Mark whipped around, his eyes going wide at the sight of the man. His mouth fell open, but he didn’t say a word. He didn’t hesitate either.
“Run,” he called to Angelica, launching into motion.
He grabbed her as he charged for the door, practically lifting her off her feet in his haste to get her away from Lord Shayles. Angelica acted on instinct alone, darting from the bedroom and dashing down the hall as fast as her feet would carry her. She was fast enough to keep up with Mark and well away from Lord Shayles as he shot after them.
“You think you can run from me?” Lord Shayles shouted as he rocketed out to the hall.
Angelica and Mark were already at the receiving room, putting distance between them. But it didn’t feel like enough.
“You can never get away from me,” Lord Shayles continued to shout as he stormed after them. “I said I’d kill you and I will. With my bare hands. But not before I’ve had my way with her and left her choking and bleeding.”
He went on with his threats, but Angelica barely heard them. “Hurry, hurry,” she gasped as they reached the top of the stairs and charged down. She couldn’t think of anything but getting away, and Mark apparently wasn’t interested in anything else either.
“The dining room,” he growled, steering Angelica back the way they’d come as they reached the ground floor.
It seemed like the best option. They could escape from the house the same way they got in without worrying about unlocking doors and wasting precious time. As soon as they reached the dining room, Mark whisked her in front of him. When they reached the window, as she lifted a leg over the windowsill, he turned and threw his lantern at the table with all his strength.
Angelica yelped again as the lantern shattered on the muslin-covered table, bursting into a ball of flame. Burning oil spilled across the fabric and onto the floor. She didn’t stay to see if the fire took hold, though. With her heart throbbing in her chest, she careened out the window, spilling to the grass below with an ungraceful grunt. The impact of her jump took a second to shake off, but as she stood, Mark jumped out the window after her.
His recovery was faster, and as soon as he was on his feet, he grabbed her hand. “Come on,” he said, dashing off across the night-blackened lawn with her. An orange glow shone from the window as the fire spread. “He won’t let his house burn. He won’t come after us.”
Angelica could only pray that Mark was right as she poured everything she had into running from Ravencrest Hall.
Chapter 16
Mark didn’t stop to so much as take a breath as he rushed Angelica away from Shayles’s house and across the moonlit grounds to the gate. He wasn’t inclined to slow down once they reached the edge of town, but two people sprinting through a sleepy village toward the inn near the train station would have raised suspicions he didn’t want to answer.
“I don’t think he’s coming after us,” Angelica panted as they made the turn onto the street with the inn.
“The fire must have done its job,” he answered, catching his breath.
He could still feel the heat of the sudden blaze he’d caused, feel sweat dripping down his back. Or perhaps it was the flash of horror at the sight of Shayles that kept his blood boiling. What was the man doing home? He wasn’t due to be released from prison for another week.
“Why was Lord Shayles at home?” Angelica asked in reflection of his thoughts as they entered the inn and headed straight up the stairs to their room. “He’s supposed to be in prison.”
Mark’s expression darkened into a scowl as he searched his pocket for the key to let them into the room. “Obviously, he lied,” he growled.
“About the day of his release?” Angelica asked. She walked swiftly into the room and collapsed into one of the chairs by the fireplace.
Mark shut and locked the door behind them, but he was in no mood to sit. He paced to the mantel to deposit the key there, then continued to stride around the room like a caged tiger. “I’m a fool,” he chastised himself with a wince. “He must have been planning this for months. I should have checked with Newgate or the police to confirm the date of his release instead of trusting Shayles’s word and the word of his solicitor. The bastard must have deliberately lured me into thinking his release was later so that he could catch me unawares.”
“I hate to agree with you,” Angelica began but didn’t go on. She watched him pace with a wary look. Several moments of silence filled the room before she continued with, “What do we do next?”
“We don’t do anything,” he said, dreading how she would react to what he would say next.
She delayed the inevitable by rushing on with, “We know where your painting is. Now that I’ve seen it, I believe more strongly than ever that you must get it back, come hell or high water.”
Mark made a noncommittal sound and rubbed a hand over his face. He had no faith at all that Shayles would let him retrieve the painting. He had no faith that Shayles would let him go at all. The man would pursue him until one or both of them were dead. It was a fate he accepted. But he refused to let Angelica go down with him.
“You’re not answering me,” she said, sitting straighter.
“You didn’t ask a question,” he said, well aware she would see him as stubborn and peevish. Perhaps that was what he needed to be in order to push her away and keep her safe.
“All right,” she said, standing, clearly irritated. “How’s this for a question? What do we do next to ensure that your painting is retrieved, Lord Shayles is kept at bay, and the two of us are able to return home and live peaceful lives without the threat of him hanging over our heads?”
Mark sent her a guarded look and stopped pacing at the other end of the room. He had to keep his distance—in more ways than one—or he would never be able to do what had to be done.
“I’m going back to Ravencrest Hall,” he said in a low voice. Shame bubbled up in him at his declaration, even though it felt as though he were taking long-overdue action.
“Excellent.” Angelica moved toward him, her face lighting up. “We can go back armed, or perhaps we can take the police with us. I’m certain—”
“I’m going back alone,” Mark spoke over her, hating how he raised his voice.
Angelica’s mouth hung open for a moment before her eyes widened in indignation. “You are not.”
“Yes, Angel, I am,” he said. He crossed to her, gripping her arms. It would never work for him to remain aloof with her. His heart was too deeply involved for him to play the callous bastard. He brushed a hand over her heated cheek. “I have to face Shayles alone. It was always going to be this way.”
She pursed her lips and glared at him. “This is not some fairy tale where the hero must slay the dragon by himself,” she insisted. “Lord Shayles is nothing but a petty criminal who has stolen something that belongs to you.”
Mark shook his head. “Shayles is much more than that. I can no more trust proper channels of authority to end his menace once and for all than I can allow you to put yourself in harm’s way—harm you can’t possibly imagine—by facing him with me.”
She snapped away from him, crossing her arms and looking like a fury from Greek myth. “You seem to forget that I am not a fainting violet who has never faced asses like Lord Shayles before.”
“I am not saying you aren’t strong or denying the experiences you’ve had,” Mark insisted. “And I understand that you believe your experience in that warehouse and the training you have undertaken since then has prepared you to face Shayles. But please, please believe me when I say it has not.” She opened her mouth to protest, but Mark rushed on. “Shayles is no mere rapist. He is a sadist and a killer. He would not simply attack you if given half the chance. He would humiliate you and torture you in ways that you cannot possibly imagine.”
She started to argue, but paused and pressed her lips shut. When she spoke, Mark had a feeling it was not what she’d originally intended to say. “You believe he’s that evil? That he would
do all those things to me?”
“I do not simply believe it,” he said. “I have seen him commit evils that I wouldn’t have dreamed were possible. I have seen him destroy women in ways that would give you nightmares. I did nothing to stop him.”
His last sentence came out in a gasp before he could bottle the thought or its accompanying memories. He jerked away from Angelica, hiding his face from her. Instead of being horrified by him, as he was certain she should be, she walked up behind him and rested a hand on his back.
“You need to stop blaming yourself for the actions of another man,” she said softly.
He turned to face her. “I do not blame myself for Shayles’s actions, I blame myself for my inaction. I had it within my power to stop him and I never did.”
Angelica arched an eyebrow. “Did you? Did you truly have it within your power to stop a man like that?”
Mark hesitated. He wanted so desperately to believe that he hadn’t, that he could be absolved for decades of evils that he’d watched in silence. But there was no such forgiveness for him. Another man would have intervened and brought Shayles to justice far earlier. His father would have seen Shayles thrown into prison or banished from England before he had a chance to perpetrate any of his crimes.
“Enough,” Angelica said, startling him out of his memories. “I’m tired of seeing that look on your face.”
“What look?” he grumbled.
“The look as though you don’t deserve a place on this earth,” she said, crossing her arms. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of whether you are a horrible coward who allowed horrors to happen by remaining silent or whether you were simply another victim of an evil man?”
Mark writhed under her question. Even with the mountain of guilt that teetered perpetually on the verge of crushing him, he hated being called a victim. If anything, he was the criminal, not the recipient of the crime.
He shook his head. “I have no wish to burden you with the past.”
“I don’t care what you wish,” she said, grabbing his arm when he tried to walk away. Her grip was like iron as she held him to the spot. “I wouldn’t let Grandpa Miles treat me as though I were fragile, and I will not let you do so either. Tell me now or I will march back to Ravencrest Hall and demand Lord Shayles tell me the whole story himself.”
“You will not,” Mark insisted, both aggravated and aroused by her tenacity. What kind of man found pleasure in being dictated to by his wife? But of course he knew the answer to that question. Shayles had employed women at The Black Strap Club who had specialized in dominating men who were aroused by humiliation. The comparison of himself to those men turned his stomach. Everything about his past revolted him.
“Stop it.” Angelica yanked him out of the spiral of his thoughts again. “It’s about time you stop disappearing into yourself every time you’re faced with uncomfortable truths and start talking to me about them instead.”
“You would despise me,” he said, wanting to look away from her but not able to bring himself to.
“I highly doubt it,” she said. “Either way, it’s high time you leave my feelings for me to decide. I don’t need you telling me what to do with my life and I certainly don’t need you telling me how I should feel about it as I do.”
Mark blinked, guilt gripping him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“I know,” Angelica said, her face tight, her patience at an end. “You never do. And I am fully aware that you cannot give me the credit I deserve before you give that same credit to yourself.”
Mark furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s time for you to tell me the whole story of your association with Lord Shayles so that I can decide for myself whether my life and yours are truly in danger or if the man is a tempest in a teapot,” she said.
“I can assure you that Shayles is a real and dangerous threat.”
“How?” she demanded. “Why? Tell me what he’s done to you that has wrecked you so.”
Her demand was couched in genuine concern, so rather than balk at it and push away from her, he let out a breath, lowering his head and shoulders.
“What do you want to know?” he asked in a defeated voice.
“Everything.” She shrugged. “How did you meet Lord Shayles?”
“We met at university,” Mark explained, pacing away from her. He wouldn’t be able to tell the story if he didn’t move while doing so. “We were in the same year at Oxford.”
“I see.” Angelica crossed her arms and followed him with her eyes as he paced around the room.
“I barely noticed him at first,” Mark went on. “I certainly wouldn’t have chosen him as a friend. I had no intention of making any friends at Oxford.”
“Why not?” she asked with a frown.
“My father was ill,” he explained. “Gravely ill. I felt as though making friends and enjoying time with them would be a betrayal to him. I didn’t want to leave his side to attend Oxford in the first place, but he insisted. He said there was no point in a bright and energetic young man wasting his days at the bedside of a dying man.” He choked on the last words and was forced to clear his throat before going on.
“I intended to keep myself to myself, but Shayles had other plans,” he went on. “We lived in the same dormitory, and as soon as Shayles realized I existed and that I had no interest in socializing, he plagued me at every chance he got. He and his cronies. They crowded around me at meal times, followed me into the washroom, and generally refused to leave me alone. They dragged me out to pubs when I wanted to stay home and study, and they carried me forcibly into brothels several times when I had no intention of patronizing the ladies there. It was as though I became their mascot, a necessity to their mischievous activity.” He paused. “I was too overwhelmed and weak to stop them.”
“You were young,” Angelica said, as if that alone were enough to explain his involvement.
Mark rolled his shoulders uncomfortably and paused for a moment by the fireplace, staring into the low flames. “My father died before the end of my first semester. I went home to be with him, but it was too late. He’d instructed everyone not to send for me until the bitter end.” His chest and throat squeezed at the memory, at the sense of grief and betrayal. He’d been denied the simple right to be with the one person he loved more than life in his final days.
“I sat by his bedside and told him all about Shayles, all about the horrible things I was being made to do, but Father didn’t have an answer for me,” he explained, his voice rough and hollow. “The man who had guided me through everything in my life couldn’t tell me how to navigate my way out of the influence of a pack of bullies. He died, and I was left alone, without answers, without a plan.”
“I’m so sorry,” Angelica said.
Mark shook his head, pushing away from the fireplace. He didn’t deserve her sympathy.
“When I returned to Oxford, Shayles was as relentless as ever,” he went on. “He and his friends teased and tormented me about being an orphan, alone in the world. They humiliated me for crying.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Horrible was Shayles’s currency,” he said with a growl. “The trouble was, nothing Shayles said was a lie. I was an orphan. I had no close family.”
“What about Lord Helm?” Angelica asked.
Mark shook his head. “Armand was off pursuing his own interests. He joined the army and charged off to the Crimea to fight. I was as abandoned as Shayles told me I was. The bastard was cunning enough to see his opportunity. He swooped in with just enough temptation to make me feel as though I depended on him, as if without him I would have nothing at all.”
“He manipulated you,” Angelica said, her expression hard. “He took advantage of a young man in mourning.”
Mark nodded. With the benefit of hindsight, he could see exactly how Shayles had bound him to his side. But that didn’t explain why he had stayed there after the descent into the nightmare began.
&
nbsp; He paused near the window, glancing out into the black for a moment. “In my final year at university, I managed to spend more time alone, painting, than being dragged into Shayles’s schemes. For a time, I thought he’d finally forgotten about me. And I was happier when I was in the small studio space I rented than at any other time in my young life, aside from the time I spent with my father.”
“Is that where you met the woman in the painting?” Angelica asked, letting her arms drop.
Mark nodded. “Kitty. That was her name. She was the daughter of the man who owned the building and rented the space. She cleaned the rooms and brought food once in a while.” His heart squeezed at the memory of her—at least, the memory of her before everything had gone to shit.
“Were the two of you lovers?” Angelica asked respectfully when the silence had stretched too long.
“Yes,” Mark admitted. “The whole thing took me by surprise. Kitty spent more and more time in my studio, talking to me as I worked. I sketched her and painted her a few times. Those canvases are long gone. I was young and male, and eventually I convinced her to pose nude. She agreed, though she was constantly afraid her father would find out. From there, it was a simple step for the two of us to spend our afternoons in bed once the painting was finished.”
“The painting Shayles has,” Angelica said, putting two and two together.
Mark swallowed as the painful echo of everything that happened next rushed up from the darkest recesses of his soul. “I don’t know why Shayles suddenly took an interest in me again. Perhaps he was bored.” It tore him to shreds to say what happened next, so he blurted it out. “He and three of his cronies tracked me down in my studio and found me with Kitty.” He swallowed, his mouth going dry.
“You don’t have to say it if you don’t want to,” Angelica said in a haunted voice.
October Revenge Page 18