“Edward?” she said softly, taking a step toward him. A step back to how they had been.
Poison rose up in him as he opened the door to the past. Not too wide. Just enough that he could share a semblance of it. As the memories slipped out, he grimaced. It was always the same on the other side of that door. Images of his father, hanging. Neck breaking. Of the girl his father had raped and beaten to death sprawled on the drawing room floor. The sick horror of it strangled his throat. He shook his head and slammed that damned door shut. He couldn’t tell her. Not Mary, not when she had been so brutalized.
Her hands came up to his face, the soft palms caressing his cheeks. “Edward. Say it. Whatever is causing you such pain, say it and you shall be free of it.”
He rested his face against her palms for a moment, desperately wishing to give in, but if he did, he would lose her. He might even lose himself. Jerking away, Edward faced the fire.
“Why are you so afraid?” she whispered.
“I am afraid of nothing,” he snapped, bracing his palms on the mantel.
“Fear and I are intimate acquaintances, Edward. You are in its bed.”
Her words struck like knives. He dug his fingers into the carved marble, starting the trickle of blood again from the scratch on his hand. “Stop.”
She came up behind him, her strong presence lingering only an arm’s length away. “We cannot live our lives in fear. You taught me that.”
“I am not afraid,” he growled.
“You are afraid of what I will think or say,” she countered.
“You are calling me a coward.”
“You are only a coward if you live in fear. And that is not who you are.”
Edward hung his head, the weight on his shoulders so heavy that at last he could not bear it. “What do you know of who I am?”
“I know you are strong, and powerful, and though you wish no one to know it, you are good.”
At this, a harsh groan tore from his throat, one that belied her supposition that he was good. Edward lifted his head and glared back at her, letting the full weight of his torment fill his eyes.
She blanched and took a small step back. And there it was: fear in her eyes. Fear of him. And she wanted to know the truth? For all her bravado, if he told her . . .
“Edward . . . Whatever has hurt you so badly—?”
Anger rippled through him so fast and hard he could not stop the eruption of words that burst from his throat. “What do you wish to hear? That my father was a monster? That my mother was a conniving and brutal whore? That I am the child of such a union? That I come from a long line of sadists? That I have fought all my life to ensure I didn’t become like them?”
She did not step back but rather reached out toward him. “Edward—”
“You wished to hear,” he mocked, throwing up a barrier between them, unwilling to let her touch him. “But let me tell you—it is not fear that stops me, but shame. Shame of who I am.”
“You told me once that you no longer experienced shame.”
He had. And he’d thought he meant it, but now, standing here, he knew it wasn’t the truth. He’d simply buried it.
When he didn’t reply, she let her fingers flutter to her side. The earnestness on her features was as powerful as any touch. “Who you are is beautiful.”
He longed to sink into her care and not expose her to his darkness. “You might not think so when I tell you what you desperately long to know.”
She remained silent, the only sound now the crackle of the fire and the howl of the wind at the window.
He’d come too far in his own stupid raging to stop. Somehow, she’d caught him up in something. For all his resolve, she’d won. “My father raped a fourteen-year-old girl with such violence, she died. It was brutal and bloody.”
That strong, shadowy gaze that had captivated him the moment he saw it widened, but she still said nothing . . . Nor did she retreat.
God, he longed to. To hide from this moment. But he’d gone too far now to stop. He squeezed his lids shut, evoking the horrors of the past, but the image of blood and ripped flesh flicked them back open.
“My mother procured the girl for him. She wanted to keep my father so intensely, to keep him hers, she was willing to pander to his every desire.” That twisted need of his mother’s had ruined her, left her a shell of a woman, and he wondered whether his father had ever truly given her the love she had been so determined to keep.
Edward bit the inside of his cheek until the iron of blood flowed over his tongue. The pain was the only way he could force himself to remember. “I’d only started at Eton and come home early for holidays. As far as I understood, my mother had promised the girl a place in our household. This, of course, was not the case.”
“I wasn’t supposed to be at home.” He spoke the words, but it was as though someone else was uttering the phrases as he disappeared from the room and plunged into memory. “I heard the screaming. I ran toward the sound.”
Edward closed his eyes again. The blond girl was on the floor, naked, her chemise cut away from her pale young body. There had been slashes along her thighs. The wine stain of blood had blossomed from her temple through her silvery locks. “Th-there was so much blood. So much. My mother was babbling how my father had gone too far and what were they to do.”
Mary’s fingers came up and stroked his shoulder, but he couldn’t bear the attempt at comfort, not in this memory, not when he could still smell death and hopelessness. So he shrugged his shoulder away from her soft hand. He drew in a ragged breath and went on. “I ran to the girl. She was still breathing ever so slightly. But my father grabbed me and forced me from the room. I didn’t know what to do. Who to tell. So . . . I told no one what I saw. But it didn’t end there.”
Tears—god-awful, womanish tears—stung his eyes. If he wasn’t careful, a torrent of his grief would pour forth from the dam he had kept erected for so long. He swallowed back the acidic taste of sick before continuing. “The girl’s father came to find her, to defend her honor. My father disposed of him.”
Unable to bear it any longer, Edward opened his eyes and stared into the flickering fire until his pupils burned to the point of blindness. It would have been so much easier to believe that none of it had been real, but the pain of it carving out his heart tore apart any such consoling fantasy.
“You see, when the constables came to investigate the disappearances . . . this time, I knew what had to be done. I—I told them everything.” He smiled a tremulous mockery of a smile. “I still recall my father’s face. Sheer disbelief marred his countenance. I was his son and heir, after all. What son betrays his father?” He choked on the pain of it but forced himself to finish. “In the end, it was my testimony that condemned him. They kept the worst of it out of the papers.”
Shaking, eyes wide, Edward could not exorcise the memory of his father’s blackened tongue lolling out of his purple face, eyes bloodred and bulging. That hellish vision would never leave him.
“And your mother?” Mary asked quietly.
“She tried to destroy herself. She failed,” he said factually. “She lives in the country.” His voice broke and he had to wait several moments before he could finally confess. “Servants watch over her.”
What else could he say? Nothing could soothe this moment into something bearable, but now he’d gone to the edge of memory and needed to put the last nail in his own coffin. “So that is who I am. Who I belong to.”
“Edward, you are not your father.” Her voice came like rain upon the parched earth. “Or your mother.”
Edward threw back his head, wishing he could drown himself in the comfort of her voice. But there was no comfort for him now. Staring up at the wood-beamed ceiling, he let out a harsh sound. “But I am of their making.”
She came up behind him and placed her curves against his, holding him, attempting to make them one. “How can you say so?”
“I didn’t save her. I did nothing,” he growled, his vo
ice reverberating off the crystal chandelier. A tear slipped down his cheek and he dashed it away lest more follow. “I let my father push me out of that room. And—and if the constables hadn’t come, I would have told no one. I would have allowed him to get away with it. What if he’d done it again—?”
He shoved back from the mantel, breaking their embrace. He turned to Mary, hoping wildly that even she might be able to explain his behavior. “How could I have done that?”
“You were little more than a child,” she protested.
He shook his head at the feebleness of her argument. How many others had tried to convince him thusly? “I should have stopped it.” There was no excuse. And that was his hell. “I should have taken a pistol or fire iron or whatever it took to stop my father. I should never have kept his secret. Not even for a moment.” Edward grabbed her upper arms and shook her, willing her to understand what he was. “I did nothing. Nothing.”
Mary grabbed hold of his biceps and commanded sharply, “You listen to me, Edward Barrons. You are no more to blame for what happened to that girl than I am for what happened to my mother.”
His memories stuttered. What the hell could she possibly mean? The words were out of him now, but he felt no better. In fact, he felt coated in misery. Coated in a memory he had not fully allowed himself to visit except for in his dreams. “I failed that girl,” he whispered as his throat began to close. “And now, I begin to think I will fail you.”
Her fingers stroked up his arms until she clasped them around his neck. “You must let go of this guilt.”
The feel of her was the only balm he had ever known, yet he couldn’t quite bring himself to wrap his arms about her, not when he was finally seeing himself so clearly. “I can’t.”
“If you don’t, it will obliterate what is left of you.”
He was going to fail her. It was as certain as the setting sun. “Can you forgive and forget what your father has done?”
She narrowed her eyes slightly. “’Tis different. He never suffered for his crimes.”
“When he has suffered, will you forget then?” He should keep these thoughts to himself. The bitterness, the anger—now that he had opened that prison in his head, all the torment seemed to be pouring out.
“Yes,” she said vehemently.
He shook his head wildly. “No, you won’t. This is what I am trying to explain. I don’t regret testifying against my father. But what I do regret is never letting it go, of always trying to find more justice. If you can’t move on from this, you will dream of him until the day you die because it is half of who you are. Revenge leaves you dead inside.”
She cocked her head to the side as she reached up and attempted to smooth his brow. “I will move on with my life. Away from all that I have seen and done.”
“Even though I wish it, you will never escape the past if you continue on this course. I was a fool to have not seen it immediately. For too many years I have lied to myself, but no more. Because I didn’t let it go, the past owns me. So please listen.”
Her face contorted with anguish. “Edward, after all you have done for me, after all this . . . I must ask again. Why are you doing this now?”
“Because you demanded to know what makes me the way I am. If you had not insisted, I would not have told you. But I see you on the same path, choosing to believe justice or vengeance will give you peace. It won’t.”
Her lips tightened. She tore her hands from him and thrust them over her ears as she lamented, “I will always hear your words now. The threat that I will never be free.”
Edward’s hands dropped to his sides, empty. “Forgive me.”
“At long last, we have found something that can’t be forgiven.” Her fingers slipped away from her face as tears sprang into her eyes. She shook her hands, ridding herself of his poison. “You are stealing back the hope you gave me.”
She had demanded to know his innermost hell, yet he should have kept it locked deep down in the blackness of his unsalvageable soul. There was no more selfish bastard than he. “Please—”
A sort of panic whitened her already pale features as she backed slowly away from him. “This evening has painted me the greatest of fools. I always knew that it was not me you wanted or truly hoped to right. I was a means to some end of yours. But I was so wrong. Oh, god, I was wrong.” Her voice pitched up. “I needed you for protection. You needed me for retribution of some kind. But in the end, Edward, we are only using each other. And you’re right in this—it’s time we stopped.”
Chapter 22
The silence between them was full with her hope that he would negate her words, but he couldn’t. Because in the deepest part of his heart, he was afraid that they would never be able to defeat their demons. No matter what they did. And she was correct. They had been using each other.
The hollows of her cheeks, which had begun to fill out over the past weeks, intensified and her violet eyes—eyes that had ripped up his heart—stared with vacant acceptance. “I had thought that perhaps you had seen some part of me that was beautiful. Some part of me to love, and for a long time now I have believed that I would never be worthy of love. That there was something so wrong with me that my father sent me away. That I was ruined beyond loving with what had been done to me. I want more than just an arrangement. You will never give me that. By your own admission.”
More.
He didn’t know how to give her more. He’d let her in for brief moments, confessing his past, but the pain of it was so great he never wanted to discuss it again.
Love meant pain. Hadn’t his parents shown him that?
Oh, he’d had a sick alliance to his mother and father. Duty and kinship had drowned him in guilt for betraying them. But love? Love the way she meant it. He had never, nor likely ever would, experience it. “I am sorry.”
It was not what she had so wished to hear. Her face creased and her chest heaved as she let out a broken sound. “I cannot stay here. I cannot. I—” Her breaths came in great waves of anguish. “We have lost our understanding.”
Something rose inside Edward so fierce that it nearly blinded him. “I don’t care if you are using me, Mary.”
She lifted trembling hands, appealing to some invisible power before she fired out, “You should care. What are we if we are just using each other? Parasites. That’s what we are.”
Edward took a step forward, wishing he could hold her to him until all was at peace again. “It doesn’t matter.”
Her hands pressed to her temples. “Do you hear yourself?”
“Mary, whether you wish to hear it or not, whether you agree about vengeance or not, you belong with me. You belong to me. It doesn’t matter if it’s not the love you so desire.”
“Yes,” she sobbed, “it does.” The pain on her face contorted into a calm determination as she drew herself up and dropped her hands to her sides. “Edward, the only person I belong to is me.”
And with that, his Calypso darted from the room.
“I won’t thank you, Powers,” Mary clipped as her stomach twisted into a snake, coiling with determination and regret. The nauseous feeling didn’t direct her back toward the house, from where Edward had no doubt seen them enter the stables.
The dank smell of hay and horseflesh and the heady scent of rain clouds surrounded them. Mary drank it in, dreading and simultaneously savoring her impending escape. Now she just had to rid herself of Powers and be gone.
The viscount towered above her, his blond hair glowing pure silver in the moor’s moonlight. “And I can’t help the gnawing feeling I am making an irreversible mistake.”
Mary arched a brow, every limb, every essence of her tired and so bitter she could manage nothing more. All she longed for was to climb onto the waiting gelding and tear across the heath. “You? You don’t make mistakes, my lord.”
Powers’s glacial eyes stared into hers with the power of some eternal being. “Let me go with you. Please, Mary.”
Her breath puffed out white
in the cold night. Please?
“Powers—”
His usually so impassive face softened, showing her a face without a mask. “I’ll never forgive myself if you go alone.”
She eyed him carefully, sure this was some ruse. “I’d no idea you had such qualms of conscience.”
Powers’s gloved hand came up and paused just by her cheek. “There is much to me that I don’t show the world.”
Mary’s skin prickled with the intensity of his gaze and the promise of his touch. The possibility of his hand cupping her cheek was harrowing enough, but it was his look that devoured her. There was no mockery, no promise of bite. Just the clarity of a man about to throw himself into the abyss.
“I realize now I must do this alone, my lord.” Slowly, she lifted her fingertips to the charcoal sleeve of his riding coat, lightly pushing his hand away. “And Edward will need you.”
Powers melted under her touch, the ice sliding away from him. His big body closed the gap between them. His head bent down, closing several inches of the considerable distance between their faces. “He will hate me,” he whispered.
“No. He won’t. And I must go. It is right.” The words tore at her throat—if they had had physical shape, she was sure they would have left her windpipe bloody, like flesh raked with thorns.
His strong hand closed over hers, his fingers as large as Edward’s, as warm as Edward’s, and as sure—but wrong. “I am not here with you now because it is right,” he said.
“Then why?”
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