A Hope Divided by Alyssa Cole (12)

CHAPTER 11

Ewan was shaking. He was shaking and didn’t know what to do with the rage that made him want to lunge and kick and lash out.

“Breathe in,” his mother had told him when he was small and that feeling came over him, her lilt soothing. “And then breathe out. Then do that again. It’s the only way we get through life, my boy.”

His mother knew better than most how to move past the terrible things life could subject a person to. The only time he’d ever seen her break was when she’d discovered his father dead by his own hand, when he’d finally grown ashamed enough to put an end to the wretched abuse he’d laid down on his wife and family for years. That had been Ewan’s only regret—that after that last argument with his father, when the man had grabbed his gun and stalked into the woods, Ewan hadn’t found him first. He’d been glad that his father was gone from their lives and hadn’t understood why his mother mourned him.

It was their father who had first inspired Ewan’s impulse to lash out and cause pain, as well as the desire to control such base emotions lest he emulate the man he hated. But when he’d seen Cahill attack Marlie, all the years of training, all the methods for funneling the ugly bursts of energy—they all fell to the wayside. He’d wanted to hurt Cahill, again. Worse than he had before. And when he saw Marlie stand up unharmed, he wanted to pull her back up into her rooms and hide her away from the world with him.

Why hadn’t she listened when he’d warned her to avoid the man? Instead she’d run right at him.

Ewan pressed his fingers into his scalp, as if that could relieve the frustrating itch that began in his skull and grew each time he thought about what he’d seen.

When the shot had gone off and she’d been thrown to the ground . . . at the angle from which he’d viewed the scene, Ewan had been unable to piece together what had happened. For a brief, terrifying instant, he’d been certain Marlie was dead. Certain that he’d let Cahill kill her.

Even the memory of the despair that had near caved in his chest left him reeling in a way none of his wartime experiences had. In the wake of their near kiss, he’d said the first thing that had come to mind that would put space between them, and had hurt her deeply. When he’d seen Marlie lunge for the gun and heard its report, he’d been sure that she was gone and that he would never get to make amends. And she still hadn’t returned.

He’d told himself Marlie was just a woman, like many women, as The Enchiridion counseled. If she were broken, he would not be disturbed. Whether she lived or died was beyond his control.

He’d told himself that as he exited the drying room. He’d told himself that as he’d opened the leather and translated pages of Vivienne’s memoir. He’d written out passages with shaking fingers and a mind too distracted to take in their import, just so her mother’s words would be waiting for her when she came back.

He’d told himself he would not be disturbed if she didn’t come back. It was beyond his control.

She had to come back.

What if she’s injured? What if he’s hurting her? Ewan knew what Cahill was capable of: anything. The image of him interrogating Marlie came to Ewan riding on a wave of nausea. He would go to her. He had to. But then logic, damned logic, kicked in. If you go running into the house searching for her, you put her at even greater risk.

The risk to himself was immaterial. But he refused to be the one who’d sealed Marlie’s fate because his nerves wouldn’t let him be. During his first battle, the soldier beside him in the trench dug into red clay had been jumpy beyond measure. As the drumming of the Confederate battalion they were to face drew nearer, Ewan had watched in dismay as the man had jumped up out of the trench and charged, too anxious to wait for the order to do so. The battle had gone pell-mell after that. It might have anyway, but Ewan would never know, nor would the men killed by the gunfire the soldier had attracted.

He would wait. She was just a woman. He would w—

The sound of the key in the lock startled him up off his seat and toward the drying room door.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

He heard steps, and after several of them he recognized they were hers. He knew the sound of her footsteps like the melody in his favorite song; recognizable in any variation. The heavy drag of these ones revealed her fatigue.

He sat on the bundle of fabric that made for a bed—it wasn’t soft or comfortable, but it was still precious in those dire times, when every scrap was put to some use. That wasn’t lost on him.

He heard the scrape of the desk only by straining—she’d grown adept at moving it quietly in his days there.

He felt her before he saw her, moving toward him in the darkness like a specter. Then she drew nearer, and he could make out her faint silhouette in the moonlight seeping through the curtain. She settled next to him on the pile of fabric, more substantial than shadow, warm and smelling of some mixture of hers—likely an unguent to relieve the pain of the blows she had received.

It was dark, but Ewan closed his eyes anyway, as if that could stop him from seeing her struck and falling to the ground as it replayed in his mind.

“Marlie?” He didn’t speak above a whisper, as his throat had gone tight. His whole body was tight. He’d spent the last few hours wishing for her presence, and now that she was beside him, he was vividly reminded of why she shouldn’t be.

“Yes.”

“I told you to be careful,” he said. “And yet you ran right for him.” The harsh words slipped out, a reprimand that he knew wasn’t fair. But he couldn’t stop hearing the report of the gun, and reliving the sick instant when he’d thought her gone.

He heard her breath catch, felt her body go stiff. “Are you saying I should have just let him shoot that woman? I may have to cede my home to him, but I won’t let him kill an innocent if I can help it.”

The displeasure in her tone was evident. His thoughtless words had wounded her again.

Ewan pressed his teeth together against his frustration. He was tired of being wrong when it came to things like this. He hadn’t been the man who protected her when she’d needed him; he needed to be the man who soothed her pain instead of exacerbating it. “That was imprecise.” He paused, tried to formulate the right words. “What happened wasn’t your fault, and I’m sorry I implied that. And I’m sorry about what happened before that, too. I am not good at . . . things like this, but I’m here and I want to give you what you need. I can just listen.”

Ewan hoped he hadn’t said the wrong thing again, but then he felt her sag against his side, as if she trusted him to hold her steady. Ewan felt the import of that in the weight and pliancy of her body, and emotion surged in his chest.

“He’s awful,” Marlie whispered, her voice shaking. She didn’t acknowledge his apology, but she didn’t refuse it, either. “How can such a man exist? I know people say that there are unnatural men who walk among us, and these are unnatural times, but he’s the devil’s hand servant.”

“Yes, he is,” Ewan said. He wondered what she would say if she knew he was cut from the same cloth. He wouldn’t hurt Marlie, ever, so that was at least one difference between him and the damned Reb who had hit her. “If you wish, I’ll go handle things now and he won’t ever bother you again. You can pretend you have no idea who I am if I’m captured.”

There. He’d as good as told her his true nature, again. He waited in the darkness for her to get up and move away from him, but she moved closer to him instead. Her forearm brushed his and Ewan exhaled sharply at the surprise of it. Her hand rested on his biceps, and Ewan was sure he could feel her heartbeat in the palm of her hand, urgently tapping out the message that she was alive and in his arms, and asking what he would do with that information.

“Thank you for the offer, but no,” she said. “You forget that I could handle him, too, Socrates. With the right mixture of plant toxins, he’d die quite painfully.”

There was a rough delight in her voice as she said the words. Ewan had only ever known Marlie to take care of others—she’d devoted her life to it. It shocked him, intrigued him, to know that her thoughts weren’t all as saintly as he supposed.

“But I won’t stain my soul for a man like him, and I don’t want you to, either,” she said. “I just . . . can I sit beside you for a spell?”

The roughness in her voice was gone now, and there was only uncertainty.

He should have. But instead he said, “Of course. We’re well past polite, remember?”

She inched next to him and rested her head on his shoulder. Her disheveled curls brushed against his ear and he shuddered; something sharp and sweet jolted down his spine.

He tried to recall her nature then, as Epictetus directed, but she was not as easily dismissed as a clay pot. Her nature most certainly didn’t diminish her in his eyes. She was brilliant and thoughtful and never made him feel out of place when she most assuredly could have. She understood his humor and didn’t treat him as an oddity; one could not say that of a clay pot. Clay was cool and hard, but Marlie was warm and soft and pressed against his side as if she felt safe with him. She shouldn’t have.

“I was terrified,” she finally said. “I’ve been so removed from everything. Even going to the prison didn’t give me a clear picture. But seeing the Home Guard with that trussed boy was . . .” She shook her head against his arm. “Cahill would have killed Hattie simply for having dignity in the face of his callousness. He could have killed me. Here, on our own property where I’m supposed to be safe. But nowhere is safe.

“Your ankle has healed enough. You must go soon,” she said, and then released a shaky breath. “More militiamen arrive every day and Melody is intent on letting them have the run of the place. And Stephen has left for his holdings in the North like the coward he is, leaving us with his despicable wife. That explains Cahill’s bold behavior today.”

Stephen? Something stirred in the back of Ewan’s mind, but he could not pull it to the forefront with her against him and the truth of their situation finally spoken aloud. It was no longer safe for him to stay there. It never had been, but they’d fallen into a routine, and routines comforted Ewan.

It was more than that: Marlie comforted Ewan. The thought of leaving her was highly unpleasant, despite his knowledge that attachments were useless in this world.

“I understand,” was all he said. “I should want to leave, I suppose.”

“Of course.” Her body pressed into his, just slightly more than it already was. He wasn’t sure she was aware she had even done it. When he glanced down at her, her head was lowered, her hands folded primly in her lap. “I imagine more pleasurable diversions await you than passing notes with me in an attic.”

“Marlie.”

He reached out then, encircled her wrist between his thumb and forefinger because the impulse was impossible to resist. She gasped, and he felt her pulse increase where his finger bent at the knuckle. Her skin was so soft, and though her wrist was thin, it wasn’t as fragile as he’d imagined. He felt the stretch of tendons as she flexed her hand in surprise—she was stronger than he’d given her credit for. Perhaps . . .

No.

He released her wrist and went to move away from her, to stop this madness before it began, but then her hand caught his shirt by the front and tugged. His face was abruptly at the same level as hers, and he stared, trying to discern its features in the darkness.

Her eyes fluttered shut and she began to lean forward toward him, so slowly that he could have dodged away as he should have, but then her lips were pressing against his, softly, tentatively. Those first few exploratory brushes nearly undid him, but it was the way her brow creased as she did it again—her eyes were closed, but Ewan didn’t want to miss a moment—that sent the first tendrils of smoke up from the slow-growing fire within him. She looked . . . confused. As if she weren’t sure how to proceed.

Ewan was exacting in his expectations of others, but not Marlie and not this. A bolt of tenderness shot through him as he realized that she was seeking instruction. He could not push her away. If she was to remember him, it wouldn’t be as the man who refused her in a moment of need. He would be the man who every other kiss had to measure up to. Ewan could allow himself that bit of baseness—the desire that she never forget him.

His hand went to the back of her neck, and when she gasped in surprise he nipped at her lower lip. He molded his lips to hers, pressing his tongue into her mouth, teasing her with long, slow licks.

His head buzzed as her arms went about his neck and her breasts pushed into his chest. Her nipples were taut and hard through her bodice, and Ewan ached to feel them in his palm, in his mouth—but no, that would be too far. His hand went to her hip instead, gripped her there hard, and she rocked up into the hold.

Marlie was adept, for she was soon matching his strokes and nipping at his mouth in turn. Her quiet sighs pierced the silence and her hands tangled in his hair, pulling him closer.

Pleasure pooled at Ewan’s groin, spreading from his hardening length through his body. He’d never wanted anything so much as he wanted Marlie in that moment—he’d made sure of that—but the Fates intended to hold him to his resolve, despite his own failure.

“Oh God, Ewan,” she whispered as his mouth moved to her neck, and he tasted the sweet and salty flavor of her. He scraped his teeth over her collarbone, so close to her bosom. Her hands gripped his shoulders, and she pulled him closer—and then abruptly pushed him away. Then she was up on her feet, running.

That’s when he heard the pounding at her door.

“Open this door right now,” a woman’s voice called out, sweet as a sugar drop laced with venom. “Enough is enough. After today’s exploits, you’ll no longer be allowed to do as you please.”

Marlie looked back at Ewan, her eyes wide. Then she squeezed through the door. Ewan was up after her in a flash, shutting the door behind her as she quietly pushed the desk against it.

He heard Marlie’s key in the lock, and then Cahill’s voice sliced through the silence. “Now to see what this darkie has been hiding up here.”