Page 79 of A Dark and Stormy Knight
His voice was paradoxically decisive and uncertain, but it lacked the harshness of before. It contained a hoarse note too tame for desperation and too bleak for nonchalance.
Composure, it seemed, eluded them both.
“Deceit has been a relentless part of my entire life,” he began, dousing a bit of her hopes. Tempting her to curl in upon herself like a salted snail.
But she didn’t move.
And he didn’t stop.
“The only things I remember of my parents, are the lies they used to hurt each other with. When my father died, Caroline and I survived only through dishonest means. Everything we had could be taken by a craftier thief, a better con artist. It was the game we learned to play on the streets. After she…after I…” He broke off, filling his chest with an endless inhale as he pressed his thumbs into the grip of her fists as if he could likewise penetrate her closed heart.
Prudence relaxed her grip incrementally, doing her best to allow her insides to mirror the action. To open. To hear him.
“My parents never documented our birth, so I had no papers. I read the name Carlton off an advertisement for the Carlton Football Club posted on the building next to the military office where I joined up.” He made a rueful noise, shaking his head at the younger man. “Another lie I told, one I thought would have no consequences because I fully intended to die in some hole on another continent somewhere. I never thought I’d live to see England again. Instead, I shot a swath through entire countries. Killing for an empire that fabricates falsehoods and misrepresentations to the world as if words like humanity and honor do not exist in the face of progress and expansion. And then…”
He turned her hands palm up to caress the delicate lines there with his thumbs as he continued. “I became a police officer, of all things. And I implore you to find me a vocation wherein someone is confronted with more deception. Not only do criminals lie to me for every kind of reason, but regular, frightened, generally honest people do as well, merely for what I am and the authority I wield. My subordinates consistently report errors and embellishments, and many of them, apparently, use the uniform for criminal enterprise.”
He crept closer on his knees, powerful thighs bunching and straining against his trousers as he entreated her to hear him. “So much of my day-to-day life is spent unraveling untruths and investigating inaccuracies. I see them everywhere, and because of that, I think I’ve come to expect them from everyone.”
“I understand,” she murmured, as a sense of sympathy infiltrated her gloom. Such a life was not easy, such a mindset awfully arduous and burdensome. “You’re telling me this is why you are unable to trust.”
He gathered her hands to his chest as he brought their gazes even. Anchoring them against his pounding heart, he placed a fingertip beneath her jaw, nudging her to look up at him. Something shone in his gaze she’d never marked before. A gentle contrition. The glimmer of vulnerability. “Sweetheart. I’m telling you why I’ve been a fool. An unmitigated bastard. Prudence…I’m sorry.”
She would have sworn her heart ceased beating if not for the thrumming in her ears. Had she heard him correctly? Or was she fantasizing this?
Had she fainted again?
Her gaze flew to his, searching for signs that she was truly going mad.
“You…don’t have to—”
“I do,” he insisted, his visage claimed by an emotion both desolate and resolute. “The truth is, I don’t know you like a man should know his wife, but that is my failing, not yours. Beyond that, I think you are an honest person, possessed of integrity I’ve only ever pretended to have.”
She stalled, blinking over at him in wonder. “You do?”
His features softened as he regarded her with such infinite tenderness, she felt as though it might melt her completely. “Yes. You’re so open and vulnerable. You tell me everything you’re thinking. You tell me what you want, and what you feel and what you know to be true. Hell, that very first night, your shocking candidness was the first thing that drew me to you. From the beginning of it all…I’ve been inclined to believe every word from your mouth.”
The mouth he referred to fell open in abject incredulity. “Then…why?”
“Because everyone—literallyeveryoneelse—is a liar, including me, and with that, I have made my peace. But Prudence,” he brushed his thumb up her jaw, his eyes touching her face everywhere, searching for something. “You are the one person who can truly betray me, do you understand?”
She tilted her neck, pulling away from his distracting touch to shake her head with incomprehension.
“You’re going to make me say it,” he realized wryly, giving the impression of a boy squirming beneath a scolding adult’s insistence he explain himself. The electric blue of his eyes disappeared as he hid his expression behind his lids. “You are the epitome of every desire or dream I’ve conceived of since before I can remember, and that is a very specific kind of torment. An unparalleled beauty, a superb lover, a woman of grace and kindness and intellect whom I can only respect and admire. A fantasy in the flesh, here in my house. Withmyname.”
He lifted his empty hand to swipe it through his hair. “Christ, sometimes I have to just stand in the hall and stare at the door you sleep behind because I cannot believe my luck, my undeserved good fortune. You arehere. You are real. And so is our child.”
A sob escaped her. Not one adorned by tears, but disbelief. “But…” She didn’t even know where to start. A part of her had awakened at his words, the part made of need and love and hope and happiness. “But…only this morning you thought that I—You said—”
“I know what I said.” His jaw tightened before he continued, his brow crimping with earnest anguish. “Trust is not a word I understand. Faith is a foreign concept to me. Despite that, my instincts have screamed at me to trust you.” His gaze cast down as his jaw worked over powerful emotion.
“And then that insidious voice inside of me warns that if Ididbelieve you, and then discovered you lied? That you’d somehow swindled me, possibly the most incredulous man alive. Well…I’ve survived any number of disappointments, treacheries, and sorrows. But I don’t see the way back from that. You could break me, Prudence, don’t you see? It’s why I’ve been pushing you so hard. Why I almost needed you to be guilty, so the terrible truth—if it was a truth—would be out. So it was safe to fall for you because you were just as dishonest as the entire world. Just as deceitful as me.”
Prudence yearned to say so many things. To ask so many questions. To soothe him and set his churning mind at rest, but now that he’d begun, his torrent of words tumbled out in escape, like the freed captives of a heavily fortified prison.
Her hand stayed against his heart hammering beneath the hard muscle of his chest as he released his grip to tenderly cradle her face in his palms. The spark of warmth he’d ignited within her bloomed to an incandescent radiance, reanimating the spirit within her.
“I meant what I said earlier,” he whispered, his gaze searching hers, beseeching her. “Even though I was being an inconsiderate ass when I said it. I don’t care about scandal in the paper but for the fact that it distresses you. I’ll send anyone to the devil before they hurt you. I am a knight. A man with a code. A warrior with a creed. I vow, from this moment onward to beyourknight, wife. Someone who is honor bound to protect your name, your life, and your soul. I swear to you, that before this child is born, the world will know who did this. And they will know you didn’t.” His voice grew in fervency until he finished with the one thing she’d yearned to hear. “They will believe you, as I believe you.”
