Oath

by K. J. Jackson

  Looking at him, she attempted a sad smile through her frown. “A cruel twist, since they were the very reason I turned my life the way I did, and then they were gone” —the fingers of her free hand slowly flittered into the air above her mare’s mane— “just like that.”

  The trail dodged inward, and in the next steps of the horses, they arrived at the Roman ruins. Or more correctly, the ruins of the castle that was once built around and above the Roman baths. Only the walls of grey stones, much the same ones as Mortell Abbey was built with, stood from the ground, still stacked taller than Tieran in some areas, not even up to his knees in others.

  Tieran looked to Liv just as she angled her face to a single thin ray of sunlight that broke through the clouds. The ray lit the tiny flakes of snow blowing from the trees—a thousand diamonds floating in the air around her head.

  He had to forcibly turn his head from the sight. From the innocent pleasure on her face.

  In front of them, the snow had melted down to the ground in a wide ring around the building. Tieran dismounted his horse and wrapped the reins to a tree along the edge of the melt. Sprigs of green fought up through the brown layer of dead grass, and his horse dipped straight for them.

  He turned to Liv, taking her hand to help her alight from her sidesaddle.

  “The air, it is warm right here,” she said as she gained her footing on the dormant grass.

  “I believe it comes up from the baths below. A natural warm spring that they built the baths around. Or so Lord Mortell told me.”

  Liv nodded, walking toward the ruins. “I did not expect this. Do you think we can still get below to see them?”

  Tieran tied off Liv’s mare a healthy distance from his horse where another handful of green grass shot up. Falling into step behind Liv as she picked her way around the crumbled blocks of the outer walls, he watched her pull and push at the stones, her curiosity brimming forth. He recalled it quite suddenly—her infectious enthusiasm for the new and interesting. She had always wanted to see and experience so much more than she had in Cheshire.

  “There.” Tieran pointed past her head to the right. “I think there is an opening through there.”

  She jumped a step, rushing to where he pointed and then veered inward past the outer wall. “Yes. Stairs going down.” She looked over her shoulder at him as he rounded the corner from the outer wall. “The entrance around it is still intact.”

  Just as Tieran opened his mouth to advise against going down—he had no idea how safe the stairs were, or if the stones could crumble above them—Liv disappeared into the niche along the wall and out of view. No time to even plead caution.

  With a sigh, he followed her down the circular stone staircase, its width designed for much smaller men than he.

  Ducking under the low opening into the bath chamber, Tieran was engulfed in humid warmth. Once his eyes adjusted to the low light emanating from the small, rectangular slits along the top of the chamber, he found Liv already halfway across the wide room.

  Her back to the wide, square recess in the floor partially filled with dark water, she stared at the wall as she stripped off her gloves and removed her cloak. Setting them down on the long stone bench that ran the length of the chamber, her fingertips went to the wall, brushing aside a thick coating of dirt.

  It wasn’t until Tieran was a step away from her did he realize what held her rapt attention. Where she had brushed away dirt, a mosaic of tiles had begun to appear.

  From the area she had cleared, he could recognize the black eyes, nose and mouth of some type of green serpent. A monster from the sea, if his imagination ran free.

  She looked up at him, a grin on her face. “This is extraordinary, Tieran. These are Roman?”

  “I believe so.” He took off his gloves, running his fingers across the ancient tiles she had uncovered. Gritty dirt stuck to his fingertips, some of the mortar and tiles crumbling under his touch.

  Liv spun around, her hand sweeping around them. “And this bath—can you even imagine how glorious it would have been when it was first built? The warmth when just above it is cold?” Her jaw shifted to the side as she looked at the pool of water. “The green water aside, one could swim in the length of that bath, though I do not know if I would enjoy bathing with scores of other people.”

  Tieran chuckled.

  Her look went to an opening at the far end of the chambers, which, presumably, led to more baths. Darkness flickered across her face, stealing the smile from her lips. “Lord Shepton insinuated these were…ruins…above ground ruins, some crumbling buildings. Not these, these hidden chambers…” Her voice drifted to silence.

  Tieran recognized exactly what she had just realized. He had no patience for it. “Why else would he want to accompany you out here, Liv?”

  Her look snapped to him as she forced a brittle smile. “Of course I should have suspected—simple facts I should have inquired about with Lady Mortell.” She shook her head, disgust crossing her face. “I have been thinking of other things.”

  Her look dropping to the floor, her hands clenched as she rubbed the dirt between her fingers and her palms, flecks of blackness falling along her skirt. “I need to wash the dirt from my hands.”

  Without waiting for him to reply, Liv moved past him and went to the circular staircase, rushing upward.

  Tieran watched as Liv, only a few steps in front of him, gulped fresh air once she had escaped the ruins, hurrying to tromp through the snow to the edge of the nearby stream. The moving water had managed to defy the cold holding hostage to the land, only half of it frozen over.

  Liv picked her steps carefully down the bank, the toes of her boots slipping on the icy rocks. At the edge of the stream she went to her knees, bending over the water.

  Tieran followed her, his boots crunching across the rocks.

  Standing in silence behind Liv as she swished her hands in the open stream, he watched the water bubble along the edge of the shelf of ice covering the stream. He couldn’t tell which was winning—the ice, or the warmer water, holding on, refusing to freeze.

  “You want to ask me a question. I can see it.” Her voice came soft, just above the gurgling of the stream.

  His gaze darted to the top of her head, the black wool bonnet she wore shielding her face from his view.

  Setting her wet hands on her black wool skirt, she remained on her knees next to the stream. It took several moments before she twisted her body so she could look up at him. Her left eyebrow had lifted in question. “You can just ask it, Tieran. There is no need to lurk about it on my account.”

  Tieran stared at her, unnerved by the incisive way she looked at him. She always could read him. She could from the start. And she had never shied away from provoking him when he preferred to remain silent.

  Maybe she was right. Maybe now was the time.

  Tieran took a bracing breath. “Why did you marry Lord Canton, Liv? Why did you not wait for me?”

  { Chapter 9 }

  “Liv?”

  She gave herself a slight shake, dismissing the shock that had seized her. How long had she been staring at Tieran with her jaw askew? Still on her knees, she twisted forward, looking down at the stream, attempting to exhale the breath that sat stubbornly in her chest. “I had thought you were going to ask me about the list.”

  “Should I ask you about the list?” His low voice came down upon her from behind, heavy. “The other question is more important to me, Liv.”

  She nodded, but could not turn back to him, her cold hands curling onto her wool skirt. Nor could she manage to gain her feet. Not yet. Not when every bit of strength in her body had just deserted her.

  She saw it in his eyes. Hurt from years ago surfacing. Unspeakable pain she recognized because she had felt it herself. Hurt she had never seen Tieran let surface in his blue eyes. Anger, she had seen plenty of. But never the pain. She hadn’t believed he had felt it, just the same as her.

  “Liv.”

  “No. It is fine
.” She held her bare hand up, the back of it to him as she closed her eyes.

  She just needed one more moment. One more second to steady herself. She dragged air into her lungs, the cold stinging as it descended deep into her body. “You have never asked the question, Tieran. You have never had the chance to. It would be the one thing I would want to know.”

  Rocks crunched behind her, an impatient sound.

  “You did not wait for me.”

  Her eyes stayed closed, her head slowly shaking. “I thought you were dead.”

  “So you married an old man—older than your grandfather—for what?” She heard him take a step toward her back, his space overtaking hers. “The title? The money? Did you turn into your mother while I was at war? Willing to exchange everything for a title—even if it came with a lecherous old fool?”

  “No.” She sprang to her feet, spinning to him, her hand landing flat on his chest, pushing him. “Do not dare to speak ill of Lord Canton. You do not get to do that. You will respect him, for he saved me. He saved me and I saved him.”

  Tieran shuffled one step backward. Only one. “Saved you from what, Liv? What could you have possibly needed to be saved from?”

  Her hand slid downward from his chest, deflated. “Ruin.”

  She wasn’t ready to have this conversation.

  She would never be ready. Not with Tieran. Not with anyone. Aside from Viola, the only people that knew of her past were dead and buried.

  Her gaze dropped from his face, unable to witness the questions, the searching in his eyes. How many answers did she owe him? How many truths? What was love owed?

  She backed up.

  Three steps, and her heel dropped, slipping off the icy bank of the stream. She fell backward, arms flailing.

  Tieran caught her arm, yanking her onto solid ground before her skirts touched water.

  His hand a vise around her upper arm, he stared down at her, not releasing her.

  “Liv, you need to tell me. I am owed an explanation.”

  She twisted her arm, a final weak attempt to break free, to escape the one thing she swore she would never do. Speak of the past.

  He didn’t let her go.

  Her eyes closed for an elongated breath.

  What did it matter now? Her mother was dead. Her father was dead. Every reason she’d had for marrying Lord Canton had disappeared with time, no longer relevant.

  If Tieran took what she told him and ruined her in society with it, did it matter? He would just be verifying to the ton what half of them already thought of her. Vulgar, lewd, shameless, trollop. She knew exactly what words were whispered as she went by. And she had become immune to it long ago. Were it not for the fortune Lord Canton had left her, and the many teats it offered for investments, she would have been ostracized long ago.

  The ruin she could live with. The harder thing to contend with was the very real possibility that if she exposed her soul to Tieran, offering herself up bare to him, he could smash her vulnerability into tiny, irreparable pieces.

  But he was right. She owed him this. This explanation. No matter what it cost her.

  Words gathered, she opened her eyes to stare at the dark lapels of his overcoat, half open in front of her.

  “The summer I married Lord Canton.”

  “Yes?”

  “I had been out riding on Thunder—do you remember her?”

  His fingers on her arm twitched, but his grip didn’t loosen. “Yes. I remember. A fine filly.”

  Liv nodded. Thunder had been a fine mare. Beautiful and bold and fast. A white streak across the fields. “I had taken her out on the high cliff above the Rosewood Brook. Do you remember that spot? We spent so much time there walking along the cliff. I would go there every time I missed you.”

  She smiled, soft. “Which was every day. All day long. For more than two years. Mama grew tired of me always disappearing, but she also knew how heartsick I was for you, so she let me be. Papa helped with that, I think, and told her to leave me to my wanderings. Even at the end—when the war had been done for a year, and he knew you were dead, he still let it be. Made Mama let it be.”

  She gasped a breath, her lips drawing inward. Exhaling, the air, the words came in a rush. “That was where they grabbed me. Stole me. At the cliff. They shoved me in the back of a wagon. Sat on me. Wrapped my head so I couldn’t see.”

  Her eyes closed. She couldn’t look at Tieran anymore. Not his chest. Not even his clothes. “It was dark for five days. The rocking. I was sick again and again and again. And I lay there. Lay there in the filth of it. The smell.” She shook her head, her nose wrinkling at the memory of putrid stench. “I just wanted it to be done. Over. I wanted death. Prayed for it. When they propped me up, dragged me up some stairs, and yanked the mask off of me, I was in a brothel in London.”

  Tieran’s clamp on her arm pinched, digging into muscle, hurting, but Liv couldn’t shake free, couldn’t tell him it hurt, couldn’t even open her eyes. His hand was the only thing holding her up.

  “They cleaned me. Verified I had never been compromised. Set me on a stage, meat to buy. Sold me for my virginity. An auction, bidding on me like I was a cow. But the man that bought me did not touch me. He walked out of the brothel with me, a sack over my head, and put me in a carriage. I never even saw what he looked like. The woman inside brought me to a house where there were other women like me. Others that had been sold in the brothel.”

  Her words had dropped to a wooden monotone. “My body was unscathed, but I was ruined, through and through. I had been gone for nearly a fortnight. Sold in a brothel. I could never go back to my parents. Never again put myself before you even if a miracle happened and you appeared. And that was when a friend I made at the house, Viola, offered me a way forward. She had gone through the same as me—stolen from her home, sold. But she found a way to move forth without ruin. She married an elderly man—an acquaintance, and he had a friend that needed the same thing—a young, strong wife. Lord Canton was old and feeble and he needed someone he could trust to help protect him against a cousin that was too eager to gain the title with his death. He was feeble, but his mind—his mind was strong.”

  “Lord Canton’s cousin tried to kill him?”

  “Yes. I did not believe it at first either—paranoia, I thought. But even after we were married he continued his attempts to kill Lord Canton. He was devious, and I have the scars from intervening upon several of the attacks. I had to run from the house to push my husband out of the way of a carriage, but I could not clear myself and the carriage wheel cut my arm open. I had to break Lord Canton’s fall halfway down the stairs, roll with him the rest of the steps, shielding him the best I could. More bruises. Cuts. But I protected him. That I did. Time and again.”

  Liv could feel the pulsating in Tieran’s fingers on her arm, the fury he wanted to unleash. But all she saw behind her closed eyes were flashes, snippets of those days. The terror that would not release. The utter loss of who she was and what she should do.

  She rushed on, pushing words from her lips before he interrupted her, before she could speak no more.

  “So I had a choice, Tieran. I could marry Lord Canton. Tell the world we eloped. People would jeer, yes. But I would not be scorned, ostracized. No one would know what happened to me—that I had disappeared without explanation for that length of a time, alone, would have ruined me. The marriage meant that my parents would maintain their status. And Lord Canton would gain an ally, someone to care for him.” She heaved a breath, her chin dropping. “I was so lost. My heart, my soul, my life. Everything gone. I married Lord Canton because I saw no other path.”

  She shivered, the entire ugly truth escaping her, only to leave an empty, wicked chill in her body. She wished she hadn’t left her cloak in the baths.

  Silence smothering them, the gurgle of the stream was the only thing that moved, that dared to make a sound.

  Minutes passed, and Tieran didn’t move, didn’t say a word. His hand stayed a frozen c
lamp around her arm.

  When she could finally open her eyes, Liv braved a glance upward.

  The exact thing she feared.

  Her look dropped to Tieran’s boots with a gasp, the disgust on his face too much to bear.

  “I am sullied. I know. Everything you have believed of me, verified.” She shook her arm, trying to free herself. When that didn’t work, she stepped to the side, pulling and turning away whether he was going to release her or not. “You now know, Tieran—the truth was what you needed and now you have it. So be done with me.”

  His grip clasped harder. The five harsh points of his fingers on her skin dug into her muscle, pulling her arm backward, straining her shoulder.

  Her arm high in the air behind her, captive, Liv lunged forward with all her might. Not an inch. Not a step. She stood straight, attempting to ease the pain his grip caused, but could not look back at him. He was near to snapping her arm, but she refused to bow to the pain. “I would like to return to the abbey now, Tieran. You have what you came out here for.”

  “No. No, I am stunned, Liv.”

  His fingers spread on her arm, and her body instinctively twisted sideways, trying to escape the pain it caused. He reacted instantly, releasing her.

  Freed, she started toward the half-crumbled castle. She moved along the outer wall, passing under the stone archway that still held firm against time, denoting the entrance to the structure.

  “Stop.” He was on her silently, snatching her wrist and spinning her around, trapping her against the stone wall. He grabbed her chin, forcing her to look up at him. “Hear me now, Liv. I don’t think you sullied. Never. I am stunned that you believed I would ever toss you aside. Stunned that you did not wait for me to find you—did not trust me, trust in the love I had for you.”

  She wedged her head away from his grip on her chin. “I thought you were dead, Tieran. You had not come for me and the war was a year over.” Her head shook, but it was nothing compared to the frozen tremble coursing through her body. “You were dead and I was facing utter ruin—a solitary life of expulsion and scathing looks—of losing my family and being cut by all those that I once knew. I did what I had to in order to survive, the best I knew how. I cannot apologize for that.”