Page 62 of Tender Blackguard

Lowering her chin, she spoke in a tone that was both quiet and firm. Soft but unrelenting. “A chilly stare can’t fool me anymore.”

Old emotions rose from the depths of darkness inside him, clawing to be free. His legacy was one of lechery and depravity. He’d been born of it and had lived most of his life under the shroud of his mother’s shame and loathing.

His fists tightened as his stomach churned. “You couldn’t possibly understand.”

“Explain it to me, then.”

He couldn’t. Couldn’t put words to the twisted feelings he’d inherited. The hatred burning inside him. The fear that this was how he’d always feel. Even after he destroyed the brotherhood and avenged his mother. How could a soul so blackened ever be cleansed?

Though the heat of the fire behind him began to burn the skin of his bare back, he felt chilled inside by an icy surety. As the woman in front of him watched him with gray eyes filled with calm strength and undoubting confidence, he acknowledged how wrong it all was. How wrong he was.

He altered his gaze—unable to look at her without pain spearing through his center—as he pushed abruptly to his feet. The urge to apologize scratched at his throat, but he couldn’t get the words out. He wasn’t sorry for having tasted of her lush sweetness, for having held her as he brought her pleasure. He couldn’t be sorry for that. The memories would likely stay with him the rest of him life.

She did not voice a protest or stir from her position on the floor as he collected his hastily discarded clothing. After drawing his shirt over his head, he clutched the rest of his garments in one hand, and he stared hard at her closed door.

He should dress completely. If anyone caught a glimpse of him leaving her room in his current state, there would no question as to what had transpired between them. She’d be ruined, shamed, and degraded. But he couldn’t stay another moment, feeling her silent gaze on his back.

Reaching for the door handle, he finally spoke. “I’ll keep my distance going forward. You must do the same.”

He didn’t wait for a reply before quickly exiting the room. He didn’t expect one.

#

LARK SIGHED—DEEPLY, with a breath that scored her throat and brought with it the prick of tears. But she wouldn’t cry. She’d learned long ago that it never did any good. Instead, once the sound of Warfield’s footsteps faded away, she rose to her feet and redressed in a new gown. Then she gathered her scattered buttons and her hairpins. She’d sew the buttons back on later. Right now, she needed to get back to work.

I’ll keep my distance going forward. You must do the same.

His final words to her echoed through her head. She’d do what he instructed. As best she could, anyway, in her current circumstances. For his sake but also for hers. Because she could no longer deny how deeply her feelings ran for the man when his departure from her room just now had nearly broken her in a way she hadn’t believed possible.

She’d seen and lived through too many heart-hardening experiences in her life. She’d long since believed herself incapable of heartache.

Warfield, however, had proven her wrong in that. And in other things.

It was clear he was consumed by the pain of his origins. When he told her his mother’s story, though he’d tried to keep his voice free of emotion, the damage done to his mother by his father had been passed on him. Thrown onto him. From an age when he wouldn’t have been able to see that his mother’s shame was not his own. Unable to contemplate that, although he’d been the result of something horrific and terrible, he was not to blame. Nor was he responsible.

He’d carried the weight of it all for so long, the fear that he was destined to become like the monster who’d sired him. He didn’t know how to release it. He might never know how. And because of that, he might never allow himself to be with her in the way she could see he wanted. In the way they both so obviously needed.

And though she could see those truths and even understand them, she had to acknowledge that she couldn’t change them. Only he could do that.

As she checked her reflection in the small oval mirror beside her wardrobe and patted her hair to ensured it was proper righted, she noted the uncharacteristic regret and quiet longing in her own familiar gaze.

One thing was for certain; he wouldn’t begin to see things differently until the brotherhood was destroyed.

He wanted her to remain safely ensconced in the house.

That simply wasn’t going to happen.

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