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“I killed them.” His voice was raw.
“I don’t understand.”
“On the night they were murdered. It was because of me that they were in St. Giles.” He finally looked up, his eyes dry and stark and so wounded she wanted to cry the tears he couldn’t.
Instead she lifted her chin and commanded, “Tell me.”
“We were at the theater that night.” He held her eyes as if afraid to look away. “Only Father, Mother, and I, for Hero was too young and Phoebe was just a baby. It was something of a privilege for me—I wasn’t that long out of a governess’s care. I remember we saw King Lear and I was dreadfully bored, but I didn’t want to show it, for I knew it would make me seem naïve and young. Afterward, we got in the carriage, and I don’t know how, I can’t remember, though I’ve been over and over it in my mind, but Father was talking about guns. I’d received a pair of fowling pieces for my birthday, and I’d taken them out and shot some birds in the garden in London the week before, and he’d been quite angered. I’d thought he was done scolding me, but it came up again and this time he said he’d take my guns away from me until I learned to handle them properly. I was surprised and angered and I shouted at him.”
He inhaled sharply as if he couldn’t catch his breath.
“I shouted at my father. I called him a bastard, and my mother began to weep and then to my horror I felt tears at my own eyes. I was fourteen and the thought of crying in front of my father was too terrible to bear. I threw open the carriage door and ran out. Father must’ve stopped the carriage then and come after me, and I suppose Mother followed. I ran and ran. I didn’t know where we were, and I didn’t much care, but the houses were tumbling down and I could smell spilled gin and corruption. I heard my father’s shouts as he neared, and in a moment of malicious stupidity I ducked around a corner, behind some barrels—gin barrels—and hid. The smell of gin was overwhelming, filling my nostrils, my lungs, my head until I wanted to vomit. I heard a shot.”
He stopped, his mouth opening wide, as if he were screaming, but no sound emerged.
He bared his teeth and flung back his head, still holding her gaze with those awful eyes. “I peered around the barrel and my father… my father…” He closed his eyes and opened them again as if unable to look away. “He saw me, as he lay there with the blood upon his chest. He saw me hiding and he… he moved his head, just a bit, in a small shake, and he smiled at me. And then the highwayman shot my mother.”
He gulped. “I don’t remember what happened then. I’m told they found me over my parents. All I recall is the stink of gin. That and the blood in my mother’s hair.”
He looked down at his hands, fisting them and opening his fingers again as if they were foreign appendages.
He glanced up at her and somehow he’d come back to himself, contained all that terrible sorrow and anger and fear, enough to make ten strong men fall down like babes. Maximus held it all inside of him and straightened his shoulders, his chin level, and Artemis couldn’t understand it—where he got the strength to hide that awful, bloody wound in his soul—but she admired him for it.
Admired him and loved him.
She felt an answering wound open within her own soul, a kind of faint reflection of all the pain he’d endured, just because she cared for him.
“So you see,” he said quietly, in full possession of himself, even standing completely naked. He was the Duke of Wakefield now as much as when his stood and gave a speech in the House of Lords. “I have to do it myself. Because I caused their deaths, I have to avenge them—and my honor.”
She held out her hands to him, and he approached the bed and sank to one knee before her. “Can you look at me now, knowing what kind of coward I am?”
“My darling,” she said, cupping his face in her hands, “You are the bravest man I know. You were but a boy, then, surely someone else has told you this?”
“I was the Marquess of Brayston, even then.”
“You were a child,” she said. “A willful, silly child who lost his temper. Your father didn’t blame you. He protected you as he lay dying, telling you not to leave your hiding place. Think, Maximus. If you had a child—a son—wouldn’t you give your life for his? Wouldn’t you be glad, even if you died, that he lived?”
He closed his eyes and laid his head in her lap. She ran her palms over his head, feeling the soft bristles beneath her fingers.
After a while she bent and softly kissed his forehead. “Come to bed.”
He rose then and climbed beneath the sheets, pulling her close. She faced away from him, his heavy arm across her waist, and stared into the darkness and waited for sleep.
“YOUR GRACE.”
For a moment, as Maximus swam to consciousness, he thought he’d imagined Craven’s voice. He blinked. Craven was hovering next to his bed.
“Craven,” he said stupidly. “You’re back.”
Craven arched an eyebrow, looking miffed. “I never went away, Your Grace.”
Maximus winced. By the amount of “Your Grace’s” Craven was tossing around, he was still on the outs with his valet. “I didn’t see you about the house.”
“Your Grace doesn’t know all that goes on in this house,” Craven pointed out acidly. “There is a gentleman waiting for you downstairs. He says his name is Alderney.”
“Alderney? At this hour?”
Craven raised both eyebrows at once. “It’s just before noon, Your Grace.”
