“How is he, Mr. Macleish?” she asked in an unsteady voice. If her brother died because of what had happened today, she’d never forgive herself.
“Oh, he’ll make it. But he’ll be gey sore on the morrow.”
The confidence in his tone reassured even more than his words. Through the gathering dusk, she saw that Hamish had done a marvelous job of bandaging Ben’s wounds. She wondered where he’d found the linen, but she didn’t ask.
In her brother’s bruised face, one blackened eye opened and focused on her in the fading light. “Verity lass,” he said indistinctly through his swollen mouth.
He was awake. She hadn’t been sure he’d regain consciousness. She bent her head and started to cry out her overwhelming relief and her bitter guilt in great heaving sobs.
“Oh, lass! Don’t take on so.” Ben’s face contracted with pain as he struggled to reach out to comfort her.
“No, don’t move. I’m just so happy that you’re alive,” she wept, taking his hand carefully so she didn’t hurt his poor, bruised knuckles. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“Takes a sight more than those cream puffs to finish Benjamin Ashton. Give over, lass. There’s nowt to cry for.”
“I know,” she said on a gusty sigh that produced more tears. “I don’t know what’s…what’s wrong with me.”
“Hamish, you ride with Ashton in their carriage.” Without her noticing, Kylemore had come to stand beside her. “I’ll take madame up with me on Tannasg.”
Dazedly, Verity checked the rapidly darkening road and saw that only the four of them remained. The duchess and her men had gone, as had the rest of Kylemore’s band.
“I’d rather stay with Ben,” she said. She couldn’t risk being alone with Kylemore when her resolution to leave him teetered so close to shattering.
Unresisting, she let him help her to her feet. “The hired curricle only takes two, Verity, and someone needs to handle the horses. Your brother will be better off with Hamish until he reaches the castle. I’ll make sure you’re never far away.” His authoritative tone softened as he made the promise in the last sentence.
“As you wish,” she said dully, too weary to argue.
Numbly, she watched Kylemore and Hamish lift Ben into the vehicle. They were careful with their burden, but her brother’s tight expression indicated his pain. The jolting carriage would only worsen his discomfort, but they had no choice if they wished to get him to shelter.
She hurried forward and folded her brother’s hand in hers again. “I’ll see you at the castle,” she murmured. Then she looked up at Hamish, who had climbed onto the bench beside Ben. “Look after him, Mr. Macleish.”
“Aye, my lady, that I will. One of the lads has gone for the doctor. We’ll have young Mr. Ashton right as rain in no time.” Hamish took the reins and clicked his tongue at the horses.
“He’ll be fine.” Kylemore stepped up to stand at her shoulder as the carriage rolled away. “Don’t worry, mo gradh.”
His massive horse loomed behind him. The beast no longer frightened her. Compared to this afternoon’s tribulations, her fear of horses seemed childish, feeble, unimportant.
She wiped her face with shaking fingers. Curse these tears. Soraya had never cried. Verity these days seemed to do little else. “How did you come to be here?”
“I pledged escort to Whitby. I’m a man of my word. I intended to follow at a discreet distance.” Tension darkened his tone, and his gaze was grave and impossibly deep as he stared at her. “Thank God I did. The memory of my mother holding that knife to your lovely face will haunt me forever.”
The reminder of the duchess’s foul threats made her belly roil anew. “After she’d scarred me, she meant to hand me over to her henchmen for their amusement,” she whispered.
Murderous anger flashed in his eyes. “I should have killed the bitch,” he grated out fiercely.
She forced some strength into her tone. “Thankfully your good sense prevailed over your rage.”
His lips turned down in bitter self-derision. “For once.” Some of the intensity drained from his expression. “Come here, mo leannan. Your ordeal is over.”
Weak fool that she was, she couldn’t resist. She stepped into his embrace, and the world lit with warmth and safety. The empty years stretching ahead loomed cold and lonely when viewed from the circle of his arms. Because the prospect was so bleak, she forced her intentions into words yet again. “I’m still leaving you, Kylemore,” she said sadly. “You must make your own life. You must marry and have children.”
“And you’re going to what?” He paused thoughtfully, as if he considered the alternatives available to her. “Take a new protector and forget the wicked duke who kidnapped you?”
How could he be inhuman enough to mock? Leaving him had been the hardest thing she’d ever done, harder by far than turning her back on her upbringing and selling herself to Eldreth. Harder than facing the duchess’s sickening vengeance.
“I’ll never take another lover,” she said brokenly, burying her face in his coat to hide fresh tears.
“No, I don’t think you will,” he said gently. “Hush now. You’re too tired to fight. I’d win too easily. Let’s go home.”
She was too heartsick to protest at the word “home.”
The castle would never be her home. She had no home apart from the man who gently lifted her onto Tannasg’s back.
And that home was forever barred to her.
Kylemore slid into the saddle behind her and wrapped his arms securely around her waist. If only he could hold her safe like this forever. But even as they rode away toward his castle, she knew nothing had changed.
She was still a whore. He was still a duke.
And she still had to leave him.
Chapter 26
Papers littered the satinwood desk in Kylemore’s beautiful library. It was very late, after midnight, and he made a desultory attempt to sift through the correspondence that had banked up in his absence.
But it was impossible to focus on petitioning letters or statements about his investments. He lifted the crystal glass of whisky he’d poured himself, then replaced it, untasted. He’d reached a pitch of bitter hopelessness far beyond the comforting warmth mere liquor could provide.
His gut clenched as he recalled the torture his mother had planned for Verity that day. The duchess had always been selfish and destructive, but her evil had festered unchecked to reach a peak of viciousness even he hadn’t recognized.
Margaret Kinmurrie was lucky he hadn’t shot her down like a rabid dog.
He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t. The rage and fear that had engulfed him on that lonely stretch of road still pounded like wild thunder through his veins.
What if he’d been too late? His hand tightened, white-knuckled, around the glass.
What if he’d acceded to Verity’s wishes and not followed her at all?
No, he’d never have agreed to that. He’d sworn no harm would come to her. He’d sworn on his black soul.
Yet only hours after leaving his care, she’d faced disfigurement and rape, even death.
He’d never forgive his mother. Or himself.
It bedeviled him to think the duchess was retiring to the lovely dowerhouse. She’d be perfectly comfortable there, however barbarous she considered her surroundings.
He could draw some satisfaction from contemplating how she would chafe at her quarantine from the centers of power. She could fuck as many strapping footmen as she liked to while away the hours, but nothing would compensate for her loss of influence.
He sighed heavily and let yet another letter begging for his patronage drop unread to the desk. Terrible as the events of the day had been, they weren’t what kept him here, sleepless and suffering.
The dumb misery that gnawed at him tonight stemmed from old heartbreak. Old heartbreak as sharp and fresh as when his mistress had abandoned him in Kensington so many months ago.
At the time, he’d blamed his mad frenzy on p
ride and lust.
Now he knew better. Verity had inflicted a mortal wound on him that day.
Over the last weeks, he’d foolishly believed that the wound had begun to heal. But his momentary reprieve in the glen had only sharpened his present anguish.
She’d plunged a blade into his heart, withdrawn it, then thrust it in again, deeper and harder.
Dully, he glanced up at the Roman triumph carved around the Adam mantel. Dancing maidens in swirling tunics led a garlanded bull to sacrifice at the delicate little temple in the far right-hand corner.
How keenly he envied the brute beast’s ignorance. How he wished he faced his fate with similar insouciance. But he comprehended every measure of misery awaiting him.
Losing Verity was torment now, but as the long, barren years passed, the pain would weigh heavier and heavier, slowly squeezing the life from him.
She consigned him to a slow, agonizing death with her absence. A fitting punishment for what he’d done to her.
“Damn it all to hell,” he groaned and buried his head in his hands.
He couldn’t live without her.
He had to live without her. And he had no idea how he could do it.
“Damn it all to fucking hell.”
In an excess of feeling, he flung his arm out and sent everything on the desk flying. The delicate whisky glass landed with a crack against the marble fireplace and shattered into tinkling shards.
“Your Grace?” Verity hovered in the doorway before him as if his imagination had invoked her.
He lunged to his feet and stared at her in helpless longing. Hungrily, he dwelled on every detail of her. He recognized her rose pink gown from the glen. She’d looped her hair back in a loose knot, revealing the perfect shape of her jaw and neck. Her hands were bandaged, and her slender throat was bruised. On her ashen face, the knife cut stood out as a stark red line. His anger and guilt surged anew at the reminder of what she’d borne because of him.
“Verity?”
Gently, she shut the elaborately carved double doors behind her, but she didn’t venture further into the room. Her hands twined together nervously at her waist.
The gesture pierced him to the marrow. Surely she knew she had no reason to be afraid of him any more.
“I thought you’d be asleep. You’re exhausted.” The struggle for control made his voice flat.
How he sometimes missed the man he’d been. That man would have spirited her away to serve his pleasure without a thought to what was right or what she wanted. That man would take her and keep her and never let her go.
“I’ve been watching over Ben. The doctor says he can travel tomorrow if we go slowly and find appropriate transport.”
“Stay here until he’s recovered.”
Stay here forever.
But she was already shaking her head. The pure lines of her face set with determination. “Kylemore, I must leave. Nothing has changed between us.”
“No, nothing has changed.” The saddest words in the language. He wanted to argue, object, insist she wait, but any reprieve merely postponed the inevitable. “Take one of my carriages so you travel in comfort.”
She bent her head in acknowledgment. “Thank you.”
Surprised at her ready agreement, he watched as she edged closer to the light. The brightness illuminated marks of weariness and unhappiness under her translucent eyes.
It slashed him to the heart to see her looking so defeated. His gaze focused on her cheek, where tendrils of hair escaped her simple hairstyle.
“Does your face hurt?” he asked in concern. “Christ! I should have been there to stop anything happening to you.”
She smiled with an edge of irony. For a moment, Soraya’s knowing, sophisticated ghost hovered. Then she was gone.
“Given what you prevented, I think I can manage to forgive you. It’s only a scratch. It could have been much worse.”
She drifted across to the wall to trail her hand along the alabaster top of a side table. When she raised her eyes, they were somber. She’d been pale when she’d entered the room; now every trace of color had drained from her face, leaving her white as new parchment.
“I’ve come to say good-bye,” she said softly but implacably.
In a heartbeat, he circled the desk to reach for her. Then he remembered he no longer had the right to touch her.
“Oh, mo leannan,” he said gruffly, although he knew it would achieve nothing. “Don’t do this.”
“I have to.” Then, with visible effort, she added, “It’s over and I must go. Heaven bless you, Your Grace.”
His heart laden with despair, he watched her turn to leave. She straightened her back, as if she prepared to face an invincible foe.
It was an act of lonely gallantry. It was an act of breathtaking grace. As she walked away, he had no difficulty remembering that this woman had once held the glittering world in thrall.
In the flickering candlelight, he saw that her control wasn’t as complete as she wanted him to think. The hand she extended to the latch shook as if she had a fever.
“Coward,” he said softly but quite clearly behind her.
For a moment, he thought she hadn’t heard.
Then she bent her head, revealing the vulnerable nape under the thickly piled hair. His throat closed with grief as he waited for her to push the door open and leave.
This was a last desperate gamble to keep her. He held no expectations he’d succeed.
“What did you call me?” she asked unsteadily.
He leaned back and braced himself on the desktop with his hands. “I called you a coward,” he said relentlessly. “My God, you were braver at fifteen.”
“At fifteen, I had no choice,” she choked out, still without facing him.
“Yes, you did. There’s always a choice. And from that choice, you had the courage and the cleverness to create something marvelous. From chapel-going rustic to Europe’s most famous courtesan? I’m awestruck.”
Her elegant shoulders tensed under his attack, but mercifully, she didn’t flee.
“I told you why I do this. It’s for your sake,” she said in a low voice.
“Rubbish. You’re doing this because you’re afraid.” His tone lost some of its harshness. “Do you love me, Verity?”
She whirled around at the question. If he hadn’t been fighting for his very life, he’d have relented then. Untold suffering was etched deep on her lovely face.
“That’s not fair,” she protested in a trembling voice.
No, it wasn’t fair. But if he had to, he’d play dirty to win his prize. He’d do anything if it meant she stayed.
In truth, when he looked into her eyes, he already had the answer to his question.
But he continued remorselessly. “You’ve given me so much—your body, your trust, your comfort, your absolution, so many of your secrets. Yet that’s something you’ve never said.”
Arms outstretched against the inlaid marquetry, she pressed back into the door. In her flowing pink dress, she looked like a trapped butterfly. He stifled another wave of compassion.
“You’ve never said you love me either,” she challenged.
He shrugged.
“I love you,” he said.
It emerged with a naturalness even he hadn’t expected.
For a moment, her gray eyes blazed with light as they rested on him. Had so simple—and so momentous—an act as confessing his love finally won this battle for him?
But of course, it wasn’t that straightforward.
She shook her head and glanced away. “Love isn’t enough.”
“It’s a damned lot. Do you love me, Verity?”
She made a helpless gesture that tore at his heart, but he reminded himself he must be pitiless. For both their sakes.
“You must know I do,” she admitted sadly.
Until a moment ago, he’d never been sure.
She loves me, she loves me, his heart chanted in a paean of elation. Surely now he couldn’t lose h
er.
He fought to hide his burgeoning triumph. He hadn’t won yet. “I know you’re hellish ready to sacrifice yourself for the people you love. But in this particular case, you’re misguided.”
He took a deep breath and struggled to summon the words that would persuade her to stay. “And if you must sacrifice yourself, do that by marrying me. I’m not an easy man. You’ll earn your martyr’s crown before you’re done. Don’t condemn both of us to an eternity of unhappiness just because you’re too stiff-necked to face society’s censure.”
“You make me sound so petty,” she countered furiously. “But I know how highly you value your prestige. And you’ve always had Lucifer’s own pride. You speak lightly of what you’d forfeit if you married me. But society’s censure is crueler than you imagine. You’ve never had to suffer ostracism. I have.”
“I can live with gossip and innuendo. I can’t live without you,” he said heavily.
What she said about his vanity and shallow worldliness was true. Or had been once.
But compared to the prospect of losing this one precious woman, nothing else mattered an ash in hell.
Her face contracted with turmoil. “You’re like the Devil.” As she turned away, she sounded like she wasn’t far from crying. “You speak seduction and tempt me to what I know is wrong.”
He despised himself for hurting her this way, but he had to persevere in his ruthlessness or they were both lost.
“Marry me, become my duchess. What does anyone else matter? We can set up home in the Highlands far away from rumor and the world’s disapproval. We’ll create a life that’s rich and fulfilled and useful. And based on love.”
The eyes she leveled on him were dark and so tormented that his soul twisted in guilty agony. “Stop it, Kylemore. You’re a duke. You owe an obligation to your title.”
He frowned in sudden anger. All his life, his title had been a curse and a burden. Now it promised to deprive him of the only thing he’d ever wanted.
“What about my duty to myself? What about your duty?” he asked fiercely.
He drew himself upright and chanced a step in her direction. His voice became deep and sure as his brief rage receded in the face of her distress. “You’ve redeemed me, Verity. You’ve made me a better man, created honor where there was none.”
Claiming the Courtesan Page 33