by Kelly Bowen
“Why did you come back?” Conflicting emotions were rising fast and furious and making it hard to think.
“I never intended to.”
“Why?”
“It doesn’t matter. Why are you in my house?” His voice was hoarse.
“Why am I in your house?” she repeated incredulously. “This is what matters to you right now? This is what’s important? Your house?” She lifted her head and turned in what she thought was his direction. “Well, don’t worry, Dawes, your coffers are being suitably compensated for my presence.”
“That’s not—” There was another long silence. “You’ve changed.”
“You can’t see me.”
“I wasn’t talking about your appearance.”
“That would be a departure for you,” Rose replied, failing to keep the derision from her voice.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Rose made a rude noise. “Are you trying to be coy, Dawes? Because it’s not a flattering trait.”
“When did you become so cynical?”
“When I grew up. Had my eyes opened.” She paused, a suffocating tightness constricting her chest. “I suppose I have you to thank for that in part.”
He didn’t respond.
Rose felt her lips thin. “You never answered my question. Is Anthony really dead?”
“Yes.”
Rose stared into the nothingness, fiercely glad for the darkness. Because when the death of one’s fiancé was undeniably confirmed, one should publicly display some sort of suitable emotion, no matter how much time had passed. Grief. Sorrow. Regret. Some sort of measure of unhappiness. Yet all she felt was…nothing. Whatever love or respect she had once harbored for Anthony Gibson, youngest son of the Viscount Crestwood, had been brutally extinguished by betrayal and humiliation long ago.
“I saw him die. It was quick.” His words were strangely flat.
Rose tried to think of something suitable to say to that but came up with nothing. She wasn’t sure if Dawes was trying to make her feel better. Or, more likely, himself.
“And Giles and Prevett?” she asked instead. “Are they really dead as well?” The other half of the dashing, fearless foursome who had once been the darlings of London society.
“Yes. Both of dysentery before they ever fired a gun,” he replied in that same flat, dead tone.
Rose knew propriety demanded she say something kind. Offer him some sort of condolence. But Rose couldn’t seem to conquer the bitterness that had wrapped itself around her and drawn tight. She sighed and set the paintbrush aside with a muted clatter and reached for the tinderbox again.
“Wait.”
She froze. She hadn’t heard him move. Hadn’t heard him come so close.
“I’m done listening to you, Dawes,” she said. The scent of the outdoors and wool and horse swirled around her again.
“I’m not…Just wait…”
Rose frowned at his unsteady words. They were a far cry from the confident, cavalier arrogance she remembered so clearly. “What do you want?” she demanded.
“Do you still have your knife?”
Rose sneered. “What, you’re afraid I’ll skewer you?”
“You tried once.”
She blew out a disgusted breath. “It wasn’t a knife. It was the end of a paintbrush.”
She heard him mutter something unintelligible under his breath. His hand came up to graze the length of her arm before it found her wrist again. His fingers closed over her skin, his grasp warm and steady.
“I’m different,” he said roughly. “From the man I once was.”
“Of course you are. If the magnificent and insatiable Eli Dawes cut a swath through the boudoirs of London society before, imagine what a handful of war medals and an earldom will do for you now. You’ll have women crawling about in your bed the way a hound has fleas.” She didn’t even try to hide her contempt.
Dawes’s fingers suddenly tightened around her wrist, and before she understood what he was doing, he pulled her toward him, pressing her palm against the side of his face with his own. “Rose, please,” he whispered.
“What the hell are you doing, Dawes?” Rose tried to pull away, but he held her firm, his other hand coming to rest heavily against the small of her back, keeping her securely against him. She had stood like this in his embrace many times before, she thought suddenly, the vivid, unwanted memories intruding. Only then they had been on a dance floor in some grand society ballroom, under glittering chandeliers in the middle of glittering crowds, everyone around them staring. Because people always stared when Eli Dawes danced with a woman, his vibrancy like a thrilling vortex that no one could ignore. She remembered the feeling of giddy happiness that had filled her then, secure as she was in her place in the world and secure in the care of a man she’d thought had been a good friend.
She’d been an idiot.
Rose blinked in the darkness, realizing that Dawes had never answered her. Instead he had stilled completely. His palm, pressed against the back of her hand, was rough and callused, warming her fingers where they were trapped against his face. Dampness was starting to bleed through her robe from the front of his sodden coat. An occasional drop of icy water dripped from the ends of his hair and down her wrist.
Rose shivered, and she tried again to snatch her hand away.
The earl’s hand tightened on hers, pressing her palm more firmly against his jaw. “Not yet.” His voice was raw. “I need you to…You should know…”
She froze, comprehension suddenly dawning. She slid her hand down just fractionally, and Dawes made a muffled noise just before his own fingers dropped, releasing her. She could have removed her hand. She didn’t. Because beneath her palm there was no longer the clean, smooth line that should have delineated the masculine cut of his jaw. The skin was textured and uneven under the pads of her fingers as she moved them upward toward his hairline. The skin there was more of the same, and she traced the subtle ridges over the bone where his eyebrow should have been. He’d been injured. Badly.
Rose closed her eyes. Absurd, she knew, because she couldn’t see anything anyway, but she wanted to create a picture in her mind through touch. She did this often when she painted, as if her hands could memorize the object and help reproduce it on canvas in a way mere sight could not.
She raised her other hand to cup the opposite side of his jaw. This side was as she remembered him. Smooth skin, if a little rough with stubble. A faint hollow along the side of his cheek that denoted the contour between his strong jaw and high cheekbones.
The fingers of both her hands skimmed over his temples, testing the difference, coming to rest softly over his closed eyelids. Or at least the eyelid that remained. Beneath her touch, where his left eye should have been, was only more of the thickened, ridged skin that characterized a portion of his face below.
Rose kept her eyes closed and slid her hands back down along the side of his face, tracing the underside of his jaw and neck until they reached the collar of his coat. Dawes hadn’t moved, his breathing shallow and rapid.
Rose opened her eyes. Her fingers still rested against his neck, and she could feel his pulse jumping. “And this happened at Waterloo?”
“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate.
She dropped her hands, and as she did so, he removed his hand from her lower back. She was left feeling strangely adrift in the darkness. “Why did you do that?” she asked, ignoring her own rapid heartbeat. “Ask me to touch you like that?”
“I didn’t…didn’t want to startle you. With my appearance.”
Rose shook her head, trying to sort out a host of emotions that were darting through her, some too quick to identify. Pity threatened, but she squashed it as fast as it rose. He didn’t deserve her sympathy. Sadness, perhaps, though for whom Rose couldn’t say. So instead she settled on irritation because it was easy and familiar and fit well with her lingering bitterness. She brushed by him and felt along the mantel, finding the tinderbox and a candle.
This time, Dawes did not stop her. She lit all three candles before finally turning back to him and meeting his gaze for the first time.
Perhaps he hadn’t been wrong to warn her, Rose acknowledged briefly. Because only half of the fallen angel’s visage remained as she remembered. The other half of his face was a twisted, distorted landscape of scar tissue, faded with time, but leaving no doubt that his injury had been severe. The sort of injury that men do not always survive.
The scars had obscured the hollow where his left eye had been, giving him an almost piratical appearance. His left ear, where it was exposed, was mostly gone, ropes of discolored skin twisting across his jaw and down his neck, disappearing under the collar of his coat. His lips had remained unscathed, though the tightened flesh of his ruined cheek tugged at the left side of his mouth in a way that made it look as if he had just found something amusing.
“Well, then,” Rose said, her verification of what she had already seen with her hands complete. “It really is you.” She reached for one of the candles and glanced back in the direction of the door, considering. “I suppose I need to find you somewhere to sleep for the night. You do, after all, own this damn pile, while we are only paying guests.”
A single hazel eye blinked at her. “What?”
“I’m assuming you intend to stay at Avondale. But there’s no furniture in this room any longer save for what you see.” She waved her hand dismissively in the direction of the dozen easels and tables that had transformed the space from a bedroom into her art studio. “Whatever was here was put into the attics and can be retrieved if that is your wish. I’ll let my brother know you’re back in the morning. If you have a problem with us being here, you can speak to him about the terms of our contract with your estate.”
She suddenly needed to get away from him. To get away from the man who was standing in front of her, who had, in a sliver of time, torn open a festering tumult of feelings and emotions that she’d believed healed.
The earl frowned, a blond eyebrow drawing low. “What?”
“Did whatever damaged your face damage your wits as well, Dawes?” Rose asked, keeping a desperate hold on her irritation. “You can’t sleep here. And whatever business you have with my family can wait until morning.”
He stared at her.
“You should know that almost all the bedchambers are occupied, but I believe the room in the far southeast corner is—”
“That’s it?”
Now it was Rose’s turn to scowl. “What’s it?”
“This doesn’t…” He trailed off, but not before he gestured faintly at his face. “Don’t you have anything to say about…”
She blinked. “What?”
“My face. Most people cringe. Or look away. Or stare in disgust.” The words were almost belligerent, and Rose realized he was challenging her.
The utter, complete irony of this very moment was breathtaking. “Did you actually believe that your looks would be what was important to me at this moment?” she managed in a strangled voice. “Or at any moment?”
Eli didn’t respond, giving her his answer.
She took a step toward him, fury obliterating her earlier bitterness. Waves of wrath coursed through her, making it hard to speak. “I will only say this once. I am not you, Eli Dawes,” she hissed before she took a deep breath, trying to regain control. She was better than this.
She cleared her throat and started over, tamping down her ire with effort. “I regret whatever pain you may have suffered, my lord,” she said precisely. “And any discomfort that you currently endure. My condolences on the death of your father.”
Her fingers were still wrapped around the small candlestick, and with horror she realized that they were shaking. She backed away toward the door and out into the hall.
“Welcome home, Lord Rivers,” she said and closed the door behind her.
Chapter 4
The smoke swirled around Eli, thick and noxious.
His eyes burned mercilessly; if there was a silver lining, it was that they hid the terrifying sight of the enemy thundering toward him. They were coming for the guns, Eli knew. Or what was left of them. Around him, shattered men and horses lay in piles, like rag dolls tossed carelessly across the field. The men still living ignored the carnage and worked feverishly, feeding the guns. Back and forth Eli ran, from the munitions cart to the cannon, from the cannon to the cart, slipping occasionally on blood-slicked grass but never stopping. There was no time to stop.
Another explosion, another cloud of smoke, another round of shot hurled toward an enemy that had pushed ever closer. The ground shook with French hooves, and the very air around him compressed and expanded with answering artillery. And then, suddenly, a horn sounded in the distance, and the thunder receded. Eli collapsed against the side of the cart, fighting for breath.
The painfully young gunner looked at him, tears from the smoke or relief or both streaming from his red-rimmed eyes and cutting tracks down his blackened face. They had been unusually blue, his eyes, the color of a summer sky washed pale by heat. Eli had never forgotten them.
“Frogs’re running away,” the gunner had gasped, his voice hoarse from shouting.
Why? Why had the horses and the men coming for them been called back? Eli had listened, trying to understand, but there had been only stillness. A terrible, empty stillness, sinister against the muted fighting farther across the plain.
The horn again. The boom of French guns. The unmistakable sound of round shot shrieking through the air toward them.
Eli jerked awake.
He stared motionless at the ceiling for a gut-wrenching, soul-stealing moment before he remembered where he was. It had been a long time since those memories had come back to haunt him in his dreams. He closed his one good eye again, telling himself it was a blessing that he had woken when he had.
Because it only got worse from there.
In the quiet of the morning, the faint melody of birdsong drifted in through the window, and somewhere in the bowels of the house a pail clanged as hearths were emptied and cleaned. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to collect a horse and ride back the way he had come. Slip out the back and disappear again, and let his father’s solicitors continue to deal with the paperwork and the processes that had already been set in motion.
Eli groaned and flung his arm over his eyes. A dull throbbing had started in his head, and his stomach growled with hunger. He would have to get up sooner or later, either way. He wondered if anyone save Rose was even aware he was here yet.
Rose Hayward.
The fates were laughing long and loud. Of all the people who could have been planted in his path on this journey home, in this resurrection of duty and conscience and reconciliation, of all the people he could have faced first as the new Earl of Rivers…
She was the only woman he had never been able to forget. And she had never been his to remember in the first place.
The last time he had seen Rose Hayward, youngest daughter of the dizzyingly wealthy Baron Strathmore, she’d still been engaged to Anthony Gibson, the man Eli had once considered a friend. Neither Rose nor her two siblings had ever made more than a rare appearance at what might be considered fashionable society events, and until Gibson’s sudden and unexpected courtship of Rose, Eli had known only what gossip he’d heard whispered behind fluttering fans on the dance floor at Almack’s or behind clouds of smoke in the back rooms of White’s.
That the slight, boyishly figured, plain-faced Rose Hayward was a wallflower. A bluestocking. Educated far beyond what was acceptable, though artistically gifted. Tolerated at the fringes of society only because of her charismatic and wildly popular parents. Courted only for her substantial dowry.
Anthony himself hadn’t been very forthcoming about his betrothed, though Eli had known that Gibson’s father, the viscount, was suffering financially. Eli had avoided asking indelicate questions that his friend had made clear he had no interest in answering. Being from a titled family,
after all, did not come without its sacrifices, and Eli had naively assumed Rose Hayward was one of them.
Until the inevitable moment when Anthony had introduced Eli to his affianced.
And Eli had been instantly, irrevocably captivated.
For Rose Hayward was not like any other woman Eli had ever met. She possessed a cutting wit and a brilliant mind that fascinated him. She’d made him laugh too many times to count. Kept him on his toes with their verbal sparring. Startled him with her insights and knowledge of politics and history.
The rules of society dictated that Eli should have been suitably scandalized, but he had been too busy trying to subtly seize every opportunity to accompany Anthony and his dark-eyed, red-haired fiancée. He stole as many minutes and as many dances and as many meals with Rose as he could, and each time he left her, his hunger to see her again only grew.
He’d quizzed her on her artistic interests and discovered that they shared a keen proclivity for Renaissance art. Without a second thought, he’d given her the keys to his private collection, with instructions to his staff that she be allowed in whenever she liked, whether or not he was in residence. Though he had made sure he found himself in residence a great deal when he knew Rose Hayward would be visiting.
Occasionally she would sketch the works on his walls. More often, she would discuss and debate their provenance with a passion and intelligence he found breathtaking. And sometimes she would simply sit and gaze upon the canvases in a reverent silence, unaware that it was she who shone brightest in that room full of masterpieces.
Eli had learned that she was fiercely loyal to her family and to those for whom she cared. And that included Anthony Gibson. That she had been head over heels in love with Gibson would have been clear to even the greatest of fools. And Eli wasn’t a fool. He found himself, however, desperately jealous and aware that, if he continued like this, if he continued to covet a woman who could never be his, he would lose whatever shreds of honor he still had left.
So he’d distanced himself from Anthony and Rose and spent more time with Giles and Prevett, drinking and carousing to excess. He tried to find distraction in the lusty, voluptuous women whose company he’d once reveled in. His decadent lifestyle had become positively debauched as he’d thrown himself into assignations with bored widows, beautiful actresses, and accomplished courtesans. Women who knew all the lines of the licentious script that played out over and over with the scintillating extravagance of London society as the stage. Women who were exciting in bed and immediately forgettable out of it.
