by Lenora Bell
Thea’s fingers massaged his forearm. “Dalton,” she whispered. “You’re still holding your knife.”
Here he stood in his scuffed boots and ragged kerchief, knife blade glinting in his hand, and he’d been named as the duke.
A quick darting glance told him there was no one within earshot, but the words had been said. The secret uncovered.
He flipped his knife back inside his boot and scrubbed a fist across his eyes. “How long have you known?” he asked, his voice sounding wooden and hollow.
“Two weeks.” Alec searched the deck and lowered his voice. “The secret stays with us,” he said urgently. “I’m a Counsellor at Law in New York. I don’t want to disrupt the life I’ve built for myself there.”
“That’s just plain selfish!” Thea wheeled on Alec like a lioness protecting her den. “You say the duke is heartless but what about you, Mr. O’Roarke? Can you think of what your brother is feeling right now? He loves you. He’s been grieving for you this entire time. His whole life he’s been atoning for the imagined sin of letting go of your hand, that day on the beach. Believing he was responsible for your death.”
Alec’s gaze faltered for a moment. “Twenty years have passed. Please. Just leave and pretend this never happened.”
“You truly want us to leave?” Dalton asked. Pain clenched his chest.
Go back to the house.
I don’t want you following me.
This was what he deserved.
He gripped the leather cord around his neck so hard it broke off in his hand. He ripped it off and threw it on the deck.
Thea glanced down at the bloodred fossil and then shook her head. “We’re not leaving.”
She took a step toward Alec. “Not until you two talk to each other like men instead of snarling beasts.”
Alec closed his eyes briefly. “Please, my lady. I don’t want any trouble.”
Thea’s eyes flashed bluer than Dalton had ever seen them. “Your brother has gone searching for trouble in every gaming hell across London. Avenging your father’s sins and protecting the helpless victims of the gambling world.”
Dalton’s chest swelled with pride at the way she leapt to his defense, but clearly Alec was set on keeping the past buried. “Thea.” He clasped her hand. “We should leave now.”
The sharp point of her chin raised defiantly. “No. Not yet.” She widened her stance and addressed Alec. “Did O’Roarke also tell you about your mother?” she demanded. “How he broke her heart by stealing you? How she hasn’t left her house in ten years and is only a shell of a woman?”
Before Alec could answer, a small figure darted across the deck and flung his arms around Alec’s legs.
“Father?” The child was about six years of age with reddish-brown hair and wide, hazel eyes. He gazed up at Alec. “Why are you angry? Who are these visitors? Aren’t we setting sail now?”
Alec ruffled the boy’s hair. “I’m not angry, Van. And these visitors are leaving. Go below and find Ned, there’s a good boy.”
Was Van his nephew? Did that mean Alec had a wife? The boy’s small face tugged at Dalton’s heart, dredging up memories of Alec when he was that age.
The boy stared at Dalton. “How did you come by that cut across your jaw? Did you fight a duel?”
He drew himself up tall and straight. “I’m a great swordsman.” He made a slashing motion as if he held a fencing sword. “No one escapes my blade.”
Dalton dropped to his knees so he was on eye level with the lad. “You’ll have to work on that forehand stroke. You need a good fencing master.”
Van pulled on his father’s hand. “May I have a fencing master?”
Alec unclasped his son’s hands and took him by the shoulders. “Go below, Donovan.”
So Van was short for Donovan. Dalton had a nephew.
This was so much to absorb.
Thea smiled and bent toward Van. “The duke could be your fencing master.”
Alec tensed.
Van turned to Dalton, his eyes wide and shining. “You’re a duke? I’ve never met a duke before!”
“Go below,” Alec said firmly. “Now.”
“But I want to talk to the duke,” the boy protested.
Alec pointed to the doorway. “Now.”
Van left reluctantly, shuffling his feet and casting lingering glances back at Dalton.
Alec waited until the boy was gone before rounding on Dalton and Thea, his entire body shaking. “I won’t have my son corrupted. He’ll never know the taint in his blood.”
Dalton nodded. “We’re leaving.”
“Dalton, please,” Thea urged. “If your mother was able to see her son, and met her grandson, it would help her so. I know it would. You have to explain, you have to fight—”
“I’m through with fighting,” Dalton said, bowing his shoulders.
Alec nodded tersely. “Thank you.”
Dalton forced himself to turn his back on his brother and lead Thea off the deck.
Alec.
Not dead.
His mind still reeled with shock and there was still that churning of hope in his gut . . . but he knew one thing.
Alec didn’t want him there. And so he had to leave.
Thea couldn’t believe they were just leaving. She glared at Dalton but he avoided her eyes, using his strength to hustle her along the dock toward the waiting carriage.
She tried to dig her boots into the planks but he was too powerful. He easily kept her walking, fairly lifting her off the ground.
“I’ll carry you to that carriage if I have to,” he muttered, his face dark and closed.
Ominous dark clouds had overtaken the sky during their conversation.
There would be a downpour soon.
No sunshine for viewing paintings today.
“But,” Thea sputtered. “You need to go back there, find a way to convince him to go to London. You can’t just let his ship leave, Dalton. You can’t do that.”
He kept marching, his arm an implacable force around her waist. “Not my choice. He told me to leave. I left.”
“That child can’t be more than six years old. He’s resilient. Adaptable. He’d adjust to the idea of having a new identity. Should it be your brother’s choice to deny his son a grandmother?”
Dalton set his jaw. “He doesn’t want the boy to know he’s half-British and a descendant of a corrupt, evil aristocrat.”
“But that’s cowardly!”
“It’s his choice.”
“He doesn’t know you like I know you.” Thea curled her fingers around his forearm in a vain attempt to slow their forward motion. “You must go back there and speak to him. Before the ship leaves. Convince him he’s wrong. If he got to know you he would want his son to have an uncle. A strong, kind uncle to guide him.”
Why were his eyes so cold? Why did he shake his big, stubborn head like that?
“I don’t know what to think, Thea. All this time I thought he was dead. Maybe it’s better this way. Better for the truth to stay buried.”
“No! I don’t accept that.” Thea clutched his hand, trying to make him understand. “I don’t accept that our fates are written in stone. As long as we draw breath we can change. Until we’re only bones resting in a crypt we have the power to shape our own destinies.”
Dalton didn’t even answer her impassioned speech. He merely opened the carriage door, lifted her by the waist, and set her inside.
He climbed in after her, cutting off all escape.
As the carriage wheels began to spin, carrying them over the uneven planks of the pier, Thea clenched her fists in her lap.
Obviously she wasn’t going to be able to talk sense into him. It was so maddening.
The man was too stubborn.
He was letting his chance at happiness and wholeness slip away on the tide. It made her want to cry.
He sat beside her, heavily cloaked in silence, and she could almost believe that he was heartless and cruel and everything his broth
er had accused him of being.
Except she knew better.
She knew he had a heart. And right now that heart was grieving for the brother he’d lost once and was in danger of losing again.
She wanted to comfort him, help him make sense of the turmoil of emotion he must be feeling. But he was grieving in the only way he knew how—by shutting away his feelings and keeping her out.
The carriage kept an easy pace along South King Road. The green fields and estates of Lough Mahon that she’d used to delight in leaving her cold now.
“Turn the carriage around, Dalton.” She took his hand. “You’ll regret this the rest of your life.”
A muscle tensed beneath the jagged scar across his jaw. “It’s better this way,” he finally said.
“How is it better?”
“It’s too complicated. Alec is right to leave the past buried.”
“You stubborn arse,” she choked out.
“You don’t know the half of it,” he replied cryptically, retracting his hand.
What did that mean?
“It’s twenty minutes to Ballybrack,” he said in an emotionless voice.
“We’re not going to Balfry?”
He shook his head and turned away, staring out the window.
The rain started then.
A sudden spring downpour; the sky turned dark, just like her thoughts.
Relentless needles of water. Rain running in rivulets down the carriage windows.
Two can play the silence game, thought Thea.
She wrapped her cloak tightly around her arms and shifted to the far side of the carriage.
It was all going so wrong. Finding his brother should have freed Dalton. Instead he’d only put up more barriers.
Finally they arrived and the dear, familiar whitewashed walls and trailing rose vines of Ballybrack Cottage filled the carriage windows.
Her heart couldn’t help but lift at the sight. Aunt Emma wouldn’t be outside in this rain. She’d be sitting by the parlor fire, reading a book about beekeeping methods, or knitting socks for neighboring tenant families.
She’d bustle into the kitchen to put on the kettle.
And the duke would have some of her homemade apricot and honey preserves.
Maybe their sweetness would improve the beast’s temperament.
One could always hope.
He helped her down from the carriage, still avoiding her eyes, and walked with her to the front door.
The door opened abruptly, as if someone had been at a window, watching for them.
Thea lifted her head and pale blue eyes skewered her to the front steps.
“Mother?” she asked, disbelief coursing through her mind.
“What took you so long?” the countess asked. “We’ve been waiting, the dowager and I.”
The dowager countess was here?
As if in a nightmare, Thea drifted into the parlor, small details exploding in her mind.
Four teacups on the table. Scent of the dowager’s expensive French lily eau de toilette.
The dowager stiff-backed in the horsehair chair by the fireplace.
Aunt Hen here as well. She waved to Thea. “Hello, dear. Pleasant journey?”
Thea was too stunned to reply.
Aunt Emma rose. “I’ll fetch another teacup.” She stopped as the duke entered the room, stooping a little to make it through the low doorway. “Oh! Your Grace.” She dropped into a deep, flustered curtsy.
He nodded curtly, his eyes dark and flat.
The dowager countess’s gaze swept disdainfully over Thea’s mussed curls and Dalton’s scuffed boots. “My, my, my. You two must have a tale to tell.”
Thea finally located her voice. “What . . . what are all of you doing here?”
The countess flashed her a triumphant smile. “Why don’t you ask His Grace? He’s the one who invited us.”
Chapter 24
“What did you do?” Thea asked Dalton, advancing on him and backing him out of the parlor doorway. “What did you do?”
His face turned blank and emotionless. “I was going to tell you.”
She backed him out of the room until they were near the front door. “When? When were you going to tell me that you invited my family to come fetch me like some sheep who broke loose from its pen?”
“Today. I was going to tell you but then . . . everything with O’Roarke. It fled my mind.”
“When did you do this?” Her mind felt numb and frozen and her words came from far away. She wanted the facts. The exact sequence of events.
The anatomy of a betrayal.
He flinched. “I wrote another letter and posted it with yours. I couldn’t let you throw away your future like that.”
His back hit the doorjamb.
He thought he’d done this to protect her. Arrogant, controlling arse.
“It’s better this way,” he said.
The same words he’d said in the carriage.
“Better for whom?” She was nearly shouting now but she didn’t care. Let them hear. Let them know how she’d changed. How she’d found her voice and it would never be soft and diffident again. “For you? So I won’t be your burden anymore?”
His eyes darkened to coal. “I’m not any of those things you said I was, Thea. I warned you not to trust me. I betrayed you. My own brother hates me. I’ve lived my life based on a lie. I have no answers.”
“What did your letter say?”
“What difference does it make? I sent it. They’re here.”
“I want to know what it said.”
“I told your mother you were lying. You hadn’t been ruined. I told her you still had a choice and a chance for happiness.” His head fell against the wall with a thud. “Now what I wrote is the lie. I ruined you. I limited your options.”
“I heard that,” came the dowager’s sharp, reedy voice.
Dalton started, his gaze darting to the parlor doorway.
“You didn’t trust me enough to let me make my own decisions,” Thea accused.
“And that’s the man you’ll marry, Lady Dorothea,” he said, raising his voice. “You’ll marry a heartless rake. You’re saddled with me now.”
Emotionless. Flat. No love for her in his words . . . or his voice.
Only duty. Stupid honor and duty.
“We’ll go back to London. You’ll live at Osborne Court,” he announced.
Excited gasps from the parlor.
No, no, no.
She clenched her hands. This wasn’t what she wanted.
She opened the door and pushed him outside, fighting desperately to keep from crying.
Outside, slashing rain pounding her bare head, sliding down the hood of her cloak and seeking out the opening to trickle down the middle of her back.
Thea slammed the door behind them. “I can’t believe you’d do something like this.” Hurt and anger raced through her mind, galloping for the finish line. The end of this journey and the end of the dream she’d had of a future with Dalton.
She’d never imagined it ending like this. Never thought he would betray her. Seek to force her back into the cage of her family’s expectations.
“I warned you not to trust me,” he repeated.
He’d tried to warn her, but she’d deluded herself into believing . . . what exactly? That she yearned for the same outcome her mother and grandmother wanted for her? To marry a duke?
Ha. That’s the last thing she wanted. Marry a duke who didn’t love her. Never.
“I won’t marry you, Dalton. You’re precisely what I ran away from. I’d rather be alone here in Ireland than be shackled in a loveless match. I will only marry if there is love and trust and—”
“You have no choice.”
And that was the proverbial last straw.
“I do have a choice,” she shouted, glaring at his arrogant, cold face. “And I choose not to marry you. You don’t love me. You don’t even know me.” She kicked the muddy path, splattering dirt across her red boots. �
�I thought you were listening to me, truly hearing me. I thought you understood my need for this hard-won independence. I was wrong.”
“You’re right.” He squared his chest, standing erect, taking the abuse she leveled at him with infuriating calm. “I’m not worthy of you.”
“You,” she sputtered. She’d never been this angry. She was wet, and tired, and the events of the past few days had left her so raw.
The passion they’d shared. The intimate conversations.
All lies.
“You’re an expert at building walls between yourself and your emotions,” she said. “A wall to keep me out. A wall to distance your brother. Barriers like the ones hemming in your mother. Walls around your heart.”
“You’re right,” he said again, bowing his head slightly.
“See? There you go again.” She stamped her foot, even though it spattered more mud on her hem. “Admitting I’m right is just another wall.” She wiped her wet hair out of her eyes. “Our journey meant nothing to you?” she asked, needing to hear him say the words. “You never began to believe that life could hold more. The possibility for trust . . . and love?”
She whispered the last word, knowing what his answer would be, knowing it would only be another wall between them.
“Love’s only an illusion. And so is the person you thought I was. I’m not good or noble. You were falling in love with a fantasy. A person you created out of your own needs. I told you I’m nobody’s answer.” He spread his hands wide. “My own brother, who I thought was lost forever, hates me enough to deny our mother comfort and peace in her old age.”
Thea shivered.
His eyes softened and he half raised one of his hands, as if he wanted to touch her. “You’re right to refuse me. I can never give you what you need. You don’t need me to believe in you. You’re strong enough on your own.”
“You’re right. I don’t need you.” She wrapped her cloak tighter, even though it was already a sodden mess. “Leave now, Dalton.”
Of course that’s what he wanted her to say. Just as Alec had said the same words an hour past.
“Leave me and never come back,” she commanded.
“Thea.” He touched her, the ghost of a caress along her cheek. “I wish I had a heart to give you. It would be yours, Thea. All yours.”