Oath

by K. J. Jackson

  “You need to leave, Liv.”

  “Yes, I probably do. And I will exit in a moment.” She pointed to the wing chair by the fireplace. “But not until you sit and I am assured that whatever just happened in here has passed and you are not about to destroy more furniture.”

  “I’m awake, Liv. I have control.”

  Her head cocked to the side. “Do you? Your body is still taut—almost to shaking, Tieran. Sit, if only to soothe my silly worries.”

  He heaved a sigh that vibrated through the room and then ambled to the chair, plopping down, his fingers raking through his dark blond hair. His glare, centered on her while he moved, was unmistakable, but it also wasn’t about to frighten her away.

  Liv moved in front of him, using her bare toes to pull the footstool close to his knees so she could sit directly before him. She held out the tumbler of brandy. Another sigh, but he did thrust his hand out to take it. Their fingers met around the glass and she realized his hand was still trembling.

  Positioning herself between his long, outstretched legs, she sat on the footstool, balancing her arms along the length of her thighs as she leaned forward, waiting for him as he emptied half the glass in one long swallow.

  Before she could speak, Tieran pinned her, warning in his blue eyes. “Where I was in my dreams, you want no business of, Liv.”

  “Do I not get to decide that?”

  His voice dropped to a growl. “Do you want to hear how I hated you? Hated you with such a passion it nearly destroyed everything around me?”

  A slight gasp escaped her. Her lips ajar, her tongue slid to the side, running along her teeth, clamping back at rising to his baited words. “No. But I also do not want to see you in this state—in the state I just saw you.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have opened the door, Liv.”

  She nodded. “But I did. Was that what was in your dreams—hate?”

  “Amongst other things.”

  She exhaled with a silent nod, standing, then paused for a moment before leaning forward to take the glass from his hand. “Then it appears as though I have stumbled upon a moment of reckoning.”

  With a quick backward tilt of her head, she drained the rest of the glass, the fire burning a path down her throat. Going to the sideboard, she slowly refilled it, watching the quiver in her own fingers.

  Before she turned around to Tieran, she forced a deep breath into her lungs, bracing herself. Steadied, she returned to him, handing him the tumbler as she reclaimed her seat on the footstool. She met his gaze. “You hated me because I failed you. I was not there for you after the war to help you escape the hell it put you in.”

  He set the glass on the end of his left knee, his fingers moving to hold it by the rim before meeting her eyes. “I hated you because you did not wait for me.”

  She fortified herself against the words, against the pain palpitating through his words. Of course he had hated her—she had hated herself. But she had also long since accepted the necessity of what she had done. “As much as I wish your forgiveness, Tieran, I cannot defend against what I chose to do. I had been ripped from my home. I thought you were dead. I was on the brink of ruin, of being disowned—I could only imagine the worst of what my life would become. Marrying Lord Canton was the only security I could find.”

  “I know, Liv. I know that now.” His right hand ran through his hair again. “But back then…back then I hated you for a very long time. Knowing the reason now does not remove the hate I once felt. I still lived it, breathed it, unjustified though I now know it was.”

  A frown on her face, she nodded. She could do nothing but accept the fact.

  His head fell back, his eyes going to the elaborate ornamental motifs on the ceiling. “So when you asked why I was broken, I did not want to speak of the hate. I did not want to put that upon you.”

  “But it was real. It happened.”

  “Yes. And when I came for you, I carried with me each and every dream of the men that had died on foreign soil—their dreams to return to their loved ones. I was returning to you—my love—not just for me—for all of us. Only once I came for you, you were gone.”

  “Married to another.”

  His look dropped to her, agony in his blue eyes. “And there, in that moment, I realized what their pain was in their dying moments—the horror, deep in their souls, that they would never see, hear, or touch their loved ones again. Bury their faces in the sweet smell of their wives’ hair. Hold their children, clutching them to their chest. They knew dying in that muck they would never have that again.”

  Her hand went to his right knee, gently setting her fingers atop it. “Only death released them from those thoughts—whereas you had to live with that pain.” Through the sheet covering his leg she could feel him twitch at her touch.

  “Yes.” He looked down to her hand on his knee and then shook his head, staring at it. “What I would have given for the merest touch from your hand during that time.”

  He lifted the tumbler, taking a long swallow. “But I managed to do the impossible—I managed to put myself back together, Liv. Put myself back together enough to walk, to talk, to eat. And I learned how to smile again.”

  Her hand slipped off the edge of his knee, curling back into her lap. “With Lady Rachel?”

  His head slanted to the side, his blue eyes taking measure of her. “Yes, with Rachel. She was small and delicate and soft.”

  “Everything I am not.”

  Tieran’s look swept her face, her hair, moving down her body and back up again. “I could not be around anything you were, Liv—anything that reminded me of you.”

  Liv nodded. She didn’t want to understand, didn’t want Tieran to have found another love.

  But he had.

  And she did understand.

  “You loved her?” Her voice cracked.

  “I did. Deeply.” He took the last swallow of the brandy, looking away from Liv. His gaze landed on the wrecked table. “But I never did learn how to sleep again. Not properly.”

  Liv followed his gaze to the table, and then she glanced down to his knuckles to see if there was any blood. How he had destroyed the table so completely, in such a short amount of time, bewildered her. She looked to him. “I know you led men and they died, but what exactly did you do in the war, Tieran?”

  He flinched, his look snapping to her. “I…”

  “Yes?”

  “No…no one has ever asked me that before.”

  “Not Rachel?”

  “No.” His head shook slowly. “She knew…knew I was damaged, but I could never tell her why. And she never asked. I know she didn’t want me to dredge up pain that was best forgotten.”

  Liv stared at him. His breathing had quickened, his bare chest stretching tight with each inhale. His look went to the fire, to the mantel, darting from one thing to the next, looking for a haven. He was fighting against memories—she recognized it because she had done it herself a thousand times. “Just because it is best forgotten does not mean it does not fester within you, Tieran. Does not yearn for release.”

  He abruptly stood, shuffling past her legs and setting the tumbler down on the sideboard as he moved across the room. Stopping at the windows, he pulled the heavy velvet draperies back and stared out.

  Silent moments stretched long, suffocating the room as she stared at Tieran’s back. He wasn’t going to speak. Not without encouragement. There was a time when she would have planted herself in front of him, demanding, nose-to-nose, that he bare all to her. And he would have.

  But they were not those people anymore, and she didn’t know how far she could push him without getting stung.

  Liv stood and moved across the room, stopping several steps behind him. She looked past his bare arm, out the window to the vast land of snow covering the lawns and trees, the whiteness a sea of sparkles under the reflection of the three-quarters moon.

  “What did you do in the war, Tieran?” Her voice soft, she shuffled closer to set her fingers l
ightly along a hardened muscle of his bicep. “Whatever it was, I can only imagine you did what you had to in order to survive. That is what I have been told about war.”

  Her breath held, she waited, her fingers frozen along the smooth skin of his arm.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  Her fingers ached to move, to push him further, but she held still in silence, refusing to back away.

  “It is survival.” His voice crept out towards the window in the softest murmur. “War was survival.” His head, his shoulders shuddered, and Liv could see his jawline tighten at the exact moment his muscle went impossibly hard under her fingers. “But then at some point—at some random and brutal moment in time—survival becomes irrelevant, and the only thing one is left with is the need for punishment.”

  “Punishment?” Her fingers wrapped around his upper arm, tugging him to face her.

  Tieran inhaled, the breath lifting his chest high before he turned slightly, his blue eyes meeting her gaze. “It becomes the important thing—the only thing. Punishment for those that killed my men, men I considered my brothers.”

  “Punishment?” Liv repeated the word in a whisper, watching torment take over his eyes.

  “Not just punishment, Liv. I needed to find all of the killers, and there was only one way.” He stared at her.

  “What does that mean, not just punishment?” Her head slanted, staring, searching for answers in his eyes. “No…not just punishment…torture?”

  He turned from her, a tremble running the course of his body, vibrating her fingers with the force of it. The quaking didn’t cease.

  His head had dropped, his eyes closed as his voice cracked. “I became the monster everyone always saw in me. The monster everyone always knew was within me. And not a man stopped me. They wanted it as well. I was ordered to do it. But it was me, Liv. Me. My hands. My monstrosity.”

  He gasped a swallowed breath, his body shaking with increasing violence. Violence that wouldn’t stop.

  Liv swallowed hard. Swallowed back the rage in her throat. The injustice. The outrage.

  That Tieran—her love—had ever, for even one second in his life—believed he was a monster. The sheer perversion of that blasphemy swelled in her chest, the infuriation burning, speeding her heartbeat.

  She bit back a scream—a scream that would only rant at the heavens, at ghosts, at men that demanded power and greed be satisfied by the deaths of thousands. By the death of Tieran’s spirit.

  Tieran had once known he was an honorable man. But now—now she could see he questioned it in every step he took, every move he made, every word he uttered. It made her heart ache.

  Her hands fighting tremors of their own, she settled both of her palms along his bare back, moving them up along his shoulders before they drifted downward, slipping around his waist to encircle him, her cheek nuzzling into the crook along his spine. His heat flooded her face.

  “Tell me what I can do, Tieran.” Her voice dropped to a cracked whisper. “Anything. I will do anything.”

  A soul-shattering quake rolled through his body, every muscle shuddering. She could feel the tears racking his body, but his sudden grip on her forearms at his belly told her he didn’t want her to see. Nor was she about to force herself around him to witness them.

  “Tieran?”

  “Don’t let go, Liv.”

  “That is all?”

  A deep breath shook into his chest. “Don’t let go.”

  She turned her head, her lips wispy along the skin of his spine. “I won’t. I swear. I won’t.”

  { Chapter 15 }

  Liv stepped gingerly down the expansive hallway in the center of Tieran’s townhouse—gingerly because of her thigh muscles that had been strained and stretched to the limits earlier in the day at the last coaching inn.

  She had not chosen a small man to love. And the rawness burning the inside of her thighs was, apparently, the price she would have to pay.

  She grinned to herself. Not that she minded in the slightest. A tingle ran through her core at the very thought of what Tieran had done to her body hours ago. Her leg stretched high on his chest, his teeth raking along her calf. Her grin widened. She would pay the price of a few sore muscles a thousand times over to finally have Tieran as hers.

  Tieran slowed his gait to match hers—just as he always had—and the heels of her boots clunked on the polished wood floors in tandem with his stride. Arriving on London streets hours after darkness, he had offered to deliver her to her townhouse and let her rest.

  An honorable offer, but they both knew he didn’t mean a word of it.

  He wanted her by his side, and that was exactly where she wanted to be.

  So they had continued on to his townhouse, entering quickly by way of the mews under the cloak of darkness.

  Halfway down the hallway, Tieran’s palm went to the small of her back, ushering her to the right at an open set of double doors.

  Liv knew she was in a sitting room even before Tieran lit several lamps—it had a sense about it—a sense of comfort, of being enveloped in relaxation and warmth, even though the air was chilly without a fire in the hearth.

  His staff had not known he was to arrive back in London so soon, so had not prepared the house for his arrival, nor had he wanted to alert them to his sudden presence so late in the evening, especially with Liv accompanying him.

  One sconce and two lamps lit, Tieran closed the double doors and moved to stand behind Liv, his hands going down the length of her arms as he bent, his warm cheek heating her cool one.

  “Sit, relax, Liv. I will start a fire.”

  Liv nodded, even though she had no intention of sitting. It felt so good to stand after the days of riding that she guessed it would be at least an hour before she could even think about sitting again.

  Tieran went to the fireplace and Liv’s gaze left him, moving about the room, studying her surroundings. This was a sitting room, but not a public one—not by far. It was much too cozy, far too personal to be shared with mere acquaintances.

  Her feet threaded her about the room. Plush wing chairs upholstered in striped yellow silk damask were angled for both conversation and to the hearth centering the room. A pianoforte sat next to a harp. And side table after side table held needles in every size for knitting—from beautiful ivory needles, to functional wood needles that had been worn to a shine from years of use.

  Stopping beside a delicate Sheraton cane-backed armchair, Liv’s fingers rubbed along the rosewood inlay along the back rail as her eyes scanned the room. A woman’s hand had touched the whole of the room—it was not ostentatious—truly done in very restrained, quality taste. Very few knickknacks cluttered the room of soft yellows and browns that fit a man, but were delicate enough for a woman.

  Liv went over to the sideboard with the amber-speckled granite top, picking up a jade sculpture of a tusked elephant with its trunk raised in trumpet. The accompanying sculpture was of a mother elephant with a calf tucked around its hind legs.

  She studied them for a moment, flipping the bull over in her hands. “These are beautiful. Where did you get them?”

  Sitting on his heels as he balanced on his toes, Tieran looked up from the fire that was just starting to flame. His eyebrows drew together when he spotted what was in her hands. “The jade—I did not know those were there.”

  “You did not? But this is your house.”

  Tieran shrugged, his attention going back to the fire. He poked at the coals below the split log on the grate. “I don’t spend much time in here. Any, to be precise.”

  Liv glanced fully about the room once more, her look landing on Tieran’s shoulders. “Why not?”

  He continued to poke at the coals. “I couldn’t change anything about the room—touch what Rachel had created.” He sighed. “Nor can I bear to look around at it, even when I happen my way in here.”

  “Why are we in here, then?”

  He glanced at her, then looked back to the flames.
“I do not know. It is comfortable—and I wanted you to be so. I did not think on it.”

  Her lips drew in, her breath landing heavy in her chest. She gently set the jade sculpture onto the sideboard. “You truly did love her, didn’t you?”

  His hand holding the iron poker stilled, his head dropping slightly. An agonizing moment passed, and he hung the poker along the fireplace, standing.

  Tieran didn’t speak until his look centered on her. Yet she couldn’t read anything in the blue of his eyes—they were guarded, his words careful. “Yes, I did love Rachel, Liv. You doubted it?”

  Her gaze flickered about the room, and she realized she was standing in the middle of a shrine to Tieran’s dead wife. Her hand went out to land on the top of a chair, steadying herself as her fingernails dug into the silk. “If I am honest, I had hoped it was not possible. Not possible that you could love anyone but me.”

  His head cocked slightly, the guarded look in his eyes solidifying.

  “But I very well realize how selfish that is of me—especially if she made you happy, Tieran.” Her free hand went to her chest. “I made the choice to marry Lord Canton. I made the choice when I thought it was the only thing to do—and I stood by that choice—by him. I never approached you in those years because I had to respect my marriage—and your marriage. I couldn’t have you, but I still wanted happiness for you, Tieran. As much as it stung that it wasn’t with me. It just hurts my heart now to see how you had to suffer her death, when she meant…everything to you.”

  His eyes left Liv, landing on the jade elephant she had placed on the sideboard. “She did mean everything to me. For a brief time. She did.”

  A shiver twisted down Liv’s spine.

  She gave a slight shake of her head. “I thought I could, but…I do not think I can stay here in this home with you, Tieran.”

  His look instantly flew to her, pinning her. “I will leave it.”

  “No, I cannot ask you—”

  “No. You are not asking, Liv—I want to come with you.” His hand swung around him. “This. Everything here, I can no longer be around it. I knew it the second I stepped foot into this room. It pulls me into the past—into death, into the place where I do not want to live life. And I don’t want that anymore. I don’t want to burden you with it. I no longer want to be burdened by it.”