Page 5 of Loving a Beast of a Marquess
Her pain stirred something in him. A wanting for something more; the grief that he so often ignored because there was no good outcome. When he was made into a monster, he could hardly wish for love, and so, he dared not. But this girl’s crying ignited into real feeling the silent longing for somethingmorethan this half-life with a burned a hole in his chest.
Zachary lowered himself to the ground beside where the girl was hiding. He could see nothing of her in the darkness, but her sobbing stopped abruptly as she realized he was there. Shock, he imagined. Shock had a way of freezing the limbs, and it appeared she had not expected to find him here.
“I know you’re there,” he said when she took another shuddering breath that was clearly designed to be quiet. “But fear not—I’m quite drunk.”
“Is that an effort to reassure me?” she asked after a second, her voice husky from crying.
“If you are wishing to remain anonymous, you may rest assured that I will remember very little of this evening—or you—tomorrow.”
“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “How… refreshingly honest.”
“I take it you’re finding the ball as detestable as I am?” He leaned back on his elbows and looked at the moonless sky. Dampness from the grass seeped through his coat, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.
Roberts, his valet, would care, but that was a problem for tomorrow.
“Oh, if you knew what it was like,” she said then gave a shaky laugh, “but of course you wouldn’t.”
“How so?”
“Who are you?”
He chuckled. “Having you know my name would put us on unequal footing, would it not? I may remember little of our meeting, butyouwill recall everything in great detail, no doubt.” He loosed a breath. “You may call me Quentin.”
This time, her laugh was a little stronger. “In which case, call me Daisy.”
“So, Daisy, what brings you out here on such a fine night?”
“You really are quite drunk,” she said amused. “I imagine the same thing as has brought you out, seeing as you confessed to finding the ball detestable.”
“Ah, yes. And you informed me that I don’t know what it’s like.”
“Yes,” she said, “I did though, perhaps, I should not have done.”
Zachary waved a careless hand, the movement clumsy enough it threatened to unsettle his balance, seated though he was. “We are strangers,” he said. “You may say anything you wish to me and feel no consequences.”
“Do you promise you won’t discover my identity?”
“Now that I have sat, I do not think I could stand even if I wanted to,” he assured her. “You are perfectly safe.”
“Then let me tell you this: you are a gentleman. You may mourn the death of a father, but it will never place you in such a predicament as I now face.” She hiccupped another sob before giving a slightly wet snort. “Andsuchgentlemen as I am expected—no, obliged—to marry.”
Zachary reflected with surprising relief that he could not have been one of these objectionable gentlemen as he had not danced once, but the thought was tempered by her grief. “I know what it is to lose a father and to feel… trapped in the life that you are left with.”
She sighed, the sound quiet yet burdened with a thousand things she didn’t say. “I never thought grief would feel like this.”
“Why, had you given it much thought?”
“Not as such, but… The realization that nothing will ever be the same again is a sobering one.”
“A sobering one indeed,” he said heavily. “You may think me enviable in that I am a gentleman, but that does not mean my position is enviable.”
There was a pause as she considered his words—a pause during which he wondered if he could have made a mistake—before she said, “How so?”
How could he put this without giving too much of his identity away? He frowned, attempting to marshal his spinning thoughts. “I am not well-liked,” he said at last, “but I should like to be.”
“And is that your fault?” she enquired.
That was a cutting question. Zachary’s frown deepened. “In part,” he admitted. “I drink too much.”
