Enchanting the Earl (The Townsends)

by Lily Maxton

  When he didn’t answer, she continued, “You keep it locked inside you. You keep everything bottled inside you because you don’t want it to touch me, or your brother and sisters. You think it’s something you can contain for our sake. But bottles break under too much pressure, Theo. I…I worry about you. We all do.”

  “You shouldn’t.” He was immovable, even more so than she’d anticipated. She felt panic clawing at her throat.

  “You can tell me anything,” she continued. “You can let me help you, just as I let you help me.”

  “No,” he said, his voice sharp. “It isn’t the same. I don’t want your help.”

  “It doesn’t have to be me, then,” she said desperately. “What about Robert? He would gladly listen. Or…or another soldier, someone who unders—”

  “I am done with this conversation, Annabel.” His voice was cold, colder than she’d ever heard it. It chilled her to the bone.

  She was losing him. He was slipping away too fast for her to hold.

  “Then…then just let me be with you,” she whispered. “I’ve missed you these past days.” And when he didn’t answer, when his face remained as forbidding as ever, the words tumbled out, uncalled for, unheeding, but true to the depths of her soul. One last, desperate plea. “I love you.”

  He was so still. So quiet. So impassive. And then, “You shouldn’t,” he repeated, his voice hollow and dead. And final.

  She felt her heart crack.

  She didn’t know what else to say to him. She didn’t know how to move him, if he wouldn’t yield on his own. She didn’t think there was anything else she could do other than be honest, and she had been. Her chest was open in front of him, bare and bleeding, and he wasn’t lifting a hand to help her.

  She found herself nodding, inanely, clumsily. She tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. At least she wasn’t crying. The only thing that could make this worse was uncontrollable tears.

  She gripped her hands together tightly, backed away from him. She thought she should say something. The only thing she could utter was “very well,” which sounded just as inane as it felt on her awkward tongue.

  I love you.

  Very well.

  I ache for you.

  Very well.

  Take me. Take my heart. Take my soul. Take everything.

  Very well.

  She went straight out of Theo’s bedchamber to her own. She didn’t stop moving. Not when she numbly packed a valise. Not when she scribbled a letter that Theo would find, maybe tonight, maybe the next day. Not when she stepped out into a misty evening.

  Not for a long time.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Theo knew she was gone. As soon as he woke from one of his restless, tortured nights, the castle felt different—colder, darker. Empty as a shell. As empty as his heart. It didn’t take him long to find the letter she’d left for him, sitting at his place at the drawing room table, where not long before she’d challenged him to a game of knucklebones.

  He stared at the folded foolscap, at the empty table, felt the silence all around him, and he wanted to weep.

  Theo,

  I have taken it upon myself to arrange for my own accommodations. We both know I’m the one you want gone. I have a small amount of money saved, so don’t trouble yourself on that account. I hope you shall continue to let Frances live at Llynmore Castle, as she’s been here longer than any of us, and this is her home more than anyone else’s.

  That was all. She hadn’t signed it.

  He felt a strange, soul-deep panic, like he’d lost something vital. Something he could never get back.

  But she would be safer this way. Happier. She had to be. If he thought he’d pushed her away for nothing, he’d fall apart completely.

  Theo saddled Robin and rode for a long time at too fast a pace. He rode to forget the way Annabel’s face had crumpled, but the way her spine had stayed stiff, her shoulders back, just like when she’d revealed her secrets to him, so strong and so vulnerable at the same time; he rode to forget what he’d said; he rode to forget everything.

  But he knew, as he’d always known, that forgetting didn’t come easily.

  If it did, he would be with her right now.

  He pulled back on the reins suddenly, realizing he’d gone off the dirt trail Annabel had forged with her own frequent rides. He stopped, his chest heaving, as he stared at the ground ahead of him.

  He could have steered them straight into a bog with his recklessness.

  Shaken, he leaned down, pressing his head against Robin’s mane. It was a small comfort for his roiling emotions. The scar at his shoulder hurt. It pained him as it hadn’t pained him for weeks. It pained him, searing and ripping and hot, as though it were a fresh wound.

  It felt like Annabel had torn down some kind of barrier with her words.

  Wasn’t it enough that he relived these moments in dreams? Why did she want him bleeding in front of her? Why did she want him naked?

  She wanted his memories, but she would only be disgusted by them. She’d regret ever asking.

  Why had he told her she shouldn’t love him? Why had he said something he knew would hurt her?

  But he knew why. It was a coward’s move. Cut her open before she cut him open. Before she saw what was inside him and turned away.

  He’d caused her pain. He hated that he’d caused her pain.

  But then, he’d caused people pain before. Too many and too much to count. He’d cut down men—and he’d failed to save men—with families and wives and parents and brothers and sisters and children. He didn’t know why he was the one left, out of all of them. He didn’t think he was worthy of their sacrifice, and he couldn’t bear the force of their weight.

  The ghosts of the dead wouldn’t leave him no matter how hard he tried to turn them away.

  And if anyone else was haunted, they didn’t talk about it. Either they didn’t care, and something was wrong with him that he cared too much, or they cared as much as he did but they were afraid to acknowledge it.

  Either way, he was alone.

  Just like Annabel was alone. She’d opened herself to him and he’d let her cut open her own heart and watched silently as she left. Not telling her how much he wanted her. How his love was this roiling, monstrous, inexorable thing. How much she mattered. He was as bad as all the others. All the people who had never deserved her.

  He took a deep breath.

  God, she must hate him.

  His hands weren’t steady on the reins.

  “Theo?”

  He straightened, wiped the sweat off his face.

  Robert had followed him on horseback. His brother was about ten feet away, watching him silently, his brow furrowed in a knot of worry.

  “She’s gone,” was all Theo said.

  “I know. So do George and Eleanor. We found the letter.” After a moment, when Theo didn’t speak, Robert said, “They’re not very happy with you. They think you did something.”

  Theo almost laughed. No, he’d done nothing. And that was the one thing that would hurt Annabel the most.

  “It’s better this way,” he said. “She’s better off without me.”

  Robert snorted. “Do you even sound convincing to yourself, Theo?”

  Theo glared at his brother.

  Robert cocked his head. “I was always a little jealous of you,” he said.

  This took Theo by surprise. He’d always been a little jealous of Robert—everything had come so easily to him, making friends, making people like him. He’d lacked whatever indescribable quality Robert contained that drew people to him.

  “You were our anchor. You still are. Even when you joined the army, George and Eleanor didn’t blame you for it. They never resented you like I did. But even if I resented you, I always knew there was a piece missing, a piece that wouldn’t be put back until you returned. Even when you were gone, you were still the dependable one, the steady one. You never missed a letter, until your leg was injured. And even
then, you wrote as soon as you were able.”

  Theo didn’t speak.

  “You are a good man,” Robert said with a sigh. “I don’t know why I’m the one who needs to tell you this, but you were a good man when you left and you are still a good man. And I’ll say it as often as it takes for you to believe it.”

  His brother’s words gave him pause. Theo realized he hadn’t thought of himself as a good man in a long time.

  “Do you remember how happy our parents were?” Robert continued. “How Mama never regretted marrying beneath her? Do you remember they used to laugh when they were together? You have the chance to have the same kind of marriage they did. Why would you waste that chance?”

  Theo’s grip was tight on the reins. He didn’t want to waste it.

  “Doesn’t Annabel deserve it? Don’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said quietly, “if I can be with her without carving myself open.”

  “Then carve yourself open,” Robert said simply.

  He imagined a future where he met Annabel and she looked at him and looked right through him. He imagined those green eyes turning dark and distant. He imagined all of her love turning as bitter as ash.

  He didn’t know if he could live through reliving his memories, one by one, but Annabel was right—pushing them away wasn’t working, either. And he couldn’t stay locked in this cage forever. Not when Annabel was on the other side. Because he knew, beyond any doubt, that he couldn’t live with her hate. He couldn’t live with himself, knowing he’d done the exact same thing all of her worthless relatives had done.

  But he didn’t want to simply shove everything inside him onto Annabel—she was strong enough for it, but these were his demons, his responsibilities. He wanted to come to her…maybe not healed, because he didn’t know how long it would take him to heal, but at least with hope.

  He just wanted to know he could heal, eventually—he wanted to know if he gave himself to her, it wouldn’t be a meaningless gesture, a fancily wrapped parcel with nothing in it. She deserved a life, a future, with someone who would never be frightened of loving her.

  But he didn’t think he could do it alone.

  Pride, he thought, was a weakness just as often as it was a strength.

  “Will you help?” he asked Robert, his voice strained.

  Robert nodded, “I’ll try.”

  He pulled on the reins and together they turned back toward Llynmore Castle.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Where is she?” he asked, nearly three weeks later.

  Frances, who’d been stitching in a patch of afternoon sunlight in the drawing room, looked up and smiled at him.

  “Lord Arden,” she said amiably. “I haven’t seen much of you these past days.”

  “I’ve been occupied,” he said. “Where is she?” He was being rude, but he couldn’t help it. Three weeks without Annabel, almost twenty-one days of getting up and not seeing her, of the realization that he wouldn’t see her, or talk to her, or hear her laugh, had been like a punch to the gut each time. He missed her desperately. Llynmore Castle was nothing without her, an empty shell without a heart.

  They had that in common.

  “I assume you’re asking about my niece?”

  He nodded.

  She set aside her work. “Why do you wish to know?”

  “I’m going to ask her to marry me. If…if she’ll have me.” He didn’t think about the very real possibility that she wouldn’t. That he’d inexorably broken something between them with his inaction.

  “Hmmm,” Frances said thoughtfully. “How do I know you won’t simply hurt her again?”

  “I won’t.”

  She studied him appraisingly. Something in his tone or his stance must have communicated itself to her, because she smiled.

  “You love her,” she said, more statement than question.

  He couldn’t speak. He nodded.

  “That is a relief,” she said. She went back to her stitching.

  He stared at her blankly.

  “Are you going to help me?” he asked a moment later, incredulous. “I don’t care where she’s gone. I’d follow her to the ends of the earth,” he said, and he meant every word.

  “Lord Arden,” she said, “if you love my niece, then you must know her heart a little better than that. Where do you think she is?”

  He assumed she’d gone to Edinburgh or Glasgow… It was possible she’d sailed to Ireland to be with her sister… It was— He stopped, eyes narrowing on the older woman. No, she wouldn’t go to any of those places.

  This was Annabel’s home. This was her world. This was her heart. The castle, yes, but not just the castle, the land itself.

  And Theo should have realized she wouldn’t abandon the one person who’d accepted her, unflinchingly, unquestioningly. She was too fiercely loyal for that.

  “She’s here.”

  “Ah,” Frances said. “Not entirely hopeless.”

  He breathed deeply and tried to sound pleasant. “Could you be so kind as to point me in the right direction?”

  “One of the abandoned cottages, due north.”

  Theo was already moving.

  Chapter Thirty

  Only a minute or two after Annabel returned from her walk, there was a soft rap at the door. Ian would bring her things from time to time, but he’d already been by that morning, so she doubted it was him. Her hand trembled as she reached for the knob, her heart lifting like a bird on a warm breeze. She ached for Theo, every single day.

  God, how she missed him. She’d known she would, of course; she just hadn’t expected it to be quite like this constant, searing pain.

  She knew, eventually, he would find her here, but when she’d fled the castle so hastily, she hadn’t been able to leave her aunt and Llynmore completely. This was the only solution that presented itself. If he discovered her at the cottage and still wanted her off his land, she would go, though she wasn’t under the same roof anymore, wasn’t even very close to him—he could continue ignoring her quite well if he wished it.

  And a part of her, a foolish little part, hoped that maybe, if she gave him enough time, if she didn’t push—

  But she tamped down hard on that part of herself. She knew what she wanted. But she also knew that Theo wouldn’t accept her love unless he believed he was worth it, and she didn’t think he could do that without confronting the reasons he thought he wasn’t.

  It wasn’t something she could force him to do. It was something he had to do for himself.

  Her hand closed around the knob. She told herself it was probably just Ian. Maybe he’d forgotten something earlier when he’d dropped off supplies.

  But it wasn’t Ian Cameron who filled her doorway. Nor was it Theo. Viscount Westburgh stood in front of her, haggard and pale and gaunt, and her breath seized in her lungs.

  He must have been on the road to Llynmore and seen her heading toward the cottage. She leaned heavily on the door handle, ready to push with all her might to lock him out. Ready to scream as loud as she needed to.

  “I suggest you let me in.”

  When she didn’t answer, he scowled. “I could have you thrown in the gaol.”

  “For what?” her voice shook, even though she tried to keep it steady.

  “My memories were a little muddled afterward. But you were there that day. You must have been.” He stared down at her. “Did you help her get on a ship, after she did this to me?” He gestured toward his temple, where a pale scar had formed.

  “Answer me,” he snarled, when she didn’t speak.

  She lifted her chin. “Do you have a warrant for my arrest?”

  He glared at her, his mouth pressed thin. Which meant he didn’t. Which meant his threats were empty ones. Even if he could use his influence to persuade the sheriff to issue a warrant, with Fiona gone and no witnesses and no evidence that she’d done anything at all, any trial would be a waste of time.

  Still, she wouldn’t put it past him to
do it just so he could see her in a dank gaol cell while she awaited the trial.

  “Answer me.”

  She met his cold blue gaze with as much strength and defiance as she could, even though she quaked inside.

  “I just—” His voice was hoarse. “I wanted justice. It’s too late now, isn’t it?”

  And Annabel saw it then, saw what she hadn’t seen before, because he’d covered it with wrath and demands and threats. She saw guilt. She saw grief. She saw a wounded man.

  “You wanted vengeance.”

  He shook his head wordlessly, his jaw clenched tight.

  “You knew my sister, too.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Do you think she didn’t have a reason?”

  Cool air was seeping in through the open door, but neither of them moved. It was his turn to be silent. He looked past her, staring blankly at nothing for a long moment. “Tell me,” he finally said.

  She hesitated. Telling him the truth would be admitting she’d had contact with Fiona. But when she looked into his distant eyes, there was no spark of desperation or anger. No longer. It had faded at some point during these past weeks. Maybe when he’d finally accepted that the woman he wanted vengeance upon was out of his reach.

  But she didn’t want to answer him. Surely it was kinder that the viscount didn’t know, that he didn’t think of his brother as a man who would push a child down the stairs. He was dead. Let his ugliness die with him. Let his family believe any pretty lies they wanted to tell themselves.

  That was what she wanted to do, but she had a feeling the viscount wouldn’t leave until he had answers. He wanted a reason. He thought he wanted the truth. It wasn’t her place to deny him, even if the truth was bitter.

  “She loves her daughter more than anything in the world,” she said. And she told him. She told him exactly what Fiona had told her.

  His face paled, except for two burnished ridges along his cheekbones. There was a flash of anger in his eyes, muted but present. Annabel’s hand grasped the door knob a little more tightly. “He didn’t. He wouldn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She’s lying.”