She wanted to tell him then. She wanted to explain the rush of gratitude she felt when he offered her his arm on the bow of the brigantine. She wanted to tell him that she admired him for making a stand and that she wished she could’ve met him before all this happened, before she had thrown her life away.
Then Jason’s crew boarded the ship, and she had nearly fainted like some weak-nerved fool. Her legs refused to support her, and she went down like a cloth doll. Somehow, she had gone the entire thirty-two years of her life without fainting once, and now she’d managed to almost do it twice in a day. It had to be some sort of record. So shameful. Some partner she turned out to be. It’s a wonder she didn’t die of sheer embarrassment.
Richard had come to her rescue. She remembered his scent as he wrapped his arm around her, the smell of sweat and smoke and sandalwood, a rich, smooth, earthy, powerful redolence that took her to places she had no business going. She had said something in her addled state she couldn’t remember.
“Where are the boys?”
“In front,” he said. “They insisted on driving.”
“And the dog?”
“He’s with them. You will have to name him at some point.”
“Where are we?”
“Half an hour from Camarine Manor,” Richard was still watching her with that warm look in his eyes. “We’re almost there.”
“Already?”
“It’s late afternoon,” he said. “We left Kelena at dawn and rode nonstop through the day.”
“Do you still have the ledgers?”
He reached into a bag lying by his feet and pulled out an edge of the small red leather book.
It slowly dawned on her then. The horrors of last night were over, and she could let them fade from her, as if it were all a terrible nightmare. They had their proof. They would take it to the Marshal of the Southern Provinces, and the slave trade would be no more. She’d been too spent and traumatized to recognize it last night, but now she finally understood.
They had won.
She looked at Richard. “We won.”
“We did.” He smiled. It was a genuine, beautiful smile that pulled her as if she were a speck of iron and he a powerful magnet, its lure so sudden and strong, she pressed her back deeper against the carriage seat. She’d kissed him last night before passing out. She was almost sure of it.
“Are you all right, my lady?” he asked.
That “my lady” slid over her soul like soft velvet over skin. “Fine, thank you.”
She waited, but he said nothing more. He made no move toward her. He was probably letting her collect her wits. She thought he wanted her, but maybe she’d read too much into a look. Maybe there was no mutual attraction. Charlotte searched her memory, trying to scrounge up some definitive evidence that he was drawn to her. She could find none. She thought she heard something in his voice or saw something in his eyes, but she barely knew him. They’d been together for a mere two days. She could’ve been mistaken.
She had thrown away everything she was taught and willingly walked into hell, where she had murdered countless people. It filled her with self-loathing. She hated what she’d become, and she wanted reassurance that she still deserved to be loved. It was coloring her judgment. Richard had made it clear where his priorities lay. True, he always addressed her with complete courtesy and tried to protect her from harm, but she was a useful tool. Any man with exposure to the Weird’s customs would afford her that courtesy, because she was a blueblood and a woman.
She had to stop deluding herself. She had let her fantasies carry her away once, and she was now perfectly aware of the monsters and heartbreak that lay in wait on that path. She’d made a fool of herself already. If he had any tact—and Richard had tact in spades—he wouldn’t mention it.
She summoned whatever poise she could muster. “How’s your wound?”
“Better. It’s so kind of you to ask, my lady.”
And why in the world did his “my lady” sound like an endearment to her ears? Charlotte scanned his injury. It was regenerating well, but a budding infection promised to blossom into a serious problem. “I’ll need to heal you when we stop.”
“Why not now?” He touched the curve of the seat next to him.
She blinked. He was sprawled on the seat, tall, handsome, dangerous, and he was smiling. It was a wicked smile, inviting, no, seductive, as if he was promising her that if she sat next to him, he would claim her, and she would enjoy it.
Get a grip. You’re not some schoolgirl. Charlotte forced a shrug and invited him to the seat next to her with a nonchalant wave of her hand. “Why not?”
Richard rose and sat next to her. She caught a hint of the same scent she remembered from last night, a rich, slightly spicy sandalwood mixed with smoke. Gods, this wasn’t any better.
Don’t look at his eyes or his smile, and you’ll be fine. Her gaze paused on the sharp line of his jaw, his lips . . . She wanted to kiss him.
Argh.
She forced herself to concentrate on the injury, which was hidden by his doublet. His arm was out of the sling. “Why did you put your doublet back on?”
“It seemed like a bad idea to travel surrounded by cutthroats with my bum arm on display. Jason’s people are like sharks, you see. A hint of weakness, and they’ll rip you to pieces.”
“Take off your shirt.”
“I’m afraid I may need some help.”
She could’ve sworn there was a hint of humor in his voice. Perhaps he found her attraction amusing. It seemed out of character for him to toy with her, but then, men did strange things when women were involved. Perhaps he was laughing over her discomfort in his head.
She had to stop letting her thoughts run around like wild horses. They were carrying her off to crazy places. He needed help getting the jacket off? Fine. She would assist him. Charlotte stood up and gently helped him pull the doublet off, revealing a long-sleeved dark tunic underneath. She would’ve liked to yank it off of him, just to make her point, but her professional pride wouldn’t permit her to purposefully cause pain to a patient.
His arm was still covered by the sleeve of the tunic. Would she have to peel it off him? Her mind conjured up images of his body beneath the tunic, the tight, strong muscle under the bronzed skin. No. No, that was completely out of the question.
“Do you have a knife?” Charlotte asked.
He pulled a knife out and offered it to her, handle first.
“Perfect.” She took the knife and slit his sleeve, exposing the bandage. She handed the knife back to him. He reached for it. His fingers brushed hers, and every nerve in her stood at full alert. Utterly ridiculous.
She removed the tape and the bandages. The cut hadn’t bled as much as she expected. Richard had a remarkable talent for quick recovery. She touched the gash, letting the current of golden sparks wash over it. Richard held completely still.
“You’re permitted to wince,” she said.
“Only if you promise not to tell anyone.”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
She placed her hand over the wound, her fingers touching his carved biceps, and channeled her magic, repairing injured tissue, melding the blood vessels, and purging any hints of infection. She sealed the skin, painfully aware that he was sitting right there, only inches away. She wanted his tunic off. She wanted to touch that bronzed skin and slide her hand up the hard ridges of his stomach to caress his chest.
“All done,” she said.
“Thank you.”
An ugly mess of a burn scar crossed his shoulder a couple of inches above the wound. The edges of the scar were perfectly straight as if someone had heated a rectangle of metal and pressed it against the flesh.
“May I?”
“Of course.”
She touched it. The heated metal had to have been held to the skin for at least a few seconds. “Were you branded?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Barbaric, to inflict this sort of pain on
a human being. “Who did this?”
“I did it.”
She looked at him. “You did this to yourself? Why?”
He sighed. “I had a tattoo on my shoulder. I wanted it gone.”
“And you thought disfiguring yourself was the best way to go about it?”
“It seemed fitting at the time.”
“What in the world was on your shoulder that you wanted it gone so badly?”
“My wife’s name,” he said.
“Oh.” She pulled back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve come to terms with it. I was young and very much in love. I did ridiculous things like pick wildflowers and leave them on her balcony, so when she woke up, she would see them first thing in the morning.”
No man had ever brought her flowers. Elvei favored more substantial gifts. It must’ve been so sweet to wake up to a balcony filled with wildflowers. It was at odds with who he was now: a grim swordsman who killed so efficiently, it could’ve been an art.
“I wrote dreadful poetry. After we were married, I’d hide small gifts for her around the house.”
“I haven’t known you that long, but that doesn’t seem like you, Richard. You are . . .”
“Bitter? Fatalistic?”
“Practical.”
He grinned at her. “As I said, I was young and romantic. Or a sappy moron, as my brother put it. Marissa hated the Mire. She hated everything about it. I wanted her more than anything, so I became what I thought she wanted in order to win her. It worked. She married me.”
“She must’ve loved you.” How could you not love him?
Richard sighed. “She decided I was the best she could get under the circumstances. The Mire is sectioned off from the rest of the Edge: impassable swamps on both sides, the State of Louisiana on the border with the Broken, the Dukedom of Louisiana in the Weird on the other. The trek to the Broken is long and dangerous, and a lot of us from the old Mire families can’t pass through the boundary. Too much magic in our blood. On the other hand, the border with the Dukedom is heavily guarded. Louisiana is aware that the Edge exists, and it uses the Mire to dump its exiles, so they don’t want anyone coming back across the boundary. The swamp resources are limited, and the number of people keeps rising as Louisiana shoves more and more of its undesirables across the border.”
“It sounds hellish,” she said honestly.
“It has a certain primeval, savage beauty. In the morning, when the mist rises above the water and the giant alligators sing, the swamps have an almost otherworldly air. My family was . . . better off than some. We were numerous, we owned land, and we had a reputation of retaliating fast and hard.”
She could believe that. A whole clan of swordsmen like him would give anyone pause. “And your wife?”
“She was born in the Mire, a daughter of an exile from the Dukedom of Louisiana and a local woman.” He leaned closer. “You see, our family also had Vernard. He was an exile, a blueblood of the finest bloodline. His entire family had been sent to the Mire with him, and my uncle married his daughter. Vernard took over our education. I was his finest pupil.”
So that was it. Like she, Richard had had the benefit of personal instruction from a blueblood peer of the realm. That’s why his manners and poise were so polished. Living in the Mire must’ve been terrible for Richard. To have the self-awareness and know that there is a better place out there that was out of reach.
“I wasn’t like most men of the Mire, and that appealed to Marissa. She had grown up on her father’s stories of mansions and balls, and I was as close to that as she could find in the swamp. She was very beautiful, and I was like a blind man who suddenly saw the sun.” A mordant smile stretched his lips. “Kaldar almost never stops and thinks about the consequences of his actions. Something is fun or not fun, and my brother’s fun often lands him in interesting places such as jails or castles belonging to California robber barons. Where other people see certain death, my brother sees an opportunity for a hilarious, thrilling adventure. But when I got the tattoo, Kaldar warned me that marrying her was a bad idea.”
“Wow.”
“That should’ve stopped me in my tracks, but it didn’t. I married her. She wanted a clean house free of the swamp’s mud, and I gave it to her. She wanted clothes from the Weird. I bought them when I could find a smuggler.”
“So what went wrong?” It was inappropriate to pry, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Her grandmother died.”
“Was it very traumatic?” Sometimes the death of a family member caused an irreversible shift in one’s life. She was a prime example of that.
“No. Marissa’s grandfather had passed away earlier, and her grandmother left the entirety of their savings to her. It was enough to buy her passage out of the Mire into the Broken, purchase false documents, and start a new life there.”
Charlotte recoiled. “But you couldn’t go.”
Richard nodded. There was a shadow of old pain in his smile and in his eyes. She had an urge to throw her arms around him and kiss him until it went away.
“She waited until I was out in the swamp on a family errand and left. When I came back, there was a note on the kitchen table and a collection of the things I’d given her. Jewelry, books, her wedding ring. She took nothing that would remind me of her or the house. The note told me that I’d been a good husband, but this was her way out of the swamp, and she had to take it.”
She left him? She had left this man? Unbelievable. Charlotte almost shook her head. She would give anything to have Richard bring her flowers.
“Did you go after her?”
“There was no point. She had made it clear she didn’t want me, and I still had some pride. I got drunk. At some point I burned off her name. I recall doing it, but I couldn’t tell you when. I was drunk for a long time.”
“Did you ever find out what happened to her?”
“Yes. Kaldar came across her on one of his excursions to Louisiana. She’s married to a man who owns a store that sells man-made ponds and fountains for people’s yards. She works in the store as well. They have three children, two of their own and a boy from his previous marriage. Kaldar asked me if I wanted him to ruin their little haven. I knew at that moment that despite all my efforts, I was a flawed man because for a few minutes I seriously considered taking him up on it. But I managed to walk away from it.” Richard grimaced. “And now I’ve told you my sob story, and it wasn’t my intention.”
“You have my word that I won’t share it,” she said.
“It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
He clamped his jaws shut, the line of his mouth resolute.
“Richard?”
“I don’t want to seem like a pathetic, moonstruck fool,” he said quietly. “So far, you’ve seen me as a killer, you’ve seen me as a monster, and now I’ve added a doleful sentimentality to it, setting myself up to be pitied or laughed at. I keep missing the mark.”
Her pulse sped up. Charlotte caught her breath. “And what’s the mark?”
“The mark is where I seem capable and confident. A better man than I am.”
He was looking at her again with that intense male need. She couldn’t possibly be imagining it. It was right there. She wondered if he even realized what his stare communicated. No, probably not.
He wanted to seem better for her sake. He wanted her to like him, and he’d told her something he hadn’t meant to share. She wanted to tell him she understood, to share something equally intimate . . .
“I almost murdered my ex-husband.” It just popped out of her. Dawn Mother, why in the world did she say that? Of all the things she could’ve told him, that was the last one on the list.
Richard’s eyes widened.
“I’m such an idiot,” she whispered.
The phaeton came to a stop. She glanced out of the window in reflex. A beautiful manor lay before them, three stories of beige stone walls,
arched windows, and a grand cascade of pale stairs rolling onto the green lawn.
George opened the door. “Welcome to Camarine Manor.”
He held out his arm to her. She rested her hand on it and stepped out. Three people waited for them at the top of the stairs. The man was unquestionably a blueblood: tall, wide-shouldered, built for battle. His face was classically beautiful, even more so because he’d chosen to pull back his long, pale blond hair into a low ponytail and the hairstyle accentuated the masculine cut of his jaw.
The woman next to him had to be Rose. She had a perfect figure, not obviously lean, nor voluptuous, but rather fit. Her face was delicate, with fine features and big eyes framed in dense natural eyelashes, for which at a certain point of her life, Charlotte would’ve given her right arm. Her Edge heritage was obvious. It wasn’t her lack of beauty or poise that gave her away, it was her choice of styling. She was off ever so slightly, but to high society, she might as well have hung a sign around her neck that said “Amateur.”
Her gown was probably cut in the latest fashion—the fabric was of good quality, and the workmanship looked flawless—but the pale yellow, an attractive color on its own, wasn’t flattering to her skin. Her hair was overly elaborate for an evening at home, and the style her curls were arranged in was decidedly winter instead of late spring. The entire package seemed more suited to a slightly older woman, one who had earned the right to veer from the latest trend by virtue of her status, accomplishments, or reputation. Rose was still in the age bracket where women were expected to be on the cusp of fashion. She was likely modeling herself after another woman’s example, perhaps the earl’s mother or his much older sister.
The Camarines surely had hired a stylist, but no woman wanted to be consistently told that her taste in clothes was flawed. If Éléonore’s stories of Rose’s character were true, she either got exasperated and fired the stylist, or more likely, consulted him only on special occasions. She didn’t commit any fashion crimes, by any means, but she wouldn’t be held up as an example of what to do either.
On second look, the earl favored a slightly older cut to his clothes as well. He knew, Charlotte realized. He understood that Rose was off by half an inch and adjusted his attire to match. She was so loved. A familiar pain, dulled by time, stabbed at Charlotte. They had that thing she so wanted and was denied. Rose was so very lucky.
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