“You are a beast,” she said at last. “But you are not a beast for the marks upon your face or the damage done your leg. You are a beast because you are a cold, cruel man who does not have forgiveness in his heart.” She took several jerky steps toward him. “You are a beast because you hold a man responsible for mistakes he made as a mere boy and torture him with the guilt of those mistakes. I feel sorry for you, Your Grace.”
The Duke of Blackthorne leaned down, shrinking the greater than one foot of space between them. He stuck his scarred face close to her gaze. “I do not want your pity, Lady St. Cyr,” he hissed.
She recoiled, but then dug deep for the courage to not be cowed by this more monster than man figure. “Well, you have it regardless of whether you wish it or not. For any man who could go through life hidden away, hating all, including himself…” A mottled flush stained the unscarred and shockingly handsome portion of his face, a testament to the truth of her supposition. “A man such as that should be pitied. A man who would only drag himself from his closed off world to taunt and torment a man who is already tormented.” Prudence gave her head a disgusted shake. “He called you friend and yet you would condemn him so. Shame on you, Your Grace.” The winter wind howled its approval outside, rattling the floor-length windowpanes. “If you will excuse me?” Without allowing the eerily silent stranger another word, she spun on her heel and sailed off in a flurry of skirts.
As she put the White Parlor behind her and removed herself from his cruel, sapphire blue eye, she allowed her shoulders to sag with the relief that came from being away from such a vile, nasty human being. No wonder her husband carried the weight of this guilt. How could he not when a man who’d once been more brother than friend spewed such venom? Her heart swelled with love for him. Prudence quickened her steps, her slippers soft on the threadbare carpets as she set off in search of her husband. She would show him he did not need to spend the remainder of his life seeking an absolution he would never find; for it needed to come not from Blackthorne, or Maxwell, or any of the other soldiers who’d fought alongside him. It needed to come from within Christian himself.
She reached his office when Dalrymple’s voice sounded beyond her shoulder.
“He is not here, my lady.”
Prudence looked to him and found his heavily pockmarked face tense with anger and concern. “Where—?”
“Asked for his mount to be readied and set off like the devil himself was hot on his heels.” He touched a brim of an imagined hat. “My apologies, my lady.”
Prudence waved off that apology. With a silent curse, she started in the butler’s direction. “Have the carriage readied please, this instant, Dalrymple.”
“It is already done, my lady,” he said, lengthening his stride to keep up with her. From the corner of her eye, she took in the worry creasing the other man’s brow.
“What is it?” she asked, concern making her voice tremble.
“There was a panicked look to His Lordship. I’ve seen that look before in others…in myself, my lady.” A muscle ticked in his cheek. “He’s a good man,” he said, defending his employer needlessly. “He made mistakes. We all did.” So Dalrymple knew and had loyally devoted himself to Christian. Did her husband even realize how many men respected him and saw past more than the whispers of his own past? They reached the foyer. “But those mistakes should not be held against the marquess.”
There was an assessing gleam in his eyes, as though he sought to gauge whether his mistress was one of Christian’s staunch defenders, or one of the whisperers.
Prudence took the other man’s hands. He started at her unexpected touch. “I know my husband is a good man. I thank you for your devotion.” She gave his hands a squeeze and then promptly released them as a footman rushed forward with her cloak. Prudence quickly shrugged into it and fastened the hooks.
“We do not know where His Lordship has gone,” Dalrymple said gruffly, pulling the door open.
She gave him a reassuring smile. “I know where my husband is.” And she’d not return home until he was at her side. Prudence raced down the steps to the waiting carriage and then accepted the groom’s assistance up. “Hyde Park,” she ordered. Prudence settled into the torn squabs of the carriage. Her husband had been shamed and hurt this day by her inadvertent actions. She’d not have him retreat within himself.
Filled with a panicked restiveness, she yanked back the velvet curtain and stared out at the quiet London streets.
It was snowing. Christian stared up at the enormous, aged elm with its overhanging branches. Through those mangled and crooked limbs, the faintest specks of snow filtered through and danced to the earth.
Standing there at the trunk of her tree, their tree, a sheen of tears dusted his vision. In a bid to keep those useless tokens of his own weakness at bay, he pressed his forehead against the tree. The brittle bark bit sharply into his forehead and he welcomed the sting of pain. With Blackthorne’s visit, all the shame he’d carried these eight years, the deserved guilt, his own lack of self-worth came rushing forth with a potency that threatened to swallow him.
He’d deluded himself into thinking he deserved to be happy. What right did he have? What right, when Blackthorne remained shut away, scarred and ruined by his haste with his weapon? What right, when he’d casually tossed away that one crucial bit of information to a French sympathizer, focusing on the time he’d have with that woman after the battle was done. The wind shook the branches noisily overhead as if in agreement.
“I thought I’d find you here.”
He stiffened but did not pick his head up from against the hard trunk of the elm. Old leaves and gravel crackled as his wife’s footsteps carried her closer. Then silence reigned with nothing more than the gusting, winter wind about him, so that he wondered if he’d merely imagined her voice.
“I am so very sorry, Christian.” Her tenderly spoken words shattered any such illusion. “I thought if you and the duke spoke once more, that with time’s passing you could find peace.”
Christian drew in a steadying breath. “It is not your fault, Prudence,” he said tiredly, turning to face her.
“But it is.” She stood wringing her gloveless fingers together. Her flyaway curls spoke of the haste in searching for him. In her slippered feet and naked hands, she had no place being here. “I foolishly interfered where I had no place.” His wife scrunched her mouth in that endearing manner he’d come to love. “My brother and mother are always lamenting my poorly thought out efforts.” How casually she stood here, speaking as though they were two merely walking through Hyde Park and yet nothing could be normal. Not with the mention of Lynette and Toulouse. She must have seen something in his eyes, for she stilled her distracted movements and looked at him squarely. “Did you love her?”
Christian ran his hands up and down his face. “No. Yes. I thought I did.” He shook his head once. “No.” And perhaps that was the greatest tragedy of all. He’d shared just enough information that the French sympathizer passed along those details to French forces who correctly deduced the 2nd regiments’ positioning at Toulouse.
“Tell me,” she pleaded, her warm breath stirring the cold, winter air. “I want to hear it from your lips and not that man you once called friend. I am tired of you only offering the half-truths you think I can handle. I want it all.” A paroxysm of pain twisted her face. “Even if that truth is you love another.”
“I do not love another.” The denial exploded from him.
By the sad glimmer in her blue eyes, she didn’t believe that truth.
“I was a boy.”
A broken, tremulous smile formed on her lips. “Funny how you should claim you were a boy in that regard and a man in all others.”
He went still and then panic ran through him. She didn’t believe him? And why should she any longer. “I thought I loved her,” he said quietly, again. “I loved the excitement she represented. I intended to offer for her.” By the agony twisting his wife’s delicate features, he
may as well have run her through with a dull blade.
Prudence dropped her eyes to the snow-covered earth. “I see.” Christian strained to hear her faintly spoken whisper.
“Oh, Prudence.” His voice emerged ragged from the place where regret lived. “Those feelings were not truly love. I loved the dream of being in love, but that is not…” His words trailed off.
She raised her shattered gaze to his face. “That is not, what?”
Christian forced his gaze to hers. “That is not what it was.” He’d not let the first time he told her be clouded with talks of Lynette.
“I want to know about her and Blackthorne’s charges.”
And she deserved those truths.
“It is as he said,” he said warily, swiping a hand over his face.
With her insistence, she dragged him back to that night, and the hellish days to follow. He’d spent so many years trying to bury the memories of that night that he did not know what to do with this request to share. The wind howled around them, whipping at her muslin cloak. In his haste to be rid of Blackthorne and with shame hot on his heels, he’d fled without his cloak. He welcomed the stinging chill as the snow slapped his face. “Her name was Lynette.” Of course, with the duke’s revelation, she was aware of such, but it was the only place he knew where to begin.
His wife’s slender frame went still and he detested he’d been that rash, reckless youth who’d only lived for his own pleasures. “She was a Belgian woman. We met at a tavern and…” She’d easily seduced the seventeen-year-old boy he’d been. A boy who’d been foolish enough to believe her words of love and to have given her his heart in return. He cleared his throat. “I would go and…” Shame at even speaking of such to his wife, thickened his voice. “Pay visits to her in the city.”
Through his telling, Prudence remained frozen. He allowed himself a moment to look at her but could not read anything of her expression. Was she disgusted? Horrified? “Several evenings before Toulouse, I was preparing to return for battle. She asked where I would be, said she would die if she did not see me immediately after the battle. Said she wished to…” Know the pleasure of his body. “See me once more.” His lips pulled in a grimace. How had he not questioned her insistence that night? With the inexperience of his youth, he’d preened like a peacock over her praise and the hungering desire in her eyes.
“And you told her where you were to battle?” Prudence’s quietly spoken inquiry sought to make sense of the sins of his past.
He gave his head a shake. “Not specifically.” Largely because he himself had not known the specifics of the battlefield plans. If he had known, he’d have easily given those facts over to her. “I made plans to meet Lynette at an inn in Saint-Gaudens. It is a crossroads between the two…” Recognizing he rambled, he allowed the useless details to trail off. “She was a French sympathizer. A spy for the French. She took that information and from there, French intelligence needed only to make their deductions on Wellington’s movements.”
His wife frowned. “You did not give away your location.”
He dragged a hand through his hair, a desperate laugh working up his throat. By God, why must she see more in him than there was? “I may as well have.”
“No, no you may not as well have. Those are two very different things.”
His sole remaining friend in the world, Maxwell had been of a forgiving opinion, too. When he’d visited Blackthorne after the war, burned and scarred and broken, he’d offered the man the truth. He’d sat silent, unmoving as the dead, and then with a terse “Rot in hell”, had never spoken to Christian again.
He glanced down as his wife slid her hands into his and held them up, forming a small circle between them. “It was a mistake, Christian,” she said quietly, cutting to the heart of it. “What happened was not your fault. Toulouse would have happened whether you’d mentioned Saint-Gaudens or not.”
He pulled free of her hold and backed away. She advanced, as determined as Wellington himself had been. “Will you cease defending me?” His harsh command brought her to a jerky stop. “When will you simply accept the truth of who I am?” Of what I am.
His wife gave him a gentle look. “And what is that?”
The snowflakes danced about them, captured by the dark blue of her cloak. “I am a coward.”
“No, you are not,” she interrupted giving her head a brusque shake. “You are a man of strength and honor. You were a boy who went to war and fought.”
Poorly. He’d fought poorly. Why could she not understand that?
She took another faltering step toward him and then stopped as though uncertain. “When I was a girl, I was afraid of the dark. My sisters, Poppy and Penelope, were as well. Oh, never Patrina. She was far too logical to be afraid of the dark.”
He blinked trying to follow along whatever path she now took him with her words.
Prudence waved a hand as she spoke. “We had governess after governess.” With his wife’s ability to seek and find trouble, he rather believed it. For a moment pain lifted, and he smiled, thinking of the person she’d been then. “Each of those dour women would scold us for our silly fears. Except, it didn’t matter how much they told us we were being irrational. Every night, my sisters and I would look at the walls and there were these shadows. I began to realize, if I laid a certain way or moved just so, those shadows would shift. If I looked at them long enough, I could control what I saw in those shadows.” She brushed her hand over his cheek. “I came to find people are like that.” He wanted to turn himself over to the warmth of her touch and the allure of her words. “You see, Christian, you see yourself one way. You see yourself as a coward and a failure, but that is not how I see you, for that is not who you truly are.”
A bitter, ugly laugh exploded from his lips and he jerked away from the tantalizing promise she dangled. “What do you see? A hero?”
“I do,” she said with an automaticity that made him curse.
“When will you cease to see I am not that gentleman?” Heroes were men of extraordinary ability and skills. They were men who commanded with strength and did not cry upon the fields of war. They were men who knew how to fire their gun and save their family from ruin without relying upon a woman’s dowry for salvation. “I am not a hero,” he cried. “You would make me out to be something I am not. I am a broken, useless man. A coward. Everything Blackthorne said is true. This is not about flickers of light that are real or not real. These are things I did and did not do in my life.”
“Everything he said is not true,” she said, going toe to toe with him.
A growl of impatience escaped him. “If you believe that, then you are a bloody fool,” he gritted out. He turned on his heel and stalked away from the bloody elm. And her.
“Are you walking away from me?” she called out, shock raising her tone and echoing through the quiet, empty park.
Christian spun about. A powerful gust of winter wind shook the branches overhead in a violent dance and those snowflakes she’d spoken of as magical flecks of white stung his eyes. “What would you have me say?” he bellowed. “I am—”
Craaack!
His heart stilled as the wheels of life seemed to churn with a mind-numbing slowness as he followed Prudence’s shocked gaze skyward. “No,” he thundered charging back and shoving her aside just as the limb of their elm knocked into the back of his head. He dimly registered his wife’s agonized scream, the flicker of light, and then he pitched forward.
Chapter 26
Lesson Twenty-six
All men are determined to save themselves. It is up to us to show them that only love can truly save them.
Prudence sat in the darkened chambers of her husband’s rooms in a leather winged back chair that Dalrymple had personally dragged over to the side of his employer’s bed. Knees drawn close to her chest, she layered her cheek to her white skirts and stared at her husband’s still, unmoving frame.
“Wake up, Christian,” she said quietly. Silence met her command.
Undaunted, she continued, “You have been sleeping three days now. It is time you awake.” She studied him for any sign of movement. But for the slight, shallow rise and fall of his chest, there was no flicker of life. Tears blurred her eyes and she swatted away the futile, useless drops, angrily swiping the back of her hand across her cheeks. Since she’d sprinted through Hyde Park for the groom who carried Christian’s unconscious body back to the carriage, she’d not left his side.
The door creaked, but her attention remained riveted on her husband. She didn’t have the energy to care about any of the many visitors who’d come these past three days.
Lord Maxwell’s voice sounded from the doorway. “As advised, I saw to the missive for Christian’s mother. She and Lucinda should arrive within a day.”
The grim doctor had actually been responsible for that particular note being sent. The man had given up hope of Christian awakening. Another dratted sheen of tears filled her eyes. Unable to manage the proper words of thanks, she gave a juddering nod.
The earl cleared his throat. “Has he—?”
She looked over her shoulder and shook her head once. “He’s not awakened.”
The earl had set himself outside Christian’s chambers as a sentry of sorts. When her siblings came and went throughout the day, Lord Maxwell remained.
…we were closer than brothers…
A viselike pressure squeezed her lungs. If she’d not sent ’round a note for the duke, her husband would not have been at the elm that day, he’d not have rushed over and foolishly sacrificed himself for her. Tears flooded her eyes. “If I didn’t try to reunite him with that monster…” She dashed the useless drops from her cheeks.
“This isn’t your fault,” Lord Maxwell murmured. He cleared his throat. “Your mother has arrived.” Again. That last word needn’t be spoken.
Captivated by a Lady's Charm Page 30