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“I was searching for some meaning to it all. My father had been accused of treason. I thought that if I became what he had been I would be able to prove his innocence. I did it for my family, Indy. So that Colin would have something to inherit. So that my mother wouldn’t have to live with the taint of being a traitor’s widow.”
“I’m beginning to understand now.”
“My father’s death hurt so much, it was this cataclysmic event that shaped me and I became defined by it. The espionage business thrives on boys with wounded hearts and voids to fill. You were right when you accused me of living selfishly. I was trying to make sense of why I was left fatherless and alone, and I hurt you and that makes me hate myself.”
“You were so young when your father died. You had to become the duke. I understand what a burden that must have been. And then to discover he’d been a spy, and wanted you to become one as well. That’s why you stopped writing to me.”
“After I graduated from the secret training program, Sir Malcolm gave me a talk. He told me the truth about his wife and daughter’s death. They hadn’t died in a carriage accident, as was the official story. They’d been poisoned by his enemies. The poison had been meant for Sir Malcolm.”
“How awful. Those poor innocents.”
“He told me never to marry. Told him that my profession could only bring suffering to those I loved.”
“And so you shut yourself off from me, and from your family. You pushed us away.” She turned in his arms so that she faced him. “And that night at my coming-out ball...”
“I planned the whole thing, Indy. I planned to have you discover me there in the garden, kissing Mrs. Cavinder. I hated myself for hurting you. Gods, how I hated myself.”
“How I hated you.”
“I’ve never forgotten the sight of your ashen face... your eyes hazing like lavender fields viewed through a mist of rain. Betrayal settling like a veil over your face. The memory has haunted me forever.”
“Why did you do it? Why didn’t you just make up some story about another woman and ask me to end our engagement?”
“I thought if I made you angry, you would jilt me. You could be the injured party and maintain your reputation. If I jilted you, there would have been whispers about your virtue. I fully expected you to formally end our engagement. I expected you to marry another.”
“I told myself that I never brought suit to break our marriage contract because I never would marry and so what was the point? But I think the truth is that I wanted to keep the connection to you. The attachment.”
He stroked her cheek. “I felt the same way, though I wouldn’t admit it to myself.”
“I told you I would uncover your secrets eventually,” she said with a tremulous laugh.
“Actually...” He touched her face. “I had already resolved to tell you. I was going to confess everything in the carriage on the way here. I couldn’t live one more day without telling you the truth, even if it meant breaking my code of silence. I’m a brick wall, a blunt instrument. I do my duty. The trajectory of my life was predetermined by the choices I made when I was young.”
She squeezed his bicep. “You are a brick wall, aren’t you?”
“You don’t have to make a joke. I know the pain I caused you. I’m the biggest numbskull known to man.”
“That’s my line.”
“Then say it. Say something. Tell me that you hate me, or that you can forgive me, or that you...” He paused. The words wouldn’t come. The words he wanted to say. Had to say.
He’d lived so much of his life denying that those words even existed.
He only spoke those three words in his dreams. When she sat next to him by a fireplace.
And there were two children playing with alphabet blocks. The girl forming a word with her blocks that started withLand ended withE.
He knew when and why he’d driven away the possibility of everything those four letters contained.
What he didn’t know was how he could find his way back, and whether Indy could ever forgive him for pushing her way.
“Can you forgive me, Indy?” he asked.
“First, I heartily approve of your clandestine activities. All that single-minded pursuit of justice and that unerring sense of duty is actually quite attractive. And I’ve always wondered why a man who is supposed to lead such an indolent, intemperate existence has a body that is sculpted from marble.”
That certainly wasn’t the response he’d been expecting. But then Indy always surprised him.
“Espionage isn’t a glamorous profession, Indy. Violence begets violence. War begets war. I’ve seen terrible things. I’ve seen men treat each other like animals. Men thinking of other men as less than human, as other. But we all bleed, Indy. We all bleed the same red blood. Inside we’re all the same. I’m not trying to excuse the way I treated you. I know it was wrong for me to push you away, to make you hate me. I only thought... I thought I was doing it for your protection.”
