Page 94 of A Rogue to Ruin
He exhaled, his fingertips stroking her arm. “After the dinner, I found myself going to the only place I truly know, the only place where I belong. Or used to, anyway.”
She angled her head so she could see his face. “The men there fight with knives like the children do?”
“Mostly for money, but also for the other reasons I mentioned before. I thought it would make me feel…not better, but more like myself.”
“And did it?”
He shook his head.
She traced the scar on his chin, starting at the base and slowly moving up to his lip. “And this was from a fight?”
“A particularly fierce one. I was seventeen. The other lad wanted to kill me.”
She tensed, lowering her hand to his chest. “Did you—”
“No, but Partridge had it done. He didn’t want anyone to question my authority again. That was the last time I fought, until last night.”
“That you managed to survive your childhood is astonishing.” Anne’s throat tightened. “Not only that, but look at what you’ve built, what you’ve become. And I don’t mean an earl. Even if you weren’t going to be ennobled, you’ve accomplished so much. You seem destined to be great.”
“It never felt like that. Every day was a struggle.”
“Even the days with your wife?” she asked softly. When he stiffened in response, she blurted, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked you about her.”
He pulled the cloth away from his chest and tossed it to the side of the bed. “I’m glad you did. I won’t keep anything from you. Not anymore.” He turned, and she lifted her head from his shoulder. “What I wanted more than anything was a family. I lost my parents, I missed my sister. By the time I was twenty, I was smart enough to recognize that Partridge and the other men in his employ werenota family. Still, it was the most secure I’d ever been, and at that time, Selina was lost to me. She’d left the boarding school to take a position as a governess.” His eyes briefly closed, but not before she saw the flash of pain in their depths.
She didn’t want to interrupt, so she waited for him to continue. In the meantime, she skimmed her fingertips across the varied slopes of his muscled chest.
“When I was twenty-five, I fell in love with Eliza. She was the daughter of a cobbler. Dark-haired and so full of vibrancy and laughter, she was everything I dreamed. Her father didn’t like me, but she believed he would come around. I wanted to earn his approval, and not just for her, but for me. I craved her family, that sense of belonging that had eluded me my entire life.”
His words curled around her heart and made her love for him expand. Emotion cinched her throat, and she flattened her palm against him. Perhaps the heat of his flesh would warm the chill inside her.
“I planned to leave Partridge’s employ. To do that, I reinvented myself as the Vicar, a moneylender in Blackfriars.”
At the mention of that name, a tremor passed through her. She wanted to ask how he’d become acquainted with Gilbert, but again, she wouldn’t interrupt.
“Partridge didn’t like that I left.” Rafe’s jaw clenched. “I was his best officer, you see. He gave me an ultimatum: return to his employment or he’d ruin my life. I thought he meant my new business endeavors. In addition to lending money, I also owned my own receiver shops—and the bookshop in Paternoster Row. And I was making other investments, looking to the future, because by then I had a wife, and soon I would have a child.” His voice cracked.
Anne cupped his neck, stroking her thumb along the underside of his jaw. “I’m so sorry.” She assumed he was going to tell her that Eliza had died in childbirth.
He took a deep breath and looked into her eyes. “This is where I may lose you—and I won’t blame you for it. Every time I told you I wasn’t worthy or that you could never know everything about me, this is what I was referring to. It isn’t just that I was married or my wife died. Or even that Partridge killed her—and our unborn child.”
Rafe’s body went completely rigid. Anne held her breath, desperate for him to continue and yet terrified by what he might say next.
“It’s that I killed him in retribution. I stole into one of his flash-houses where he was, and I cut his throat open, just as he’d done to Eliza.”
Anne clapped her hand over her mouth lest the sob gathering in her chest escape. After everything he’d endured, to suffer the loss of the family he was building was unimaginable. It was no wonder he held himself apart, that he’d tried to keep her at arm’s length.
When she trusted herself to speak, she lowered her hand. “You haven’t lost me. And you won’t. I still love you. I will always love you.”
“Truly?” He brought his hand to the side of her neck. “I can’t imagine you loving me when I can’t really love myself. When I lost Eliza, I lost myself. I didn’t think I could be found.”
“Well,Ifound you. And I’m not going to let you go.”
He dragged his thumb along her jaw. “Sometimes the depth of my emotion frightens me,” he said softly. “It’s why I tried so very hard to hold myself from you, despite being pulled quite strongly toward you from the moment we met. Losing Eliza, discovering how I lost my parents… If I lost you—”
She shook her head fiercely, thrilling at his admission of the way he felt about her from the very beginning. “You won’t.”
He smiled, but there was a sadness in his eyes that pressed on her heart. “I will always be afraid of losing those I love. That’s simply what happens to me.”
