Page 74 of A Dark and Stormy Knight
“I do. I…did. A twin. Caroline.”
“A twin,” she breathed, her heart softened by the way he’d said her name, and then skewered by the use of the past tense. She tried to imagine Mercy without Felicity—or vice versa—and her eyes threatened to summon a storm the likes of which they’d not yet seen. “Can you tell me…what happened to her?”
He looked down at her for a long time, and she met his gaze with silent encouragement. This was like the doors in their home. This was what he’d kept locked away from her, this pain shimmering in his eyes, radiating from his body and fragmenting his soul.
After an eternity, his lips parted and he revealed to her what she understood he’d not been prepared to impart in the carriage.
She stood in the circle of his arms as he took a sledgehammer to the shards of her already broken heart. He told her about two children shivering on the cold cobbles, stealing their food and necessary supplies. Of hoping his sister would marry his best mate. Of his desperation and disappointment when she’d turned to the profession of so many to provide for herself what he, an ignorant thief, could not.
He recounted the violent day of Caroline’s death in vague and broken detail, though whether for her benefit or his, she couldn’t be sure. His eyes remained dry. Distant. As if he recounted the horrible tale of someone else’s sister’s cruel murder.
Pru was a puddle of emotion again when he ran out of words. The story didn’t even exactly seem over and yet he just…stopped abruptly.
Much like Caroline’s life had, before it had truly begun.
This time, when she buried her face against his chest, she plunged her arms around his waist, holding him close to her, wishing to impart all the solace she possibly could.
He stood still for a moment, stiff and unsure, before heaving out a kept breath, and dropping his cheek to rest on her hair.
He relaxed against her, allowing her to take some of his weight as they propped each other up, creating a creature of more strength for the sharing of their collective burdens.
“To think,” she said. “You could have drowned in that pain. Could have let it own you. But you chose to rise, instead, to become this…this miraculous, extraordinary man—”
Abruptly, he drew back, lifting a finger to press against her lips lest she say anything kinder. His eyes were still shuttered, opaque with uncertainty bordering on anxiety. As if he still hadn’t come to a decision. “I didn’t tell you to gain your sympathy nor your admiration,” he said before casting a furtive glance around the garden, finding only bees noisily eavesdropping on the last blossoms of lavender before autumn stole their bloom.
“I told you because I want you to know that…you’re not the only one in this marriage with damning secrets.”
Prudence shook her head, not understanding. “I have no secre—”
“I killed him.” The confession hung in the air like a cold blade, waiting to slice them apart. “The man who hurt my sister, who looked into her eyes as they dulled and died. I found him, I cut his throat, and watched as his blood soaked my hands.” He released her then, stepping away to show her his rough palms as if the stain remained. “He was a watchmaker, some nobody, who liked to hurt women. Girls. Who thought they deserved it.” His voice broke for a moment, and he looked away, not in agony, but apparent disgust for a human he’d helped out of this world and into the next.
“Dorian was nabbed for theft that night, which provided me a getaway, and I showed up on Vicar Applewhite’s doorstep. He granted me sanctuary. He washed the blood from my hands, much as I did for you the day I proposed.”
“My God.” Prudence stood as if her shoes had been welded to the cobbles. Her husband had just confessed a murder to her. The Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard. He’d killed the man who’d raped and murdered his sister in cold blood.
So why wasn’t she horrified? Or angry? Why did she still want to take him—and that grubby, starving adolescent he’d been—and rock him in her arms until she’d soothed away that pain? Confounded as she was by the truth, it took her a moment to process his next sentence.
“I revealed this to you as an olive branch,” he said earnestly. “No, a commiseration. We’re not so different, you and me. You see, revenge isn’t only a human trait, but a universal one. Justice is our society’s way to punish crimes, but when there is no justice, it’s natural to seek vengeance—”
She jerked away from him so violently, his hands were still outstretched as she retreated a few steps to the corner of the garden.
“Yes, wearedifferent,” she insisted, her trembling intensifying again, but for an entirely different reason than before. “We areabsolutelydifferent.”
He stared at her, his head cocked to the side in almost doglike befuddlement.
“You avenged your sister’s death, and I do not think I condemn you for that. But I…” She clasped both her hands to her chest. “Ididnot. I’m innocent of any and all crimes but the one you and I perpetrated together in that garden.”
She wanted to cry again, but, it seemed, she’d been wrung out of tears. Now, all she had left was a raw and open wound where her heart used to reside, one that ached and stung with every breath. “The fact that you still think I’m guilty is more disappointing than the condemnation of every paper and person in the whole of the empire. Don’t you see?” She shook her head, knowing that, even now, her husband’s mind, his heart, was closed to her. “I could face all this, every last individual I know and love turning their backs on me, if I could only hope that you believed me.”
He stepped forward, reaching for her until she held up a hand against him.
“What I’m telling you, Prudence, is that it doesn’t matter what I believe,” he said fiercely, gesturing with fervent, sharp swipes of his hand. “It doesn’t matter what happened in that room, I’m taking your side. Come what may, you have every tool at my disposal, every cent to my name, and every ounce of my power, influence, and expertise. I will get you out of this, you have my word.”
“And I thank you for that, but does it not destroy you to do so? Should you not only take up my defense if I am worthy of it? You don’tknowthat I’m innocent.”
“And I don’t bloody care!” he roared. “I’m telling you, dammit, that I would do anything for you. Do you understand? I would take responsibility on my own shoulders if I thought it would help. I would bring back the bastard and kill him, myself. I would commit perjury for you, Prudence, hell I’m afraid I’d commit murder if you asked me—”
“But Iwouldn’t. I. Would. Never!” She threw her arms up and turned away from him, pacing toward the fountain, wishing the sound of the water didn’t bring up memories of the night they’d met. “All I ask, is that you find out who killed George and clear my name.”
