Chapter 23

 

“Wherein confessions are made … and a proposal.”

Dev stared at the hundreds of men at work on his land. Carts moved back and forth, the horses weary now after a day of shifting tons of earth. The workmen sweated although the heat had left the sun and a cool breeze stirred the grass at his feet.

It was happening. His vision for the future set in motion, the foundations being laid not only for a new home, but a new beginning. He only hoped it would not become a monument to his foolishness, to hopes and dreams built on sand when he’d thought there was rock beneath his feet. Dev let out a breath, wishing he knew Charity would believe in him, take a chance on him, and—as if he’d conjured her with the thought—he noticed a figure riding towards him.

He knew it was her even before she was close enough to be certain of whether it was a man or a woman. She was riding astride, galloping across the expanse of flat land the surveyor had chosen for the building site. Her hair flew out behind her, her body in perfect accord with the huge horse thundering towards him. He should have known she would ride like that, without fear, with absolute control.

Dev watched as she eased the horse back into a canter and then stopped right in front of him. Both horse and rider were breathing hard, the horse blowing, nostrils flaring, excitement still shining in its dark eyes. Charity’s chest rose and fell as she stared at him, her cheeks flushed with exertion, exhilaration, and something in her eyes that he could not read.

He stared at her, all the words he’d hoped to say when she eventually came tangled and snared up, caught in his throat.

“What are you doing?” she asked, not taking her eyes from his.

“Building us a house,” he said, at a loss for anything less direct.

Charity took a deep breath and stared around at the work already done. Carts of stone were being hauled in now, the foundations beginning in the morning.

“But… I left you,” she said, and he saw the tears glittering despite the way she held her jaw taut, trying to keep her composure. He heard too, the anguish in her voice. “It’s not possible,” she said, the quaver behind the words audible now. “I explained this, you must see—”

“Charity,” he said, and his voice was harder now. He wouldn’t let her throw him over a second time. “You’ve had your say. Would you be so kind as to let me have mine now?”

She bristled a little at the autocratic tone of his voice but gave a stiff nod as he held his hand out to her. He helped her dismount, longing hitting him hard and fast as his hands rested on her waist, memories of the last time he’d touched her all too easy to remember. The blush tinting her cheeks told him she remembered it too and he smiled, taking her hand.

Once he’d given her horse into the care of one of his men, he guided her away to a rocky outcrop where they could sit and talk undisturbed. They sat side by side, silent, as Dev’s heart beat in his throat. She wouldn’t make this easy for him, he knew that, so he would be blunt. He would make her see how everything she’d said and assumed was wrong.

“You hurt me, leaving as you did.” The words were raw, exposing his heart to her and he didn’t try to soften them. They were too true.

She darted a look at him, her expression appalled before she turned away again, hiding her face from him.

“No more than I hurt myself,” she said, and he knew that was true too. “But there was nothing else to be done, nothing else to say.” He knew she’d intended those words to sound hard, fatalistic, but he wasn’t fooled. She longed for a way forward just as he did.

“Oh, there’s plenty more to say, my love.” He reached out and put his hand to her cheek, turning her face to his. As he’d suspected, her tears had already begun. He sighed, hoping she would listen to what he ought to have said when she came to London, if he hadn’t been so blinded by desire. “You made a great many assumptions about my life, about what I’d be forced to give up if I married you. So now I’d like to tell you the truth, and then you can tell me if you still believe I’m about to make some heroic sacrifice at the altar of our love.” He quirked an eyebrow at her and she frowned but nodded, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

“My father was a great man, I think you know that?” he said, watching her nod before he carried on. “He did a great deal of good for the country, fighting for the welfare of those less fortunate than ourselves. He was not so supportive of his own family. I now think all the good he did was incidental if you want the hard truth, and yes, I am aware how bitter and selfish that sounds. Yet I know it’s true, he did it for the adulation, because he loved to hear what a good and kind and big-hearted man he was, when in fact he had no heart whatsoever.”

Dev rubbed a hand over his face. He had never spoken of such things, not to anyone, and it was hard to keep his anger at bay.

“My mother was a society beauty. She lived to be seen, to go to parties and be admired. From everything I now know of her she was vivacious, funny and full of life. Father married her and buried her here in the back of beyond. She hated it here, but he was jealous of everyone and so he kept her isolated and she saw no one. I think she rebelled against him and her behaviour became erratic and so….” Dev swallowed hard, the bile and bitterness of his emotion flooding him. “I cannot prove it, but I suspect my father gave her laudanum, in a hope to control her. However it began, she became addicted. My only real memory of her is one of her screaming because her room was filled with spiders. I must have been four I think. She died the following year.”

“Oh, Luke.” Charity was watching him now, her eyes filled with compassion as she threaded her fingers through his. “I’m so sorry.”

He smiled at her. “I feel like someone new when you call me that,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Like I can begin again and be someone worth loving, worth fighting for.” She bit her lip and he looked away, the desire to kiss her so strong he had to fight to keep talking, but she must hear this. All of it. He wouldn’t allow her to distract him again.

“Father didn’t know what to do with me. He was too busy, too important to have time for his son. He didn’t believe in spoiling children, by which I mean he wanted absolute control over me. I was not to be hugged or shown affection, which would make me weak. I was to be beaten if I was naughty or disobeyed an order.”

Dev kept his gaze on the ground, trying to tell her without letting the truth of his words get under his skin, to overwhelm his emotions. He’d spent long enough wasting his life on anger and regret; he’d get this out and over and done, and then she would see she was saving him, not ruining him.

“My behaviour became worse, so he sent me away to school. I was five. At school I was bullied until I learnt to fight back, and I did fight back. I was threatened with expulsion at least once a term, but my father would simply pay them more to keep me. I would receive a lecture from him about how disgusted he was with me, what a disappointment I was to him, how I would never amount to anything. I soon realised it didn’t matter what I did, nothing would ever change.” He swallowed, knowing that this had been the pivotal moment in his life, the only way he’d been able to take back some control. “So, I became the boy the others were afraid of and I learned to use that fear. If I disgusted my father, I decided that was the only way to get to him, to hurt him. It was the only power I had, and I used it.”

Dev cleared his throat, aware that his hopes of keeping his narration unemotional were failing miserably.

“I became a man worthy of his disgust. I was cruel and selfish and indulged all of my baser instincts.” He looked up then, wondering what Charity made of his confession. Did she despise him for being weak? There was only compassion in her eyes, though, such warmth and such love and understanding that a lump rose to his throat. He forced it down, needing to finish this, to ensure she understood. “I didn’t realise how much I despised myself, though. I never stopped to wonder what my life might have been if I hadn’t been so hell bent on hurting him, on destroying everything his good name stood for.” He reached out then, touching his hand to her face. “I didn’t realise until I met you. Pretending to be someone else, it… it freed me. It let me see I could change, I could be different… better. If I just had someone who would give me the chance to be that man.”

Charity opened her mouth to speak, but he pressed a finger to her lips.

“Selling Devlin Hall was the first step and it was like cutting a cancer from my soul. I’ll never regret it, Charity, not for a moment.” The words were hard and full of certainty and he held her gaze now, willing her to acknowledge the truth what he’d told her. “You think I’d be giving up my life, that I’d be losing friends, losing my self-esteem.” He gave a laugh, shaking his head at the idea. “I had no life before you. Do you know that no one… no one came looking for me when I disappeared? No one cared, and I can’t blame them for that. If you married me, you’d not be condemning me to a life I will come to regret, love, you’d be giving me a life. If not for you I’d have drunk myself to death in a year or two or been killed in a duel or some back-alley brawl.”

He heard her sob, and she covered her mouth with her hand as he reached for her, grasping her arms and nodding towards the house he was building. “I’m building a future for us here, Charity. The land is good, I had it surveyed. It’s rich, and there’s healthy grazing land too. This will be a farm, you see, except… except I barely know what a bloody potato looks like and I can’t do this without you. I don’t want to do it without you. Not without you, or John and Jane and Kit and Mr and Mrs Baxter. Please love, say you’ll marry me. Don’t condemn me to that life again. I won’t survive it.”

She didn’t answer, tears streaking down her face as she stared at him. Dev held his breath, waiting, hoping and praying he’d not just exposed his heart and soul only to have it trampled underfoot.

Charity launched herself at him, throwing her arms around him and unbalancing him so he slid from the rock and landed in an awkward sprawl on the floor. She was laughing and crying and clinging to him and Dev found himself unable to speak, to ask if this was a yes. He tumbled her onto her back, pushing the curls that had fallen over her face away so he could look at her.

“I hope this is a yes, love,” he said, the words breathless and anxious. “As you’re in a very compromising position now, and quite thoroughly ruined.”

She laughed, a slightly hysterical sound as much a sob as amusement.

“Yes,” she said, reaching up and tugging at the back of his neck. “Yes, yes, I will, because if you’re foolish enough to want to marry such a pig-headed, stubborn, wilful creature, then you only have yourself to blame.”

Dev made a sound of triumph that echoed over the land, and if anyone hadn’t seen them sprawled on the ground together, they had certainly noticed now. Determined not to give her any grounds for wriggling out of her acceptance, Dev submitted to the pressure on his neck and bent to kiss her.

“Hey!” An angry shout had him looking up, finding Kit’s furious countenance above them as he swung down from his horse. “Get your hands off my sister, you bloody bastard. What the hell are you thinking? Have you no sense of honour, propriety?”

Dev eyed Kit with caution and got to his feet, tugging Charity with him and holding her close. “We’re to be married,” he said in a rush, not wanting to start life with Charity with her twin enraged with him. “She just said yes.”

“Oh.” Kit’s face cleared, and he grinned at them. “Well, that’s all right then. Mind you, she’s got a shocking temper.”

“Kit!” Charity exclaimed, glaring at her brother, who merely winked at her.

“Too late now, love, he’s committed.”

Dev laughed and let Charity go for long enough to hold out his hand to her brother. Kit stepped closer, smiling, until he wasn’t. The blow came out of nowhere and Dev stumbled backwards, landing on his arse with a thud.

“Kit!” Charity screamed.

“What the…?” Dev touched a tentative hand to his nose, finding it bloody as Charity fell to her knees beside him. “What the hell did you do that for?” he demanded.

“That was for what happened in London,” Kit replied, his voice grim. He cleared his throat, rubbing his knuckles with a scowl. “Damn, you’ve got a hard head,” he muttered, before offering Dev a hand up. “It’s all right, old chap, I feel much better now.”

“I wish I could say the same,” Dev remarked, taking his hand with caution. “You’ve got quite a punch for a poet.”

Kit returned a rather feral grin. “Never judge a book by its cover, nor a poet, come to that. Just because I write of love and romance, doesn’t mean I can’t hold my own in a brawl.”

“I believe you,” Dev said, staunching the flow with his sleeve.

“Oh, Luke, you’re bleeding,” Charity cried, fumbling for a handkerchief. “Kit, how could you?”

“Luke?” Kit said, looking confused.

Dev held out his hand once more. “Luke Linton,” he said, feeling a little absurd. “I’m a new man,” he added with a grin. “I hope I’ll be one you’ll be happy to have as a brother-in-law. I shall certainly try to be.”

Kit snorted and took his hand this time, shaking it and giving him a warm smile. “I reckon we’ll rub along well enough,” he said, nodding. “If you can endure Charity, I’m easy to get along with. I’m the nicer twin.”

Dev laughed as Charity smacked her brother on the arm and Kit cried out like she’d done more than just tap him.

He pulled her away from her twin and into his arms once more, unable to stop touching her. Happiness bubbled up in his chest, the emotion so new and overwhelming he didn’t know what to do or say next.

“Come along you two lovebirds, it’ll be dark soon,” Kit said, gesturing up at the skies which had dimmed already. “Charity, didn’t you say something about roast pork and summer pudding?”

Charity nodded, grinning at him. “Batty will be furious with us for spoiling her welcome home meal,” she said, giving Dev a look that made his heart turn in his chest. “We’d better hurry.”

“Me too?” he asked, not wanting to presume, though she’d seemed to be inviting him.

“Of course, you too,” she said, tugging at his hand. “You’re part of the family now.”

Dev savoured the shock and delight of her words as they rolled over him. He was part of the family now. He wouldn’t ever have to be alone again. He belonged somewhere, and to someone. People would care for him, about him, and he for them. If he ever got lost on the moors, if he ever failed to come home, there were people who would worry, who would look for him and not stop until he was found. The knowledge swelled in his chest, sinking into his bones and filling his heart until he couldn’t breathe with the wonder of it.

He belonged.

“Are you coming then?” Charity said, her voice soft as she looked at him, perhaps now understanding the enormity of what had happened to his life. “I’m not going anywhere without you,” she added, moving closer and pressing a kiss to his lips. “Not ever again.”