Page 29 of This Haunted Heart

He fell quiet. Then he let out a deep breath that heated my skin. “I’ve had a heartbreak of my own, and I’m trying to make sense of it.”

“I have no wisdom to share. I’ve had no successesin my relationships with men or women. I’m the wrong person to—”

“Just answer the question.”

I was silent for a long time, gathering my thoughts, trying to wade through the flood of memories, take what I needed, and harden my mind and heart to the rest of it.

“Lochlan,” I whispered like it was a holy offering, a gift to the dark. “Heaven above, I haven’t spoken that name in ages . . . It still hurts . . .”

Finley’s shoulders stiffened against me. His fingers flexed in the bedding beneath us. “Tell me what happened.”

“It’s a long story.”

“I still want to hear it,” he said stubbornly.

“The family I worked for,” I began, throat dry and voice cracking, “the father was a horrid land baron. An absolute monster. The worst sort of man. He possessed the kind of cruelty that delighted in abuse.”

“Hm. I can imagine that sort.” As he spoke, his short beard scratched gently against my belly. I was growing to like the weight of him there.

“I won’t tell you the baron’s name. He doesn’t deserve to be honored in such a way. I never speak it. All you need to know is he should have smelled like sulfur and had cloven hooves. That’s how horrible he was, and he treated poor Loch the worst of anyone.”

“That doesn’t answer my question at all.”

“I’m getting to that,” I grumped. “I told you it’s a long story.” I propped an arm behind my head and peered out the window at the twinkling stars and the blankness between them. “Lochlan had been adopted by the family I served, only he was treated like a domestic, not a son. No matter how bad it got, no matterhow cruel the baron was, Lochlan still tried so hard to please that blasted man.”

“Seems only natural that a boy would want to please his father,” he muttered.

“I suppose you’re right, but I had a much younger mind then. I was just eighteen when I left, still practically a girl myself. And I hated that Lochlan loved him so. I felt betrayed by his loyalty to a man who treated me—and him—so poorly.”

“That’s it, then?” he said, his tone unexpectedly prickly. “He was his father’s boy, so you’re not together anymore?”

“No . . . that’s not it . . .” I swallowed. “I had sticky fingers when I was a youth.”

“You still do.”

“Ha. Your knife hardly counts. At least I gave it back after I stole it. I came by my wealth more honestly eventually . . . mostly. But when I was younger, I took as I pleased. A feeling you can apparently relate to,” I added pointedly.

“Just where you’re concerned,” he said.

I snorted at that, not believing him for a moment. “Am I supposed to feel special now?” Robbing my safe had taken thought, effort, at least a handful of madness, andexperienceto crack a lock like that. “Anyway, poor Lochlan only had one thing he cared for more than the baron’s approval. It was a ring gifted to his birth mother and passed on to him when she could no longer care for him. It wasn’t worth a great deal, just a simple rose gold band, but it was his fondest possession. His natural father died in the Great Rebellion before he could marry his mother, but he’d sent that ring to her as a promise. It was the only piece of his blood family that Loch had . . . Oh, how he used to dream about them. When the baron was terrible, he’d talk about his father returning suddenly to saveus both. He’d describe him riding in on this great horse like a famous gunslinger in a dime novel, still wearing a Union uniform, not dead after all, coming to make everything all right.”

“I’m not following how this all connects,” he pressed.

“I’m getting to that.” My face went hot with shame. I was glad he wasn’t looking right at me. I wouldn’t have been able to bear it. “The baron and his wife tried to have their own children but couldn’t. They’d both gotten on in years, and so had we. When we were eighteen, Lochlan was finally pronounced the family heir, and it was all made official by an attorney. That’s when I knew there was no future for us. That horrid baron would never tolerate a domestic-nobody like me as a daughter-in-law. It was only a matter of time before Lochlan cast me off just to please his pa . . .”

“Did he tell you that?” Finley grunted, his shoulders going taut. “Did he do something that convinced you—”

“No, no. That’s just the way of the world, but Lochlan insisted on looking at everything through a more romantic lens. To him, the books we loved so much were more than fiction and closer to the truth of things, but I knew better,” I said. He was staring at me now, his sad, scarred, tawny gaze boring into me, reminding me too much of a different set of sweet, hopeful brown eyes. “I . . . I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

Finley lowered his head back onto my belly, this time placing his cheek just above my navel. “You haven’t finished answering my question.”

I sighed. “He didn’t do anything wrong, all right? It’s like I told you. I’m more serpent than you. No harpy in hell is worse, remember?”

“I remember.” He rubbed a hand soothingly across my stomach, the touch so gentle the muscles there trembled.

As long as he wasn’t looking at me, I could finish part of the story at least, or enough to get me out of the trade. I tried to rush to the end, skipping over the horrendous middle, words spilling painfully past my lips. “I tricked Lochlan into teaching me how to open the family safe. He wanted to show me the ring he was going to marry me with. He knew I was insecure about our future together, so he showed me the band he’d been going on about for years. He was . . . We were . . . What I did next was unforgivable, Finley.”

The lump in my throat had become too much. I struggled around it, the words burning on my tongue.

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