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His face washed over with sadness, but that too, she did not trust. “You’re right,” he confessed. “I was the man who robbed you that night.”
At least he had the decency not to insult her intelligence. It didn’t soothe the squall in her chest. Instead, it broke free, and she sobbed, turning from him to hold herself against the workbench as the entirety of their acquaintance took on a new meaning behind her eyes. “It would have been kinder to kill me.”
Like a sudden storm, he rushed over to her. His hands looped around her wrists, then her arms, then they were on her cheeks and in her hair. Before she could make sense of things, he waskissingher, his lips cold and addicting against her own,pleadingwith her not to say a thing more. She bristled all over, suddenly kissing him, too. His mouth traveled to her ear, her jaw, and her neck, tracing a burning, wicked path on her skin. Her knees buckled at the fear of falling roused her enough to push him away.
“No!” she cried as he stepped back, running his hands over his face. “No, don’t touch me!” She wiped her mouth with the back of her gloved hand. “You will never touch me again!”
The kiss had transformed him. The man became restless before her, casting away a planting pot with a cry. It shattered against the ground as he turned to her and argued, “You must believe me—I never wanted to hurt you, not after I knew who you were!”
Charlotte clutched the fabric at the neck of her gown. “You lied to me! Do you believe lies to be withouthurt? You accosted me! You tricked me! Youusedme!” She wailed, “I thought to have orchestrated our artificial betrothal on my own—that I was saving myself—but it wasyou, all along, pulling my strings.”
“Only ever to survive!”
She gritted her teeth. “To survive,” she echoed mockingly. “No—to line your pockets! Youlivefor your crimes. Your crimes do not live foryou!” Charlotte breathed a guttural sigh. “You had ample chance to tell me about your past, of our first meeting! No, I cannot believe you did not want to hurt me, that you do not derive pleasure from my torment.”
“Never,” he breathed, “There has never been pleasure in your torment. Of all the ill I have wrought, blighting you with my presence has been the worst of all my crimes.” He clawed at his cravat. “Charlotte, please—“
“My name is not yours to use.“
“If you would only listen—“
“So you might spin me another tale—“
“I have fallen in love with you!” he bellowed, and all arguing came to an end.
She could not believe what he had said. She wished he had not spoken the words, as their power eclipsed all else. So light were they, yet shrouded in darkness. Surely, even the greatest villain could not utter them as a lie. “That cannot be… true.”
His eyes glittered with tears. Suddenly, he threw herself at her feet, kneeling before her. He clutched her skirts, his palms flat against the back of her thighs. “It is…” he sighed, the words broken by a sob. His cheeks pressed against the fabric of her gown. “You are right that I have lived a lie,” he looked up at her, “but my adoration of you is gospel.” Benjamin shot up, holding her face in his hands, and he was crying. “I swear it.”
She almost wanted to believe him, sinking against the calloused skin of his palms. Tentatively, her fingers crawled up his arms, but she could not bring herself to open her eyes. Not even as his forehead pressed against hers. “But, why—“
“The night I met you in Twicham, I was driven there by Harper. We were traveling the road to London looking for easy prey—a few peers or good as. It was not the first time we had acted highwaymen, but it was the last, because we foundyou. I will not lie and say I loved you from that moment, but you opened a door. When next I traveled into town, I heard whispers of an anonymous poet—Huxley. The rest is history.” He recounted the story so quickly, Charlotte hadn’t the time to breathe before he added, “When I could no longer live with the lie, I loved you too much to tell you the truth.”
She was numb from his confession, feeling without a body in his arms. “So you thought to run from London.”
“I couldn’t bear the thought of you seeing me differently.” She couldtastehis breath for how close they were. He gently pressed his lips to her cheek. “I have only known myself truly as yours, Char.” He kissed her forehead. “I want to look in the glass and see your lover.” Drawing his lips away, he brought her eye level. “Tell me you don’t feel the same.”
She bit her lip, knowing every breath they shared was one of folly. She should not have allowed him so close. She shouldnothave listened to a word he had said. She wondered why she could not push him away. The answer, she feared most of all.
“I do not know you,” she wept. “We are strangers—and strangers cannot fall in love.” Refusing to look at him, knowing she would only end up back in his arms, she pried his hands from her face and stepped back. “This has all been a mistake. A fruitless mistake because the Duke of Gamston still vies for my hand.”
“What?” he hissed, defeated. “No, he would not—“
“Keep the rest of the poems and publish them at your leisure,” she uttered without emotion. “Take with them the rest of me. I am done fighting for another life.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO
It had all been too good to be true, Benjamin thought as the coach took him back to Five Fields. He had been a fool to think that his life could have been anything other than what it was—an endless spiral of misfortune, of which he was the arbiter, spinning in on itself like a dog chasing its tail.
He had lost his mother to the Duke. He had lost himself to the War. And now he had lost Charlotte, too, though he admitted that was by his hand alone.
Never in his life had he suffered quite so much guilt, and the feeling niggled away at him until he reached his home. Something else had buried deep in his chest: not guilt but confusion. Though guilt of all else, he hadnotpublished the poem that had sparked her revolt, recognizing it all the while as her work. And it begged the question—who had? Charlotte had seemed sincere in her disgust for him; Harper had not cared for the poems’ existence.
With a throbbing head, he stared up at his house, which was not reallyhishouse but Gamston’s, teetering on one side. Like a ghost, weightlessly, he trailed the path to the door, his pretender’s boots ringing a pretender’s song against the stone.
He blinked, and he was in his attic room. He blinked again, and he had done away with his overcoat and shoes. One more blink, and he feared he would dematerialize altogether. There was nothing left for him in the life he had made for himself. So sweet was the life of Huxley that it had made the life of Benjamin Fletcher feelwrongby comparison. He was doomed, now, to be forever trapped in limbo between the two.
At his desk, he began rearranging his affairs, stacking his letters and notes into piles as though they might help him make sense of things. Casting a glance at the torn painting of his mother’s Italian village back on the wall, he weighed his options. The truth was that he wastiredof living in the shadow of his service. He heard clinking mugs downstairs, bone dice rolling against the tables, and it made himangry. Angrier even than his loneliness. He did not know what it was like to live without a leash, without duty, chasing something other than his own survival.
