Page 49 of This Haunted Heart

“I won’t say it again! You heard me the first time!” I shouted. My hands balled into fists that shook. I didn’t know what to do with them, and so I shoved them into my lap and folded in on myself. “Oh, how I’d love to forget him and all of that. But I cannot.”

“You abandoned me to that hell,” he hissed, his voice cracking like a whip, the snap of it as cutting as the baron’s crop had been across our backs and thighs and asses whenwe’d committed the smallest transgression. “If you did not forget who he was, then youknewhe would blame me for what you’d done. You made sure of it!”

I choked on my next breath because he was right. I had made sure of it. That was the horrible middle I’d left out of the retelling the night he demanded to know about the man I loved. “But I didn’t mean for—”

“You didn’t mean for it to happen?” he mocked with a laugh that felt like a dagger in my chest. “Why did you leave all those little things you’d stolen from my mother in my room? You knew she was the only person my father felt any kind of tenderness for.” His gaze narrowed to slits as he unbuttoned his shirt with brisk movements. “Why? Why’d you agree to marry me and then set me up for all of this?”

He jerked his shirt down and turned to show me his back. The scarred welts that matched mine I had expected, but there was more than that along his spine. There were injuries I couldn’t name. Strange burns, blotches that stained his skin.

“Because I’m horrid,” I said, turning away, disgusted with myself. “I’m the one who’s a serpent . . . a wretch. I did it because I was barely more than a stupid child! I was angry and young and impulsive and hopeless and . . .”

He jerked his shirt back up but left it to hang open in front. There was another burn high on his chest, just under his throat. It disrupted the dusting of auburn hair there. “That’s not an answer.”

My arms fell open at my sides. I sagged beside him. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want the truth. Why’d you ruin me? Why’d you rip my heart to pieces that day? Why’d you frame me with all those things you’d stolen before abandoning me to that hell housealone? You were the only good thing I had in all the world. Why, Rynn?Why?”

Anger and sadness warred within me. Another breath shuddered past my lips, and my nostrils flared. I felt like I was that girl again. Like I’d lost years of my life, traveled back in time, shrunk to a silly underfed, almost-child. “Because you lovedhim. You loved him more than you loved me.” Even my voice sounded younger in my ears.

“That’s not true,” he said slowly, staring off at the wall like he was staring into another time. “There wasn’t anything or anyone I loved more than you.”

“You were my only good thing in the world, too,” I said earnestly. “I swear it.”

Another tear shot down his cheek. A remembered fear stirred in my gut, tightening the muscles in my abdomen to near nausea. We were alone here, I knew that, but his tears made me afraid for him, afraid of what would happen if he were caught crying. Unable to bear the sight of it, I wiped his cheek clean.

I sucked in a sharp inhale but felt no stronger for it. I could have fainted, I was so unsteady. It was a struggle to stay upright, my lungs had constricted so much. “No matter what he did to us, no matter what cruelty he visited upon me right in front of you, you still loved your father. You still wanted to please that devil of a man. I couldn’t bear it. Not a moment longer. I couldn’t stay to watch you turn me away for his approval.”

“That never would have happened. Not ever,” he bit out.

“You had already started to ignore me in his presence. When he was around, you wouldn’t speak to me. I knew that was just the beginning. I . . . I wasn’t convinced you’d keep me.Wasn’t convinced youshouldkeep me. I wasn’t . . . I’ve never been a good girl, Loch . . . I was never going to amount to much.” Tears welled up in my eyes, then spilled over, shooting hotly down my cheeks. “I suppose we can’t know for sure what would have happened now.”

“I’m sure,” he said so forcefully I felt compelled to look back up at him, to see the blaze in his gaze. I was meek and useless as the focus of that fire sharpened once more on me and set me aflame. “Iknowwhat would have happened.”

“I saw no future for us because of him and because of me,” I confessed, laying my soul bare to his fire because he deserved that much at least. “And I hated how you loved him. Hated it so much that I . . . I hoped he’d cast you aside or you’d finally stop trying to win him over or . . . I don’t even know. Whatever he did to you, you loved him, and I thought finally, finallyI would break you of the habit.” With hands that shook, I touched the scars that marred his wet cheek, caressing them with the pads of my fingers. “But I didn’t wantthisfor you. Not any of it. I would never ever want you harmed!”

His jaw clenched. “Well,” he said, fresh sadness turning his eyes glassy, “your plan worked.”

His melancholy clawed at me, a monster riding on my back, digging in razor-sharp talons to tear me apart from the inside out. And I deserved every moment of its dreadful torture.

Chapter 14

Lochlan Finley

Making love to her again had been too much for me. As Rynn had slept in my arms after, I’d felt a pain in my chest sharper and more piercing than ever before. It was like my shattered heart was trying to stitch itself back together but it no longer fit inside the cage of my ribs. It was too battered and swollen.

So I’d left her there in the grass, naked and exposed, needing to get far away from the woman who had broken me into too many pieces.

I took her belongings and secured them in my bedroom behind lock and key, and still my haunted heart tried to rip me apart. I felt gutted as I hung the housecoat for her by the entrance and readied the things for her bath. When I returned to the first floor to seek refuge in the drawing room, I feltthe prickle of the ghosts responding to my agony, pulling in closer, made curious by the pain that radiated from me.

They filled my ears with their whispers.

I’d sent them all away with a shout. The ones tethered to me had to listen, and they took the others with them. That was my blessing and my curse now.

And then the house stayed quiet for a time.

Eventually, I went looking for her to make sure she made it inside before dark. It was her singing, her sweet soprano carrying down the halls that broke the silence and drew me to her. As she sang, voice echoing in the bathroom, I imagined she was singing just for me. Like in my dreams. She used to sing to me when we were young, but it was after I lost her, after I’d come to long for her nocturnal visits, that I started to think of her as my nightingale.

Now Rynn was seated next to me on the tile floor, staring at me, finally really seeing me. The knowledge of our past turned down her full lips and made her hickory-colored eyes glossy and dark as volcanic glass. Her chin hung toward her chest like it was too heavy to lift.

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