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“I liked him. He was generous and witty and he made me feel important. Treated me as a future peer of the realm. That first day we left, we only rode for a few hours. We stayed at an inn. He poured me ale all night. And he noticed that I stammered every time the young tavern wench came near. He sent me up to our room and sent her as well.”
His face heated at the memory. He’d been frightened and painfully aroused, and she had been soft and very friendly. “It was a test, I think. Because he came up soon after. And I thought, ‘Well, this is a thing that gentlemen do.’ He watched us, me and the girl. Then he had her also. Much…rougher. And I think if I had said no, if I’d asked him to leave or left myself…It was a test to see if I could be bent to his will. And I could.”
“How could you have known?” Her voice rose, defending him from himself.
“It does not matter. That’s who I was. I was easy. I liked everyone, and I was eager to please, was I not?”
“Stop it,” she hissed.
“It is true, damn it.” He stood and grabbed up the fireplace poker to jostle the logs. When he touched them, they disintegrated into coals. Though he meant to set the poker down on the tiles, somehow it clattered as if he’d thrown it.
“What did he do to you?”
“He took me to his home. There was no tour.” I’ve a bit of business to attend. Make yourself at home. “And he seemed surprised when I resisted. He wanted me afraid, but not defiant. He wanted me to beg, not yell.” On your knees, boy.
Lancaster rolled his shoulders against the feel of a hand gripping his neck, winding into his hair. He opened his mouth and drew a breath just to know that he could. “After three days he seemed to realize I would not break. No matter how many times…no matter what he did. I kept telling him I’d see him hanged. Drawn and quartered. First he said no one would believe it. Then he said that everyone could see me for what I was. A ganymede and a foul pervert. No one would be surprised. Finally, he claimed to have made a deal with my father.” Tears stung his eyes, then burned away in the blast heat of the red coals.
Cynthia gasped, her soft sorrow filling her ears. “That’s monstrous.”
> “‘Your family needs the money,’ he said, ‘And your father promised you were a biddable child. You don’t wish to disappoint your father, do you’?”
“Nick…” Whatever she’d been about to say dissolved into a sob.
“I didn’t believe it. In the end, he panicked, I think. He’d expected acquiescence. He thought I’d be cowed and silent. And there were already rumors, apparently, and he couldn’t risk more. So he hung me.”
He glanced over his shoulder with a twisted smile. “There is your answer. You finally got it out of me.” He had to make a joke, because the sound of the rope creaked in his ears.
“You didn’t try to kill yourself,” she breathed, hardly believing it even as she spoke.
“I didn’t. But…I wanted to die, so perhaps it is all the same.”
“No.” He hadn’t meant to kill himself even after all that, and that knowledge freed some cold, tight grief from her heart. She could not imagine a world without Nick in it. And if he had made that happen…
“It’s not the same,” she insisted, pushing off the bed to move closer. She needed to touch him so badly, but she now grasped why he flinched at every brush of her hand. Instead of touching him, she stood close and held her hands at her sides, palms up so he could see that she meant to leave him be.
“It’s not the same, Nick. When I ran from Richmond, I had a plan. I’d thought it through so carefully. I ran all the way to the cliffs in case someone was watching. I even leapt over the edge and landed on a ridge five feet below. It all went according to plan.
“But when I was hunched there on that rock on my hands and knees, I stared over the edge. I looked at the stones below and I thought, ‘This is too hard. I am too tired.’ I felt as though I’d struggled for years, trying to free myself from my stepfather. I just wanted some peace. I watched the blood drip from my lip and disappear into the sea and I knew it would’ve been over in seconds.”
Nick dropped his hands from the mantel and turned to her. Her skin shivered with relief when he wrapped her in his arms.
“I couldn’t do it,” she whispered, “because of my sister. Not because of me.”
“You didn’t do it,” he said. “And you wouldn’t have. I know that.”
His heart beat so loud against her ear, as if insisting that it would never stop. “How did you survive?”
His chin shifted against the top of her head when he spoke. “I don’t know. He cut me down too soon. That was part of the deception, I think. The villain recast as hero. ‘I found him and cut him down and tried to save his life.’ But I gather that suffocation takes a long time, and I was skinny enough to delay the process.”
Cynthia squeezed her eyes shut and mouthed a silent prayer against his chest.
“By the time he realized I was breathing, the doctor was nearly there. And then it was over. My parents were sent for.”
Desperate to wrap her arms around him, Cynthia fisted her hands in his waistcoat instead and held tight to his clothing. “I don’t want you to risk your life tomorrow.”
Nick sighed and his chin rested heavier on her head.
“But if you must, then be sure you kill him, Nick. I want him dead.”
