IT WAS HUMILIATING TO have been outmaneuvered and cornered like this. It was also infuriating.
Helen glanced at Charity, who was sleeping peacefully in the chair. “I don’t want to wake her. Is there another place we might talk?”
Without a word, Rhys took her with him past the threshold. She hated the way he guided her with his hand clasped on the back of her neck, as if she were a helpless kitten being carried by the scruff. The fact that he was doing it in front of his . . . henchman, or whatever the young man was, made it even worse. He shepherded her into a little office on the other side of the hallway, pausing to speak tersely to the man in the hallway. “Ransom. Don’t let anyone near the child.”
“Yes, sir.”
This room was smaller, only big enough for a desk, a chair, and a bookcase. Rhys seemed to take up most of the available space. He looked calculating and utterly self-assured, and Helen had an inkling of what his business adversaries must face when they sat across a table from him.
She retreated to the foot of wall space between the desk and the door, still feeling the sensation of his hand on the back of her neck. “That man in the hallway . . . he works for you?”
“Now and then.”
“You hired him to follow me.”
“At first I hired him to follow Vance. I’d received word about some underhanded business he was involved in, and I had no intention of being duped by the bastard. To my surprise, I received a report that not only had Vance visited Ravenel House, but you and he met again the next day for a private chat at the museum.” A chilling pause. “I found it interesting that you didn’t see fit to mention it to me.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” Helen countered.
“I wanted you to tell me. I gave you every chance that night at the store.”
She felt herself turning very red, as she remembered that night. Seeing her flush, Rhys looked mocking, but mercifully made no comment.
“But I didn’t,” Helen said. “So you told Mr. Ransom to follow me.”
“It seemed a good idea,” he agreed with knife-edged sarcasm. “Especially when you and Dr. Gibson decided to traipse through the East End docklands at night.”
“Did she tell you that Charity is Mr. Vance’s child?”
“No, Ransom bribed the orphanage matron. When I cornered Dr. Gibson to ask about it, she told me to go to hell.”
“Please don’t blame her—she only went because I told her I’d go by myself if she didn’t help me.”
For some reason, that broke through Rhys’s veneer of control. “Christ, Helen.” He turned away, seeming to hunt for something in the tiny office to destroy. “Tell me you wouldn’t have gone alone. Tell me, or I swear I’ll—”
“I wouldn’t have,” she said quickly. “And I didn’t. I took Dr. Gibson with me for safety.”
Rhys swung back to her with a lethal glare. His color had risen. “You say that as if she could provide anything close to adequate protection! The thought of you two skipping along Butcher Row through that crowd of whores and thieves—”
“No one was skipping,” Helen said indignantly. “I only went there because I had no choice. I had to make certain that Charity was safe, and . . . she wasn’t. The orphanage was unspeakable, and she was there because no one wanted her, but I do. I do, and I’m going to keep her and take care of her.”
His temper finally exploded. “Damn it, why? She’s not yours!”
“She’s my sister,” Helen blurted out, and a wracking sob escaped her.
Rhys turned ashen beneath his bronze complexion. Staring at her as if she were a stranger, he sat slowly on the edge of the desk.
“Vance and my mother—” Helen was forced to stop, coughing on a few more sobs.
There was nothing but silence in the tiny room.
It took a full minute before Helen could control her emotions enough to speak again. “I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to deceive you, but I didn’t know how to tell you after I found out. I’m so sorry.”
Rhys sounded sluggish and disoriented. “When did you find out?”
Helen told him the entire story—God, she was so tired of explaining it. She was hopeless and unflinching, like a condemned soul at her last confession. It was agony to cut every bond between them, one by one, word by word. But there was also relief in it. After this, there would be nothing left to fear.
Rhys kept his head lowered as he listened, his hands clamped on the desk with splintering pressure.
“I wanted just a little more time with you,” Helen finished, “before I ended the engagement. It was selfish of me. I should have told you right away. It’s only that—losing you felt like dying, and I couldn’t—” She stopped, appalled by how melodramatic that sounded, like a manipulation, even though it was the truth. In a moment, she managed to continue more calmly. “You’ll survive without me. She won’t. Obviously we can’t marry now. I think it would be for the best if I left England for good.”
She wished Rhys would say something. She wished he would look at her. She especially wished he wouldn’t breathe like that, with tautly controlled energy that made it seem as if something terrible were about to happen.
“You have it all decided, do you?” he finally asked, his head still bent.
“Yes. I’m going to take Charity to France. I can look after her there. You can go on with your life here, and I won’t be here to . . . to bother anyone.”
He muttered two quiet words.
“What?” she asked in bewilderment, inching forward to hear him.
“I said, try it.” Rhys pushed from the desk and reached her with stunning quickness, caging her body with his and slamming the sides of his fists against the wall. The room vibrated. He glared into her shocked face. “Try to leave me, and see what happens. Go to France, go anywhere, and see how long it takes for me to reach you. Not five fucking minutes.” He took a few vehement breaths, his gaze locked on hers. “I love you. I don’t give a damn if your father is the devil himself. I’d let you stab a knife in my heart if it pleased you, and I’d lie there loving you until my last breath.”
Helen wanted to crumple in agony. His face blurred before her. “You—you don’t want to end up living with two of Albion Vance’s daughters.” At least, that was what she thought she had said. She was crying too hard to be sure.
“I know what I want.” He pulled her against him, his head lowering over hers.
Feebly she tried to twist away, and his mouth landed on her jaw, dragging hotly over her skin. Shoving at his chest was like trying to move a brick wall. “Let go,” she wept, grieving and exasperated, knowing that he had made the decision without thinking. But the force of his will, the strength of his desire for her, couldn’t change facts. She had to make him face them.
He was kissing her neck, his beard scraping her tender skin until it smarted. But his lips gentled as they grazed the hollow at the base of her throat, where her pulse was beating.
“You s-said any child of his is demon spawn.”
His head jerked up, his eyes fierce. “I didn’t mean you. Whatever damned evil thing I might say, it never means you.”
“Every time you look at me, you’ll remember that I’m half his.”
“No.” His hand came to the side of her face, his thumb wiping her tears. “You’re all mine.” His voice was deep and shaken. “Every hair on your head. Every part of you was made to be loved by me.”
He bent over her again, and she tried to push him back long enough to say something, but she was covered by at least fourteen stone of thoroughly aroused male, and soon she was too distracted to remember what she’d wanted to tell him. Her struggles slowed, her resolve weakening, and he took advantage, devouring and seducing every tender place he could find. Somewhere in the middle of it he turned gentle, searching her with slow fire, until she sagged against him with a moan. She felt him pull at the little combs that anchored her hat, and he tossed it aside. His hands went to either side of her head, angling her mouth upward, and he possessed her hungrily.
“Rhys,” she managed to gasp against his lips, twisting in his arms. “Stop. This isn’t solving anything. You haven’t given one moment’s thought to what you’re promising.”
“I don’t need to. I want you.”
“That’s not enough to make everything all right.”
“Of course it is,” he said, so arrogant and stubborn that she was at a loss for words. He stared at her parted lips, his eyes darkening in a way that sent hot and cold chills down her spine. His voice turned husky. “Damn you for saying I could survive without you. I’ll have to punish you for that, cariad. For hours . . .” His mouth crushed over hers, dizzying and blatantly sexual, making promises that sent her blood racing.
After a long time, his head lifted, and he reached into his coat, pulling out a soft white handkerchief. He gave it to her and kept an arm around her, his embrace now protective, supportive, as she wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
“Tell me what you’re afraid of,” he said quietly.
“The scandal will never go away,” Helen said miserably. “People would talk behind our backs, and say malicious things, the most terrible things—”
“I’m used to that.”
“I was supposed to help you advance in society. But that won’t happen now. Charity and I are”—a residual sob came out in a hiccup—“liabilities.”
“Not in my world, cariad. Only in yours. Only in that razor-thin layer I was so determined to be part of.” A self-mocking smile tugged at his lips. “For no better reason than pride. To show off, and prove that a Welshman could have whatever he wanted. But that means nothing to me now. You’re all that matters.”
“And Charity?”
Rhys’s expression went carefully blank. “She matters too.”
Helen knew he was trying to accustom himself to the idea. But she knew how much she would be asking of him. Too much. “It won’t be enough for you merely to tolerate her. I grew up with a cold and unloving father, and—” She broke off, swallowing painfully.
“Look at me.” He urged her chin upward. “I can love her, Helen.” As she tried to look away, his grip firmed. “How difficult could it be? Half of her is exactly the same as half of you.”
“The half from Albion Vance,” she said bitterly. “You can’t dismiss that casually, and say it doesn’t matter.”
“Cariad, nothing about this is casual to me. But if you want a long, sensitive discussion about my feelings, I can’t help you. I’m from North Wales, where we express ourselves by throwing rocks at trees. I’ve had more feelings in the past half-hour than I have in my entire life, and I’m at my limit.”
“That still doesn’t—”
“I love whatever it is you’re made of. All of it.”
He seemed to think that was the last word on the entire matter.
“But—”
“Stop arguing,” he said gently, “or I’ll find a better use for your mouth.”
“Rhys, you can’t—”
His lips clamped firmly on hers, making good on his promise. She stiffened at first, withholding her response, but as he kissed her with passionate intensity, she soon found herself clinging to him weakly. The kiss turned deep and languid, and she went boneless, sinking through a soft, dark current of sensation into depths of drowsing pleasure.
Thump. Thump. Thump. She moaned in protest at the jarring sound of a fist on the door.
With a grunt of annoyance, Rhys fumbled for the doorknob. Lifting his mouth from Helen’s, he shot a lethal glance at Ransom, who stood there with his gaze pointedly averted.
“This had better be worth it,” Rhys said. Helen rested the side of her hot face against his chest. She heard a few indistinguishable words over her head. Rhys’s chest moved beneath her cheek with a short sigh. “That’s worth it.” Reluctantly he eased Helen away, gently encouraging her to stand on her own. She was wilted and dazed, her legs shaking.
“Little love,” he murmured, “I want you and Charity to go with Ransom—he’ll take you to my carriage. I’ll join you there, now in a minute.”
“Where are you going?” she asked anxiously.
“I have an errand to take care of.”
“Does it have to do with Mr. Vance? Is he here?”
Staring into her worried face, Rhys smiled and kissed her. “All I’m going to do is say a few words to him.”
Helen went to the threshold and watched as Rhys walked down the hallway with purposeful strides.
“Is that really all he’s going to do?” she asked.
Ransom gave her an oblique glance. “For now. But if I were Mr. Vance . . . after this, I’d try to keep a continent between myself and Winterborne.”
AFTER EXCHANGING A few words with the gray-haired booking clerk and handing him a gold sovereign, Rhys went to platform eight, where the last of the passengers had boarded, and porters were loading the final carts of luggage.
Albion Vance’s snow-colored hair gleamed from beneath a felt bowler hat. He was gesturing to one of the first-class carriages as he stood with three train officials in uniform: a platform manager, a train guard, and a conductor.
Vance wanted them to search for Helen. He was calm and deliberate, a predator who had no idea that he was being pursued by a larger predator.
Pausing at the end of the platform, Rhys couldn’t help wondering . . . had he known the first time he’d met Helen that this man was her father, would it have mattered?
Maybe at first. He wasn’t sure. But there was no doubt that eventually he would have succumbed to the irresistible attraction of Helen, the magic she would always hold for him. In his mind, there was no connection between Helen and Vance, regardless of physical resemblance, blood, or heredity. There was only good in Helen. That gentle, valiant spirit, that perfect mixture of strength and kindness, was all her own.
It still terrified him to think that she had gone to an East End slum district last night. Even though he’d heard about it after the fact from Ransom, knowing that she was safe, the story had nearly brought him to his knees. “You’re sure she wasn’t harmed?” he’d asked Ransom a half-dozen times, and the assurances still hadn’t been enough to satisfy him.
In the past eighteen hours, Rhys had come to understand far more about poor Ioan Crewe and the choice he’d made after Peggy’s death. He would have to make Helen understand that in risking her own life, she had risked his as well. It would break him to lose her. He wouldn’t survive it.
But at the moment, what Helen needed most was to be protected from the man standing in front of him. As he stared at Albion Vance, Rhys felt whatever there was of the decent, humane part of his nature being swallowed up by the side he always tried to keep hidden. It was from an earlier, rougher time in his life, when violence had been habitual and necessary. There were things he preferred people not to know he was capable of . . . and what he was willing to do to Albion Vance definitely fell in that category.
Slowly Rhys approached the group of men. The platform manager was the first to notice him, giving a look askance at the big-framed, scowling stranger who wore no overcoat, hat, or gloves. Following the platform manager’s gaze, the others turned as well.
As Vance recognized him, a quick succession of emotions crossed his face—surprise, anger, frustration, defeat.
“She’s not on the train,” Rhys said flatly. “I have her.”
Sighing, Vance turned to the railway employees. “It seems there’s no need to trouble yourselves. Go about your business.”
Since there was no other way to leave the platform, Vance was compelled to walk beside Rhys.
The importunate clanging of a bell rent the air, and the down-train sounded two short, shrieking whistles.
“I should have told Helen the brat had died,” Vance said after a moment. “I hadn’t expected her to take such an interest in the creature. But that’s how women are, their emotions eclipse all judgment.”
Rhys didn’t reply. Hearing Helen’s name on his lips provoked a nearly irresistible urge to seize him, break joints and bones with his bare hands, and hurl him onto the tracks below.
“What will you do about her?” Vance asked.
“The orphan?”
“No. About Helen.”
Rhys’s fists clenched. Stop saying her name. “I’m going to marry her.”
“Even now? Oh, my. What a fine litter of mongrels you’ll breed.” Vance sounded amused. “And my grandchildren will inherit your fortune.”
As they reached the foundation of an overhead footbridge, Rhys gripped the front of Vance’s coat with one hand and shoved him against the support posts.
Vance’s eyes widened and his face reddened. He gripped Rhys’s wrist, gasping.
Leaning closer, Rhys spoke quietly. “When I was a boy, my father sent me in the afternoons to work for the butcher, who’d hurt his hand and needed help dressing the small stock. Most men have a natural distaste for such work. It turns the stomach at first. But soon I learned to saw along the center of a hog’s backbone, cleave through a sheep’s ribs, or break the jawbone of a calf’s head to remove its tongue, and think nothing of it.” He paused deliberately. “If you ever try to communicate with my wife again, I’ll carve you like a saddle of lamb. It will take ten minutes, and you’ll beg for killing before I’m done.” Easing his grip, he released him with a slight shove.
Vance straightened his coat and gave him a hostile, contemptuous glance. “Do you think I fear you?”
“You should. In fact, you should leave England. For good.”
“I’m the heir to an earldom, you lowbred swine. You’re mad if you think you could bully me into living in exile.”
“Good. I’d prefer you to stay.”
“Yes,” Vance said sarcastically, “so you can have the pleasure of carving me like a mutton loin, I understand.”
“Do you?” Rhys fixed a murderous gaze on him. “You’ve spent years proclaiming to the world how you loathe the Welsh. How uncivilized my kind is, how brutal. How savage. You don’t know the half of it. I’ve never been able to forget the sound of Peggy Crewe’s screams as she lay dying in childbed. Like someone was using a fishing line to hook out her organs one at a time. One day soon I’ll try that on you, Vance. And we’ll find out if you can scream even louder.”
As he heard the vicious sincerity in Rhys’s voice, Vance’s smirk vanished. He finally wore the look of real fear: the focused eyes, the tiny spasm of tight facial muscles.
“Leave England,” Rhys advised softly. “Or your life will be very short.”