by Jaimey Grant
Until she’d met Gideon, she was sure she’d never stray from that belief. Yet a few moments with his lips against hers was enough to send her good intentions into permanent hiding. What had come over her?
Answering her look of confusion, he told her, “You have always done what you were commanded, Malvina. Look where it has gotten you. Why have you never questioned your course in life?”
“Am I allowed to, then, my lord? Forgive me if I hesitate. The gentlemen in my life have never been very forgiving, you see.”
Gideon stood and held out his hand. “Your life has changed. Embrace the change and decide for yourself what is right and what is wrong.”
Everyone sensed a change in Lady Malvina. Upon her return to Moorview Park, she sequestered herself in her room and refused to see or speak to anyone.
Malvina was thinking. She didn’t like change but knew the futility of railing against it. When her husband had died, she’d changed nothing. It was far more comfortable to go on as before, as if he were still there, demanding how things should be. It occurred to her, finally, that perhaps that was not the best thing for her son.
When That Man had contacted her, fear allowed her to do everything he demanded, assisting his band of cutthroats to lure certain gentlemen of fortune and position into his trap. He’d moved his chosen servants to her home, installed his own men in her stables, and made it clear that she could do nothing without his knowledge. Fear had kept her pinned closely to his side, being an unwilling party to more and more heinous crimes. Always, he threatened not her, but her son. And now, because she wouldn’t—or couldn’t—think for herself, the death of an innocent young man hung on her conscience.
Then Gideon swooped in and rescued her. She’d likely have gone on doing everything That Man asked, right up until he put a bullet through her own head and taken care of Wolf the same way. She’d done nothing in her life for herself, nothing to determine the way she wanted her life to go. While having a child would, naturally, curb any reckless decisions, that wouldn’t have prevented a change in scenery. Had she decided after Brackney’s death that she would live for herself and her son, she’d have moved the child as far from home as she could afford. She saw now that she should have.
An hour or so after returning from her ride, Malvina heard a knock at her door. She attempted to ignore it but the visitor was persistent. Rising, she flung open the door.
Gideon stood there, his expression deadly serious. He held out a book.
“I apologize for the time it took me to find this.” He glanced down at the book he offered, then back at her. “I believe my mother is a little like you. It is easier to do as one is told rather than learn for oneself how one should go on in life.”
Malvina reluctantly took his offering. She turned the leatherbound volume over in her hand and opened it. It was Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Glancing back up at her betrothed, she was not as surprised to find him gone as she’d been to find him there at all.
Backing slowly away, Malvina closed the door, amazed. She returned to her seat by the window, set the book on the seat beside her, and stared at it for a long time. Then, she burst into tears.
Gideon left Malvina to her tears and her personal growth. He knew it was easy to tell others to change, but not so easy to tell oneself.
He found his feet taking him to the one room he’d planned to avoid the entirety of his visit; indeed, for the rest of his life. It was empty of human life, an unsurprising circumstance. He moved around the room, drawing back the heavy damask curtains, staring at everything.
The room looked neglected, but not entirely forgotten. Someone cleaned periodically, just enough to keep the worst of the grime at bay without disturbing the contents.
In one corner sat a desk, covered in papers and books, slightly dusty and plainly ignored. No one had bothered to return the books to the library or neatly stack the papers.
Gideon turned, one hand clenched. In the middle of the room was a long table. On it sat bottles and beakers, more papers, quills and ink, and another book, open to a certain page. On one end was a microscope, the most advanced and expensive available nine years ago.
His parents had ordered this room to be left alone. It was to be a shrine to Samantha’s beauty, a constant reminder of Gideon’s wrongs.
It wasn’t the room or even the home where it had happened. But this had been his sanctuary, science his escape. So he understood their actions.
They didn’t seem to realize he was fully capable of punishing himself and with far greater severity than they could have ever devised.
He sighed. Moving to the center table, he stared down at its contents, wondering just what he’d been thinking all those years ago.
He absently fingered a brown bottle, long since empty. The old earl had had some presence of mind, then. He’d seen fit to rid the premises of the chemicals his son had loved so well.
It was for the best, he thought now, gazing around. This room had never produced results and Gideon had been wasting his time playing with such dangerous things.
His hand trembled.
The small bottle he still clutched slipped to the floor, smashing into a million pieces. He stared down at it, unaware of how it had happened.
Samantha was the reason Gideon’s life had turned out other than he had originally planned. After disfiguring her so severely, he lost the joie de vivre he’d previously enjoyed. It was all he could do to avoid slipping into a melancholy so deep he couldn’t climb out.
It was why he became insouciant. And offered his services to the Home Office, tracking down traitors and spies. It was a thankless job, dangerous and often nauseating. What better way to redeem oneself than to hunt down those who willingly hurt others? If one happened to die in the process…
Another bottle joined the first. Blue shards mingled with brown in shafts of early afternoon sun.
His work there had led him to a man who’d been smuggling secrets for years while Bonaparte roamed the world, seeking to conquer the whole. Clues had pointed to Sir Richard Brackney, baronet. He was not the ringleader, however. There was someone above him, a mystery man who moved his people around like pawns on a chess board.
The man’s identity was no longer a mystery. It was Gideon’s own childhood friend, Lord Delwyn Deverell.
Another bottle smashed, this one several feet from the others.
Since peace with France had been established, Deverell’s past activities must have had everything to do with greed and little to do with loyalty to Bonaparte’s cause. It had to be the reason he was staging holdups. Gideon could only assume Deverell’s ability to use Malvina was blackmail.
With an angry swipe, Gideon cleared the table of the rest of the bottles. He barely heard the crash as they smashed all around the room.
That meant Brackney was guilty. Even after his death, the crown would still want to hold Brackney accountable for his treason. His title and properties would be seized, his family ostracized, hounded from Society.
Gideon’s mother would truly go into a decline if he married Lady Brackney.
Books and papers flew, adding to the worsening destruction of Gideon’s once-precious room.
He leaned against the table, hands fisted tightly, trying to dam up the rage, trying to convince himself that visible emotion was a weakness. It was never productive to allow the feelings release.
There was one glaring incongruity in Deverell’s actions that made Gideon distinctly nervous. Why did the man visit Malvina in person? Was he that confident he would not be caught?
Or was there actually someone pulling his strings as he pulled Malvina’s?
Releasing a cry of frustrated rage, the noble Earl of Holt lifted the heavy table and threw it across the room. The microscope, beakers, and sundry other items flew, smashed, crashed, and banged all around him.
It did not relieve the helpless frustration that consumed him.
“Very mature, Giddy.”
He had not heard
the door open. He turned to find Samantha staring at him, her brown eyes filled with concern.
He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You should not be here.”
“Nor should you.” She walked toward him, her slippered feet moving silently around the debris. She stopped before him, searching his features for clues as to his behavior. “What has come over you?”
He shrugged, slipping back into his comfortable, insouciant façade.
Lady Samantha struck him on the chest. “Don’t you dare become the lifeless care-for-nothing, Giddy! I hate that.”
She stepped back, looking very much as if she’d like to hit him again. She successfully employed ladylike restraint but stepped back again to avoid the temptation.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“I come here every day.”
Astonishment exploded in his chest. “Why the devil would you do that?”
She shrugged. “To remember you.” Gazing around at the destruction he’d so effortlessly wrought, she added, “Today, however, it is not the same.”
He would not cry. How completely stupid to feel hurt, sorrow, or sadness that she would want to constantly remind herself that her only brother had permanently harmed her.
“Is not your mirror sufficient to remind you ?”
She met his gaze, her brow furrowed in confusion. Staring into his ever-revealing eyes, she realized what he implied.
“I do not come here to wallow in misery and hate, Giddy,” she told him gently. “I come here to remember you. I miss you. I miss the old you, the one who was up to every rig and row. The one who teased me and laughed at me and told me when I vexed you. The one who pretended I was an irritating younger sister but never failed to include me.”
She squeezed his arm. “I never hated you, Giddy.” She gestured to her face, making him wince at the severity of her scars. “Not for this. I hated you for changing and for leaving. I hated you for treating me as though I was different. I hated you for revealing you were just like everyone else, believing appearances were more important than what was inside. I needed you, Giddy, to make me laugh, when the pain was so bad all I could do was cry.”
She searched his features for he knew not what, the intensity of her gaze sending a twinge of alarm through him. Her next words stunned him unlike any others.
“I needed you to tell me I was to blame.”
Gideon stared helplessly at her, watching the tears well up in her huge eyes and trickle down her cheeks. Her face turned red and splotchy, causing the scars to stand out, grotesquely ugly against the purity of the girl they marked. She clutched at his sleeve, begging him to understand the ways she felt he’d failed her.
A single tear managed to escape before he could stop it. Damming the wellspring, he shook her off. He was not ready to give up any of the blame in the situation.
Samantha pressed her rejected hand to her mouth, trying to hold back the sobs that threatened to tear her in two.
“I am doing quite well, today,” the calm, emotionless Lord Holt murmured. “I have managed to cause grief to the two women I care about most.” He snapped a bow. “Permit me to leave you so I may visit Mother and see what I may do to her.”
Samantha watched him leave. When the door closed, she sank to the floor in an elegant heap, her sobs released from deep within.
The next day, Malvina had read the book loaned to her and found it to be very enlightening. While she couldn’t care for Mary Wollstonecraft herself or condone many of her personal choices, Malvina was wise enough to see the logic in the woman’s teachings and understand the frustration she must have felt at her lot in life.
It made sense to Malvina that women were as capable as men of learning, thought, and logic. It also made sense that men would feel threatened by a woman learning to think for herself.
What didn’t make sense was her betrothed encouraging her to do just that.
Further confused by the enigma that was Lord Holt, Malvina entered the breakfast room earlier than was her wont. It was surprisingly empty, even of servants. Curious, she turned around and went in search of another human.
When the house yielded no results, she walked through the front door. A silent scream rose up to choke her at the sight that met her eyes.
Gideon was trying to kill her baby!
The two men were stripped to shirtsleeves and stockinged feet, moving back and forth in a dance of death, silver foils flashing in the late morning sunlight.
Malvina strode forward, intent on ending the contretemps, little heeding the flash of metal as their weapons met time and again.
Someone reached out and stopped her before she’d made it three steps. Shockingly, it was Keeley, the butler. She was about to reprimand the man for laying hands on her person when she became aware that Lady Samantha had approached and stood watching at her side.
“Could you not have stopped him, my lady. He is your brother.”
The sound that issued from Lady Samantha’s delicate throat closely resembled a snort. “He is not my brother, Lady Malvina. I have no idea who that man is. Can you not stop him? He is your betrothed. Come to that, the other is your son.”
Throwing a glare at the importuning butler, she muttered, “I am not to be allowed to interfere, I think.”
In that moment, Wolf released a snarl and lunged at the earl. Malvina held her breath, unsure for whom she was most afraid. A second later, her son was disarmed, his foil flying through the air to stick in the ground at her feet. She was momentarily startled, realizing that had she been standing even one foot closer, she’d have been skewered.
Her heart beating in her throat, she glanced up to see Gideon holding his sword at her son’s neck. Maternal instinct took over. She determinedly shook off the butler’s restraining hand, snatched up the foil at her feet, and marched over to the combatants.
Malvina didn’t think. She snapped the foil up and pressed it beneath Lord Holt’s chin. “Release him!”
Brows quirking slightly at her, Gideon obeyed. His foil fell away from Wolf’s throat while Malvina’s dipped slightly. Suddenly, she found herself disarmed.
It was unclear to her how it had happened. One second, she was holding the earl at bay, heart hammering in her throat, and the next, her weapon was gone and she was being marched into the manor with a very angry betrothed at her side.
He paused only long enough to retrieve his boots and outer garments
Leaning close, he murmured lowly, “When I said you need to think for yourself, I did not mean to imply you should make stupid, thoughtless decisions that put your life in danger.”
“Stupid, thoughtless…! How dare you, sir! You tried to kill my baby!”
Shoving her through the first door he came to, Gideon’s reply was succinct. “He is not a baby, Malvina. He’s a man now and so damned confused about it that he has no idea how to go on.”
His words silenced her for a mere second. “How is assaulting him supposed to solve that?”
“I was not assaulting him,” her companion sighed. He threw his outer garments aside and sat down to pull on his boots. “He came at me with murder in his eyes and I gave him the chance, merely.”
She was visibly horrified. “You gave him the chance? Are you mad?”
He looked up. “I knew he could not win, Malvina.”
“You were trying to hurt him!”
Standing, he watched her hands clench. He caught her before she managed to use them on him. Drawing her closer, he said, “I was not going to hurt him. Only teach him a lesson.”
“What lesson is that? Violence solves all arguments?”
“That he is not invincible and should not go through life with the mistaken belief that he is.”
Silenced, Malvina stopped struggling. She was duly released and used the opportunity to move away from Lord Holt. “I do not care for your methods,” she told him calmly.
“I did not expect that you would,” he informed her. “Hence, the reason you were not informed.�
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She stared at him, her green eyes shimmering suspiciously. “Is this the way it will be, my lord? Will I have no say in my own son?”
Closing the distance between them, Gideon grasped her upper arms. “I am not usurping your position as the boy’s parent. I am trying to help guide him in a way that you cannot.”
Her chin rose a notch. “Why can I not? I am just as intelligent as you.”
He laughed, the wretch. Placing gentle fingers on her cheek, his other hand slid over her back. “No one is debating that, love. But you are not a man and what that boy needs is a father.”
Her anger deflated. “What am I to do with him?”
“Dare I suggest you trust me?”
He drew her closer. She stared up at him, not sure how to answer him. The effect his nearness was having on her breathing did not help matters.
Gideon’s hands found their way into her hair, tipping her face up to his. Mesmerized, she didn’t pull away. She moved her hands to his waist and pulled him closer and closed her eyes.
“You have trusted every man you’ve ever met. Why do you not trust me?”
Her eyes snapped open. Blinking slowly, she replied, “You are not what you seem. You hold yourself and your thoughts away, revealing only what you want known.”
She found herself released and standing alone by the time she finished her words. Her emotions jolted severely when he simply looked at her with his typical sleepy expression, the very expression he employed to hide something.
“When involved with a woman like you, a man must protect himself.”
“And you want to marry me.”
Malvina was surprised at the confidence in her tone. She finally believed he wanted to marry her. Suspicion whispered in her ear, however, a sneaking belief that whoever had ordered him to investigate her had not told him to marry her.
She was unpleasantly surprised when her betrothed again took her arms with no gentleness. “Oh, I have my reasons for wanting to marry you, Lady Malvina Brackney. It does not mean I will ever trust you. How can I? You send young men to their deaths for…what? Money?”