Page 80 of The Duke and the Darkness

She gave a jerking nod and buried her face in his chest. The emotions finally overwhelmed her, and the tears fell, soaking into his jacket. “It was Wilkins, that night of the attack,” she choked out between tears. “I remember it now.” Then she lifted her head to look at him through stinging eyes. “I remember everything. Including you.”

Silently, Devlin brushed a lock of her hair from her face that had come loose in the fight and tucked it behind her ear.

“I’m so sorry.” She tightened her arms around him and clung to him, just as she had all those years before, the first time he’d saved her from Wilkins. But this time, it wasn’t from fear. “I’m so sorry I ever doubted you.”

“You had every right.”

She didn’t believe that, but she loved him for saying so. “You saved me.” She didn’t mean from Wilkins, not this night nor the night of the attack.

Devlin had quite simply saved her soul.

Crewe returned with an unhurried gait and a solemn expression. He slowly holstered his pistol as he climbed the stairs to them.

“Wilkins is dead.” He avoided Peyton’s gaze and told Devlin quietly, “He didn’t survive the fall.”

Peyton let the air seep out of her lungs with a ragged, cleansing sigh. Wilkins’s death felt like the lifting of a sickness, one which had been a part of her for so long that she only recognized it now by its absence. The same with the house around her, whose dark shadows had finally been exorcised of their ghosts, once and for all.

When Devlin tenderly kissed her, to soothe away the last of her grief, absolution and acceptance warmed through her. She knew then that the past would never harm her again.

Chapter Twenty-One

Devlin stood atthe window of the drawing room at Dartmoor House and looked down into the street.

The cold, foggy night had given way to a beautiful morning. Children would be running through the parks with their nannies. Lords and ladies would be riding along Rotten Row on the back of finely bred horses or in barouches with the tops all down to take in the sunshine. Servants would be scurrying to markets or filling service yards across London with their gossip as they completed their work. Laborers would be going about their jobs at warehouses along the river, at storefronts or factories tucked into less savory parts of town. Not one of them would be aware of the bombshell that struck last night and that was already working to change so many lives.

Starting right here in his own drawing room. He turned away from the window and sent his mother and Margaret a reassuring smile he certainly didn’t feel.

The time had come to pay the piper.

He cleared his throat. “Thank you for joining me.”

As if sensing his nervousness, Margaret poured him a cup of tea and held it out to him.

His shoulders fell. Sweet Megs. Finding her a good and loving husband would be the next challenge he’d have to face, now uphill all the way after last night’s events. But that would bea completely different conversation from the one he was about to have.

He’d made this promise to Peyton, and he planned on keeping his promises.Allof them.

“You sounded so dire when you asked us to join you.” His mother glanced at the door. “Should we also ask Teddy?”

“Not yet.” He accepted the tea cup from his sister, even though he didn’t want it. What he wanted was a bottle of whiskey. No, a barrel of it. “I need to speak with you two first. Alone.”

“And Peyton—shouldn’t she be here?” The duchess eyed him curiously. “I am assuming she’s the reason for this conversation.”

“She is.” He leaned back against the arm of the sofa across the table from them, unable to find the patience to actually sit. “And no, she shouldn’t be here.” Which was why he had gathered them here while Peyton was still at Brechenhurst where she’d spent the night. He’d taken her there because it was the only place in London where she felt safe without him, while he Chase, and Crewe waited at the Chandler townhouse for the authorities. He would retrieve her later, once everything here had been brought into the light of day. “This concerns the Raines family. I’ll leave it up to you two to decide how much to tell Teddy, if anything.”

His mother’s mouth pursed into a grim line. “You’re leading me to believe this will be a very uncomfortable conversation.”

“Yes.” There was no point attempting to soften that. He’d never wanted to have this conversation. Yet he also knew Peyton was right. They couldn’t move into the future until they’d put the past to rest. In every way. “It’s about the old Duke of Dartmoor.” Even now, he couldn’t bring himself to call the bastard his father. Some things would never change. “You need to know the truth about what he did.”

The two women visibly steeled themselves, their fingers tightening around their cups and their expressions turning grim.

Devlin set aside his unwanted tea. “Let me start at the beginning.”

By the time he’d finished sharing what Dartmoor, Crewe, and Chandler had done all those years ago—although even now, he left out the more grisly details—the tea had grown cold, and the two women’s faces had paled as white as the cups in their hands. Silence stretched over the room, interrupted only by the soft ticking of the mantel clock.

Devlin said nothing more and let the information settle over them.

Margaret turned her face away, but not before he saw the glistening in her pained eyes.