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“He was. Wild.” All of her fingers wrapped about her glass, twisting it, making the cuts in the glass fray the flickering light from the fireplace. “But I loved the mania in his eyes—like he saw the world a hundred times brighter than the rest of us. Anything could make him happy. Watching a leaf fall from a tree. A single snowflake landing on a window. For as big and complicated as his spirit was, his heart was always gold.”
Wes shrugged, his mouth tight. Discussing how he viewed Morton was apparently not a part of the truce he’d offered her.
She lifted her drink from the table and took another sip, her tongue curdling. Taste had returned to her tongue along with the moisture.
Wes tilted his glass to her. “The port doesn’t meet your impossible expectations?”
She gave him a sideways glance. “I’ve never had a taste for port—not since…”
Her look shifted to the glowing coals in the fireplace across the room.
“Since when?”
A deep breath into her lungs and she looked at him, meeting his gaze. “Since we were engaged. Since too much port on my tongue ruined you. Ruined us.”
His eyebrows casually lifted, his head tilting ever so slightly to the side and sending a rogue strand of dark hair across his brow. “So you do take responsibility for destroying my life.”
Her lips pulled inward, her teeth clamping hard against words forming on her tongue.
He didn’t say another word, instead, his dark eyes—almost black in the low light—pierced her, saying everything.
All air left her lungs. “The truce is up?”
“Aye. I imagine it is.”
With a curt nod, she stood, leaving the glass on the table. With a rigid back she walked to the door, stepping out into the hallway.
Five steps to her door, and she slipped into her room.
Five of the stiffest steps she’d ever taken, but she made it. Made it to her room.
Made it and managed to close her door before she crumpled to the floor.
Made it before she was weak.
For she wasn’t about to let Wes ever see her like that again—weak.
She’d fight until the end before ever descending into that humiliation again.
{ Chapter 6 }
Wes leaned against the frame of his doorway, watching Laney sway, her blond hair in a loose braid swinging across her back. She nearly tripped on her own rigid toes as she made it back to her room.
He doubted she even knew he was watching her.
Truce over.
Just where he wanted her. Exhausted. Beaten.
It would hearten his commitment to vengeance more if she hadn’t looked so tired. So damned forlorn.
The hollow in his heart that had stuck firmly in his chest for the last seven years didn’t budge at seeing her like this. If anything, the emptiness only gouged deeper.
The woman had betrayed him—taken his title, his estate, his entire life away from him. She’d been the one person that could crush him—and she’d done just that. In the mess of it all, it’d been her callous betrayal that had been the impetus sending him onto a fury-fueled journey around the world, the sea the only thing offering him battles—blood—at every turn.
He’d needed those battles, needed to down men without regard to right or wrong.
He’d needed it so he didn’t come back to England and kill her.
