Well, he damned well didn’t want to, so that was good. He also didn’t want to look like he was shrinking away from all decent society. It was rather a coup for him to have gained this invitation to the Preston ball, and declining to attend would feel like a defeat, as if he were admitting he had no right to be among civilized people.
Courtenay pulled his watch from his pocket. “I need to leave if I’m to see Simon off.” He pushed his chair back and rose from the table. “I told him I’d go to the hotel and admire the carriage horses.”
As he left the breakfast room, he saw Standish sit in the chair he had vacated. Courtenay dearly hoped Standish and Eleanor managed to make this work and was almost annoyed that they had spent years resentfully apart when they could have been together. They could have had what Courtenay never would.
Medlock had made him start to second-guess his belief that he didn’t deserve happiness, didn’t deserve lasting companionship after his part in robbing his sister of her future. For how many years had he implicitly allowed his own opinion of himself to be tarnished by his mother’s contempt? She had never given a damn about him, and he ought to return the compliment.
And now, walking along the sun-dappled springtime streets of Mayfair, on his way to see his sister’s beloved child, he couldn’t help but think that Isabella wouldn’t have wanted him to deny himself happiness. Of course she wouldn’t—people wanted their loved ones to be happy. The only person who wouldn’t want Courtenay to be happy was his mother, and—
And he didn’t care what his mother thought of him.
Or, rather, he did care but realized he shouldn’t.
He thought that he could maybe try to see himself through the eyes of the people who thought the best of him—Isabella always had, Simon did now. So did Eleanor and maybe even Standish.
So had Julian, despite what he had written in that book; that had been before he had really known Courtenay. Courtenay knew that. He had gone over the timing a hundred times. He had remembered, unbidden, every kind word Julian had told him.
That didn’t mean he could ever trust Julian again, but he could know that Julian had cared about him, as much as Julian was capable of caring about anyone. He told himself that had to count for something.
That night, settled in the spare room, he tookThe Brigand Princeout of his valise. He hadn’t read it since learning that Julian had written it. But he hadn’t burnt it either, or tossed it out the window.
As he turned the familiar pages, he found himself catching traces of Julian—a turn of phrase, a cutting remark. And he realized these words were always from the mouth of the villain Don Lorenzo. The rest of the characters were as good-hearted a lot of simpletons as ever graced the pages of a novel and Julian made them all say the most appallingly sentimental things to one another. Any notion Courtenay had about Julian not understanding the workings of the human heart were proven utterly false. He was a damned expert in the treacliest of sentiment.
Courtenay remembered Julian’s insistence that Don Lorenzo wasn’t based on Courtenay, that Julian had only borrowed Courtenay’s looks and mannerisms. And now he saw that this was the truth. Julian, not Courtenay, was Don Lorenzo: conniving, ruthless, cold, friendless.
Courtenay rather wished he hadn’t figured that out.
He flipped to a passage he remembered well. Agatha and Don Lorenzo were trapped in the crumbling tower of the monastery. Don Lorenzo had very flamboyantly thrown the key out the window.
“You’ll never get away with this,” Agatha cried, clawing at the velvet folds of Don Lorenzo’s robes. Wind whipped through the open window, bringing with it pelting hail and blinding gusts of frigid air. Agatha’s own humble cloak was in tatters, a poor defense against this gall.
“My child,” Don Lorenzo drawled, his emerald green eyes glinting with cold malice, “I already have.” He opened his palm to reveal the golden contours of the prince’s locket. He held his hand out through the window, dangling the locket over the abyss.
“No!”
“Without this locket you’ll never have proof that you and your appalling infant brother are the rightful heirs of the prince, and his fiefdom will revert to me.” He ran the long white fingers of one hand through the ravens’ wings of his hair. “The ancestral curse will finally be lifted from my bloodline after centuries of despair.”
“What do you want from me?” Agatha begged, falling to her knees on the cold, hard flagstone of the tower floor. “I would do anything to restore my family’s honor.”
“Sweet, stupid Agatha. Don’t you wish it were that simple? I know I do.”
He was interrupted by the sound of a tremendous crashing. The stone floor creaked and trembled and it sounded as if the tower itself was in danger of collapsing into dust. The ancient oaken door burst inward, sending a spray of splinters into the room.
Agatha turned toward the hole in the wall where the door had once stood. It was empty. She had expected to see a party of rescuers armed with a great battering room, but instead there was only a gaping void of shadows.
“No!” Don Lorenzo cried, flinging an arm over his eyes in terror at a sight only he could behold. “Not that!”
“Nothing is there,” Agatha protested, shaking her head in meek confusion. “It must have been the storm.”
“Don’t take me!” Don Lorenzo begged to the unseen entity. “It isn’t time!”
“Who are you speaking to?” The mist in the tower seemed to be coalescing into a shape. Agatha knew it had to be a trick of her tired mind. She had spent weeks chasing this villain over hill and dale. She had travelled nearly the length of the country tracking him down and now her mind must be fevered. But if she stared too long at the mist it seemed to take the form of a hooded figure who loomed over them.
“I thought I’d have longer,” Don Lorenzo cried, tears streaming down his face. He seemed to be diminishing in size and substance. With what seemed to be every reserve of strength in his body, he leaned out the window and released the locket. Agatha watched in frozen horror as she saw the golden object drop from his long fingers, plummeting into the abyss.
The wind in the tower stopped for an instant and a silence fell over the monastery, so eerily still Agatha could hear her own heart beating. It was over. The locket was gone and her hopes were dashed. Don Lorenzo sagged with relief against the window casement, and for the first time Agatha could see what the man would be without the prophecy compelling him to black deeds and awful feats. His visage smoothed, relaxing into something devoid of rancor, empty of all traces of the villainy that had spurred him on for perhaps his entire life. As Agatha watched, a sigh escaped his mouth, a white puff in the darkness, and his eyes fell shut.
Suddenly the wind picked up again, furious and violent, and before Agatha could realize what was happening she saw Don Lorenzo fall out the window as if pushed by an invisible hand.
