Chapter 23

Jack had never cared when a woman’s lip had trembled with emotion in the past. He cared now. But it was not with the tragic sort of childish petulance that set his Cordy’s lip trembling.

Oh no. Her entire body trembled. . . with fury. Her passionate eyes sparked like lighting bolts in the middle of a sea storm and the energy about her had pooled into something, deep and dangerous. She lifted her chin and a lock of her blond hair tumbled across her forehead. Dashing it back, she said, “You have a heart as much as I.”

His gut twisted with horror at what he knew he must do. At what he must say to end the doomed path he had set upon with her. He’d been such a fool to engage in such an affair with her, his wife, and now he had to play the thing out to the bloody end. And he hated himself. He would never be worthy of Cordelia. Never. And he had to give her the freedom she’d been so determined to have if he was to keep her safe from him. Its what an honorable man would have done form the beginning. “That isn’t saying much is it?”

Her cheeks flooded with crimson. “I am not heartless.”

“Aren’t you?” The words were poison in his mouth, ripping up his tongue, contaminating his flesh. He longed to stop. To take her in his arms and explain that he could never be the man she needed. That he was incapable of living up to her expectations. His family knew. His father and even his grandmother on occasion had made that clear. If that weren’t enough the history of his own behavior had made that more than plain.

And he couldn’t bear disappointing her.

He knew all to well, the horrors of disappointing the ones one loved. Hadn’t his father been ashamed of him his whole life? His entire life, the duke had looked upon him with disgust. Every time he’d been in his father’s presence he’d felt the disgrace of being the failed son and heard the piercing words meant to teach him his lowly place. And he would now not perform the part of failed husband. Nor could he let her attach herself to someone who would just drain her happiness as he disappointed her.

So, he cast out any hesitance he felt at hurting her. If he did not hurt her now, he would make her life a living hell, living in the shadow of his inferior character. “You’ve lived your entire adult life as a virgin, unwilling to be touched, to be loved. I think you are exactly like me. Heartless. Without feeling. One who thinks of themselves at all costs.”

For a blessed moment, her gaze softened. “That’s not who you are.”

The small, barely living part of him that was good demanded that he assure her that she was the sun, the stars, that no one could ever touch her for her strength, beauty, and intelligence. But he couldn’t do that. Not if for once, for her, he was going to do the right thing. “That is exactly who I am.”

She propped her hands upon her hips, a defiant gesture. “You’re insistent upon this course?”

He’d set himself upon it the moment he had stood upon the landing gazing down. “Yes.”

“Fine then.” She squared her shoulders, her chin lifting in that resolute way she had. “I will tell you what you so clearly long to hear.”

A gaping well of dread formed in Jack’s stomach. This was exactly what he desired, but for the first time in his adult life, having charged head long into battles, faced angry husbands in duels, and drank until he couldn’t stand, he felt a tinge of fear because he actually admired the woman standing across from him. And she was about to point out everything that was not admirable in him.

She ran her eyes over him, critical, assessing, once again as if he were an object in a glass case to be categorized and catalogued. “Jack Eversleigh, you have misused a great deal of your life.”

He inhaled, relieved. Thank God. She was going to do exactly what he needed her to. Now, if she could just commit, she’d point out all the reasons why she needed to leave him and he wouldn’t have to leave her.

Cocking her head to the side, she said without any seeming mercy, “At every turn, you have chosen the path that others do not.”

He stood still, stoic under her words, allowing them to hit him, breaking familiar wounds open.

“You have turned your back on society as best you may and you have not lived up to your potential.”

His breath caught in his throat. That last part. That last part didn’t sounds quite right. He didn’t have potential. He never had. And he was never going to. That fact had been clear all his life, damn it. He opened his mouth ready to correct her but she would have none of it.

Cordelia rushed on before he could speak, “I don’t know when it occurred but at some point you decided to be the one who took all the blame in your family.” Her face grew hard, angry, almost brittle the words falling out of her mouth like rough stones. “I assume it has to do with your eldest brother’s death.” Here for one fleeting moment, those riotous eyes softened. “You took the blame, did you not?”

The sympathy in her gaze and the absurdity of her claims set his insides afire. What she was trying to do. . . Trying to lift him out of the mire, it was disgusting and futile. “It was my fault,” he gritted.

She threw back her head, an impatient breath huffing out of her. Dropping her hands to her sides, she leaned forward and leveled a determined state at him. “You took the blame because it was the easy thing to do.”

The easy thing to do?

Easy?

A bark of dry laughter forced its way past his tight throat. But that laughter, hollow and slightly broken to his own ears ignited a rage within that grabbed hold his guts so fast he nearly lashed out its full force upon her. His spine snapped straight and he grabbed her arms. In slow degrees, he pulled her forward, until she rested on nothing but the tips of her toes and her face was just a breath away from his. “You speak utter shite.”

Unyielding, she met his gaze and held firm in his embrace. “Your response suggests that I’ve hit quite the nerve.”

He blinked. She was so certain. So determined. All his life, he’d taken on the role of the unforgivable son. Of the one who’d broken his father’s heart but underneath the surface there had always been the small questioning voice, the voice of a little boy desperately wondering why his father hated him so. That voice had whispered in the cold lonely nights, before and after the nightmares of his brother’s cold blue body. Why?

“You took the blame to save your father.”

“I didn’t save him,” he choked out. “I broke his heart. My father hated me. He knew what I was and I proved it time and again.”

She stared at him, unflinching. “You filled the role he needed you to.”

“Now, that is complete shite.” Something was happening. Something he didn’t understand and he had to stop her talking. Her words were not at all the ones he’d expected to hear and that fear, an emotion he wasn’t familiar with, snaked up through his innards, threatening to strangle him. “And I think I’ve listened to your mad ramblings long enough.”

Sadness filled her eyes and she shook her head. “Too close to the truth, that’s why you’re afraid again.”

He tightened his grip, focusing on the pulsing heat of her body mere inches from his, hating the sympathy he saw in her. He did not want her to feel sorry for him. “I am not afraid.”

“Then why are you driving me away?” she demanded.

“Because I don’t love you,” he snapped. “You are the last woman I could ever want. You are bookish, know nothing of making love, and you dress like a woman would if she could be a man.”

All that bravado, that beautiful confidence she had, crumpled under his words. Her shoulders hunched. “I thought better of you,” she whispered.

“I told you,” he said, his throat tightening, any hopes he’d fantasized over burning to a cinder. “This is who I am.”

“This is who you have to be. Who you’ve chosen to be,” she whispered.

“And why do I have to be,” he demanded. “Why don’t you think I want this?”

“Oh, I’m sure they’re one and the same.” Her face paled, tinged with sadness.

“But if you didn’t let your brother drown, who did?”

“Cordelia. . . There was no one else there that day. There was no one else—”

“Your father. ”

He gaped at her. “That’s—”

“Ridiculous? I don’t think it is. Your brother was your father’s responsibility. Not yours. He hated you so he wouldn’t have to hate himself, Jack. He was a grown man who blamed a little boy because he couldn’t bear it.”

Jack shoved her from him. Pain cut across his heart so deep he couldn’t draw breath. “Cease.”

“Why? Because that hurt?” she challenged. “I thought you hadn’t any heart.”

“You shouldn’t even know any of this,” he rushed, desperate to stop this conversation before it could go further. “You aren’t one of us.”

Tears shone in her eyes. “No. I am not. I never have been, even though when I was a girl, I desperately wanted to be. I kept waiting, hoping that someone would come to sweep me away from my life. To make everything stop that I couldn’t bear. But you never did.”

“I am no knight in shining armor, Cordelia.”

“No. You are not. And I am no lady fair. So stop insisting you have no heart or that I am a delusional child. We are neither of us these things.”

He did have a heart. A cursed one. One that was breaking with every word she spoke. With every nail of a word that slammed him harder into his coffin of loneliness. She wanted so badly something from him he could never give. If she looked only at his actions, he was a cad. The worst sort of selfish men. He had left her to rot. He hadn’t given a damn about her happiness and now that’s all he did care for and it was why he had to leave. Drawing in a slow breath, he lifted his palm to her cheek and gently pressed his lips to hers.

The touch of their mouths nearly undid him. If only he was not the man he was, he would wrap his arms around her and never let her go. But he was not the man she envisioned, so he pulled back from the kiss, his heart turning to stone as he did.

She smiled, clearly certain she had convinced him.

As she reached out, her beautiful fingers, fingers hardened from work and use, toward him, he strode around her. Without looking back, he opened the door and walked out into the night. Away from the only happiness he had ever known.