by Nicole Locke
She descended the staircase, her eyes met Vernon and Helewise, who looked a mix of her shock and Gabriel’s joy.
The rest of his words sunk in. Reynold meant to give them shelter, but they were to leave Paris. She could barely get them to this house.
And what did he mean by compromised?
Chapter Seventeen
Hours later she settled Vernon and Helewise in the room at the end of the dining hall. They were clean, fed and exhausted. Gabriel took it all in as if his every wish came true. Sniffling, but far too exuberant for sleep, he skipped around as mercenaries gave him a tour.
Such a turn of events and one man was responsible, but Reynold disappeared the moment they arrived, hours ago, and it was time to confront him.
Never in her life had she thought she would seek out Darkness and demand answers for his deeds. But she’d exposed all her secrets to him and he’d revealed nothing to her. Simply ordered her about as if he had all the right to do so. With her family involved, she couldn’t risk it.
Sweeping past the two guards, she swung open the door to his study and heard the distinct metallic clank as a mercenary closed it behind her.
Sitting behind his desk, Reynold was scribbling a message. He did not raise his head when she took the steps necessary to face him.
The scratching of quill over parchment was louder than the roaring in her ears and the thumping of her heart. But it did not hide her uneven breath and she refused for it to take the place of words.
‘We need to talk,’ she said.
‘We do.’ He dipped the quill in the ink and continued his message.
His raven hair fell over his forehead and shook along with his slashes. His expression grim, dark, his brows slanted down, a fierceness to his countenance as if he battled a foe. Though she was seeing him more clearly every moment they spent together, he still seemed cloaked in shadows and night. He still held his secrets. She needed to know more.
‘What is it you’re writing?’
He stopped, but kept his face down. ‘It doesn’t concern you.’
‘You took my family into your care.’
‘And yet again you do not thank me.’
‘Not thank you!’
He looked up. ‘Will you argue I kidnapped them as well? Let us be clear. By hiding them from me, by my discovery of them, it is you who have kidnapped me!’
He brought it on himself. ‘You could have left us all alone.’
Tossing the quill in the pot, he answered, ‘We’ve set the foundation that you are the mother to Grace. I could not let you go because I will not let her go. The fact you come with others is a complication, and one I never wanted.’
She didn’t lie to him. ‘They aren’t my true family. They were struggling, starving, and I...we...help each other. You only asked whether I had parents.’
‘Aren’t you clever.’
Not enough. ‘Where is Grace’s mother?’ She needed answers to questions she should have demanded on the first day. ‘Why do you think you have to hide she’s yours—? Why do I have to pretend I’m her mother!’
‘For her sake,’ he interrupted. ‘For all our sakes, we must. I have enemies more powerful than me. If I cannot hide inside my own domain, my God, we will hide the fact she’s mine outside this fortress. You don’t know the acts I have wrought. I will do anything to keep her safe. I will not falter.’
She did know about surviving, but what did he have to survive? It was rumoured his family were wealthier than the kings of England and France. ‘Why can’t you falter?’
The fingers of his left hand, the burned one, flexed. ‘I won’t tell you. Don’t ask.’
‘Why do we have to wait three days?’ With his silence, she added, ‘I will not follow blindly in this. I can’t. You have my family.’
He exhaled. ‘For a messenger. When he arrives, we leave.’
‘What will be in that message he carries?’
‘What did I tell you about your questions.’
It wasn’t safe. But what did he care for safety? He had everything. Wealth. Protection from his men. Protection...she didn’t have. Was it possible he was trying to keep her safe?
No one had ever done that before. She wanted to ask him more, though she knew he’d give her only silence. But what had she learned of him after their hours together?
He was curious and wanted her secrets and opinions. Ones that she had been withholding up until now. When he got frustrated with her, he tended to reveal more of himself. In those moments, he stopped playing a role she was now certain he was playing. He stopped watching and hiding.
‘The message is important,’ she said.
‘Life or death.’
‘This is like Orpheus, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You don’t want to falter at the end like Orpheus freeing his wife from the Underworld. When all was at stake and he looked back only to lose her.’
A gleam to his eyes. ‘Exactly.’
‘But that’s not the only meaning of the story.’
His eyes narrowed; his jaw clenched. Victory. He hated when she withheld opinions. But he held his secrets. With so much was at stake, she deserved to know.
Ignoring his glare, she strode to one of the tables, found exactly the book she wanted and sat down on the bench to read.
She didn’t need to look at the man behind the desk to know her deeds struck him. He didn’t like secrets of any sort and this one she’d delighted to withhold from him over the last sennight.
‘You’re reading a book,’ he said.
‘You taught me.’ Days at his side, she’d learned his ability to wait was a tactic. She didn’t lift her eyes. This time, she would wait. She turned a page, then another. All the while she felt his gaze on her.
‘For how long?’ he said.
‘A while now.’
Even sitting as she was and him half-hidden, she could feel the tension, see him vibrating with some unknown force. He more than flexed his fingers now, he clenched his burned fist. ‘You had me reading to you.’
She lifted a shoulder and turned another page.
‘Why did you pick that book?’
Because since the first day he had brought her in here he’d kept picking up this particular book and setting it down. Because he looked tortured, knowing this story existed. Out of all the stories in this room he avoided this one and she didn’t know why. It was a secret and she wanted him to break. She’d do anything for her family. Needed to know the danger they were in.
‘I like the title: The Odyssey,’ she said.
‘There are other more interesting stories.’
‘I don’t think so.’ She closed the book, ran a hand down its spine. ‘It’s lovely. Far lovelier than anything else in here. Why is that?’
He now rubbed his thumb along the burn in his hand. ‘I had it commissioned.’
Wealth. She knew he had it in abundance, but this was something else. He loved his books...and so he had them made. ‘You ordered this book made.’
‘From some monks at a monastery in Spain.’
‘Have you ordered others?’
At his curt nod, she looked around his room, then down at her lap. ‘Where are those?’
He made some sound from his chest. As though he was surprised, and pleased. ‘Those I gave to the monks at the monastery.’
‘Were they expecting that?’
‘What do you think?’
She thought it made him angry and uneasy he was sharing details of his life. Especially details that displayed a more generous man than she would have guessed. But he did it in some vague desperation to stop her reading this story.
So she returned to reading the story. ‘It seems to be about a husband trying to return to his wife.’
‘A trivial endeavour. If you can read, there are tales here worthy of your new skill.’
But he had the book made, unlike the others. She flipped through the pages. ‘Odysseus suffered to return to Penelope, didn’t he? It reads his mother died of grief while he was gone. He must have been gone for a long time.’ A few more pages. ‘Oh! He lost some ships. Did he make it to his wife? Perhaps I should read the ending first.’
He slapped his hand on his desk. ‘Put it away—it’s not yours.’
Ah. ‘You took me and my family away from our life, from our things. You told me I had no choice. None of this is mine, you made sure of that. This book.’ She set the book down and stood. Her fingers went to the laces on her gown. ‘The clothes I’m wearing aren’t—’
‘Stop!’ His chair banged against the wall as Reynold stood. Swift strides and he was grasping her arms in his calloused hands. ‘You have changed everything. Everything! And you’re not even aware of it.’
A quick yank that lifted her to her toes, a growl, and his lips slammed to hers. To take as she had. His game, his life. To punish. Because he could do it no other way.
But punishment turned to desire, to lust as her lips and her body yielded. Her slight body pressed to his, shivered, his hands drawing her closer, wanting those trembles to be his as well. His.
She wrenched her lips away. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Stopping you from asking your questions. You need to stop for both our sakes.’
She didn’t pull away, her hands on his chest feeling the pounding of his heart, the battering of his breath. The kiss was too brief, a mere taste. Not nearly enough for the pain he would feel when he lost her. He could wish his family would kill him first to save him the pain, but there was no chance of that.
‘I need my questions,’ she pleaded.
‘Never to gain my answers.’ He never answered to anyone, even God himself. Especially God. Morals and commandments, all of it had to be forsaken. Unable to hold back anymore, the scent of her, the slightest of heat from her frame, her breasts, pressed delicately against him. He had to have more until she stopped him.
He kissed along her jaw, behind her ear, along the cord of her neck until her gown denied him further access, then he rested his head on her shoulder just to breath her in.
‘I do it for your own good,’ he whispered. Revelling in her hands curved into his tunic as if to keep him to her while was trying to hold her in this moment for as long as possible, until he had to let her go. Just this little bit more. ‘I’m trying to—’
‘My own good!’ She shook her head and he lifted his own to meet her gaze.
‘Your men, your fortress, are excessive,’ she said. ‘Only a man in the greatest of dangers would have such force. And you mean to move us from here. Who is threatening us?’
He could never tell her that.
She wrenched an arm away and hit him in the chest. ‘Stop leaving me in the dark!’
He growled, yanked her against him again with his one arm and cradled her face with his free hand. He couldn’t look at anything but the bluest of eyes, the purest of souls. She didn’t know what she asked. If he told her, she’d never be the same.
One brief taste of her; was that all she’d grant him? ‘You feel in the dark, do you, Aliette? You want answers to my secrets I hold.’ His thumb brushed her cheekbone. So soft against the cruel and permanent disfigurement of his hand. Against the memory of her kiss that he would feel forevermore. ‘I should never tell you.’
‘Why are you doing this? Stop touching me.’
He couldn’t. ‘Don’t like it, do you?’ He brushed his knuckles along her jaw. ‘Should I tell you how I received this scar on my hand? Maybe then you’d cease your questions. Follow me blindly like you so desperately should.’
‘Your scar? No, that’s not—’ She jerked her head away. ‘You’re kissing me. You’re touching me as if you want to—ʼ
He lifted his hand. ‘Want to...what, Aliette? What do you think I want?’
‘Let me go.’
Never. It was everything he could not to tighten his hold. ‘Tell me.’
She clenched and lifted her jaw, her eyes promised retribution. He looked forward to it. But for once, he didn’t want to wait.
‘I’ll tell you want I want,’ he said. ‘You.’
She slackened and he truly did hold her closer. ‘Why are you surprised? I’m holding you. I kissed you.’
She shook her head. Denying him. ‘You refused me when I kissed you.’
‘Refuse you? I’m trying to—’ He drew in a breath. ‘I watch you sleep, Aliette. I find myself walking hallways I have no need to just because I know you’re nearby and I might catch a glimpse of you.’
Her lips parted. Her eyes widened, not with desire or anger or anything but disquiet and confusion. ‘You watch me sleep?’
‘Now I’ve scared you.’ Like the monster he was. This time, he let her go, stepped away as he should have before.
‘You weren’t frightened when I told you who I was, or that there are enemies out to kill me...and thus you,’ he said. ‘You understand, though are being obstinate, that the more people involved the harder it will be to achieve what I need—Mistakes will be made. Of course they will. I’ve already done them!’
What had he’d become? Weak. Caving to his need for her. Revealing everything.
Confessing like the pampered nobles he derided all his life.
‘I had Grace mere hours before you were brought here,’ he continued, there was no point hiding this. ‘I can’t let her go or claim her. But what else to do? Her mother’s dead and I believe she’s mine. I couldn’t leave her, though it may be kinder in the end. Her presence jeopardises everything and still I brought her into this home. I found you fighting that watch guard. With your hair, you could be her mother. I could then pretend she was yours, my servant. It was an acceptable easy solution.
‘But I miscalculated how difficult it would be to keep away from her. You weren’t fooled. My enemies certainly won’t be and all the worse because I can’t stay away from you either.’
This was his home where he reigned. Where was his worth? Gone. Aliette obliterated his control by her very existence. He was telling her everything because he was compelled to.
Her family had abandoned her and she had found her own. Fought for them. My God, she had no idea what that did to him. Standing in that derelict house before her, two people crippled, half-blind, a boy with a damaged ear, who hadn’t heard him enter when he should have.
He thought he had pulled Aliette off the horror of the streets. The truth was she was their angel. It tossed him dangerously close to her. Every bit of wax he slapped against himself dripping off, his pathetic feathers falling. He plunged with the full realisation his body and soul were irrevocably hers.
And she simply stood there, her blue eyes wide. Observing his downfall.
‘Do you come inside the room when I’m sleeping?’ she whispered. ‘Reynold, do you open the door and...?’
‘I’ve said too much.’ He blinked. Her words, making no sense, brought him back to his own. ‘I’ll leave you now.’
‘No, don’t. Tell me. Are you close when you watch me sleep?’
He gave her everything, and she wanted more? ‘Your hair over the pillow, the whiteness of your skin. You look... You look like an angel.’
‘I don’t wake,’ she said.
She didn’t. ‘Goodnight.’
He was halfway to the door before she stopped him. Just her hand on his arm, but it was enough to turn him. ‘Don’t go. You don’t understand.’
‘I understand I’ve said too much, that I shouldn’t be here this late at night.’ He waited. ‘That I frighten you.’
This shouldn’t be happening. She shouldn’t feel like this. She shouldn’t want him. A man with blood on his clothes, a kidnapper, but he read to her and he took in her family.
Watch his deeds, then you�
��ll know the man.
‘You should frighten me because of where I come from. And there are matters—’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve lived on the streets all my life. You don’t live on the streets and sleep. Always rest in short bursts and even then you are aware of your surroundings at all times. And worse, I’m a woman. It’s far, far worse for me. But...’ She looked around the room, at him, and his bedroom behind her.
‘I have questions,’ she said. ‘Just one. This one you must answer. Did you kill someone the day we met? You had a scratch on your cheek, your clothes had blood.’
Stricken grey eyes. ‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t ask? Or I don’t want the answer who you killed?’ she said. ‘I think I already know, but I need to hear it from you.’
‘It will solve nothing. I have already stated being in my household is a danger to you. If I let both of you go now, as I should from the beginning...’ He shook his head. ‘There are spies, it probably is too late. I can’t...won’t send you back out.’
‘Is that what you’ve been doing? Keeping me away from you. Protecting me. Watching me sleep?’ She’d never been safe at any time of her life, even when cradled in her mother’s thieving arms. What danger Reynold told her couldn’t be worse.
‘Because of you, I slept for the first time in my life as if I trusted you to keep me safe...protected. You’ve taught me to read, you’ve taken care of me. Tell me whose blood you wore that day,’ she whispered. ‘Tell me or kiss me.’
Chapter Eighteen
He shook with tension. Aliette could see, feel Darkness, and it was advancing towards her.
‘You’d kiss a coward,’ his said in that even voice that sent shivers through her.
‘I want...to trust you. But I don’t know what is truth and what isn’t with you.’
He briefly closed his eyes, the fanning of his lashes not softening the harshness of his drawn features. ‘I’ve shown you, and all this time, I’ve been trying to tell you, I shouldn’t tell you the truth.’
Because it was terrible. Because he had killed Grace’s mother. Who else? Despite her speculation, his words blasted against her like a torrent of squalls. The consequences of it were too vast to comprehend and she failed to reconcile this man before her with the blood that had splashed across his chest.