A fatty candle sputtered and spun its twisted illumination along the small way, bathing them in dim, dirty light.
Yvonne slowed her steps until they were silent, as silent as the viscount’s. Considering he was a man of such large frame, she was shocked to find that she was making more noise with the rustle of her gown than Powers was with his entire being.
How the blazes did he do that?
Halfway down the hallway they stopped before a black-painted door. She swallowed back the sudden saliva that pooled in her mouth.
“You’re sure,” Powers murmured. “I could—”
She shook her head sharply. This was one thing she had to do herself.
Powers hefted his arm from her shoulder, then slid a dagger from some hidden pocket and placed it firmly in her hand. “Don’t waste time.”
Yvonne nodded, astonished at how the silver weapon weighed her palm down. Without another thought, she lifted the catch in slow, silent degrees and slipped into the room lit only by the street’s lights.
The shallow breathing of deep sleep drifted toward her and Yvonne focused on the man lying on the narrow cot. Anticipation laced through her body, sweeter than any drug. It also prickled her senses with such a clarity she thought her skin would not be able to contain her insides.
In three short strides, she crossed to the head of the cot and stared down at the man who had shredded her soul and beaten her body to the point of death.
The planes of his brutish face were hard even in slumber and his bronze hair was dull, the color of old blood in the night. With each rise and fall of his chest, she found herself recalling the blows he had rained upon her face and body. But even more so, she could not escape the cruelty he’d spread in the world. How many other women had been broken and, worse, left utterly friendless?
Yvonne leaned over his body and placed the tip of the dagger at his jugular, savoring the soft give of the skin without breaking it.
“Mr. Hardgrave,” she called softly.
For such a dangerous man, he was a shockingly deep sleeper—perhaps entrenched in his importance, he had gained a sense of invincibility. ’Twas why Powers had found his location so easily, she guessed.
Carefully, she pressed the dagger just far enough that a ruby tear slipped from his throat.
His eyes snapped open, two glinting ovals.
Yvonne stared into those eyes. “Hello, Mr. Hardgrave.”
He said nothing for a moment as his eyes attempted to flick toward the weapon at his throat, but no doubt the stinging pain told him that one move would see him dead.
Blinking furiously, he lay absolutely still. “Look ’ere. Surely, we can come to an agreement someways?” he rushed, his learned accent abandoning him.
She cocked her head to the side, eyeing that ruby tear trickling down his thick neck. “Agreement?”
“There must be something I have that you want.”
“I recall I once offered you an arrangement.”
Fear tensed his features and his pupils turned to pinpricks. “Madam, I was just doing my job. It was my duty—”
Yvonne arched a brow and leaned low over him so that she could whisper just above his lips. “And this is my
pleasure.
”
In one swift slice she raked the blade against his vein and across his throat. The flesh severed, exposing slippery, glistening sinew. Blood sprayed up, splattering her face.
She didn’t wince.
A strange gagging sound ruptured from his mouth and he shuddered. His hands stretched out to grab her, but Yvonne jerked back.
She waited as the life leaked out of his body and onto the filthy pillow and bedding. She should have felt some semblance of regret, but she didn’t. Vindication was all she felt as his last breath puffed from his slack mouth and the gaping hole in his neck.
No woman would ever suffer at his hands again. This was a good deed done.
After the last guest had vacated the Duke of Duncliffe’s London home, Edward stood in the foyer, wondering how in the hell the night had turned into such a disaster. It had taken far more of his commanding voice to evacuate the guests than he should have liked. London’s curiosity had been piqued and by morning the entire city would know that Lady Mary, daughter of the Duke of Duncliffe, was most certainly living and that her father had been the instrument of her disappearance.
He glanced up the wide stair to the woman who was the center of all this. Esme Darrel smiled down upon him, the seductive quirk of her lips promising and playful. What a woman she must have been. How he wished he had met Mary’s mother. At least now she would be able to rest easily . . . But as he studied the portrait he could have sworn sadness marred her amethyst eyes. Eyes exactly like his Mary’s.
The unease in his chest was hard to bear. The sight of Mary sobbing over her father ripped him asunder.
He had been afraid this would transpire. After coming so far in her quest for revenge, there was no further that she could go. He cursed himself for ever putting the idea into her head.
One emotion superseded his exhaustion and shock:
fear.
It was not an emotion to which he was accustomed and the way it dried his mouth and kept his thoughts at a frantic pace was most unwelcome.
Edward kept his gaze fixed upon Esme, wishing she could speak, wishing she could advise him in how to set all to rights. But her enigmatic visage revealed nothing. How he longed to rail at her that he had done all he could . . .
But she would tell him no, would she not? She would say there was one more thing he could do.
And he had to do it now. Without allowing himself to second-guess his instinct, Edward turned from the portrait. As though Esme was guiding him, he strode down the hall behind the stair leading to the duke’s private receiving room. The room he’d tucked Mary into when her father had been taken to his chamber. But with each stride to the woman he loved, fear chinked away at his hope. Had he lost his love to revenge?
He
loved
her.
It was an emotion he’d thought himself incapable of, but in that moment when she shattered under her father’s apoplexy, he knew that the wildness in his heart was not just possessiveness but fearsome love. He would have swept her away and cradled her in his arms forever if he thought it would have saved her this pain . . . from her father, from anything.
And that was the subtle message floating from Esme’s portrait. It was the one and only thing he could do to finally make amends for his sins and to bring peace to all who had been tormented. Love.
Without hesitating, he opened the oak-paneled door carved with acorns and oak leaves.
It was a strange room. A parlor of sorts, but decorated in ivory and teak with almost no ornament, something completely in contrast with the current style.
The skirts of Mary’s gown peeked out, bloody crimson over a luminescent silk fainting couch. Her hands were placed calmly over her tightly corseted middle and she was propped up by several pillows as she stared into the hearty fire.
“I should never have let you do it,” Edward said suddenly.
Her face remained in profile focused on the flames before her. “Edward, you and your
let
. You know you could not have stopped me just as you cannot give me to Powers.”
“If I had known . . . what would happen—How he would speak to you and then—”
“It was my choice to see him.” Mary stared fixedly ahead, her pale skin tinted gold in the firelight.
“I should have found another way. I should have saved you without risking—”
“I wished for revenge more than saving. I made that very clear. I wouldn’t listen to you or to Eva.” Mary dropped her head back against the pillows and stared up at the ceiling as though they were the celestial heavens and not Adam’s plasterwork.
Anger and his newly discovered love consumed Edward with such intensity he couldn’t stop himself from storming across the room and grabbing her. He forced her to look up at him, twisting her body upon the couch so that she hung in his grip and faced him. “None of that matters anymore, Mary. The revenge? Our struggle? It is done. I believe we can let it go.”
Her eyes flared under his fiery emotion. Slowly, her fingers slid over his biceps, gripping hard. “How can you say so? I—”
“Love,” he cut in. “Love is how we are free. Until I met you, I was dead. But then, day by day, being with you, living with you, I have been awakening to happiness.”
Tears glazed her wide eyes. “Edward?”
“I nearly destroyed you with my—” He choked on his own shame. “My need to play out a justice that was served years ago and my inability to forgive myself.”
Her brows drew together in distress. “Oh, Edward. No—”
“Yes,” he burst out. “I gave you my own self-loathing and bitterness. How could I have done that to you?”
Tears tumbled from the corner of her lids, down her pale cheeks. “You don’t need to say this.”
“I do.” His own voice was a rough, half-broken thing to his ears. “Look at how far I’ve driven you, all because I was afraid to give you love. But I realize now that I am not my father. His actions were his own. I don’t have to pay for them anymore. And I can celebrate life now. With you.”
Her own face twisted as more tears slid from her eyelids. “I wanted to be free from my father, from it all—” She gasped. “I was so sure confronting him would end it.”
“I have been trying to find freedom all my life. Freedom from my own father, from my memories, my mother . . . but most of all myself. You have given me myself again, Mary, and because of that I have the greatest gift that could ever be given.”
She shook her head slightly. “I could never give you all that, Edward. I am a broken person. I—”
“We are all broken, Mary, but together . . . you and I are whole. Yes, we used each other in the beginning. But now it is so much more. Out of pain came love.” He clasped her up against his chest. Burying his face into the nape of her neck, he said with utter conviction, “You have given me the gift of learning to love. I love you. I love you with all my being. I love you so much, I would do whatever needed to be done to whisk you from this house, revenge, and what the past has done to us.”
“I—I never dared believe—” Her face pressed lightly against his head and her lips kissed his hair. “Oh, Edward, how I love you. I have loved you now for some time. From the first moment you called me Calypso I knew you were unlike any other man. That you were special.”
Edward pulled back ever so slightly so that he might see the truth of it on her face. “Can you forgive me?”
She beamed up at him and her tears now were tears of joy. “Cease asking. The mistakes we have made, the hurt we have caused, it was all a part of our path to love.”
“Promise me. Promise me that if ever I act the ass again, you will not hesitate to tell me and remind me that when I am an ass I am betraying our love.”
A shining laugh bubbled from her lips and her eyes sparkled with joy. “Certainly, my love, if you promise to do the same for me.”
“Together, then. We shall be whole.”
“Yes,” she said with such assurance it could never be gainsaid. “You are my other half as I am yours.”
“Then kiss me.”
And to his disbelieving heart’s delight, she did. As her lips touched his, drinking him in, he felt true freedom for the first time in his adult life and it was more glorious than anything he ever could have imagined.
C
lare sat in the corner, silent, wondering how it had been possible for her stepdaughter to so quietly enter the chamber and sit on that bastard’s bed.
Clare kept her head back, propped against a cushion, watching through slitted eyes as the beautiful young girl, an image of her mother, laid a hand on her father’s still one.
The girl, Mary, leaned over the half-dead duke, and even from across the room Clare could hear the remarkable “I forgive you” come from Mary’s mouth. Her hand reached up and gently touched her father’s slack cheek. “For all of it. And now . . . we are both free.”
Then, without a backward glance at the devil, Mary rose, smoothed her hands down the front of her crimson gown, and quietly left the room. Leaving Clare with her husband.
Slowly, Clare pushed herself up from the silk chair, her lavender gown heavy like death’s hand. She had not changed, not even when the doctor had departed. The duke’s death was not certain, but nor was his life. The doctor had intimated that the night would see whether he stepped from this world to the next.
The sudden feeling that overtook her moved Clare toward the bed. It was remarkable that her stepdaughter’s sudden presence this night should prove to be the means by which she could be freed from her prison. But free she would be.
She took even steps upon her slippered feet, her mind remarkably sharp without her usual dose of laudanum. Though she could already feel the hunger for her medicine building within her, she ignored it. She stood beside the high bed. To her amazement, her husband’s eyes were open and he was staring upward. His breath came in slow, shallow takes. “Your Grace?” she murmured.
He blinked, aware of her presence.
She leaned forward and took one of the pillows from beside his head and held it carefully in her hands. “I should like to make you more comfortable.”
His gaze flicked to hers and he looked upon her with trust and the sure knowledge that she was his dog. A dog that would never hurt its master, no matter how often it was beaten.
With a muted cry, Clare lurched forward, shoving the pillow against his face.
He struggled feebly, his impaired body shuddering but unable to truly fight back. Clare stared at the simple headboard made from some wood she’d never heard of, nor knew whence it came. She stared at it until her husband struggled no more.
When she was certain the last breath had gone from him, she lifted the pillow. Disbelief and fury filled his eyes even in death. Shock that she had betrayed him and fury that she had exceeded his control. In the end, it had been a simple choice, she realized as she carefully lifted his head and placed the pillow beneath it. Her life or his. And she would no longer sacrifice herself to his power.