He chuckled, the sound as empty as it had been the six weeks prior to her arrival in his life.
Diana stepped in front of him. “That is a question,” she said softly. “Come with me?” she repeated.
Come with me.
Leave.
St. Giles and the Hell and Sin and his siblings and all dependent upon him. He made a sound of disgust and stepped quickly away, needing space between them. Needing to protect himself once more. “Ya know Oi can’t leave, Diana. Moi life is here.”
She flinched, and he may as well have struck her for the pain that glared from within her eyes. The sight of it cleaved him in two. Made him wish he was a better man for her. One deserving of her. Then she righted herself and met him with the same dignified strength she’d shown since their meeting in the alleyway outside his club. “Make a new life, with me.”
Her words hung in the air, powerful and potent. They sucked the energy from his limbs and robbed him of words and proper thoughts. What she asked of him . . . to simply set aside his work at the Hell and Sin, and go off with her, begged him to forget those dependent on him and the stability he needed.
She touched her fingertips to his lips. “You don’t have to answer now, Niall.”
“No. Oi have until your goddamned ship leaves,” he hurled like the beast he’d always been.
Not even flinching, Diana continued, “There is no life for me here.”
“But there is one here for me, and you’d have me throw it away.” She winced, and he forced himself to ignore that evidence of her hurt. “All because I found out your plans.” He gestured angrily to that vellum sheet clenched in her white-knuckled grip.
“I would have told you. I . . .” She gasped as he took her by the shoulders and gave her a slight shake.
“When?” he cried softly. “When would you have told me?”
Or had he mattered so little that she’d have departed and never given another thought to the bastard from St. Giles whom she’d given her virginity to? That mocking question whispered around his mind, stinging like vinegar tossed on an open wound. At her guilty silence, he released her suddenly, and she stumbled back, catching herself at the edge of her bed. His gaze unwittingly found that crimson stain, and his stomach heaved. “Or was it that you just wanted to have a baseborn street thug between your legs?” he asked, his tongue making that hated question come out as garbled.
Diana clutched that damned page at her throat. “How could you ask that of me?” she whispered. “I lo—”
“Don’t,” he barked, and then stole a look back at the panel between them and Oswyn. If he was of his right mind and rationale, he’d care that the old guard had no doubt heard more than was safe, but he’d lost all reason where Diana was concerned. “Don’t give me your empty words.”
“They are not empty, Niall,” she entreated, turning her hands up. “I love you. Surely you know that.”
Unable to take his gaze from that page, he gave another empty laugh. “You love me so much you couldn’t tell me and would have just left.” With a disgusted growl, he stalked away.
Diana let out a cry of frustration and stalked over to him. Brandishing that page the way she might a weapon, Diana placed herself between Niall and the doorway. “How dare you? If I’d told you, you would have never allowed me to leave. You’d have told Ryker or my father.”
Despite her worries he’d have told the duke, he’d learned long ago that her father was a broken shell of a man who couldn’t be trusted to protect her. “I wouldn’t have told your father.”
“Fine. Ryker, then.”
Niall met that accurate supposition with an unyielding silence. He wouldn’t have simply let her go off on her own, set sail aboard a ship with only cads and scoundrels and lusty sailors for company.
Some of the fire went out of her eyes and slipped from her narrow shoulders. “You wouldn’t have let me go,” she whispered, raising an aching gaze to his. “But you do not want me in your life. Not truly, Niall. You said it before yourself.”
The weight of that left him frozen.
A broken, agonized smile turned her lips up. “You know I’m right.” She drew in a jagged breath. “But I want to be wrong. Come with me.”
And unable to sort through the torrent of emotions and questions swirling inside, he gave his head a slight shake. “I don’t . . . I can’t . . .” He grabbed for the door handle, when she spoke, freezing him.
“You are a coward, Niall Marksman.”
He jerked around. She’d accused him, Niall Marksman, a man who’d slit throats, fired pistols, and filched from among a throng of London’s most powerful nobles . . . of being afraid.
And yet, in these very rooms, she’d proven the myth of his infallibility.
“You talk to me about being afraid, but you’re no different,” she challenged. “You’ve allowed Diggory and your fears to keep you trapped in your club.”
Fury roared to life in his chest. “How dare you?” he seethed. “Oi’m not afraid of anything.” Except her. She had single-handedly taken down every barrier he’d erected about himself.
“Saying it does not make it true.” She held her ground. “You’ve lived in your club for so long, you’re afraid to step outside that world,” she spoke over his interruption. “You can go anywhere, and yet you choose not to.”
“You don’t know a bloody thing about it, princess,” he hissed. There were people who relied on him. An empire that saw men, women, and children from the streets safe, with food in their bellies, and—
“I know you are afraid.”
Her quiet charge sucked the air from the room, replacing it with a heavy, thick, palpable tension. A muscle ticked at the corner of his eye, and she touched her fingertips to that slight pulsation. “And for all your thoughts about us being so very different, the truth is we are more alike than you’ll ever credit.” Diana let her arm fall to her side.
“We are nothing alike, Diana,” he said sadly. “Not in the ways that matter to Society.”
And with that, Niall left. He closed the oak panel behind him, erecting a tangible barrier while he sorted through the charges she’d leveled.
Oswyn stared at him, his gaze revealing nothing. And Niall, one of the most violent thugs in St. Giles, felt his neck burn hot with a blend of embarrassment and shame.
He made it no farther than a step.
“That shouldn’t have happened.” Oswyn’s reproach may as well have been an echo of his very thoughts.
Niall stiffened. The other man might be correct, but Diana’s reputation would be in tatters if word of her lying with a London street tough found its way through Mayfair’s hallowed halls. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said in hushed tones.
The guard who’d been the first ever employed by the Hell and Sin demonstrated a daring not a single other man, woman, or child in Niall’s employ had dared show. “It can’t happen again, and don’t say ya don’t know what Oi’m talking about, Niall,” Oswyn snapped, shattering his characteristic calm. The balding guard stole a quick glance about and then came forward. “If you’re discovered in the bed of Black’s sister, the club will never recover. Men like us”—he passed a hand between them—“we don’t marry dukes’ daughters. We marry whores and servants, if we wed.”
Bitterness stung Niall’s mouth. He knew his friend was right. Hated him for it. Hated himself even more for having lost so much of himself in such a short time to a woman he had no right to. Mayhap that does not matter. She wants more with you . . . wants a future. As soon as the thoughts slid forward, he pushed them back. What future could he offer her inside a gaming hell? As long as she was tied to him, she would be forever bound to danger . . . not just this fleeting peril that existed from an unknown predator.
A hand touched his shoulder, and he looked blankly to those scarred, callused digits. “Let that be the only time. Your secret will be your own. We’re guilty of far greater crimes than that.” Yes. Murder, thievery, and countless other s
ins. “But it’s time to step away from the lady. Unless you intend to marry her.” The heavy irony in those coarse tones required no confirmation or denial from Niall.
Come with me.
Involuntarily, he looked once more to her fancy arched door.
Oswyn’s curse shattered the quiet in the hall. “Surely ya aren’t thinking ya can marry the chit?”
To give his hands something to do, Niall adjusted his purple silk cravat. “I’m thinking it is none of your business what I’m thinking,” he said in those cultured tones any lord would be hard-pressed to identify as false. He may have known Oswyn for all of his adult life and trusted the security at the Hell and Sin to his care, but he’d not answer to him. And certainly not here in the middle of Wilkinson’s corridors.
An uncharacteristic flash of emotion lit Oswyn’s eyes: hurt. “Ya think Oi don’t care about ya? Your brothers and ya took me in and gave me work when I had no other future awaiting me but death in the streets.”
Another wave of guilt assailed Niall. He grimaced. Good God, he’d spoken more of feelings and emotions and all the uncomfortable sentiments that marked a man as weak more times these four weeks than he had in the whole of his thirty or thirty-one years of existence. “I know, Oswyn,” he said quietly. Just as he knew the ornery guard was correct about Diana.
“There is the club,” the other man pointed out. Did he sense Niall’s wavering? “Even if ya marry the girl, Society will never look kindly to one of our kind touching one of them.”
And too many relied on them. That truth rang loud.
“She’s Ryker’s sister,” Oswyn pointed out, needlessly.
“Do ya think Ryker would reject a match between us because of my birthright?” Niall demanded, spoiling for a fight. Desperately wanting it.
“No,” Oswyn said calmly, cracking his knuckles. He let his massive arms hang by his sides. “Since his marriage, he’d allow it and not think about all those dependent on him.”
Men, women, and children who’d clawed and fought to survive in St. Giles and at last found security at the Hell and Sin. Niall threatened that all—for Diana.
“Regardless,” Oswyn said, interrupting his silent thoughts, “ya cannot move between the two worlds. Either ya join Ryker as a guest and make yourself honorable and respectable for the girl”—Niall would have to be deafer than a post to fail to hear the skepticism there—“or . . .” Or let her go. “Ya let me accompany the duke and his daughter to Ryker’s dinner and begin putting some distance between ya.”
Come with me . . .
His heart, that damned organ that had proven itself real and wholly, surprisingly intact, climbed into his throat.
“I’m her guard,” he managed to squeeze out.
Oswyn scoffed. “All your brothers will be present. Me. No ’arm would come to her.”
Niall hesitated. “I haven’t decided what I’ll do for tomorrow,” he hedged. No harm would ever befall Diana as long as Ryker, Calum, or Adair was present. The greatest threat posed, however, was not to Diana but to Niall, and being forced to sit through a formal dinner party with gentlemen invited solely as prospective husbands for Diana.
The loyal guard gave Niall a long look and then spoke in gruff tones. “Ya don’t kill, Niall,” he reminded him. “Not anymore.” There was no condemnation or judgment there. “Ya know I won’t hesitate to end a man for her.”
Yes, he knew that. Oswyn and his brothers, even Helena, had been stronger in ways than Niall after Diggory’s machinations.
“Just as ya know what ya need to do, Niall,” Oswyn murmured, giving his shoulder a squeeze.
Aye, he knew.
I have to let her go.
Chapter 20
The following evening Diana went through the same motions she’d gone through for three years, standing before the same vanity while her maid helped her into her gown.
Seated before the vanity, Diana took in the visage reflected back. Those dark circles under bloodshot eyes. The blankness on her lips. She cocked her head. Did her maid, just like the remainder of the world, see the sadness in her? Or did no one look enough to see anything more than what she was on the surface?
Only, Niall had looked . . . and seen.
“Lift your head just a bit, my lady,” Meredith said cheerfully, angling it the way she might fiddle with a small pup. “There.” Her maid slid a ruby-encrusted coronet atop her head. It was a piece fit for a queen, or, as Niall had first mockingly then endearingly referred to her, a princess.
“Do you require anything else, my lady?”
“That will be all,” she replied automatically, her gaze lingering on the rubies.
Meredith dropped a curtsy. “I’ll inform His Grace you’ll be down shortly.” With that, the girl took her leave. When the door closed and Diana was at last alone, she returned her attention to the bevel mirror.
Since last evening, Niall had been businesslike and perfunctory toward her. He’d not avoided her, but neither had he been the same man who’d become her friend these past weeks—and she mourned the loss of that closeness. For she knew, even without words confirming any truth otherwise, what that distance meant. He would not come with her. His life was here. And what was worse, he didn’t see her as part of it because of a social divide that would always matter to him.
A soft tap at the window broke across her thoughts, and she spun in her seat. Her heart sank.
Niall gave a silent tap on the glass and arched an eyebrow in a silent request.
And despite the significance of him being outside those balcony doors, sans formal evening attire, and knowing that meant he’d no plans to attend Ryker’s dinner party this evening, she smiled. Coming to her feet, Diana lifted up her chin in acknowledgment.
Noiselessly, he parted those doors and slipped in her rooms. How did a man of his sheer size and strength move with such stealth? He closed those crystal panels behind him and stood there, unmoving.
Diana shattered the silence. “You aren’t coming,” she observed softly.
He gave his head a slight shake. “You’ll be safe with my brothers and Oswyn—”
She moved quickly, his avowal abruptly cut off. “I’m not worried about my safety.” Four weeks ago she had been. Four weeks ago she’d thought of ensuring her safety and then boarding her ship for St. George’s. Everything had changed. Diana stopped a handful of steps away. “Is that why you’ve snuck in my chambers?” she asked. “To tell me you’ll not attend Ryker’s dinner party and to assure me of my well-being?” Let it be more. Let it be that you’ve considered my offer and will join me when I sail.
The sad, regretful glint in his eyes, however, told an altogether different tale. “I have never known another woman like you,” he said quietly, and that wistful admission bore more a hint of goodbye than the very word itself. A vise tightened about her heart as he stroked the back of his knuckles along her cheek.
“From the moment I caught you sneaking inside my club, you tossed my world around,” he murmured, and she leaned into his distracted caress. “I hated everyone connected to the nobility . . . but you were nothing like those lords and ladies I’d come to hate. I never thought about leaving St. Giles, and I certainly never thought about leaving London.” Her heart lifted, and then, with his next quiet admission, promptly sank. “And never before did I regret the responsibilities that come with running my club—until now. I cannot leave, Diana.”
The cinch squeezed all the tighter, making it impossible to draw in anything more than a shallow, shuddery breath. “No,” she said at last when she could speak through that pain. “You can leave, Niall.” As much as it left her aching inside, she backed away from him, and his arm fell uselessly to his side. “You’re choosing to stay.” Just as he chose not to let her inside his world. Just as he’d chosen his club over a life with her.
His face contorted. “Diana . . .” Except there were no words forthcoming. What could he say then? Short of altering his opinion out of some unwanted, useless guilt sh
e might have instilled with her accusations.
“It is fine, Niall.” How did she manage that lie? How did it come out so even and steady when she was breaking inside?
Niall searched her face with his eyes and opened his mouth as though he wished to say something more. Then promptly closed it. With sleek, stealthy steps, he was immediately at the window.
“Niall,” she called out when he gripped the handle.
He cast a questioning look back.
She sailed over and positioned herself between him and those glass panels. Coming up on tiptoe, she pressed her lips to his in a fleeting kiss. It was a faint meeting of mouths that sealed the exchange as a goodbye. She sank back on her heels. “Thank you,” she said softly.
He shook his head.
“You helped me see that I’m not my mother.” Diana touched her fingertips to the place where he’d been branded by that monster, long ago. “Someday, you’ll also find that you are not Diggory or any of those acts you were forced to commit to survive.” And when he did, only then could he move on and begin again. Mayhap with a woman whom he loved enough to let inside his world and even leave his own. Oh, God. Her heart cracked and broke all over again.
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Diana . . .”
“Go,” she urged, favoring him with a smile that threatened to shatter her facial muscles. “Or I’ll begin to think you like me.”
A pained laugh escaped him, and he briefly dropped his brow to hers. “Oh, Diana.”
The door handle jiggled, effectively ending whatever words he would have uttered. They looked to the front of the room.
“My lady?” Meredith called from the other side of the locked panel. “His Grace sent me to ask after you.”
It was time.
“Tell him I’ll be along in a moment,” she called.
The rapid flurry of footsteps indicated the girl had left. Diana turned back to Niall and started.
Her balcony door hung open, with a path just wide enough for a man to fit himself through. She looked outside just as Niall lowered himself to the ground and stared after him until he’d disappeared in the shadows.
The Lady's Guard (Sinful Brides Book 3) Page 25