The storm had passed, and as they had moved south the snow drifting on the roads had lessened to where their horses could keep an even gait.
She glanced over at Tieran. Having stared at nothing for most of the day but the back of his head and the wide expanse of his dark overcoat stretched across his shoulders, she wasn’t sure what exactly Tieran currently thought of her presence.
She had woken in the morning to find him stretched out on the floor next to her bed, his left forearm splayed up behind his head as a pillow. That she was naked under the blanket gave her pause, especially when the last thing she remembered was giving up the fight with the knotted ribbon on her stays, and sinking into the hot water of the tub with her shift and stays still in place.
Liv had thought Tieran asleep on the floor, but the second she turned onto her side, his eyes had popped open to her, the smile carving into his face telling her he knew exactly what she was wondering—how had she been stripped naked and by whom? That same smile had told her the answer as well—Tieran had welcomed himself to assisting her into nudity.
Beyond the wicked smirk, Tieran had been nothing but a gentleman that morning, leaving the room with instructions for her to get ready to depart, as they had much road to cover that day.
No invitation, no request for her to join him. A demand, pure and simple, that they would be travelling together.
At least it lacked ambiguity about how he was going to proceed. He had decided Liv was his responsibility, whether she wanted a say in the matter or not.
Her bones and muscles still aching from the previous night’s slow, bitterly cold ride to the coaching inn, Liv wasn’t going to call foul on his domineering. She wanted to not only get far, far away from Mortell Abbey, but back to London quickly, and Tieran was her best option for that. Along with being her safest option—especially with Lord Shepton somewhere on the roads.
Liv’s eyes trailed from Tieran’s face down to his gloved hands, one on the reins, one balled, riding on his thigh. From nowhere, the vision of his naked chest pressing against her in the Roman bath chamber snuck into her mind, swallowing her thoughts. Under those gloves were the hands that had stroked her skin, shattered her into a thousand pieces, and then sheltered her as she fell back into her body.
Stop. Thoughts such as those did her sanity no favors.
Her face turning hot, she averted her eyes, staring at the glossy brown mane of her mare. What did Tieran think of her presence? She imagined she was a burr in his side that he was anxious to rid himself of. Too bad basic decency prevented him from flicking her off to the side.
And that was Tieran. Decent. Honest. Kind. Honorable.
She knew not everyone saw those traits in him—most were far too timid in his shadow to see beyond his height and muscle. And the frown he consistently wore did little to sway the casual observer to look deeper.
But she had always seen it in him. Seen who he truly was.
And he still, to the day in front of her, remained those things. Decent. Honest. Kind. Honorable.
Which was why he had been right to leave her at Mortell Abbey—she could not fault him at all for that. She possessed none of those qualities—not anymore, and no man would forgive what Tieran had walked in on. She hadn’t intended for him to witness the scene with Lord Shepton, but before she could control the situation, Tieran had appeared.
Liv had made him leave her—as sure as if she had screamed at him that she hated him.
“Are you cold? The chill appears to have set into your face, Liv—your cheeks are pink.”
She looked up at him, attempting to drain the flush—and the memory from whence it was born—from her head. “No, I am warm enough. It is much more bearable now that the bitter wind has died.”
He nodded.
“Do you still think we will make it to your friend’s estate before nightfall?”
“I do.” Tieran pointed forward with his free hand. “It is just a few more miles before his lands, and then the manor is five miles inward. There will only be a few servants present, but Lord Luhaunt keeps enough staff on hand when he’s not in residence that we shall eat well enough and have warm beds tonight.”
“And you will not feel the imperious need to sleep in a chair to protect me from the many blackguards haunting the coaching inns?”
He looked over at her, eyebrows drawn together, ready to argue, but then his frown flipped when he saw her grinning. Teasing him had always been fun. Making his frown flip.
“They are indeed, a plague on this land, those curs,” he said.
“Most assuredly, they are. I have never been so afraid. I was lucky to have you to” —she cleared her throat with a flourish— “attend to me.”
A slight blush ran across his hard cheekbones as he averted his eyes far away from her. “You were.”
She leaned forward on her horse, angling to look at him straight on while trying to stifle her laughter. “Has the chill gotten you, Tieran? Your cheeks look rosy.”
His blue eyes shifted to her, the edges crinkling, striving for a glare, but not achieving it.
“You walk upon very thin ice, Liv.”
“I would argue that last night it was you upon that thin ice when you were helping me from my shift.”
“Should I have let you freeze in the cold bath?”
She sat straight in her sidesaddle, looking over the crest of the upcoming hill. Sheep walked alongside the road, their path clearer of snow than the road proper. “No. I appreciate your assistance. And I trust you kept your hands on the right side of honor.”
“They did not stray.”
She looked at him. “I never thought it of you.”
He watched her for a moment, his eyes searching her face, his head bobbing with his horse’s stride. So long and so quiet that Liv had to look away, suddenly on guard about what he searched for.
She knew there could be nothing between them, not after what he witnessed. But the way his eyes raked over her, it made her long to erase the last day—to at least be more cunning in how she had trapped Lord Shepton. If Tieran had never seen…
She coughed, shaking herself. What was done was done.
“Tell me, Liv,” Tieran said, breaking the rhythmic sound of their horse’s hooves crunching through the snow and ice. “Why do you still wear black? I wondered it last night when I hung your dress. I have seen you in nothing but widow’s weeds, no matter the occasion. Lord Canton died more than three years past.”
“Have you embraced color yet?” She glanced at him, wrapping another tight loop of the reins around her hand. “Your wife died nearly two years ago.”
“Well, no, but my marriage with Rachel was…” His words dropped off.
She looked sharply to him. “A real marriage? A marriage where there was love? Grand passion? Was that what you were about to say?”
He shrugged. “Not in so many words, but yes.”
“There was love in my marriage, Tieran.” She exhaled, the warm puff crystallizing in the cold air in front of her nose. “Just a very different sort than the love poets create great sonnets about. It was a love born of mutual respect and kindness. Lord Canton had already had the great love of his life with his first wife. Just as I had with you. Neither of us needed passion—both of our loves were gone—his from death and mine from circumstance.”
Her gaze went forward, unable to look at Tieran with the admission. “But we both still needed a sustaining love—someone to depend upon. I know the gossipmongers didn’t account for our marriage being anything more than a title-hungry charlatan marrying a lecherous old fool. But I knew the truth of our marriage—I still do, and that has sustained me through the years of snide cuts and whispers amongst the ton. I honored that love we had for a long time with my clothing.”
“And now?”
She looked to Tieran. An acute glint had surfaced in his blue eyes, both intent on understanding her—she recognized that part of the look—and with a hint of anger. Anger at what, she did not know.
She shrugged, the center of her bottom lip jutting upward. “And I still wear it now because it is easy. People are more forgiving of a widow. I do it as a constant reminder to the gossips, a whisper in the back of their heads that they were wrong about me. Plus, it frustrates the busybodies that had placed bets in polite drawing rooms about how soon I would appear in full red regalia, declaring my skirts open for trysts with married men.”
A chuckle escaped Tieran.
A small smile touched her lips as her gaze went forward. “Most importantly, the black keeps all but the most obnoxiously bold men away from me. I have no interest in what they offer. I know you think me a coquette, but it is always on my terms, on my approach, and only when I have a purpose.”
“Such as the list?”
“Yes, the list.” Her eyelids lowered, her look whipping to Tieran. “I tell you again, do not think to press me for details about it, Tieran.”
His hand flew up, calming against her ire. “I will not. I will drop the matter in deference to the truce.”
The gloved forefinger of his hand turned into a point. “It is here that we turn. If we take to the fields, we will be faster.”
Liv nodded, following Tieran’s lead as his horse stepped ahead, silent as her mind slipped, quicksand out-of-control, into thoughts of the past.
She always tried to guard against it—stop herself before she became consumed with a past that never should have been. It was cruelty she heaped upon herself each and every time she let her mind do this. The injustice of it, of being stolen from her home and thrown into a whorehouse—when by all rights, she should have been safely ensconced in Tieran’s home as his wife, waiting patiently for him to return from war.
Uncontrollable, her anger welled.
Cease. Cease before it consumes and exhausts.
She attempted to rein in her thoughts, hating when she wallowed. But the anger spun, wicked tentacles reaching out to tense every part of her body.
She looked up from the frozen ground, catching the easy swing of Tieran’s body on his horse. It was so easy for him. Always so easy. Freedom to do as he pleased. Go to war. Marry another. Use her body and then abandon her.
“You could have married me before you left.” The words blurted, uncontrolled from her mouth before she could contain what she knew was a childish whine.
Tieran visibly jolted on his horse, his look whipping back to her. For a long moment he stared at her, his eyes narrowed. Liv expected him to turn forward and continue across the field without a word.
Instead he slowed his stallion so they were directly side by side again and he met her eyes, his words slow, careful. “You were not yet eighteen, Liv. I swore I would not touch you until then.”
She stared at him, her teeth running along her tongue. She should stop this now. Do not go into the past. Not when she was angry. But she had never been able to ask him and now she had just inadvertently started. She opened her mouth.
“I was two months shy, Tieran. Two months. Your honor could not sacrifice two months?”
His head fell backward, his look going to the sky as if to ask for either divine intervention or a lightning bolt to hit him. His chin dropped, his blue eyes locking into her gaze. “The truth of it?”
The four words chilled her to the bone. Yet she had started this.
She nodded.
“I wanted you to choose me as an adult, Liv—not as the besotted chit I met in the shadows of those stairs many years ago. As an adult. Do you not realize how beautiful you were—a spark of the highest order? You were magnificent. And I could not go through life—could not make you go through life—always wondering if I stole you away too soon, if you could have made a better match than me. I could not live with the threat that your eye would eventually wander.”
Her head cocked backward with his admission. “When did I ever give you reason not to trust me?”
“Never.” His head shook. “I did not trust life, Liv. I already knew I would spend my life staring down every man that looked at you with lust in his eyes—and I was fine with that—I welcomed that. But I could not trust that a choice you made as a child would carry you for a lifetime.”
“And that decision would have magically become more resolute in those two months?” Her hand flew up, flabbergasted. “You thought I wouldn’t choose you? I loved you, Tieran. Loved you more than anything. It would not have changed in two months—two years—twenty—fifty. Never. You were my heart, Tieran.”
“Do you not think I regretted it—regretted it every single day?” His words bit out through clenched teeth. “That it has gnawed away at my soul since I left you for the war?”
He looked away from her, his jaw twitching, the whole of him palpitating raw energy—a storm brewing.
She would not let it be so easy.
Not when he was the one that could not bring himself to trust her. Not when he was the one that had left her. “But if you had regretted it, Tieran—you would have made it right—you would have come for me directly after the war. You would not have disappeared for a year without word. If you had just—”
His head whipped to her. “I was broken, Liv.” His scream thundered across the snow-laden fields, rolling over the land to disappear into the far-off forest.
Their horses stopped on instinct.
Her eyes wide, her stare piercing him, Liv blinked, trying to jar her mind into working. “Broken?”
“Yes, dammit. Broken.” His horse took a nervous step and he yanked on the reins, stilling it. He looked at her, his blue eyes tormented. “My hands did not stop shaking for months after I finally was able to step back onto English soil. They shook so violently on the way to your parents’ home that I could not hold the reins. I almost turned back—almost could not come for you. But even with the tremors—even though I was broken—I only needed one thing. You.”
She gasped. “You…you came for me? When?”
“Three weeks after you had married. You were the one thing I knew that could pull me back from the dead—pull me back from the things I did.”
Her head swung back and forth haltingly, her world slowing, spinning about her. “But no—mother, father, they never told me.”
“I don’t imagine they would have. You were married. I was clearly not sane. If I had a daughter, I would not have let a man in my state near her either.”
Her heart crushing at the pain in his eyes, still to this day, she inhaled, needing to ask the question, but not wanting to know the answer. “Why were you broken, Tieran?”
His look seared into her for a moment before he cleared his throat, looking away to a far-off crest. He nudged his horse forward, and Liv’s mare followed suit.
Just when she thought he was not going to answer her, his voice interrupted the silence between them, low, each word spoken as if it was being dragged from the bowels of hell. “The war. Too many of my men died. Died with my hands cradling their heads. Died begging me to bring them back to their loved ones. Simple men. Complicated men. All of them died wanting one thing—to be near the ones they loved. They died one after another with only my hands holding them from the bitter cold ground. Died in pain, without mercy. It changed me. Each one just a little bit more. Hardened my soul until I did not recognize myself.”
He fell silent, his eyes closing for a long moment. Several long breaths lifted his chest as he struggled for control.
Liv watched his profile, her chest in pain, struggling for her own breath. “And I was not there for you when you returned.”
“No. No, you weren’t, Liv.”
Without looking at her, he clicked his horse onward, speeding its gait across the field.
Leaving Liv to stare at his back once more.
{ Chapter 14 }
Crack.
The sound, a sudden explosion of wood splintering, tore Liv from her sleep. She flew upright in the bed, frantic eyes searching the foreign room.
Crack.
The fire had died down to low embers, shed
ding little light in the room. It took a long second for her to pull her mind from dreams and remember she was in the estate of one of Tieran’s friend’s—Lord Luhaunt.
Her feet swung out of bed in the next second as she realized Tieran was in the room next to hers, and that was exactly where she had heard the crash coming from.
Crack.
She grabbed the borrowed robe the servants had procured for her and slung it over her shoulders, running to the door.
Pausing in the hallway at Tieran’s door, her fingers curled around the doorknob.
It had gone silent in his room.
She considered knocking for one short moment, then disregarded caution and turned the knob, barging into his room.
Tieran stood next to the bed. His back to her, naked, heaving, the light from his fireplace glistened off the sweat covering his back.
He spun around at the sound. His muscles tight, twitching, his hands clenched into fists. But it was his face that made Liv jump. Wrath raged across his brow, turning his blue eyes darkly violent, while his lips had parted, seething dangerous breaths in and out. The whole of him had turned pure savage.
Fear—not of him, but of whatever had possessed him, darted down her spine. “Tieran?”
Her eyes flickered down his body, stopping before they dipped below his waist as she caught sight of the table next to his bed. It sat in a heaping mess, cracked, splintered into ragged pieces, shards of wood scattered about the floor.
“Leave, Liv.” The strain in his voice made the words barely recognizable.
She took another step into the room, closing the door behind her. “No, Tieran.” She scanned the room. Nothing but the table appeared to be destroyed.
“I said leave, Liv.”
She shook her head, spying a brandy decanter on a small sideboard next to the fireplace. She went over to it, splashing brandy almost to the rim of a cut-glass tumbler.
Turning back to him, she found him wrapping a sheet from the bed around his waist, knotting it on the side. His breathing looked more akin to normal, though his brow still furrowed, the savagery not fully quelled.
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