Page 92 of My Rogue, My Ruin
Brynn’s brother, Northridge, pressed the muzzle of his pistol to Eloise’s temple. “I’ll take that, thank you.”
Archer felt Brynn’s soft exhale against his back. “Gray, how did you find us?” she cried out.
Northridge’s eyes flicked to his sister. “Lana told me everything, and Hadley Gardens was my first stop to find you when I heard the shot,” he replied grimly, relieving Eloise of her gun though he could not stop her from whirling out of his grasp. She dove behind a wooden saddle stand.
“Don’t hurt her,” Archer ordered while Northridge kept his weapon trained on her. “Get Brynn out of here. I will take care of it.”
Brynn rushed to her brother’s side, clutching at him as Northridge wrapped his cloak around her shoulders. “I have Lana in the carriage outside. Come.”
“No. Archer,” Brynn said, her worried eyes leaping back to him. “I won’t leave you.”
He went to her, his need to have her gone from this wretched horse stall warring with his desire to keep her safely at his side. She would be safe with Northridge, though. Archer trusted that. “It’s over, love; she can’t hurt anyone now.” He kissed her swiftly on the temple and nodded to her brother. Archer took Northridge’s pistol and waited until they had left before addressing his sister, still hunched behind the saddle stand. “Eloise, it is finished.”
She stood, and the madness in her eyes had not snuffed out. If anything, it had flared. The light from the candle threw long shadows on her cheeks, making her scars there seem even more gruesome. Even after having stood at the end of her gun, after hearing her merciless plans to do away with him and the one woman he’d ever truly cared for, Archer felt a twinge of pity. The fire had burned scars on her face, but it had burned worse ones into her soul. Eloise was so consumed by hate that she would give up a chance at happiness and love just to punish him. Archer didn’t know if he could forgive her, or whether she would be able to forgive herself, but he knew that he had to try.
“We can work this out,” he said softly.
“Work what out, brother? You have a pistol pointed at me, and I have nothing.”
Despite his better judgment, Archer tossed the loaded weapon to the stall floor. Her eyes follow the movement and then leveled on him as if trying to see inside his heart. He would not shoot her. He could not. His sister needed help, and he would do anything to see it done. “Better?” he asked, inching closer to where she stood, eying him nervously. “Eloise, please listen to me. Langlevit wants you. He has already approached me.”
Her fingers clutched the folds of her dress. “Don’t say that to me,” she cried in a broken whisper.
“He wants your hand in marriage. You have a chance to be happy.”
“And what of you? Will you forgive what I have done?”
Archer stared at his sister and felt only deep, driving pity. Unloved and unwanted, she had twisted herself into something broken and bitter. But Archer knew that despite all her machinations, his mother’s deathhadbeen an accident. Eloise had loved her desperately. Her jealousy against him had been fortified and fed by his father’s indifference. Archer swallowed hard. “I can only promise that I will try.”
They stood in silence, separated by the wooden saddle stand. He could almost reach for her, but he didn’t want to startle her. He kept his arms and body relaxed. Emotions clashed in her eyes—the promise of happiness that lay just beyond her grasp and the desolation of what she had done, drawing her down into its depths.
“No, Archer, I don’t deserve to be happy.” She raised a shaking hand.
It wasn’t empty.
Archer recognized Brynn’s lady’s pistol trained on his chest. He froze as Eloise knocked over the nearby candle with a flick of her wrist. Hungry flames sprouted along the dried hay at her feet and licked at the hem of her dress. “This ends now, the way it was meant to.”
Brynn is safe.It was all he could think of as he saw the fire spreading at his sister’s back and traveling into the space between them.
“Don’t do this,” he said, his voice hoarse, his mind racing forward to calculate how to reach Eloise without being engulfed in flames. As it was, the exit to the stall would be closed off to him within seconds. “It’s not too late.”
“It was too late the moment I killed the only person who loved me.” She smiled at him through her tears and through the flames, and for a moment, Archer had a glimpse of the old Eloise. The girl he had grown up with. Had loved and protected and cared for. It was as if all her scars had disappeared, and she was a young girl once more. Her eyes were light and clear and finally,finally, filled with remorse. “I am sorry.”
It was then that Archer realized that she was no longer pointing the gun at him. Instead, she had turned it toward her own chest. He lurched forward, but his feet touched a wall of fire, and he jerked back, the flames singeing his trousers. “No, Eloise!”
“Don’t think too badly of me, brother,” she whispered.
And then she pulled the trigger.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It made little sense that people would spend summers in town instead of out in the country, Archer thought as his horse trotted along the dirt lane, undulating through two fields of new spring grass. The blades were so pale they neared chartreuse. Essex’s air was clean and fresh, and by midsummer it would be scented by fields of wildflowers, hay, and meadowsweet. He breathed it in, his hold on his reins loose, his posture unusually relaxed. London was sticky, dusty, and smelly, and right then, it was also a hotbed of gossip revolving around the events that had unfolded in the mews behind Hadley Gardens two weeks past.
So much so that his removal of the marriage banns from theTimeshad barely garnered a reaction. Archer had cited the postponement of the nuptials on the pretext of his entering mourning for his sister, but he knew deep down it was what Brynn wanted. It was what shedeserved.
Now that Eloise—and the imposter—was dead, there was no need for the farce to continue. They had each known, should the imposter be outed, that there would be no wedding. That Archer would continue with his life, and Brynn with hers. Their agreement was over. He pushed the thought of her from his mind with brusque finality.
Archer was relieved to be gone from London for the remainder of the season. He would be more relieved when he did not wake every morning with the memories of his father’s and sister’s deaths already front and center in his mind. In time, the pain that accompanied those memories would pass. The clench of his stomach and the ache in his heart wouldn’t be so all-consuming. He knew this from experience, of course. It had taken him years to heal after his mother’s death, though now that he knew the truth—that the fire that killed his mother had been set purposely by Eloise, her intent aimed at his death, not his mother’s—all the pain he’d thought he’d finally buried churned back to the surface.
