Page 42 of My Hellion, My Heart
The chasm made him forget how to feel, how to care. How to love. He’d become cold and inhuman just so he could survive. And yet that had been the day everything within him died.
Until Irina.
She made him feel things that had long been dead and buried. It was as if she already understood, as if she could see to the heart of him—to all the dark, terrible secrets buried inside—and none of it mattered.
“Damnation,” he muttered, pressing the heels of his palms against the mantel in his study. He wanted to remain invulnerable and emotionless. Keep the past where it belonged. Yet one gentle touch of her fingers, one whisper of her voice, and the emotions he’d held at a safe distance for so long flared closer. He wanted to lay himself bare. Confess all his sins and secrets. Find forgiveness in her. Lose himself in the bliss of her body. Find mercy in the warmth of her smile.
“This is absurd,” he bit out aloud. “Get a hold of yourself.”
“You called, my lord?” Stevens asked from the doorway.
Henry frowned and was about to dismiss the butler with a curt nod, but he paused, his fingers gripping the ledge. He was not a man given to drinking to excess, but suddenly he had the notion that a good glass or two was in order. “Fetch me a cask from the cellar of my single malt. The last batch from Dumfries.”
“Of course, my lord.”
When Stevens returned as requested, Henry nodded his thanks and poured himself a liberal serving. “See that I am not disturbed, unless it is an emergency.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Henry settled himself in his armchair and consumed the entire glass in a single swallow. The liquor burned a hot path to his belly. He groaned and tossed back a second. Breathing heavily, he poured himself another, swirling the amber liquid in the crystal snifter and catching wafts of its peaty, rich notes. He should have chosen something other than this if drowning his demons in spirits was what he truly sought. Consuming it in so uncouth a manner was sacrilege to such a carefully crafted malt, aged for twenty-five years before being uncorked. Taking another swallow, this time slower in order to savor its taste, Henry closed his eyes and let the warming liquid flow over his tongue. It was complex and beautiful and lush.
Much like Irina.
She would appreciate this vintage, he thought. He’d never met anyone who loved the taste of whiskey as much as he did. Henry smiled. Yet another of the things they had in common. The list was getting longer. With a sigh, he stared into the fireplace, watching the flames leap and dance, his mind again consumed with thoughts of her.
Once more, she’d been the one to draw him back from the abyss. And both times, he’d managed to calm himself in minutes instead of hours. Henry had no illusions that that miracle was because of Irina. He trusted her, he realized with a start. And trust was not something he gave lightly.
If she knew the truth of everything he’d done, she would not be as enamored of him as she had been in the past. Would she hold him in such high favor if she knew he’d cowered like a dog as his captors had taken turns shooting at him in the prison courtyard, a bag placed over his head for sport? That he’d lost his bowels when one bullet grazed his scalp and another nicked his ear? Ever since, the sound of a gunshot was enough to drive him to madness. It did not matter where he was, the sound dragged him back into that courtyard, those cracking shots coming his way through clouds of gunpowder smoke, any one of them a promise of death. No matter what Henry did, he would never escape his past.
The servant girl’s death, as painful as it had been, had not been drawn out for weeks. Unlike his torture…beaten to within an inch of his life and then nursed back to health for months on end. An unending cycle of pain and horror and misery.
Henry drained the contents of his glass and clumsily refilled another, his hands shaking.
What would his innocent, beautiful princess think if she saw his back and knew that he’d been whipped like an animal? The scars there were testament to his powerlessness and his eternal shame.
She wouldn’t have him.
No one should have him. No one deserved someone that was broken beyond repair. Destroyed beyond redemption.
A soft knock drew his attention. “My lord?”
Henry scowled, tearing his cravat loose with an angry tug. “Stevens,” he barked. “I said I did not wish to be disturbed.”
“My apologies, my lord,” Stevens said, cracking the door open. “But it’s Lord Thorndale, and he is most insistent on an audience.”
“Send him away.”
“Too late,” a voice said as a large shape vaguely resembling Thorndale pushed his way into the room and closed the door behind him. “What kind of man only shares his best whiskey with himself?”
Henry’s scowl descended into a ferocious glower. “One who values his solitude.”
Removing his coat as if he meant to settle in for the afternoon, Thorndale laughed in his face and poured himself a glass, refilling Henry’s at the same time. “Drowning your sorrows?”
“Call it whatever you like,” Henry said. His eyes narrowed on the man who had boldly ensconced himself in the armchair on the opposite side of the fireplace—uninvited—with a drink in hand. He stared at Henry with an inscrutable expression. “And don’t mind me, help yourself,” Henry added sourly.
“Won’t mind if I do.” Thorndale took a delicate sip and sighed his appreciation as he sampled another. “Now,thiswas worth returning to dreary old London for.”
“You left early,” Henry said, an edge of accusation on his tone, even though he himself had done as much.
