“I don’t even think it has anything to do with wanting Lady Ambrosia. You’d never risk your life over her. You don’t even like her, you hate her.”
She’d finally touched a nerve that he couldn’t help but respond to, for he laughed wildly. “Bloody hell, you don’t stop, do you? Even after…Of course I hate her. I hate her almost as much as I hate the marquess.”
“Then why!” she cried, her patience at an end. “Why are you so determined to marry the daughter of a man who wants you dead?”
He looked at her impatiently, and something hard and cold drifted over his eyes. “For god’s sake…I don’t want to marry her. I want to ruin her.”
That was certainly not what she’d expected to hear. She gawped at him soundlessly for several long moments until she finally found her voice.
“What? Why?”
“Because he killed my mother!” he bit out, and his face immediately collapsed with shock, as if he’d not expected those words to come out of his mouth.
Her whole body froze. She didn’t think her heart even beat in her chest for half a minute from the shock. “What?”
“That story I told at the picnic,” he said. “It was about my mother. I had to watch as they strung her up…” He broke off, his eyes suspiciously wet, and bowed his head. “She may have been a whore, but she was no thief. She didn’t steal anything. Even if she did, how was it a just punishment?”
“Julian,” she said quietly, at a complete loss. She reached out and took him by the wrist. He immediately wrenched his hand away as if her touch had burned him.
“Don’t touch me,” he snarled.
She retracted her hand, wounded by his rejection, her eyes welling again. Damn it. “I’m sorry…”
His eyes flashed at her. “The worst—the absolute worst is that the necklace was never even stolen,” he continued. “Kildale sold off the jewels for the blunt, then accused my mother of taking it so the coward wouldn’t have to admit he’d lost his fortune. Because her life didn’t matter to a man like him. So yes, I hate him. I’ve spent years ruining him completely, and now I’ll take his daughter from him too!”
At the end of his speech, he was shouting at her, his body practically vibrating with a wrath so great it bordered on madness.
It all made sense now, and it was worse than she could have ever imagined. How could she reason with this? How could she compete?
She couldn’t.
It was as if a hand had reached into her chest and squeezed her heart until it ached.
“You think to revenge yourself on Kildale by ruining his daughter,” she said, her voice sounding distant to her ears.
“The only person he’s ever loved as much as he loves himself, ruined by the son of the whore he had executed,” Hirst spat out, glaring at her as if he dared her to disagree.
The vise grip on her heart tightened until it was hard to breathe, made worse by a rising tide of outrage.
Outrage at Kildale, of course. His actions had been reprehensible, and she could understand how it would have haunted Hirst. And yet she was also outraged at Hirst. He wanted revenge and was perfectly content to give up any chance he had at happiness to get it.
If it weren’t so tragic, she would have blackened his other eye, anything to jar him back to his senses. How could he, gifted with the most magnificent thinking organ of anyone she’d ever met, possibly think there was any logic in what he was going to do?
But she supposed grief and hate had little to do with logic. And perhaps it was because of his singular brain that he could get things so horribly wrong. His blind spots were all the more extreme for his genius.
“I understand you’re hurting…” she began.
“You cannot possibly understand what it felt like, to watch my mother hanged,” he snapped viciously.
She winced. “You’re right. But if you do this, who will you truly be punishing?” she asked him. “For I do not think it will be the marquess or Ambrosia. You have let your entire life be defined by that man.”
He didn’t respond, didn’t want to hear her. And she realized in that moment Leon Fawkes—Davina Benwick—was but a mere raindrop compared to the vast ocean of his vengeance, nowhere near significant enough to change the tide.
And now even their tenuous relationship seemed at an end. She could see it in his eyes. God, how it hurt, like a physical blow, stronger than any abuse she’d felt from Dalrymple or her mother. For a moment she truly did forget how to breathe altogether. It was certainly impossible to look at him. She didn’t think she could bear to ever again.
Any lingering hope she had withered away. There was no place for either Leon Fawkes or Davina Benwick in his life. Staying here any longer than she had to was only going to make her more miserable. Lady Highbottom's words had reminded her of that, and standing here now before Hirst, feeling impotent and unwanted just moments after having given herself to him, body and soul, only drove the point home.
But how she wished…how she wished she could have been enough. That he could have known her as Davina Benwick, and that he could have loved her as she loved him. For her feelings had moved well beyond infatuation or lust: she did love him, in a way she’d never loved anyone else in her life. It was the only explanation for this sizzling, singing feeling in her blood whenever he was near, and the soul crushing anguish she felt at the mere thought of leaving him.
“About the position as your…secretary,” she began. “I don’t think I can manage it after all.”
His voice was strangled as he answered, not even turning her way. “You were never going to stay for long anyway.”
So he’d read her well enough to know that much about her. “No, I wasn’t,” she said softly.
There was a silence, heavy and fraught. “It’s for the best,” he finally said, strain in every syllable. “I can’t…I can’t give you what you want, Davina. I can’t let him go. I can’t…” He broke off raggedly, unable to continue.
She stared hard at his boots, watched them shift anxiously in the dirt, like a spooked horse on the verge of bolting, but she couldn’t bear to raise her head any higher than that. He’d never give up his vendetta—certainly not for her. What was there left to say?
“ I know. And I’m sorry,” she said.
“What do you have to feel sorry for,” he gritted out, looking as if he wanted to run a thousand miles away from the conversation.
She knew exactly how he felt.
“I’m sorry that you’ve wasted so much of your life on a worthless man.”
He looked at her, stricken, as if she’d run him through with a knife.
She swallowed against a knot in her throat, and made herself walk away without looking back. Despite the ramshackle castle, tortured hero, and shadowy villain, this was no fairy tale. It wasn’t even in league with a Minerva Press novel. And even if it was, she was certainly not the heroine. She could see no happy ending ahead of her.
∞∞∞
As Julian watched Fawkes—Davina—whoever the hell she was—walk away from him, the gnawing, malignant pain in his chest that had been there all afternoon flared up even worse than before. What had he done?
But he fought the pain back. It was best this way. She was leaving, and it was much too late to second-guess her departure. Julian didn’t want to, anyway. Fawkes had confused him, made him want things he had never even imagined himself capable of wanting. Worst of all, she’d made him doubt his plans for Kildale, and that was unforgivable, unacceptable.
How could he let go of his revenge? He’d been working toward this moment for years—decades, and now that it was finally at hand, was he to just give that up? For a woman he’d known for a handful of days, and who’d spent every one of those days lying to his face?
God help him, he was tempted to do just that.
When did that happen? When in the last few days had Fawkes become necessary to his happiness? And when did his happiness start to matter at all?
His work and his vendetta
had always been enough for him for as long as he could remember. It wouldn’t do to change things now, no matter how much he wanted to pull Fawkes into his arms and kiss her senseless, strip her ridiculous disguise away once more and take her, take her…
But he wouldn’t do that.
No matter that it had been the best sexual encounter of his life, and no matter what mawkish rubbish he may have felt for the little deceiver, he didn’t need Fawkes in his life any more than Lady Highbottom needed to gorge herself on laudanum.
And Fawkes certainly didn’t need him. Love him? Ha! She’d realize soon enough he wasn’t worthy of such deep sentiment. She was far better off having nothing to do with him. Just look what he’d done: ruined her and sent her packing…
She deserved more than a wretch like him could ever give her—she deserved to be happy most of all.
The pain that shot through his chest at the thought of Fawkes leaving him was purely coincidental. Or so he told himself as he willed his legs to follow in his secretary’s wake, and back to the revenge he wasn’t sure he even wanted anymore.
Chapter Twenty One
The Consequences of an Inferior Tailor
Davina managed to hold in her misery on the long journey back to the castle, for once glad of Lady Highbottom’s distracting company. It was difficult to dwell on her encounter with Hirst when a viscountess was attempting to grope her arse. But once she arrived back at the castle, she retreated to her room, deftly avoiding both Hirst’s heavy gaze and her brother’s poorly concealed concern (for even he, the most unobservant man in Britain, had noticed something was wrong with her when she’d returned to the picnic).
She threw herself upon her bed, feeling completely deflated. But she still refused to give in to tears. She didn’t think she’d be able to stop once she started.
One thing was certain: she couldn’t stay at Arncliffe Castle. Leaving would be the hardest thing she’d ever had to do, but also the easiest. Staying any longer could only be an exercise in self-flagellation. She may have fallen in love with Hirst, but that didn’t make her blind to his faults.
He’d been too deeply damaged in the past for him to let go of his grievances easily. Though her life had hardly been ideal, she had no experience that came close to matching the deprivation and horrors he had suffered as a child. And to have lost his mother in such a manner…Well, even she’d have a hard time forgiving such an injustice, and she didn’t even like her mother. How could one recover from that?
One couldn’t. One didn’t. She suspected that even if someone dragged him to the gates of hell and threatened to throw him inside for all eternity, he’d not give up his vendetta. He’d certainly not been willing to give it up for her.
No, she couldn’t stay. And the sooner she left, the sooner she could stop feeling as if her chest was being hollowed out by a pike.
The following morning, she found her brother precisely where she knew he’d be: in the stables, tinkering with the remains of his charlière. Her misery came crashing back down around her at the sight of the balloon’s deflated envelope, draped over the tack room like a red and white striped blanket. To Davina, it seemed like a very large, very ham-fisted symbol of how terribly wrong things had gone between her and Hirst.
One look at her as she approached, and her brother’s expression softened into something tender—it was the same look she remembered him giving her when she’d been a girl and he’d tended to her scraped knees and hurt feelings, before they’d both grown up and grown apart.
“I think it’s time to go, Wesley,” she said without preamble. “I can’t stay here a day longer.”
“I assume this has to do with Hirst,” Sir Wesley said wryly, “and whatever you two argued about back at the picnic.”
When had her dolt of a brother become so bloody perceptive? “How did you know we argued?”
Sir Wesley snorted. “I’m not that oblivious, and you and Hirst are not so inscrutable as you think.”
She had a feeling they were having vastly different conversations with each other. “What are you talking about?”
“I may be a complete failure as a brother, and about as blind as Cousin Edmund when it comes to things like this, but even I can see it.”
“See what?” she demanded, not daring to meet his eyes.
He looked almost pityingly at her now. “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, though her cheeks had turned scalding at his words.
Wesley was relentless. “You are. You are in love with Hirst, and God help me, I think he’s halfway in love with you. You were all he wanted to speak about from the moment I arrived here.”
His words made her heart clench in both dread and tenuous hope. She wanted to deny his accusations, while at the same time she wanted them desperately to be true—at least the second part. But it couldn’t be true. He didn’t love…
He didn’t love anyone, especially not her, and she couldn’t let herself hope that he ever would. He’d made his position very clear yesterday.
“It’s not true,” she insisted. “Don’t even say such things, Wesley. He has plans for the future, and they don’t include me.”
“Lady Ambrosia!” he scoffed contemptuously. “I cannot believe it, when it is obvious, even to me, that he prefers your company above all others.”
She gripped the edges of the wicker basket until her knuckles were white. “His designs upon Lady Ambrosia have nothing to do with preference, Wesley. Kildale is guilty of doing him a great wrong, and Ambrosia is merely a tool for his revenge.”
Wesley didn’t seem surprised. “I knew something was off about it. What the devil is going on?”
“Remember the story Hirst told us at the picnic?” she said grimly.
Wesley’s eyes popped wide as understanding dawned. “No!”
“Yes, I’m afraid. Hirst has no room for anything else in his life besides destroying the marquess. If the marquess doesn’t kill him first. He doesn’t want me, not enough, at any rate.”
“I don’t believe it for a second,” he said, sounding as certain of this as he was of the color of the sky. “You undervalue yourself too much, Davina, for which our dear mother is to blame, I’m afraid. There’s nothing about Davina Benwick that Hirst could possibly object to…”
“Please stop!” she cried, the tightness in her chest nearly unbearable.
Wesley looked abashed at her obvious distress, but he crossed his arms over his chest and set his jaw in determination. “I’m sorry but I won’t. I know I’ve been a rubbish brother to you, and it’s hardly fair of me to expect you to listen to me now, but I don’t care. You are miserable, and so is he, and if it’s the only worthwhile thing I ever do for you, I will make you sort things out with him.”
Never in her life had she heard her brother speak so forcefully. It was enough to render her speechless.
“Hirst…I’ve known him for years,” he continued, “and your effect on him is something I never thought I’d see. You make him almost human. I don’t know what happened between you two, but I think it will be easily solved if you just tell him the truth. Besides, I’m fairly certain he’s already figured it out.”
She looked determinedly away from her brother’s earnest face. “It’s not so simple, Wesley. Even if what you say is true, it wouldn’t be enough.”
“You’ll never know unless you try…”
Oh, for God’s sake. “I have!” she cried, unable to contain the truth any longer. “He knows! He knows who I am! He’s known for days. But nothing he feels for me is enough for him to give up his vendetta against Kildale.”
Sir Wesley’s mouth dropped open in shock. “But…but I thought…” he began helplessly.
And just like that, in the face of her brother’s disbelief, the tears she’d been holding inside since yesterday began to fall. Wesley’s brow creased in dismay, and he held out his arms. She fell into his embrace, trying to stifle her sobs against his collar.
He kissed her temple and patted her back in the awkward manner all males did when faced with a woman in tears—just as she’d done to Lady Highbottom her first night at the castle, she realized, and for practically the same reason. The irony was not lost on her.
But her brother’s arms were warm and comforting, and she felt for the first time in years that she might not be as alone in the world as she’d once thought. Though that was cold comfort at the moment.
“I just can’t believe it,” Wesley muttered into her hair. “I could have sworn…”
“Well, you’re wrong,” she said, sniffling into his cravat.
Wesley sighed in frustration. “He’s a clod pate, for all of his brains,” he murmured soothingly. “We’ll give him some time to sort it all out for himself, shall we?”
How could he give her such hope? As if time was all Hirst needed.
“And if he doesn’t?”
His arms tightened around her. “Then he doesn’t deserve you. We’ll leave just as soon as I finish my repairs,” he promised.
“I am not flying back in that thing, Wesley,” she said sternly.
“Oh, don’t worry, we’ll go by land this time,” he said with a pat to her shoulder. “And so will the charlière, I’m afraid.”
When she’d finally cried herself dry, Sir Wesley scrabbled back into the basket with a spanner to finish up his work. Davina watched him bang at the pipes from a safe distance. She wasn’t about to climb into the basket with him, for even though there was no chance of the charlière flying away in its present state, she wasn’t about to take any chances after the experience she’d had.
All of a sudden, Wesley stilled. “What’s this, then?” he murmured, dropping his spanner to his side and crouching down low in the basket. She leaned over the edge and watched him retrieve something round and shiny caught in the woven slats. He held it up for inspection, and the cheap metal gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight pouring into the stables, momentarily blinding her.
Sir Wesley placed the object in her palm, and she stared down at it with a surge of inexplicable foreboding passing through her veins. It was a gaudy brass button with a fox’s head stamped on the top. Exactly the same as the buttons adorning Mr. Bonnet’s most obnoxiously gauche jacket.
Miss Benwick Reforms a Rogue Page 23