by Kelly Bowen
“I’m not.”
Rose glanced up sharply.
Dawes was standing beyond her easel, watching her. He had angled himself slightly, the scarred side of his face turned away from her, and she wondered if he had done so out of habit. He’d bathed; it was evident from the slight flush to his face, the dampness of his hair, and the scents of lemon and sandalwood that reached her nose. He’d also found clean clothes somewhere, and the simple, if well-made, garments revealed that, along with his voice, his form had also changed. Even under his coat she could tell his chest was thicker, his biceps and forearms hinting at strength that had never been there before. The new, defined muscling in his legs was much more obvious beneath his buff breeches. It was not at all the svelte, fashionable physique of a ton gentleman he had once taken such pride in. Now he looked more like a man who earned his living on the docks or in the fields.
Rose remembered how he had held her captive last night with very little effort, and she resisted the sudden urge to rub her wrists. “You’re not going to London today? Or you’re not—”
“I’m not going to London ever. I plan to make Avondale my home.” He crossed his arms over his substantial chest. “Permanently.”
Well, hell. The last thing Rose wanted was to have to endure his presence for the remainder of the summer. “Have you forgotten you’re an earl now? A soon-to-be officially dead one in the courts as I hear it, which is something you may wish to correct with alacrity. I think you’ll discover you have a great many responsibilities, not the least of which is your seat in—”
“Please don’t lecture me about my responsibilities. I am well aware.”
“Of course.” Rose looked down at her skirts, reminding herself that, above all, she did not need to pick a fight. She just needed him to leave. Forever, preferably.
“What are you painting?” he asked.
“Nothing that would interest you.” Rose slid from her stool.
“You’re wrong.”
She managed not to scoff. “What do you want, Daw—Lord Rivers?” she asked.
“Dawes is fine, Rose. It’s what you’ve always called me.”
“What do you want, Lord Rivers?” she repeated deliberately.
He sighed. “I wanted to see you. To make sure you’re all right.”
“Well, you’ve seen me.” She put her hands on her hips. “And I can assure you I am perfectly fine. Anything else?”
She held his gaze without wavering until it was Dawes who looked away, in the direction of the window. “I wanted to apologize,” he said finally.
Rose stared at him. She hadn’t expected that. “Apologize?”
“Yes,” he replied tightly.
Rose’s fingers curled, her nails biting into her palms. Did he honestly think he could simply waltz in here, utter a few words, and be absolved of what he had done? Fury started to curl through her chest, and she forced herself to take deep breaths before she spoke. “The only one who requires an apology from you is the kitchen maid who had to clean up the mud and mess you left inside the kitchen window last night.”
“Rose.” His voice sounded off.
Rose took another deep breath, but she was losing the battle against the anger that was still rising. “And just what, exactly, is it that you believe you need to apologize for?”
The earl looked back at her, his gaze holding hers. “Don’t make this harder.”
“Harder?” Her tenuous hold on her composure suddenly threatened to dissolve. “Of course. God forbid Eli Dawes should be inconvenienced.”
“That’s not—” He hesitated before he plunged on, as if he’d spent a great deal of time rehearsing his words. “Anthony did not treat you with the respect you deserved.”
“What?”
“He told me what he had done. After we left London.”
“After you all fled London, you mean.”
“I—” He stopped again, looking ill at ease.
“You what? You didn’t want to take responsibility for what you left behind? Anthony ran before I discovered everything. Before I could break our engagement. And you went right along with him.”
“Rose, I didn’t know then. I didn’t know what he was doing.”
“So now you’re here to apologize on his behalf? It’s a wee bit late for that, don’t you think, given that he’s dead?” A mocking quality had crept into her words that she seemed powerless to prevent.
“No. I’m apologizing for my…actions. Or my lack of them.”
“Good heavens. Are you going to try to convince me that you found a conscience on the battlefields of Belgium?”
“That’s not fair,” he snapped, stepping closer to her.
“Things are rarely fair, Lord Rivers,” she snapped back. “But believe me when I tell you I’m much more adept at recognizing that now.”
“Rose—”
“I’ve moved on. You should too. You need not concern yourself further with my welfare, but there are others who are owed an apology.”
His face was like granite. “I don’t care about others, but I care about you. I will always be concerned with your welfare. I once considered you a…friend. I’d still like to.”
“A friend?” Rose felt something give way deep within her. It was suddenly an effort to draw a full breath. She should stop, she knew. This conversation, this airing of bitter hurts, was something that didn’t need to take place. Not now, not ever.
In her head she had already dealt with the betrayal and broken trust the best way she knew how and survived. Nothing would be changed, nothing worthwhile would come from rehashing the past, but her heart seemed incapable of listening to good sense.
“Very well, let’s do this, then, Dawes. Because once, I thought you were a friend too. So let’s put all our cards on the table, shall we? Speak the truth. The way friends would do.”
She brushed past him and stalked toward the open door, then closed it with more force than was required. She had no interest in letting anyone overhear this conversation. She went to a heavy chest that sat in the corner, full of her painting supplies. With deliberate motions she opened the trunk, extracted an assortment of supplies, and withdrew a flat wooden box, the sort that might have at one time housed a pistol.
She straightened and returned to where the earl stood. “Anthony’s oblivious if well-meaning mother gave this to me,” she said, relieved at how even her voice sounded. Rose released the catch on the side and flipped the box open. In it lay a collection of yellowed papers, folded to form envelopes of sorts and tied with a brown ribbon. “My love letters to her son. Or at least that was what she thought they were. After we received word that he’d been killed, she wanted me to have them back. To remember him by.”
Dawes was watching her warily. “I don’t understand.”
“No?” Rose fingered one of the papers. “You don’t recognize them?”
“You’re not making sense,” he said. “I would never have read his personal correspondence with you. Certainly not love letters. Why the hell would you think I would recognize them?”
“Because some of their contents are addressed to you.”
Dawes was frowning fiercely. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You really don’t remember these?”
The earl threw up his hands. “No.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes.”
“So when you apologized earlier, you were apologizing for what, specifically?”
The earl’s jaw was clenched. “Anthony’s infidelity. I knew him better than anyone, and I should have known what he was doing all along. I could have—should have—intervened. I should have told you.”
“His infidelity? That’s what you’re choosing to apologize for?”
“He was engaged to you, Rose. And yet all the while, he was carrying on with—” He stopped.
“Lady Helvers? Lady Pulsham? The actress from Sadler’s Wells? Anyone who would have him?” she sneered. “Of c
ourse you didn’t tell me. Your allegiance was to Anthony, not me.”
“No.” The word was hoarse. “Rose—”
“I’m not done.” She paused, trying to keep emotion from pushing her words out in a jumble. “In hindsight, I’m surprised Anthony didn’t push to marry me immediately, given how much money was on the line. Married, he could have carried on as he pleased without risking the fortune that came with my hand.”
The earl’s lips flattened. “You were more than a dowry, Rose.”
“Oh, come now, Dawes. I thought we were dealing in truths here.”
He had the grace to look away.
“I was aware of Anthony’s reputation as a rake long before he ever professed an interest in me. But he was a consummate actor. He said all the right things, did all the right things. Made me believe that I was special. Convinced me that he had changed—that I had changed him. That is my fault. That is not what you should be apologizing for.”
The earl was staring at her, his one eye more green than brown in the pale wash of light. “I never wanted to see you hurt. And I wanted to apologize for it.”
“It isn’t I who am at issue here, Dawes. You haven’t been listening. It’s not me you should be apologizing to.”
His nostrils flared in what looked like frustration. “I don’t know what that means.”
Rose spun and set the box down on a small table, knocking an empty glass jar off the edge. She left it where it lay on the rug. With precise movements she withdrew the lengths of paper, unfolding the first to reveal its contents.
She placed the first of the loose papers on the table. “Lady Abigail Spencer,” she said. It was a caricature of a young woman in a garden bending down to smell a rose. Except her curvaceous rear had been exaggerated to enormous proportions, with a nattily dressed buck standing behind, leering and fumbling with the fall of his trousers. Might Need a Map was written underneath.
“And then, of course, Miss Emily Danvers.” This was a caricature of another young woman, the beautiful freckles that spilled over her nose, cheeks, and forehead drawn as amphibious-like spots, her eyes pronounced and her mouth widened so that her face resembled that of a frog or toad. She was seated on a lily pad, and around her head a collection of flies buzzed. Too Much Tongue had been scrawled across the bottom.
Rose glanced up at Dawes. His jaw was set, and his hands were clenched at his sides.
“In all our time together, I didn’t realize that Anthony, like you, also had an interest in art,” Rose said, and the bitterness that she had so desperately tried to control finally triumphed. She slapped another drawing down on the table. This one was a picture of a woman, her narrow face elongated into an equine image, a halter buckled over it, being led out into a breeding ring, two scrawny stallions seemingly fighting in the background. “And see the note Anthony’s written here along the top? There’s a couple of drawings with your direction on them, but this one says, ‘Eli, I thought you’d appreciate this one.’ Now, I’m not sure if Anthony was referring to your own collection of art, or perhaps your love of Tattersalls, or perhaps—”
“Stop,” Eli said.
“Stop? But I’m just getting started. Why, there are dozens. An entire discourse on the physical appearances of a whole collection of ladies, most young and noble and a couple who are not. And we haven’t got to the crudest ones yet.” She picked up another envelope from the box. “The ones that document a variety of bed sport with women he clearly found wanting. Surely you recognize them now.”
His forehead was creased, his face drawn and troubled. “Maybe,” he said after a hesitation.
“You sound less than sure. Shall I show you the rest to jog your memory?”
“No. Those drawings are juvenile and stupid,” he said tightly. “I can’t imagine you were ever supposed to see those. No one should have.”
Fury hit her with such intensity that she gasped. “No one was supposed to see them?” she breathed. “Jesus Christ, Dawes, everyone in London saw them.”
“What? How?”
Rose stared at him.
He looked up from the sketches. “What the hell are you talking about, Rose?” he demanded hoarsely.
“You published them. You and Anthony.”
The earl lunged forward and knocked the drawings from the table. Before they’d finished fluttering to the floor, he wrapped a hand around her upper arm. “What?” His voice was as unyielding as his grip, and she could feel the tension in his body rolling off him in waves.
“The drawings. You had them published anonymously after you left London. Like Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies, less the explicit sexual specialties. A booklet to be sold on every corner of London, next to the gossip sheets, meant to titillate and entertain. It was exceedingly popular. These drawings in the box are the originals, and the press and publication agreements are in here too.”
Eli had gone white as a sheet, his scars standing out in stark relief. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Rose put a hand out to steady herself, a horrible suspicion starting to stir deep within her. “You did everything together,” she said numbly. “You and Anthony. You were inseparable.”
“Inseparable?” he repeated, the word torn from his throat horribly. “Anthony wasn’t…He didn’t…” Eli bent slightly, as if in pain, before he straightened again. “I had no idea that he was going to do…that.”
“You didn’t know,” she whispered, trying to understand just what she was feeling. Trying to come to terms with the possibility that what she had believed all these years about Eli Dawes had been wrong.
The earl released her and turned away to pace by one of the long windows. “You thought I did this? That I would ever condone such a thing?”
“What did you think Anthony was going to do with the drawings?” she lashed out, anger overtaking her confusion.
He ran a hand through his hair in clear agitation. “I don’t know. I never thought about it. I didn’t even know there were so many.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what you should know.” Rose’s voice had risen, and she struggled for control. “You should know what those drawings did to some of these women. The destruction they wrought on their lives, when one’s reputation and appearance are often the only things society puts any value on. They were shunned and mocked and ridiculed. The suggestion that all these women were tried and found wanting in ways I can’t even…”
“Fuck,” she heard him breathe, almost inaudibly.
“Yes, that definitely seemed to be a recurring theme throughout,” Rose agreed coldly. “I never believed him to be a saint,” she said. “Either of you. But I believed that at least one of you might have been a decent human being.”
“If I had known what he was going to do, I would have destroyed them.”
Rose bent and started collecting the scattered drawings. “Of course.”
“You don’t believe me.” It was a statement and a question all at once.
“I believe the part about you not knowing he intended to publish them,” she allowed. She didn’t know what else she believed right now. Rose put the drawings back in the box with unfeeling fingers and snapped the lid closed.
“Why do you keep them?” Dawes demanded from the window. “Why haven’t you destroyed them?”
She stilled and looked up at him. “To remind myself why I do what I do.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “I don’t understand what that means either.”
“I don’t require you to understand anything, Dawes. What I do require you to do is endeavor to stay out of my way.” She straightened, smoothing her skirts. She felt suddenly drained, as if all the emotion that had been bottled up within her had been released and had left her limp and exhausted. After all this time, Eli Dawes wasn’t the villain she needed him to be to justify six years of anger and bitterness. It left her feeling cheated somehow. Bereft.
“This is what you thought I was apologizing for,” he said
suddenly, breaking the silence that had fallen in the studio.
Rose didn’t answer and instead returned the box to the trunk of supplies. She closed the heavy lid deliberately and carefully. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s done and can’t be undone.”
He looked away, unhappiness etched across his face. “It does matter. It matters that you thought I was capable of that. Of deliberately and publicly humiliating those women.”
“Why would you care about my opinion?”
“Because I admire you. You were always too good for a man like Anthony. Like me.”
Rose stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”
Dawes continued to gaze out the window and didn’t answer.
Rose sat down heavily on the lid of the trunk. Everything that had seemed so clear in her mind wasn’t any longer. Everything that she thought she had understood seemed alien.
“Who else knows about the drawings?” he asked suddenly. “The book? That it was Anthony who was behind it?”
She threaded her fingers together. “No one, it seems, unless Prevett and Giles mentioned it to you.”
“They never said anything to me,” Dawes said heavily.
“And now they’re dead too. So only the publisher, I suppose.”
“What about your family?”
“No.” Rose clasped her hands so tightly that her knuckles went white. “Do you know how awful it is to be told that the one person who you believed loved and revered you above all others had deceived you? Do you know how hard it is to explain that your monumental stupidity prevented you from seeing what sort of man he really was? No one wants to play the fool, but I was a fool of epic proportions, Dawes. I didn’t see any benefit to advertising that even further.”
“You are not stupid or foolish. You never were.”
Rose shook her head. “Spare me the platitudes. It was a hard, but necessary, lesson for me to learn. We see whom we want to see. What we want to see. And nothing is more heartbreaking than the death of an illusion. I don’t need you to make me feel better, so save yourself the trouble.”
He turned toward her then, and she could feel his silent gaze settle on her. “I’m not who I once was, Rose,” he finally said.
