She looked up at him. Aside from the rogue strands of hair escaping, only her face was visible in the shroud of the red plaid blanket.
Shock registered in her brown eyes, the gold flecks sparking, but in the next breath, her gaze went weary, dropping to look through his legs at the fire.
“I did not expect you to be here, Tieran.” The weariness wasn’t just in her eyes, it laced her words.
The ire rattling his bones quelled. He sank down, resting on his heels so he was eye level with her. “What are you doing here, Liv? Alone?”
Her gaze slowly left the tall blazes in the hearth, landing on his face for only a second before flickering back to the fire. “Lady Mortell requested I leave, and I abided by her wishes.”
“In this storm?”
“I was not about to fight her on it, Tieran.” She tightened the blanket around her face. “My maid stayed behind to gather my belongings and to get the bird outside, and we left Charles to accompany her home. The carriage only made it to the Leeds crossroads before the drifts became too thick. We were closer to this coaching inn than to Mortell Abbey, so I moved onward with one of the horses, and Mr. Niles stayed behind with the carriage and other horses.
“Your driver let you travel here alone?”
She shook her head, and the blanket fell down about her shoulders as her head swiveled to take in the room. Whatever she was looking for, she did not see, and her look landed on Tieran. “Lord Shepton came upon my carriage a few minutes after we were stranded. He stopped and told Mr. Niles he would accompany me. Once we were halfway here, Shepton took off, pushing his horse as hard as he could through the snow. My mare could not keep up, and he disappeared out of sight—I have not seen him since.” She glanced around again. “You have not seen him here?”
“No, the bastard.”
Her look snapped back to him.
“Do you think you have a monopoly on discarding me, Tieran?”
He winced. The words were meant to bite, and they pricked as intended.
His head dropped, his hands clasping together as he rested his forearms on his knees. He looked up at her. “Still, I cannot believe you would trust Shepton.”
“Of course I did not. But what was he going to do to me in the middle of a storm, Tieran? Accost me in some fashion from atop his horse? I knew here at the coaching inn there would be plenty of people about to set between him and me.”
“But for your man to let you leave—”
“For heaven’s sake, Tieran, I insisted. Mr. Niles had three more horses to deal with, a stuck carriage, and darkness was looming.”
“He could have left them and accompanied you.”
“Mr. Niles would never leave his horses, and I would never ask him to. He is making camp with them right now.”
Tieran pushed upright on his knees, pulling himself to his full height. “I should go find him right now and cuff him.”
Liv glared up at him through her dark lashes. “I do not know why you insist on finding a recipient for your anger, Tieran.”
“Your man deserves it for letting you go. You may not want to hear it, Liv, but you need taking care of.”
She straightened, the blanket dropping further down her body as fire flashed in her eyes. “I realize you are predisposed to not recognize it, but I have been taking care of myself for a long while now, Tieran.”
The fire in her eyes flashed for only a moment, dissipating almost as quickly as it had appeared. She sighed, pulling the blanket up around her slumping shoulders as she looked past his thighs to the flames. “Please, Tieran. It was hard to make my way here and I am tired. And you have no right to judge Mr. Niles. My man is as loyal as they come. And he respects that I can well enough take care of my own person.”
“It is not right.”
“You get no say. Not now. I cannot be drawn in by you again.” Her words dropped to a weary whisper, her focus staying on the flames. “You left me, Tieran. All I needed was for you to stay—for even a minute.”
Her head shook, her mouth twisting into a frown as the whisper grew softer. “I lose all my intelligence when it comes to you. I cannot believe I offered myself vulnerable to you again…when every single time you have crushed me. And I do not seem to be able to stop myself from making that mistake again and again and again. But now…” She paused, tightening the blanket below her chin. “Now I think I am done.”
Tieran stared down at the top of her head. Her wet dark hair glistened in the light from the fire. Even with the mound of blanket wrapping her, he could see her shake, see the shivers.
Panic started to twist around his chest.
This was not Liv. She did not know defeat. Did not know how to surrender to him.
Yet he heard the wound in her voice. Saw how she sat, bowed to the world.
Done. She was done with him.
He didn’t want to see it—didn’t want to acknowledge the possibility.
“Liv—”
“Please, Tieran. No more. I am soaked to the bone and frozen and I just want the barkeep to tell me the landlady has the tub ready.”
“You are waiting for a bath?”
“Yes.”
“Then I am standing watch by the door.”
She looked over her shoulder to the man standing behind the short bar at the edge of the room. “It is not necessary.”
“Look around you, Liv. You are the only woman in this place.”
“There is the landlady. And I imagine there are a few women in the rooms above.”
“You imagine?”
She nodded, her glare landing directly on him.
“I am standing at the door. I am not about to leave you unprotected in a place such as this.”
“No, Tieran.” She jumped to her feet, her hands balling in the edges of the blanket. She jabbed at his chest with her blanket-fist. “You do not get to do this. You do not get to swoop in and take care of me. You do not get to be jealous. You do not want me, remember? You left. So you do not get to flit and fly in and out of my life when it suits you or when you are struck with random pangs of protectiveness. I am not yours.”
“Lady Canton.” The landlady, a thin, wiry woman, appeared next to them, wiping her hands on her apron.
Liv turned from Tieran, looking to the landlady. “Yes?”
“Yer tub be ready, m’lady. Steaming, it be.”
Liv nodded, a grateful smile crossing her face. “Thank you. Nothing could be more necessary at the moment.”
“And the fire be high in the room,” the landlady said. “I left chairs and a rope so ye cin hang ‘n dry yer dress by morn, m’lady.”
Bundling up the blanket draped around her so it didn’t drag, Liv stepped away from Tieran, following the landlady to the stairs on the far end of the room.
Tieran waited until they disappeared up the stairs before following, waiting in the hallway for the landlady to leave Liv’s room.
He nodded to her as she walked past him and then went to his room at the end of the corridor to grab a chair.
Carrying it into the hallway, he banged it onto the floor outside of Liv’s door. The chair legs scraped against the wooden planks as he adjusted it and sat, banging the back of it onto the door.
Loud enough so Liv would hear. Loud enough so she would understand exactly what he was doing.
He was protecting her, whether she wanted it or not.
~~~
Tieran leaned his head back against the door, turning it slightly so the tip of his ear hit the wood. His ears perked, straining to hear motion in the room. Water splashing. Wet footsteps padding across the floor. Anything.
But it was silent, as it had been for a while.
His eyes closed not because he was tired, but because he heard footsteps thudding up the stairs at the far end of the hallway. He waited until the person took three steps into the corridor before he opened his eyes. The man jumped, startled, then quickly gave him a nod and disappeared back down the stairs.
That’s right,
sir, find another room. This is Liv’s hallway.
His eyes closed again, and the image of Liv’s body, naked, writhing before him flashed in the darkness behind his eyes.
That exact moment in the Roman bath chamber when he had truly believed, to his core, that Liv was finally his. His after all these years. After all the avoidance. After all the longing. After all the pain.
She was his.
He knew it. He felt it when their bodies were joined. It wasn’t just flesh. It was her soul merging with his. It was as it had always been meant to be—at long last—because fate had finally decided to overlook his sins.
For that one moment, she had been his.
He adjusted his right ankle slung over his knee, his loins hardening, starting to burn at the image in his mind. If he wasn’t careful, Liv would soon need protection from him.
Not that she would allow him anywhere near her.
Not for how fast she had darted away from him in the Roman baths. Not for how hard she had attempted to antagonize him at Mortell Abbey after he took her virginity.
A virgin.
Hell.
He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t felt it. After what happened to her in the brothel, after years of marriage, after flirting her way through the ton. A virgin.
For all Liv wanted to believe she was a canny widow of advanced years, she was, at her core, still the girl he once knew.
But was it enough?
Even if she didn’t want to marry him—fine, he could concede that detail—it was unusual, but not unheard of, as some of the grandest love affairs of all time didn’t stand upon a license. After Tieran had calmed from the shock of her declaration that she would never marry again—it stung by all measures—he realized he frankly didn’t care how he had her, just that he did.
He could allow her that independence.
He had changed in their years apart. So had she. He could accept that she now needed the security of her independence—understandable now that he knew what had happened to her all those years ago.
But then to see her in Shepton’s arms. To see the odious man’s fingers cutting across her alabaster skin—the same skin he had worshipped not days before.
It was too much.
He could concede much, but another man touching her—with her permission—no.
Not that. Never that.
Anger sliced across his belly. She was destroying herself with every name she crossed off that damn list of hers. Not to mention that one of his dearest friends was on that list.
Destroy them, destroy her. She didn’t understand that. Not yet. But he did.
Revenge was about to become who she was, whole and through.
And Tieran didn’t know if he was strong enough to stomach watching what it would do to her, because he had experienced the very same thing for himself. He had lived through the hell that revenge manifested, and it was a purgatory he could not bear to witness her descend into.
He tilted his ear back to the door.
It had been far too long. He hadn’t heard a sound in the past half hour.
If he had heard the soft splash of water as she got out of the tub, or heard the rustle of her getting into bed, he could relax, just a bit. He had planned to forego sleep and not to move from his chair all night, but he had hoped the tension in his belly would ease once he knew Liv was asleep in her bed.
She was fine. Of course she was. Hadn’t she scolded him on that very notion not but an hour ago?
The silence became unbearable.
He stood from the chair without a sound, moving his body in the silent stealth he had mastered during the war. That he could still do so years later was evidence those years would never fully leave him—not truly, as much as he liked to pretend.
He set the chair to the side and turned the doorknob. To his surprise, it wasn’t locked. Liv was either continuing her fool actions, or her trust in him was far more ingrained than she would have him believe.
Tieran crept into the room, closing the door and locking it behind him. Sound asleep, Liv sat propped in the tin tub, her head awkward along the side rim of it. Depending upon how long she had been like that, she was destined to have a deep red mark across the side of her face when she awoke.
One tiny jerk in her sleep, and she could slip down into the tub and drown. He couldn’t rightly leave her like that.
With a sigh to steel himself, he walked over to the tub. A quick glance at the water, and he shook his head. For whatever peculiar reason, she was still dressed in her stays and shift, fully soaked under the water.
He leaned over, dipping his hands into the bath. Stone cold.
“Liv.” His hand went to her shoulder, squeezing gently.
Her long dark eyelashes fluttered, opening to him. A smile was instant to her lips. Innocence looking at him. No memory in her look except for whatever she had been dreaming of—and it looked like the best of dreams.
He kept his fingers on her shoulder, his voice low. “You are soaked, Liv. Your stays, your shift.”
Surprise crept into her eyes and she looked downward. It took her a sleepy moment to speak, her voice a husky rasp. “My stays. The ribbons are knotted.”
“Why didn’t you just open the door and ask me to untie it?”
“I would have had to acknowledge you were outside my door.”
Tieran sighed. “Sit up.” He moved his fingers behind her shoulder, pulling her upright. “So instead of asking for my help, you ignored the problem completely and got into the tub with half your clothes on?”
Sitting, she leaned forward in the water and her body wavered, swaying in a slow circle as sleep tried to pull her back into its clutches. Her eyelids slipped closed.
Tieran grabbed the towel on a chair next to the tub and stood to quickly lay it down on the bed. Stripping out of his jacket, he caught her behind the shoulders just before she fell backward against the edge of the tub. Dipping his other arm into the bath, he slid his hand under her knees and lifted her from the cold water.
“I don’t need your help, Tieran.”
“What you need is to be less stubborn.” He carried her across the room.
“You would do well to listen to your own words.”
He laid her face-down onto the towel on the bed and then sat next to her. He picked at the knot on the back of her stays, the ribbon swollen tight from the water. After several minutes and more patience than he thought he possessed, he had made no headway. His large fingers were no match for the delicate ribbon. He considered for a moment just cutting it, but then he realized a simple knot was about to best him.
He bent over, studying the twisting carefully before picking at the knot again with the tips of his fingernails. Finally, it gave. Quickly unthreading the ribbon from the eyelets, he pulled the stays wide to free them from Liv’s body.
He looked to the half of Liv’s face he could see, only to find her deep into sleep once more. Her forearm angled to her head, her wrist touched the crown of her forehead as her dark hair formed a wet blanket framing her face.
For a moment, his hand hovered over her shoulder, ready to nudge her awake again so she could take off her soaking shift. Then he thought the better of it.
His hands going to her bare calves, he picked up the bottom edge of her shift and began to shimmy it up her body. As much as he tried to avert his eyes, he could not help but admire the creaminess of her thighs, the soft curve of her backside, the lines of muscle along the small of her back where her waist narrowed.
He paused as the shift reached just below her breasts and inhaled a steadying breath. He was hard, his cock pulsating as he bared Liv inch by inch. She was glorious, every curve, every contour of her body called out to be caressed, worshiped.
But he had little problem reining in his wayward thoughts. Not when she was soft and at peace, her skin glistening in the light of the fire.
It struck him quite abruptly. This was peace he had not seen her carry since their lives had re-twined mo
nths ago.
And he was not about to disturb the precious peace that had overcome her body. No matter how much pain was currently pooling in his groin.
His fingers nimble, he quickly slid the shift up over the rest of her body. She didn’t rustle, only a soft murmur escaping her as he lifted her head to free the shift.
Leaving the bed, he walked to the fireplace and tied the rope between the two chairs in front of it. He draped her dripping shift and stays in the middle, then went to the haphazard pile of her black clothes on the floor, picking each piece of her riding habit up and shaking it out before hanging it along the rope to dry.
He turned slowly from the fire, his look landing on her. A deep breath lifted her back, her body quivering on the exhale.
He resisted for a long moment. Resisted going over to her. Resisted giving in to the one thought that had sprung into his mind—a tiny bud, opening into a flame.
It didn’t take long for him to realize he was powerless against the thought, and he walked over to the bed, grabbing the blanket scrunched by her toes. He pulled the blanket up, covering her long, lean form. She exhaled a soft moan, curling into the warmth of the heavy cover.
Peace.
He sat down next to her hip, the bed bowing under his weight, his mind focused on that one thought that had captivated him.
Peace—he wanted to give that to her.
If she had it in sleep, maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe she could have it once again in consciousness.
He reached up, wrapping a long dark strand of her black hair around his forefinger.
Rachel had given him the gift of peace long ago. Led him back into the world of the living after burning in hell. But his wife had been a rare spirit.
He questioned his own ability to do the same for Liv.
But he needed to try. She needed to be led back from the edge she was about to go over.
And he was the only one to do it.
{ Chapter 13 }
Tieran twitched the reins in his hand, and Liv watched as his well-muscled black stallion shifted to the side, dancing in a small circle that set him even with her horse on the road.
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