.
Alex turned to look at Justin. She took a step back when he approached her but ceased her retreat as he made his way toward her. He stopped less than a breath away and didn’t touch her.
“Tell me what happened,” she said.
Justin looked away again, and Alex felt anger leap into her blood. “How did she die? Speak now or I’m leaving, and I’ll never speak to you again.”
He turned to her, and she watched as tears began to build in his own green eyes. “She drowned,” he whispered.
Alex’s eyes widened as a horrifying image came into her mind. “You held your mother—”
Justin shook his head and reached out. “It wasn’t like that.”
Alex leaned away, and he dropped his hand and eyes.
“I didn’t touch her.” His gaze returned to her. “But I watched her fight in the water, and I called for help. I was the only one there in the beginning, and even though I called for help, I knew that help would be too late.”
Alex looked away as a less horrifying but still just as ugly picture was painted before her. He was a murderer.
“My father, upon hearing my call, rushed into the water. He almost died and would have were it not for your father.” He swallowed and then took a step back. “So you see why I believe her. She was right.”
Alex closed her eyes and pressed her lips together, unable to deny his words were true. He’d watched a woman fight for her last breath and had done little about it. She looked at him again when he began to speak, the rest of the awful story pouring from his lips, lips she’d kissed.
“We were all to go sailing at Lord Avon's estate that day, but my mother went ahead of the rest of us and I followed, wanting a moment alone with her to ask her a question.” He chuckled without humor and said, “After everything she’d put me through, I was still trying to get her to love me.”
She felt that confession and her heart ached for him. Even her own mother, in the end, hadn’t seemed to hate Alex. How horrible Justin must have felt to be rejected over and over again.
“She climbed into the boat before the others arrived. I think it was yet another effort to get away from me,” Justin added. Then he moved to the sideboard and grabbed the decanter. The rest of the story came out dispassionately with his back to her. “Her leap into the boat caused it to float away from its position on the shore. I watched her panic and then watched as she stood up in an attempt to capture the oar that lay at the shore. She fell in and started to fight. I hesitated and then called for my father.” The smell of brandy hit the air seconds after the decanter was opened and the liquid began to hit a small glass.
Alex thought it best to leave him alone with his drink because at this point, the engagement was off. She could never marry him knowing what she did, for his darkness was not the same as Reuben’s, Chris’, or Nash’s. Justin was revengeful and ugly.
She opened her mouth to break their betrothal when something else came from her lips. “What was your question?”
He turned to her with his glass in hand. “What?”
“You said you had a question for your mother when you followed her out to the pond,” Alex said. “What was it?”
He seemed to frown as he tried to recall it then took a deep breath and lifted the glass to his lips. “I wanted to know why she’d pushed me down the stairs.”
Alex had forgotten about that. “You mean at Lord Wint’s house?”
Justin took a sip of the brandy. He closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head. “No, she’d tried to do it again at Avon’s the very morning she drowned.” He took another sip and frowned. “I’d not even touched my sisters that day. I’d been nowhere near them or any other girl. By that time, I avoided them like the plague, all to meet her approval. I didn’t understand it.” He shrugged and said, “But what does it matter now? She’s gone and it’s my fault.”
Alex stood frozen and glared at Justin. “She tried to kill you again?”
Justin moved to a chair by the small desk in the corner and sank into it with a sigh. “She tried killing me repeatedly.” He frowned at Alex. “Lord Wint’s house was nowhere near the first time. That was simply the first time she used stairs, and I’d been sure of her intent. Before then, there had been a few occasions when I’d suspected that she’d put something in my tea or soup before serving me. Lucy Ann or Selina would usually knock it from my hand before I could partake of it.” He paused with the glass to his hand and narrowed his eyes at her. “Do you think they knew what she was doing?” He looked away as he seemed to think of an answer and then sank back against the chair. “I suppose I owe my sisters my life.”
He owed himself his life as well.
Alex moved toward him and took the glass from his hands before he could drink any more. She placed it on the table and glared at him. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“Tell you what?” He looked toward the glass.
Alex grabbed his chin and swung it back to meet his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me your mother was trying to kill you? You made it seem as though it was only that once!”
Justin glared and jerked himself from her hold. “Why tell you? So you could pity me? I think not. I didn’t care for the amount of it you showed after the first tale. I could never say more.”
“But your mother had just tried to kill you when you let her drown,” she told him.
He reached for the glass and spoke without emotion. “I know what you’re getting at. It wasn’t self-defense, Alex. She’d not provoked me at the pond.” He looked at her and held her eyes. “I knew what I was doing by not lending a hand. I killed her.”
Alex knocked the glass out of his hand and heard it make a loud thunk across the room. “But she was trying to kill you.”
“I should have left her alone,” Justin said, defending the woman. “That’s probably why she tried to kill me. I reminded her of the father who had raped her as a child. She didn’t want me near her. She thought I would hurt her and I did. I killed her. I was selfish in my pursuits of her. I’m not better—”
She slapped him, and the action surprised her just as much as it surprised him.
They stayed in fixed silence for a long time, both breathing hard.
When Alex finally spoke, she didn’t recognize her own voice. “Don’t you dare compare yourself to that man.” Anger made her limbs vibrate. “Every child alive wants their parents to love them, and you had every right to want her love.”
Justin’s face began to heat. His eyes nearly burned her on the spot, but she didn’t look away and neither did he.
“She tried killing an innocent child and I have no pity for her.” She didn’t even hate Michael as much as she hated the former Countess of Chantenny at that moment. Were the woman alive today, Alex would have tried to strangle her.
When Justin spoke, his voice was soft. “I was fifteen. I didn’t have to come home from school. I could have kept my distance. I could have allowed her to have her peace, but I didn’t, Alexandra. She looked at me and she saw a monster. A monster that provoked her over and over again. She probably felt as though she had no choice.”
“She was ill of mind,” Alex told him.
“I should have saved her,” he whispered.
“Why didn’t you?” Alex asked. “Why didn’t you get in the water? Why call for help instead of going to her yourself?”
His lips trembled and then he threw his head down and covered his face with his hands. “Because, I was dirty and couldn’t touch her.” He body shook. “It was the same reason I didn’t try and give her the oar. She’d never have wanted it from my hands. I wasn’t to touch her. I did this to her. She’d dead because of me.”
Alexandra fell upon her skirts and placed her hands on Justin’s cheeks. She was weeping as well and could barely see as he moved his hands away to look down at her. “She did this to herself, Justin. This is not your fault.”
“I feel it is,” he whispered then looked at her. The whites of his eyes were red from grief, which made the green seem darker. Both shame and guilt stared back at her in equal measures. “A part of me, Alex, probably wanted her gone, but another part of me simply froze.”
And who wouldn’t have in the face of a woman who’d repeatedly wished him dead and conditioned him to expect horrible ramifications for touching her?
The man who sat before her was broken in ways Alex couldn’t comprehend.
“I forgive you,” she told him.
He stopped moving and inhaled a breath. “You shouldn’t. I have a darkness in me, Alex. I don’t deserve forgiveness.”
“Well, you have it and my love,” she told him, wanting to heal the wound that had been cut through his soul so very long ago. “I love you as you are.”
He closed his eyes and tried to shake his head, tried shaking her away from him. “No.”
She leaned forward and brushed her mouth against his. He froze, and she did it again. “I love you.”
He shuddered, and when he leaned away she followed, folding into his lap and wrapping her arms around his neck. He buried his face in her shoulder, and Alex held him as his body continued to tremble with his every breath.
Then his hands went around her, and Alex took the breath she’d not known she’d been holding for so long.
His hold tightened, and he buried his face further into the place where her shoulder met her neck. He was so large all around her, yet she held him as though she would a child, holding him as his mother had never done in his life. She moved her hands through his hair and continued to whisper how much she loved him until his shaking calmed and his breathing came slower.
When he lifted his head, he said, “Thank you, but you don’t have to marry me.”
“Oh, but I do have to marry you,” she whispered. “Because living without you is not a life I could bear.”
He leaned away from her and covered his face with his free hand. The shame wouldn’t leave him. “I should never have touched you.”
It was far too late for that. She’d felt his touch and was in love with it.
“I believe I touched you first,” she said as he continued to grope his hair.
He looked at her through his fingers. “I still don’t understand why.”
“Perhaps I knew you were the one from the very beginning.” She smiled. “And because you’re quite irresistible when you look confused.”
He made the expression at that very moment and, even with grief-reddened eyes, there was not another man on earth who was this handsome.
He looked away, and his lips twitched as though he knew her thoughts. Then he looked at her again and leaned toward her, his arms going around her once more. “I was so unprepared for you, Alex. I fell for you that first day, and after that kiss I knew I’d never love again if I couldn’t love you. Will you marry me?”
“I believe I've already said yes,” she informed him, though her heart still leapt with joy as though it were his first time asking her. And in a way, without the secrets between them and with a new understanding of who Justin was, she did feel as though it was the first time he’d asked.
“Say yes again,” he said, feeling as she did. This was a new beginning for them, and with all her trust, Alex was willing to jump in.
“Yes,” she said again and vowed to continue saying it whenever his doubts made him second-guess his worthiness or the shadows in his mind began to consume him. “Yes.” She was his, and she would love him.
Without reason.
Without condition.
Without end.