circle on the sensitive spot beneath her ear, and she had to take a long breath before her next words would assemble.
“However dark your moods turn,” she pushed on, “I wish to know them. To see them. All of you is precious to me. I know you don’t believe this, for you see yourself so differently than I see you.” When she remembered how he had spoken of himself, that dreadful day when he’d told her the whole of it, she shuddered to imagine how he saw himself. “You have no clear view—”
“Enough,” he said gently. “There’s no need for this.”
But she would not be silenced. She pulled away to look at him squarely. “But I see you clearly. More than that—I also see myself clearly, in your company. You fear somehow to fail me, but I tell you, you can’t. You are—such a wonder to me, Liam. Such a gift. Never in my life have I felt more myself than when I’m with you. And when you tell me to go back to Rawsey—”
“Anna, I shouldn’t have—”
“No, listen. The only time I was ever tempted was the day you woke from your fever, when you stormed out and I feared you would never come home again. Then, I longed for Rawsey. And it made me realize—why, Rawsey isn’t simply a home for me. It’s where I’ve always gone, I think, to hide.”
He stared at her, his expression lost in the dark. He seemed, at least, to be listening.
She took his hand, twining their fingers together. “I told myself I was free,” she said softly. “Freer than any woman alive. My birth, my title, my fortune—and then this odd marriage I’d proposed to you, they guaranteed that freedom. But a free woman doesn’t require a hiding place.” She cleared her throat and forced out the next words, these solid weights now lodged on her heart, for they must be spoken. “I should have searched for you, Liam.”
He recoiled. “No. Don’t—”
But she tightened her grip, holding on to him. “From the very moment you disappeared, I should have raised the alarm. I will never forgive myself for that.”
“Stop.” His hand turned in hers, crushing her fingers. “Let that go. It was not your fault. None of it was your fault.”
“But it was. Don’t you see?” She blinked hard against the prick of tears. “I was accustomed to being left. Being left was such a habit, a habitual humiliation, that I designed a marriage that would guarantee that I was left. Every term of that contract—I said that they were meant to preserve my freedom. But they weren’t. They were announcements, to you and the world and to me, that you would leave, and that when you did, it would be routine—expected—nothing to grieve or surprise me. After all, our marriage had not been designed to keep you. The contract proved it—it showed I didn’t expect or want otherwise.” She felt her mouth twist out of her control, and lifted their joined hands to her mouth, pressing her trembling lips against his knuckles until she felt able to continue. “But here’s the truth, Liam—it was a lie. A lie I constructed to protect my vanity, my pride. My heart. Before you’d even signed that contract—before I’d even finished declaring my terms—I knew I wanted you with me always. But I denied it to myself. I was a coward. So afraid of risking hurt. Of facing, again, the fact that I wasn’t enough. And so, yes—when you disappeared, I wasn’t brave. I’d been left again—and instead of asking where you’d gone, I castigated myself for even caring. And I fled to Rawsey then, to hide—from the world, and from myself. From this truth that my heart was broken.”
She heard his soft exhalation. “Anna—”
“I should have raised the alarm.” Tears clogged her voice. With her anger, her fury at herself, she pushed past the tears, spitting out her next words: “I should have searched for you. I should have demanded the authorities hunt for you, in every corner of the world. Instead, I hid, and said nothing, and I lied to myself, telling myself I did not care, did not mourn and miss you every minute of every day. I made myself let you go—and that is a mistake I will repent every day for the rest of my life.”
His palm, gentle and warm, covered her cheek. “Anna,” he whispered. “None of it was your doing. None.”
Frustration bubbled through her. “And none of it was yours, either.” So why did he continue to speak so cruelly of himself for it? Why was his anger so self-directed, when the only proper target for it was his cousin?
“You are better than I deserve,” he murmured. “That, I know.”
His mouth found hers again, and he kissed her so deeply and thoroughly that the kiss began to feel like an answer somehow—an agreement that she was right, that he would find peace with himself. After a few moments, she forgot their surroundings—forgot everything but the heat and cleverness of his mouth and hands, and the pleasing heavy weight of him against her. It was a shock, then, to realize the coach had come to a stop. They were home—the footman was opening the door.
“Promise me,” she said as he pulled away. “Promise me you will try to look on yourself as I do.”
He kissed her inner wrist before helping her onto the curb. “Come to my bed tonight,” he said into her ear. “Come to where you belong.”