His Wicked Sins

by Eve Silver

“Amelia’s death is part of my villainy.” He stared down at her, and something in his expression shifted. Hardened. “Her death. My family’s deaths. And more than those.”

  He cut a glance at Isobel, and then returned his dark, shadowed gaze to Beth. “I must tell you that I was ever a disappointment to my parents. They had their perfect son. My brother, Ethan. Older by eleven months. He was the golden son, and I”—the smile he offered then was laced with disgust—”I was the child they regretted. By the time I was eight and ten, I was a wastrel, reckless, profligate. I lost a fortune at gaming, enough that my father swore I would not see another guinea of the family wealth, and that was the best of my deeds. I was caught in the dark of night in other men’s houses, caught in the bed of a wife or a daughter. More than once. More than twice. So many times I lost count. I dueled with one poor sap, a man I had cuckolded, and I shot him dead in the first light of dawn.”

  He stopped abruptly, and she held her breath, the weight of his admission heavy upon her.

  “Let us walk,” he said.

  She nodded, understanding the need to move, the need to walk, the need to stay a single step ahead of memories that haunted and pained. They followed Isobel across the courtyard and the lawn and finally stepped over onto a wilder place where the grass was not so carefully trimmed, the hedge not so square. In the distance were the woods, dark and dense, the trees growing close together.

  Beth shuddered. Was there a clearing in that wood, with yellow wildflowers?

  “Are you cold?” he asked, but did not wait for an answer.

  Shrugging out of his coat, he laid it about her shoulders, and so she was warm and he was not. She protested. He rebuffed.

  Finally, he walked once more, his hand at her elbow.

  “You are most chivalrous,” she said, and smiled.

  But he offered no smile in return. Instead he replied, solemn and quiet and somehow sad, “No, I am not. That is exactly my point, sweet Beth.”

  She stopped, glanced at Isobel who had taken the doll from its pram and now sat on the grass some distance away rocking it in her arms. Turning to face Griffin, she laid her hand on his arm, then stared at her hand. She wondered how in the space of a night she had come to a place where she dared touch him so freely.

  “That man you shot... did you mean to kill him?”

  He stared down at her, his dark eyes transformed from the laughing amusement she had seen there often to shadowy contradiction.

  “Does it matter?” he asked, bitter.

  “No. But it makes you less a villain,” she murmured.

  “Ah, and you would like that. For me to be less the villain.” He paused, and she felt frantic, her heart beating too fast for a simple conversation here under the sun. She wanted him to tell her he had not meant it to end in the man’s death. She needed him to tell her that.

  “No, I did not mean to kill him,” he said, and his reply made her let go her breath, though she had not realized she was holding it. “The pistol was his. From a matched set. I had never shot it before. I aimed high on his right shoulder and hit him where I aimed.” He stopped, rubbed his hand along the back of his neck. “He was never meant to die.”

  “But he did.”

  “He had a bleeding sickness. The wound bled and bled no matter what was pressed to it, no matter what was done.”

  “He knew it. He must have,” Beth pointed out. “He knew he could die if your shot even grazed him, and still he insisted on pistols at dawn. Does he not bear some of the burden?”

  “I slept with his wife, and I shot him. Where is his burden of guilt in that? I am the villain. I alone.”

  She nodded, his words proving him a man who would always judge himself harshest of all. “What happened to his wife?”

  A lopsided smile twisted his lips, more disgust than humor. “She married a Viscount in need of funds. There were whispers that it was a love match.”

  She realized then that she still had her hand on his arm, and she drew it away slowly, reluctantly. Before she could withdraw completely, he caught her wrist and pressed a kiss to her palm, then closed her fingers into a fist before letting her go.

  “For safekeeping,” he said, and slanted her a glance through his lashes, before raising his gaze to Isobel. He stood there for a long moment, saying nothing more, watching his daughter with his expression carefully remote.

  “Can you not forgive yourself?” she whispered.

  “No,” he said, blunt, still looking at Isobel. “Not for that, and not for all that followed. Not for the years when my parents washed their hands of me and I lived on the street by my wits and my crimes.”

  Shocked by that, she gasped. He turned his gaze to her then and went on, talking slow and smooth, unhurried in his telling.

  “I was disowned and poor and little suited to any honest labor, and so I made my way by theft and sizing up the mark, by dodging and passing off snide as real”—he paused, frowned—”Do you know what that is?”

  She recalled then that he likely thought her some well-bred miss fallen into genteel poverty, taken to teaching as a respectable means of support. She opened her mouth to tell him where she came from, to tell him she likely knew as much of dodging and snide as he, but in the end, she held her tongue, deciding not to distract him from the telling of his tale.

  There was time enough for her story when he was done.

  So she merely nodded her head and he nodded in return, though she read the question in his expression, the wondering of how a girl such as she—genteel, a teacher—would know words such as those.

  He drummed his fingers on his thigh, short, staccato taps, and then slapped the whole of his palm flat.

  “None of those things matter, but two. The first is that my brother died of consumption. My parents were killed in a carriage accident shortly thereafter. On their way to London. To find me, their sole remaining son.

  “Upon their deaths, I was summoned home by the family solicitor. It turned out that despite my father’s avowal that I would have not one guinea more of the family fortune, he had neglected to make it official. I was the heir, and all came to me.”

  He fell silent then and Beth felt the heartache beneath his coolly even words, the anger and turmoil that roiled inside him still. His cadence was too perfect, too controlled, and she had lived far too long inside self-imposed cages not to recognize such confining bars in another.

  “And the second?” she asked, amazed that he would confide in her so. What did it mean that he trusted her with his secrets? Dare she trust him with all of her own?

  His brows rose, and he said, “The second is that I married Amelia Holder, the girl I had loved since I was a lad. The girl whose father had chased me off, who had sworn never to allow near his daughter. Much changes when one inherits vast wealth.” His lips curled in a sardonic smile that held no warmth. “A year later, Isobel was born.”

  They both looked to Isobel then. She yet sat on the grass with her baby doll, smoothing its hair and rocking it. The sight warmed Beth’s heart. She could not help but wonder if weeks past, Isobel would have played thus, or if she would have sat staring at nothing, locked in her own thoughts.

  “For a time, we were happy,” Griffin said. His expression was cast in stone and he continued in a flat, dark tone. “But Amelia was headstrong and spoiled. If something took her fancy, she meant to have it, regardless of consequences. There were the sugar swans she had made for an outdoor picnic in damp weather. Her temper knew no bounds when they melted into little oozing lumps. There was the high spirited gelding she demanded for her mount, and then demanded I shoot it when the mount proved more than she could control.”

  Beth gasped, horrified, and Griffin shook his head.

  “I sent the horse as a gift to a friend. Amelia was contrite the next day. She knew I would not harm it. She had a temper and no limitations.

  “One evening, she determined to take Isobel up to the top of the gatehouse, to watch the sunset from the crenellated wall. T
here was a storm brewing, the clouds dark. In truth, there was no sunset to see. As the first drops of rain fell, I let them go. The two of them, alone. I never thought to check on them. I never thought to join them. I simply let them go.

  “You see, I was in a foul temper that day. My best bay had thrown me, bruised my shoulder and arm so they were swollen and numb and useless. I was not fit company for anyone save a brandy glass. Certainly I was in no mood to argue with Amelia when she had her heart set on going.”

  He turned then and looked toward Wickham Hall. The gatehouse stood sentinel on the front drive, and the bulk of the house hid it from view now. But Beth knew it was there, as Griffin knew it was there, and she sensed that it played a terrible role in the story he shared.

  Should she distract him? Take his mind from these memories and guide their conversation to another place?

  A part of her thought she ought to do exactly that, to protect him from the demons that ate at his soul, but a part of her believed he would be more at peace if he would only set them free. And so, she let his tale develop as it would, saying nothing, only shifting a step closer so her arm pressed to his.

  “I know not how long they were up there. I only know that my dinner was ready and Amelia was not there, and that I stalked out the front door in a temper. At first, I saw nothing, and then I heard a cry, faint and piteous. Isobel, calling for her father, for me.

  “I ran then, to the gatehouse, and there they were, the two of them clinging like barnacles to the side of the rain-slick wall. Fallen or climbed over... I will never know. I called for the footmen even as I took the stairs two and three at a time. I remember little from that point except crushing desperation and fear and horror.”

  Beth felt them now, those emotions he described, her heart twisting in empathy.

  “I leaned over. I yelled Amelia’s name, and Isobel’s, and they looked to me, two terrified faces.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “She bid me save Isobel, her gaze locked on mine. I had only one arm worth anything, and I had only a second to choose. My wife or my daughter. One to live, the other to die. I grabbed Isobel with my good hand, winding my fingers in the cloth of her dress and dragging her up even as I dropped my weakened limb to Amelia, hoping she might grasp it, hoping she might hold on for just a moment more. And she did, she clung to the wall with one hand, and locked the fingers of her other about my wrist.

  “I could feel her grasp sliding away as I hefted Isobel over the wall. Sliding farther and farther down my wrist, to my hand, to my fingers, and then away. I lunged forward, as far as I could, caught her shawl, her damned pink shawl, and still she slipped away. I could not hold her. Could not save her. And as I straightened, there was Isobel, staring at me with her great dark eyes. Accusing. Knowing.

  “You see, Beth. I killed her. My own wife. Isobel’s mother. I killed her right before my daughter’s eyes, and she has never spoken since.

  “She has never forgiven me. And I have never forgiven myself.”

  Beth blinked against tears. “You didn’t—”

  “Didn’t mean for her to die? Just as I didn’t mean for the man I shot to die?” he shook his head and Beth knew that no words she could conjure would comfort him. And so she did not speak. She only rose on her toes and pressed her lips to his, and then she walked on, toward Isobel, leaving him to interpret her actions as he wished.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  That night, Beth settled Isobel in her bed at Wickham Hall, tucking the covers close about her and singing her a lullaby that Beth recalled her own mother singing to her. The girl squirmed free, pushing back the sheets to her waist, and for a long moment she simply stared up at Beth, her eyes very dark, her skin painted gold by the lamplight.

  She looked so much like her father. Her hair, the same rich brown-black as Griffin’s, the shape of her eyes, dark lashed and tipping up a bit at the corners. But her mouth was different and her chin. After a moment, Beth realized that Isobel was studying her in an equally assiduous manner.

  Reaching up, her small hand casting a shadow across the white sheets, Isobel touched Beth’s cheek and smiled. Then she sat up, the covers falling away, and pressed her lips to Beth’s cheek.

  Joy surged, sweet and clear as a spring brook, and so unexpected it took Beth’s breath.

  For a moment, she hovered, frozen in shock and delight.

  On impulse, she leaned in very slowly and wrapped her arms about Isobel in a careful hug. Nothing confining. Nothing restricting. Just a loose touch.

  The child stiffened, then relaxed, and when Beth drew back she saw Isobel’s lids droop as she snuggled against her pillow. Her breaths grew deep and even, untroubled, and her limbs shifted until they were flung wide in slumber. Like her father. The sight touched something deep in Beth’s heart.

  How long she sat on the edge of Isobel’s bed she could not say, but after some moments the clatter of hooves echoing on the drive drew her attention.

  She rose and crossed to the window and looked out, but saw nothing save a night-dark expanse of manicured lawn and beyond that a glimpse between the trees of the pale ribbon of road where it curved from Wickham Hall toward Burndale Academy. From this vantage, there was no view of the cobbled drive, for Isobel’s chamber was to the east side of the house, not the front.

  A wise choice to house the child in a chamber that did not face the gatehouse. After what Griffin had told her earlier that day, she imagined that to look out the window and spy the crenellated wall of the gatehouse would be a horror for Isobel.

  Griffin’s words, the harsh self-recrimination in his tone, broke her heart. You see, Beth. I killed her. My own wife. Isobel’s mother.

  No, she did not see that at all. She saw something else entirely, and she finally understood the root of Isobel’s silence, the torment in her young soul.

  Griffin thought Isobel blamed him, but he was so very wrong.

  Isobel blamed herself.

  The child believed that she was the cause of her mother’s death. To survive when a loved one died brought a terrible guilt, a crushing self-evaluation and castigation. Poor child. She locked herself behind walls of silence, in penance, in guilt, in terror of bringing down some further tragedy on her family.

  Oh, Beth understood that. She understood Isobel as she understood herself. All that was left for her was to find a way to make Griffin see the truth, to find a way to heal them both.

  Because she loved them. Father and daughter.

  How could she not?

  Griffin, her lover. The man who had scaled her walls and dropped over them with the same ease that he dropped into the back garden at Burndale Academy. The man who had offered her the only moments of real peace she had known since she was very small. In his embrace, the demons that stalked her were held at bay, not by him, but by her, because in his eyes she saw a reflection of her braver self, her better self.

  And Isobel, the child who mirrored her own heartbreak and pain. The child of her lover. Her love.

  There. She had admitted it. No more pretending that she would love him only if she dared.

  She loved him despite her fears. She was afraid to love. Afraid to lose. But more than that, she was afraid to not know this beautiful, wonderful emotion, and so she dared to love him, and dared to open herself to what might come.

  She had loved him a little right from the start, despite her demons, and his. In a way, she loved him because of them, for his secret torments allowed him to recognize hers, and wasn’t that an excellent basis for a love match?

  The irony was both dark and amusing.

  Moving away from the window, she took up the candle, cast a last glance at the sleeping child and exited the chamber. Her tread was soft as she walked the dim corridor, muffled by the carpet, pale shades of yellow and rose and blue.

  She was anxious to find Griffin now, to tell him that Isobel had smiled and kissed her. His would be a bittersweet gladness, but perhaps she could help him with that. She could tell him her thoughts on Isobel’s
silence. Perhaps share her own secrets, make him understand.

  Drawing up short, she stood staring at the candle flame as it writhed and coiled, a thin dark stream of smoke winding up from the tip.

  Did she dare tell him of her love?

  That she had yet to decide.

  With a shake of her head, she walked on.

  At the main staircase, she hesitated, staring down into the dark well of it, then up at the heavy, thick frames of the great portraits that lined the wall. She wondered if she would be best to seek the servants’ stairs.

  Griffin would be appalled by that.

  She was not a servant. The closest she could come to defining her place here was a sort of makeshift governess.

  And her place in his life? She was his lover, but did he feel some greater emotion for her?

  He had not said. But she was not such a fool as to imagine that he shared the story of his wife’s death with just anyone. Despite her inexperience in the ways of men, she was wise enough to recognize that there was a link between them, a bond that was not felt solely by her.

  Just then, she heard a sound and turned to see a maid—the same girl that had brought her dress and boots that morning—coming along the dim passage toward her.

  “Do you know where I might find Mr. Fairfax?” Beth asked.

  “Yes, miss. He is in the library with Squire Spencer and his men.”

  “Squire Spencer has returned?” So she had heard horses on the drive.

  “Yes, miss.”

  Beth frowned. What matter of import had brought them back here so soon? What weighty issue could not keep until the morning? Inexplicable apprehension rode her, not an unreasoning panic, but a gut deep certainty that something was wrong.

  “Might you direct me to the library?” Beth asked.

  “Oh, yes miss. Down these stairs, then the next flight and the next, then take the gallery to”—she broke off mid-direction, likely reading Beth’s bafflement on her face, and offered—”I will show you the way, miss.”

  The maid took her as far as the gallery, then left her on her own to take the last set of stairs to the hall below and then the library. Beth felt a pang of dismay for poor Isobel, left alone in the dark so high in this empty, echoing house.