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His arms flew up at his sides, his voice exploding. “How could I forgive him for taking everything from me—for taking you from me? Tell me how I was ever supposed to forgive that?”
“But you said…but…” She stumbled another step backward, doubling over slightly at the middle as her arms clamped along her belly. Her look jerked up to his. “You haven’t forgiven me either, have you? This week—last night—you haven’t forgiven me?”
His right hand curled into a fist he had to forcibly unflex. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Her words shrieked through the thick air.
“I thought I’d forgiven Morton.” He shrugged, unable to defend himself against it. “I thought I had, but then on that night…he knew the date as well. And he was deep in the swill—so drunk he could barely keep his head up.” A caustic chuckle stuck in his throat. “Did you know that he confessed it to me that night, the real reason why he did it?”
“What are you talking about, Wes?” Her look narrowed at him. “What real reason?”
His eyebrow cocked. “He never told you?”
A hesitation in her movement and then she shook her head.
Wes heaved a sigh, running his fingers across his eyes. “That night that he told me, he was barely conscious. Guilt must have been eating him, for I don’t think he ever would have admitted to it.” His hand fell from his face and his stare bored into her. “He needed to remove you from our engagement. End it before we were married.”
Her head snapped back. “He what? No, he would never.”
“He spent your bloody dowry, Laney.”
“No. He couldn’t have touched it.”
“Yet, he found a way.” His look lifted from her, staring at the crooked branches of the elm trees swaying above them. What he was doing was wrong—the pain it would cause her. Pain he didn’t want to see on her face. But she needed to know. No more secrets.
His gaze centered on her and hardened. “Morton spent it all—wasted it away—and he needed to hide it. From me, from you. From everyone. There wasn’t anything left at that point. He needed to end us and he hadn’t been able to manifest a way to break us up—though he tried. The women he sent my way, hoping I’d slip—the men he’d have approach you at dances. Nothing worked. And then a week before the wedding, you told him.”
Her right hand slid up, over her chest to clutch her bare neck, her words barely audible. “I told him. I told him everything he needed to know to break us.”
Wes nodded, all thunder taken from him. “You told him I was a bastard. The title wasn’t rightfully mine. My parents weren’t married when I was born.”
Her eyes closed and she sank, doubling over. She landed to balance on her heels, her body curling into itself.
Wes stared at her, wanting to go to her, to pick her up, to tuck her onto his chest and take all the pain of it away.
He couldn’t.
Not for how he’d failed Morton. Failed her.
He watched the river next to them for long seconds, watched the foam crusting on the swirling eddies. His breath back in control, he looked to her still huddled into a ball, hovering above the ground. “And the cruelty of it was that he could have told me before the wedding what he’d done, how he’d lost it all—but he was too damn proud, too damn scared—and he ruined the both of us instead. So bloody weak. That was his way out. Our pain was the price to pay for covering up his sins. He could have told me and I would have married you anyway, with or without the dowry.”
Both of her hands moved to her face, hiding her completely from him.
“Seven years, Laney. I could have had you as my wife. Seven years that he took from me—from us.” His voice cracked and he had to heave a breath. The disgust—at Morton, at himself—filled his chest and his words went raw. “So, yes, I killed him. His blood is on my hands. I let him walk out of that hellhole knowing what was waiting for him. I let him walk out. Drunk. Barely able to walk. Bloodthirsty cutthroats on the street. I didn’t have it in me to protect him one more time. Not on that night. That night of all nights.”
The softest moan came from her, gurgled, a sob that couldn’t break free.
She started to rock back and forth, swaying, looking to topple over with each movement.
The very sight of it dragging a torturous blade across his chest, slicing deeper every second that throbbed past.
Until he could take it no more.
He took a step toward her, his boots crunching onto fallen twigs. “Laney.”
Her head snapped up, her red-rimmed eyes locked onto him as tears wavered on her lashes, dropping indiscriminately onto her cheeks. “Go, just go.”
He took another step toward her, his fingers wide, pleading. “Laney.”
