AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This was never going to get any easier. He strode forward and handed her the envelope. He couldn’t let her see any doubt, not now. Not after last night.
“You’ll be going with Dryfuss here,” he said.
“Dryfuss? Who is Dryfuss?”
“The cart driver.”
She stared at the envelope in her hands.
He continued on. “Your railway ticket is in there. You’re headed to London. You’ll be met at the station.”
“London? But why am I going to London?”
“Because that is where I have another house. I promised you a house for a month, and I do keep my promises.”
She let out a gasp and tried to shove the ticket back in his hands. “You’re sending me away now? I had thought—but there’s at least two weeks left.”
“I haven’t time to argue. I’ve an appointment to see my brother at noon, and you’ve a train to catch at two this afternoon. Think on it: if it’s not safe for Robbie to stay in Bristol, how could it be safe for you? You’re at even greater risk.”
She looked at him. Her eyes grew wide, and her fingers clenched around the envelope. “But it will be safe for me to return, some day.” She gulped; she must have seen his expression grow darker. “Perhaps in a month. You’ll send for me then.”
He met her eyes and did not flinch. “No, Miranda,” he said softly.
“Because I’ll come back.” Her voice withered away in the starkness of the look he gave her. “Or you’ll come visit.”
“No,” he repeated. “It’s best that we don’t.” He reached out and touched her cheek. “This was going to end, in any event.”
She shook her head.
“One day, you were going to realize precisely what you’d saddled yourself with. You don’t need me.” He gave her a little smile. “You can do a great deal better than an obstinate—”
“You’re going to tell me what I want?”
“I’m not trying to put words in your mouth,” Smite tried again. “But I do think, that given some time—”
“Time? You think time will change what I want? Maybe,” she said, “I want a man who takes what should be an unbearable weakness and forges it into strength. Maybe I want a man who will be loyal to me with his dying breath.”
“And maybe, when you’ve had a little time to think it through, you’ll want a man who can sleep through the nights, and who doesn’t flinch at the thought of hiring servants. Maybe you’ll want a man who can stand to have his face touched in affection. Someone who can make you a part of his life instead of shunting you off to one side. What you feel now…it’ll fade, Miranda, and when it does, you’ll not want to be stuck with me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I love you.”
“I know.” He turned away so she wouldn’t see his face. “I know. But—I have always been wedded to Lady Justice. And if you think that I will be loyal to you above the demands of my work, you are mistaken.” His own voice was breaking. He took a deep breath. “With me, you would always be second. You deserve to be first with whomever you find.” Smite hated him already. “I will never come to get you. I will not be waiting for your return. If you come back to me, I will turn from you. This is over.”
“So I was right,” she said. “You were rationing me. Allowing yourself only a small space of time with me, before returning to your solitary existence.”
He gave a nod. “Precisely.”
“In a few years, will you forget me altogether, or will you take out the memory of me on occasion, for your few minutes of sentimentality?” There was a hint of belligerence in her tone; she looked up at him with one eyebrow raised.
He’d hold the memories dear and deep, no matter how bittersweet they became. His free hand lifted to her cheek. A wisp of her hair was falling out of her chignon. He reached to tuck it back behind her ear, but when he did, he noticed that the hairpin that had held it in place was loose. Instead of pushing it back, he found himself pulling the metal from her hair. The piece pressed hard into his palm.
“You’d best be leaving,” he said. “You’ll want time to make sure you’re settled on the train.”
Her eyes widened, but she turned away from him and swept to where Dryfuss awaited. He followed her; he was helpless not to. And he handed her into the cart. But she didn’t let go of his fingers when she’d found her seat. “If this were a play,” she said, “this is the point where you’d realize that you can’t possibly allow me to leave.” Her eyes were suspiciously shiny; her voice quivered. Her fingers lingered on his.
But even the sight of her obvious distress could not break him. “No,” he said quietly, disentangling himself from her. “This is the point where I wish you Godspeed.”
He gave Dryfuss a nod, and the man shook the reins.
After she left, he stood as still as he dared, listening to the sound of the cart recede into the distance. Listening, past all hope of hearing her. He wasn’t even conscious of breathing, and yet his lungs ached fiercely.
He had been wrong. It would have been easier if it had slain him. But he was still standing. Still cogent. And that meant he was all too aware of how badly it hurt. He clutched her hairpin until the metal cut into the palm of his hand, unable to let even that much go.
Chapter Twenty
SMITE ARRIVED AT THE hotel where his brother was staying just as the clock struck one. He found Ash pacing before the mantel, shaking his head.
“You’re late,” Ash said, turning around as he entered the room.
“My apologies. The delay was…” He stopped, catching himself on the lie. Those last minutes with Miranda hadn’t been unavoidable. They’d merely been vital.
“You’re so rarely late.” Ash dropped the watch he’d been holding into his waistcoat pocket. “I was beginning to worry. And wonder that I’d done something wrong. Again.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Smite said. “Not everything I do is about you, you realize. You can’t fix everything.”
Ash’s forehead crunched, developing parallel sets of grim lines.
“In any event,” Smite added, “nothing needs to be fixed.”
Ash grimaced.
They had had some variant of this conversation a hundred times over the last decades. Ash apologized, and tried to ply Smite with things to salve his conscience; Smite refused, and tried to convince Ash he truly preferred not
to be cosseted. Somehow, Smite’s insistence that nothing was amiss had turned into a cycle of accusation and recrimination.
Smite was too bone-deep tired to try to fend off such well-meaning attacks. He sat down wearily.
“Let me explain,” he said. “I don’t need anything from you. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you, or that I wish you ill. It doesn’t mean that I’m rejecting your offers. It simply means that I don’t need or want anything.”
Ash didn’t respond to this. He simply wandered over to the fireplace and looked up at the ceiling, as if wondering what he had ever done wrong.
“You act as if I’m damaged,” Smite continued. “As if one foot put wrong will cause me to collapse. But nothing is wrong.”
Silence stretched. Ash set his hands on the mantel. Finally, he spoke. “I see. You live in cramped quarters on your own, eschewing all servants, when I know damned well I’ve given you enough money that you could afford an entire estate. You do that all for the fun of it?”
Smite stared straight ahead.
“You scarcely visit, and you never spend the night. That’s because you’re just an ordinary fellow? And you harbor no resentment toward me at all.”
“I never said I was ordinary. Just that I wasn’t…wrong.” He was feeling more and more wrong now. As if he’d given away his center. As if he’d sent it via train to London.
“Oh, no.” Ash rolled his eyes. “You’re not wrong. You’re never wrong—always damnably precise, you are. Still, I must wonder—why are you always so angry at me?”
“I’m not angry!” Smite growled. “I just don’t need you to do anything for me. How can I make you understand that?”
Ash threw up his hands. “How am I supposed to believe that nothing is wrong? I remember when I first found you on the streets of Bristol. My God, Smite. I left you and Mark with Mother at her worst. You won’t even tell me what happened. How can you not hate me for that? I can scarcely stand to think of it myself.”
Smite spread his hands. “It was noth—”
“It’s always nothing with you. I don’t believe you.”
