by Mari Carr
* * *
Twelve years of work, and in the final days it had all gone to shit. Weston stared at the fire Marek was methodically and expertly lighting. There was food spread out on the coffee table—brought up by Marek—and a cup of tea in his hand—placed there by Marek.
Both the food and tea were untouched, but the warm mug felt nice.
Tabby was safe—he couldn’t let himself forget that. As fucked up as the last few weeks had been, that was the one unambiguously good thing that had happened. After all, of any of them, Tabby was the one with the least choice.
That thought made him wince. Addressing the issue of Tabby’s lack of choice implied that Caden and Rose had made choices that had led to the events of the past weeks—which they had. By extension, that could lead to the implication that it was their choices, and not the machinations of his parents, that had led to Caden’s death.
Maybe that was true on some level, but Weston intended to lay the blame for all of it at the feet of his parents and the other purists.
To do that, he needed proof, and there was no way he was going to get that while Tristan kept him under observation here. Damn it, he needed to get to Dorset. He hung his head and stared at the tea.
Marek stopped poking the fire and returned to the couch, sitting beside Weston.
Weston was aware of the other man in a way that unsettled him. Marek was an unknown factor at best, and an enemy at worst. He was an agent of the Grand Master.
Yet, he felt something for Marek. He’d accepted a cup of tea, and, if his stomach hadn’t been in knots, he would have eaten the food Marek had brought up. Weston trusted Marek. He’d wept on his shoulder.
The memory made Weston wince in embarrassment and he turned his head away, so Marek couldn’t see his flushed cheeks.
The door opened, a bare hint of sound, following by a small draft of cold air from the hall.
Beside him, Marek made a startled noise. Weston had to turn completely, sliding one knee onto the couch in order to see the door.
Rose stood in the doorway wearing a long white dress. For a moment, her stillness combined with the light—the firelight flickered over her body, but the light from the hall backlit her head and shoulders, hiding her face—made her seem unreal. She was, in that moment, every beautiful ghost from every tragic tale of death and suffering. An ethereal figure in white, too lovely to be mortal, radiating sadness, tragic loneliness, and a sort of quiet menace.
Marek rose to his feet. “Rose. You look lovely. Would you like a cup of tea?”
Marek’s body blocked his view, so Weston assumed she nodded, since Marek walked over to the tea cart. Rose came to stand in front of the fire, hands outstretched.
The light from the flames rendered the white gown completely sheer. He looked away, but not before the image of her lovely body had been burned into his memory.
Marek brought over her tea, and Rose took a seat in the armchair closest to Marek’s end of the couch. The softer feelings he’d developed for Marek faded.
Rose held her tea, but like Weston, she didn’t drink.
Marek’s head swiveled as he looked at first Rose, then Weston, and back again.
He cleared his throat. “I’m not a relationship expert by any means, but I do know that the two of you need to talk, before we can move on to the problem at hand.”
Rose brought her cup to her mouth, touching the rim to her bottom lip, but didn’t sip. She held that pose then lowered the mug, balancing it on one knee. “I’m done talking about my past.”
“And after what you told me, I can respect that,” Marek replied.
That surprised Weston. She’d talked to him? What had she told him? He looked at her, frowning.
Rose raised her chin, as if daring him to reprimand her. But the cup trembled in her hands.
“I think,” Marek said in his firm, reasonable voice, “that you are each operating under a misapprehension about the other.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Instead of answering directly, Marek asked, “Weston, is what Tristan said true? Are you in love with Rose?”
Weston clenched his jaw. Damn it, he didn’t want to be this pathetic. He didn’t want to be the half-blind cripple nursing a decade-long case of unrequited love. He felt like fucking Quasimodo pining for Esmeralda.
“Of course he isn’t,” Rose said in that same wry tone she’d been using all day. “He’s spent the last twelve years fighting the purists, and I am one. He probably hates me.”
“For fuck’s sake, Rose. I don’t hate you. And I know you’re not like them.”
“Maybe I am.”
“Why are you being like this? They forced you and Caden to work with them by threatening Tabby.” He snorted. “And I know exactly how dangerous they can be.” He gestured to his missing right eye.
“How were you injured?” Marek asked.
Weston gave him a brief run down, leaving out the part about the apartment belonging to his parents’ mistress. He didn’t like to dwell on that night, so he kept the description short.
“Wait,” Rose said. Her tone had lost some of the wry, almost mocking quality. “Who got you out? You didn’t tell me.”
“Members of the Masters’ Admiralty. In particular, Tristan. Before he died, Grandfather Prosser—Victoria’s father—got a bit senile, and when I would go visit, he’d tell me stories about the other secret society. The Trinity Masters’ counterpart in England. He told me they were larger, older, and more powerful than the Trinity Masters. He told me to beware, and never trust anyone from England.”
Marek let out a chuckle.
Weston looked at him coldly. “He was serious.”
Marek stopped. “Oh.” He picked up a small cheese knife and cut a wedge from a small wheel of brie. “How did you find someone in the Admiralty to contact?”
“Research,” Weston said. “I went back to school and accessed WorldCat. I started with the name. That brought me to Lord Admiral Nelson.”
“Who was famously in a trinity,” Rose said.
“Exactly. I followed his family tree, then that of the other two in his trinity, William and Emma Hamilton.”
“Even if you found a member to contact, they wouldn’t have given you any information.”
Weston stared into the flames of the fire. “I begged. I told them…” He had to stop and decide if he was going to lay the whole truth bare, or if he’d protect his heart, protect the naïve boy he’d been. “I told them that my younger brother, younger sister, and…and girlfriend were all being held hostage. That I didn’t know who to trust in the Trinity Masters, and didn’t have anywhere to turn for help.”
“You mentioned the Trinity Masters by name?” Marek asked.
Weston nodded. “I think that’s what got their attention.”
“If you told them all that, why didn’t they do something?”
“They wouldn’t,” Marek said quietly. “America belongs to the Trinity Masters. They cannot operate within in the United States.”
“Since no one seems to even know they exist, how would they get caught?” Rose demanded, looking at Marek.
Marek looked at him. Weston sighed. “They didn’t know that—I mean, the Admiralty didn’t know that the Trinity Masters didn’t know. At least the Admiralty didn’t until I told them. I traded them information about the Trinity Masters, including their ignorance of the Admiralty in exchange for money, a new identity complete with a British passport, and some advice. I flew to London, met with the Security Minister, and then came home. I confronted the Andersons and, well, you can see how that ended.
“The part I didn’t tell you was that I didn’t fly home alone. Two people came with me. One of them was Tristan. He and I hung out a bit when I was in London. I think he was supposed to be keeping tabs on me, but we went out drinking, stuff like that.” Weston shrugged. “He and the other guy had followed me to the apartment. They saw the fire, saw me trying to crawl away. They got me out.”
; “Where did they take you?”
“Initially? Canada. Then London.”
“You said you were in a coma?” Rose said quietly.
“I was, for a while. Medically induced because of the burns. Then even when I woke up, I was in bad shape. Burns, broken bones. Muscle atrophy from the coma. I had a hard time dealing with losing my eye. I spent a lot of time in physical therapy. I was useless for nearly a year.”
“You could have called, texted, anything,” Rose said quietly.
When Weston didn’t answer, Marek did. He cleared his throat. “If I understand correctly, you two were romantically involved before Weston was hurt.”
Weston was surprised Rose had told the other man that, but nodded. She did the same.
“His mission was to save you. You and Caden and Tabby.” Marek spoke with deliberation. “He couldn’t do that in the condition he was in.”
Weston’s shoulders sagged. It was a relief to hear someone else say it. As if the fact that Marek had reasoned it out validated what he’d done.
“So what?” Rose spat, leaping to her feet. “You decided to wait until you were all healed, then you’d suddenly appear again?”
“There was nothing I could do when I was recovering.”
“You could have told me you were alive.”
“What good would that have done?”
Rose stared at him. “Fuck you, Wes.”
“What do you want me to say?” he demanded, pushing to his feet. “I tried to get us out, and I failed. I failed spectacularly.”
“It’s not about that. It’s not about that at all!”
“Then what is it about?”
“I loved you.” Rose’s breath trembled, her hand clenched at her sides, and her eyes sparkled with emotion. “I loved you. You died and suddenly there was no hope. I had to mourn you in secret.” She licked her lips. “I would dream you were still alive and wake up sobbing.”
“Knowing I was alive wouldn’t have helped.”
“If you believe that then you’re an even bigger fool than I thought.”
“Damn it, Rose! By the time I was functional enough to even begin to think about calling you, nearly a year had passed.”
Rose didn’t reply. She turned to look at the fire, and he realized that her dress wasn’t really a dress, it was probably lingerie, meant to show off a woman’s body and entice. He forced his attention from Rose to Marek.
“Why didn’t you call?” Marek asked in measured tones.
“She was…she was safe. She was with my brother.”
Rose whirled but didn’t speak.
“You mean she was in a relationship with your brother,” Marek supplied.
Weston nodded.
“Is one of the reasons you didn’t reach out because the girl you loved was now with someone else? Because she loved someone else?”
Damn it. He could ignore the question, or he could tell the truth.
“Yes.”
Rose sucked in a breath.
“It was stupid. Immature.” Weston didn’t look at her as he admitted that. “But when I was able to track down information about you, get a PI to take some photos, I realized that you were with Caden. That…that hurt. Then once you turned eighteen and joined a BDSM club with him…” Weston had to swallow to get the words out. She deserved the truth, in no small part because Caden was gone. “I realized that you were safe with him, happy with him. You didn’t want to be…be my submissive, and I didn’t want to be your Dom, but you were able to submit for Caden. And I knew Caden would protect you from our parents, so I decided to focus on a long-term solution. I drove myself night and day to find a way to get Tabby away from them, and figure out what they were hiding.”
One of the logs on the fire cracked, and a little puff of sparks rose up. When the last spark winked out, Weston let out the breath he’d been holding. He sat down.
“So that’s it,” he said. “You were right, I should have told you I was alive. I could have kept doing what I was doing even if you knew. But you’d moved on, and I didn’t want to get in the way of that.”
“And your heart was broken,” Marek said.
Weston flinched, then nodded.
“And,” Marek continued, “you’ve never really stopped loving Rose. Even though she was with someone else.”
“Damn you,” Weston whispered, so low only Marek could hear the words. “What do you want?”
“It’s not what I want that matters,” Marek replied in an equally quiet voice. “You’re hiding from one another. Hiding from the truth.”
“You must think I’m a coward,” Weston said. That stung, even though it shouldn’t matter what Marek thought.
“No. Not at all.” Marek raised his voice, once more speaking so Rose could hear. “You never stopped loving Rose, even now, did you?”
“No, no, I didn’t.” Weston stared into the full teacup he still held, then set it down on the table.
Rose made a strangled sound.
Weston didn’t look up. He figured she’d respond with either pity or derision, and both prospects were soul-crushingly horrible.
Marek laid a hand on his shoulder. Weston didn’t turn. Marek was on his right and he would have had to turn a full ninety degrees to see him out of his good eye, and he just didn’t feel like moving that much. Now that he’d admitted to it all, he felt small and stupid—as if everything he’d done since that fateful day was worthless. No, not worthless—inadequate.
He’d always imagined that one day he’d ride to the rescue, crushing the purists with one well-coordinated stroke, while simultaneously pulling Tabby to safety and freeing Caden and Rose from nearly lifelong servitude.
“Would you ever have told me…told us?” Rose’s voice was scratchy.
“No,” he admitted. “I hadn’t planned on it. I hoped I could dismantle the whole thing without letting you know. I’d planned to tell my parents that they had to keep my name out of it. I had even planned to anonymously give some of the non-critical information I’d found over the years to the Grand Master, as long as he offered you and Caden a chance to leave the Trinity Masters with no repercussions. Then you and Caden could go on and have a normal life.”
“A normal life?” Her voice was slightly higher than usual. “A normal life?”
“Rose,” Marek said. “You need to tell him the truth. He’s been truthful with you. It’s your turn.”
“I’m not going to tell him—”
“Please, Rose. Now that you know what he thinks was going on, he deserves to know what really happened after he was hurt and evacuated to London.”
Weston’s head snapped up and he looked at Marek. “What happened?”
Marek watched Rose for a moment. She’d turned to face the fire, her back to them, her body once more visible through the white dress. Marek shifted his attention to Weston.
“When we were in the basement, she told me a story. A story about two young people being systematically manipulated and tortured.”
Weston’s hands clenched into fists. “What? What happened? What don’t I know?”
Marek didn’t reply, but instead looked at Rose.
Weston got to his feet and went to stand beside Rose, looking down at the fire. He stood on her right so he could see her out of the corner of his left eye.
“When I woke up, in the closet in the cottage, you seemed angry,” she said. “Why?”
“I’m sorry. There were, are, too many things going on.”
“But later you held me. Let me cry.”
Weston closed his eyes, the light from the fire filtering through his lids. “I let myself forget.”
“Forget what?”
“That you were grieving. That you’d just lost Caden. That…that you weren’t the girl who said she loved me. Forget that a lifetime had passed since then.”
“You were trying to keep your distance,” she murmured. “That’s why you sounded angry.”
Weston didn’t reply. It didn’t seem like he needed
to. And his throat was tight with embarrassment and remorse.
Now that Caden was dead, it was easy to see that he should have reached out to them. It wasn’t fair of him not to have contacted them just because he was heartbroken. They deserved to know that his parents hadn’t actually succeeded in killing him.
Rose made that same odd sound. He hunched his shoulders, bracing himself for the laughing or cursing he was sure was coming.
Instead, a gasping sob escaped her lips, and Rose reached out to brace both hands on the mantel.
“Rose?” Weston started to reach for her, then stopped, unsure if he should.
She didn’t reply for a moment, then pushed off from the mantel, turning to face him. Weston mirrored the pose. Marek stood, knees slightly bent, hands relaxed at his side as if he was ready to jump in and break them up.
Rose took a slow breath, then started to speak. “When you…when Elroy made me kneel for you, you took over the punishment and tried to lessen it. You didn’t think of me as a submissive. I was still…still Rose.”
Thinking back on that night made him feel ill. He didn’t say anything, simply waited for her to go on.
“We went back to the room and you took care of me. Gave me something for the pain.”
His voice was thick with regret. “I was the one who hurt you.”
“No. Elroy hurt me. You gave me hope. We made plans to escape. To get away so we could be normal.” She raised her gaze to his. “After you disappeared, they did the same thing with Caden—made me act like a submissive in front of him. But Caden didn’t react the same way you did.”
Weston’s stomach started to knot.
“Caden took the cane and finished the punishment,” she said.
Weston shook his head. “He probably didn’t realize he could—”
“Wes, I never loved him.”
He froze in shock.
“God help me,” she went on. “But I could never love him.”
