Page 32 of The Duke and the Darkness

“Go ask the surgeon who brought you to him that night,” he challenged quietly. “We can go to him right now, in fact. Rouse him from his sleep, make him look back through his records. Perhaps you’ll believe him.”

Her lips began to tremble. So did her hands that she tried to calm by folding them in her lap. Even in the darkness of the carriage, he could see her grow pale.

“I am more relieved than I can ever express to know you’re alive,” he admitted, “because I had nothing to do with your parents’ murder.”

She swallowed, hard enough that he could hear it across the compartment. “If not you—” That breathless phrase cost her dearly, he knew. “Then who? Who was responsible? Tell me.” She paused, and the soft begging that followed nearly undid him, “Please, Devlin…tell me.”

“So you can punish him, the way you wanted to punish me?” He leaned back against the squabs. “I’m afraid you’re too late.” He pulled in a deep breath to confide the deepest secret of his life, the one no one else knew, except Crewe. “It was my father. And his grave isn’t empty.”

*

Breathe… Oh God,the pain!… Just breathe, damn it!

Peyton didn’t move.Couldn’tmove. It took all her strength to simply sit there, returning his gaze, and remembering to breathe.

All the grief she’d suppressed, replacing it with fury and hatred and determination—all the emotions she needed to focus on maintaining in order to keep living, to keep hunting for her parents’ killers,to simply keep breathing—rushed back with the ferocity of a storm. She wanted to scream!

Instead, she rasped out in a breathless whisper the question that had haunted her for a decade. “Why would your father do something like that?”

But the carriage had stopped in front of her rented townhouse, and the tiger flung open the door to let them out, unwittingly interrupting them.

Peyton couldn’t tear her gaze away from Devlin, from the man who for so long had been her most hated enemy. The cold night air rushed inside the compartment like an ill-wind.

“Why?” she repeated. When Devlin didn’t straighten from his casual slump against the squabs to tell her, she clenched her fists to keep from reaching for her pistol. “Why?”

He slid his gaze out the door toward the tiger. “Invite me inside.”

“So you can continue to lie to me?” she bit out. Her head pounded! Everything she thought she knew about that night swirled together until she couldn’t sort through it all. She felt as if she were sliding away, and her grasping hands couldn’t find any purchase to stop her fall.

“So we can finish this conversation in private,” he corrected gently.

Then he held out his hand.

She stared at his extended hand and shivered.An anchor.That was what he was offering. A tether to the world that was slipping away from her. She didn’t move, not daring to reach out—

“Peyton,” he murmured. “Please.”

Her gaze flew up to his, and she inhaled a sharp gasp of air. Her breath returned, filling her lungs with deep, steady inhalations, and with each one, the dark abyss around her receded, and the swirling slowed. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, its steady drum bringing her calm, quiet…

“Trust me enough to let me inside,” he cajoled, this time teasing her from the darkness by adding, “and I’ll let you keep your gun.”

“No need,” she answered, her voice raw. “I’ll make you check yours at the door.”

His mouth softened into a faint smile. “Then invite me in. We’ve only just started.”

Slowly, she slipped her hand into his and gave a jerking nod, one that matched the same rough breaths that filled and left her lungs in an unsteady rhythm. But shewasbreathing, and she would survive. Just as she had before.

He stepped down from the carriage and helped her to the ground. As soon as her foot touched the footpath, she pulled away her hand. The graze of his fingers across her palm left tingles in its wake.

She hurried up the front steps with Devlin on her heels and past the butler as he held the door open. She ignored the surprised look on the butler’s face that she was bringing a man home so late at night, when not one other person from outside her household had crossed the threshold in the weeks since she’d rented the house.

“Elizabeth?”

She startled at the name, the one she’d taken for herself so many years ago, and stopped.

Wilkins emerged quickly from the rear of the dark house. His gait faltered in the doorway of the entry hall as his eyes landed on Devlin. She didn’t have to make introductions. From the way Wilkins stiffened, he knew exactly who Devlin was.

Yet he came forward and took her arm to pull her aside. Keeping his voice low, he shot a glance over his shoulder at Devlin. “What is he doing here?”