The Scoundrel's Lover (18 page)

Annabelle bit her tongue. What an idiotic confession, dropped in a moment of unguarded weakness and revealing too much. “I only mean knowing that Crispin has separated himself from us all,” she hastened to lie. “After my discoveries when I snuck into Mr. Rivers’ carriage that night a few weeks ago.”

Serafina’s eyebrow arched. “Yes, Mr. Rivers. He is a very interesting fellow, isn’t he?”

“What do you mean?” Annabelle asked, hearing her own voice crack and trying desperately to keep it from happening again.

“At supper, he was very witty and engaging. You seemed to like him a great deal, actually.”

Annabelle turned her face. “How could you not? As you said, he is unexpected.”

“Hmmm.”

Annabelle’s eyes went wide. “What does
hmmm
mean?”

Serafina got to her feet, a slow process thanks to the increasingly rounded belly that held her child. She walked across the room before she turned to look at Annabelle. “I cannot be with you as you make your way in Society. For that I am truly sorry, because I might have been able to ease your transition.”

Annabelle blinked, uncertain of this sudden shift in subject from Marcus to her debut. But not sorry for it, Marcus was an infinitely more dangerous topic. “I understand,” she said slowly.

Serafina continued, “But I
have
been able to observe you during your weeks out in the world of the Upper Ten Thousand, and I see that you are garnering interest from Lord Claybrook.”

Serafina swallowed.
Claybrook
. She had not thought of the man in days, actually. The moment he left any room they shared, it was as if he no longer existed. Not a good beginning, she knew, but she had no intention of admitting that to Serafina.

“Yes, I’m very pleased about that fact,” she said, hoping her voice sounded brighter than she felt. “If we were to make a match, I think it would be a good one. For me, especially, considering that he is so well regarded. And I’m certain my dowry will not hurt his coffers.”

Serafina’s lips pinched together. “I hate to hear you speak so cavalierly about the rest of your life. To put your future in terms of advantage and wealth when I know better than anyone how much those things can damage if they are all one shares with one’s intended. What about friendship and attraction? What about
love
, Annabelle?”

“Not all of us can be so lucky as you and my brother have been,” Annabelle whispered.

“Yes, we are lucky that we were brought together by circumstance and yet found such a connection that will keep us in each other’s arms and hearts for all time.”

“And yet Rafe is also an undeniably good match,” Annabelle pointed out gently.

Serafina shook her head. “I would love your brother if he had not a farthing for bread. If he had no property and no title.” She met Annabelle’s eyes. “If he were no more than a notorious club owner.”

Now it was Annabelle who leapt to her feet. She walked away from Serafina, her hands shaking at her sides and her eyes unseeing as she stood at the sideboard, staring at her brother’s bottles of whiskey.

“Well, I have no one I love so deeply,” she said, her voice trembling.

Serafina was quiet for a very long time, and Annabelle had to force herself not to look at her sister-in-law. Finally, Serafina sighed. “The best laid plans are often not as good as we believe they will be. And maybe what you think you want is not what you actually need.”

Annabelle spun toward her. Serafina’s face, so kind and open, still told her nothing about what she knew. Or
thought
she knew.

“I wish it were so easy as want and need,” Annabelle said. “And that I had choices as to how I would be seen by the world at large. But right now is my only chance to have the life I have wanted, Serafina. I must take it, mustn’t I?”

Her sister-in-law blinked and her smile faltered. “Only you can decide that, Annabelle. Only you can know what you are willing to lose to get what you think you want.”

Annabelle bent her head, her mind spinning on Marcus. Marcus’s mouth, his touch, his soft and gentle words that brushed over her skin and settled beneath it.

“Now are you
certain
you have nothing to reveal?” Serafina asked. “Nothing that I could help you with at all?”

Annabelle swallowed hard. “No. I’m afraid I must determine my future on my own. There is nothing else to say in the end.”

She saw Serafina’s disappointment at her answer, but the flash of emotion was gone from her face as quickly as it had come. She smiled again and retook her seat.

“Would you like more tea?” she asked, as if the deeper, darker conversation they had shared had never happened.

Annabelle nodded as she too sat down again. But she couldn’t help feeling that she had missed an opportunity here. And she hoped she wouldn’t regret it later.

Marcus watched as Annabelle scribbled notes from her place at his desk. Her mask had been replaced by her spectacles once again and she was focused on the task at hand, just as she had been since she arrived half an hour ago.

But he knew in his heart that something had changed between them. There was a skittishness to how she held herself and her glances toward him had been furtive rather than natural.

“Annabelle, what is wrong?” he finally asked, coming around to sit on the other side of his desk, forcing her to look directly at him.

She shook her head far too quickly. “Nothing. Of course nothing.”

He leaned back and folded his arms. “Annabelle…”

She caught her breath, stared at his ledgers for a long, silent moment and then whispered, “Do you think my brother will return here tonight?”

Marcus pursed his lips. “It is his regular night to come, yes. But he is late. It could be that after his recent outburst, he may stay away for a while.”

Her cheeks flamed, and he saw both embarrassment and pain in the pinkening of her face. “I-I am sorry, again, for the way he behaved.”

“Why do you apologize?” he asked with a shrug. “You didn’t cause him to lose control.”

“Why do you think he is so unhappy?” Her voice cracked as she asked the question.

He stared at her hand, clenched on the desktop. He so desperately wanted to touch it, to comfort her physically. But that was most definitely not his place.

He leaned forward anyway, and did exactly that. He covered her hand briefly, letting his fingers stroke over hers.

“I wouldn’t know,” he said, voice rough as he pulled away. “You know him better, don’t you?”

To his surprise, she bent her head and a tear slid down her cheek. "If you had asked me a year ago, two years ago, I would have said I knew him better than anyone except for perhaps Rafe. I would have told you I thought of him not just as my sometimes destructive brother, but as my friend.”

Marcus drew back. He had never heard a lady call her brother a friend. But then, Annabelle was entirely singular. Which was why he liked her so damned much that it physically hurt.

“But not now?”

She shook her head. “Since Rafe’s marriage, I have watched Crispin spiral out of control, but I have no idea on earth why. When he was going to hit you, I knew what he would do; that is why I cried out. But when he looked around, trying to find the voice that said his name, it wasn’t my brother I saw in his face. That man was a stranger.”

“He said something about
she
,” Marcus offered, thinking back to that night. “Was there a woman?”

“There is always a woman with Crispin,” she said with a sigh. “But I’ve never known one to make him weak or to hurt him.”

Marcus stared at her. He would have said the same thing about himself before he met Annabelle, or perhaps it was more correct to say before she staggered into his club and forced him to do more than stalk her mother’s drive, watching for a glimpse.

“Perhaps he met the right girl,” he said, his voice low as he searched her face.

“She would have to be the wrong girl if she has hurt him so much,” she growled, her protectiveness of her brother bright on her face.

Marcus shook his head. “Sometimes people don’t mean to hurt those they care about. It just happens.”

She jerked her gaze toward him. “I-I suppose that’s true. I’m sure I have hurt people in my past without meaning to do so. And though I hope I won’t, I fear I will repeat that in the future.”

Marcus turned his face. He wasn’t certain she was talking about him, about their arrangement, but that was where his mind took him regardless. He could clearly picture the moment when she would walk away from him. And soon after that, she would certainly forget him, even while he was haunted with images of how close he’d been to perfection, to happiness.

To love.

He pushed out of his chair and paced away from her so she wouldn’t see his ridiculous thoughts on his face. So that he wouldn’t have to look at her while they infected his mind.

He cleared his throat. “I think your brother is lucky indeed to have you as a friend.”

She sighed. “It seems he is lucky to have one in you as well. You could have had him banned from your club and you didn’t. You could have hit him back and you didn’t.”

Marcus shifted, not looking at her. “I would never do that.”

“Because you feel you owe him and Rafe?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“You told me the last time you saw me that you would explain to me how it is you came to know them, why you feel you owe them so much.” She moved toward him. “Will you tell me now?”

He slowly faced her. She was so beautiful, so desirable, so everything he had ever wanted and more than he would ever have. Perhaps telling her the story of why he owed her family would be a reminder to him of why he couldn’t want the things he wanted now.

He motioned to the fire and the two chairs before it. She moved there slowly, tucking her feet up beneath her and watching him as he sat beside her.

He took a long breath, wishing it would calm him. “I met your father and your brothers when I was fourteen years old,” he said with a shake of his head as memories flooded him. “There was a club that your father used to frequent.”

“Like this one?” Annabelle interrupted, bringing him back, temporarily, to this place and time.

He shook his head. “No, not quite. The Donville Masquerade is a high quality establishment, I pride myself in its cleanliness, its safety and its reputation. But the club where I met them wasn’t any of those things. It was a gaming house, and there was always a fight happening. It was owned by a bastard named Jack Quill. He was a drunk and a skinflint and he took whatever opportunity he could to steal from the clientele.”

“And my father went there?” Annabelle said, her voice filed with incredulity. 

Marcus shrugged. “You know how your father was. He liked to game and Quill paid odds well. Probably because he knew his patrons would rarely win; they were so sauced they were all practically crossed-eyed.”

“And where did you fit in?” she asked.

He hesitated a long moment. Here was the difficult part. “I worked for Quill.”

She tilted her head, and he could see she didn’t fully understand. Of course she wouldn’t. At fourteen, she was still in the schoolhouse, reading her books and sewing and playing pianoforte. She had no concept of the desperation of the street.

“So that was how you met my father, at the gaming club.”

“And your brothers,” he said. “Your father brought them along, despite their tender years.”

He expected Annabelle to be shocked by that fact, perhaps even horrified, but instead she merely shook her head. “Oh, Papa. So predictable. And were they the youngest gamblers in the place?”

He smiled. “Indeed, they were. Though your father didn’t let them game often. I believe Quill’s establishment was a bit of a lesson for them in how far a man could fall if he let drink and cards and bad company mix.”

Annabelle pursed her lips. “For all the good those lessons have done Crispin.”

“Only recently,” he said softly.

She nodded, but the pain lingered in her dark eyes. “So there they all were, in your father’s club…”

“He wasn’t my father,” Marcus snapped, stiffening.

She leaned away from the sudden sharpness of his tone. “I’m sorry.”

“Quill essentially owned me,” he said, bitterness in his voice that he couldn’t contain even after all these long years. “And he never let me forget it. He forced me to slave for him, steal for him, do his bidding, and when I didn’t do it right, or when he’d had a bad day or when he felt like it because it was Tuesday or Friday or Sunday…he beat me. Sometimes with his fist, sometimes with a stick, sometimes with a hot iron if he was truly angry.”

Annabelle gasped, and in that sound he felt, again, the disparity of their childhoods. Annabelle who had been raised with such love, he who had been nearly drowned like an unwanted kitten once, who had been beaten until he couldn’t move, who had been reminded daily or even hourly that he was trash.

“Marcus,” she whispered, and now it was her hand that reached for him, covered his, squeezed with such small, but meaningful comfort. “I’m so sorry.”

“One night Quill was enraged. He had asked me to empty a barrel in the back. It was filled with…” He flinched. “You don’t want to know what it was filled with. But it was so heavy and I was hardly more than a child. I couldn’t lift it, I tried dragging it, but it wouldn’t budge. Quill came in and he started screaming at me. Just screaming and screaming. And then the screaming stopped and the hitting, punching and kicking began.”

Annabelle made a pained sound in her throat and her hand tightened on his. It was odd, for the pressure of her fingers seemed to help him as he fought through the layers of memories, the nightmare of pain that always accompanied thoughts of that night.

He swallowed. “It all becomes foggy after a while. But Quill flipped the barrel’s disgusting contents onto me while he beat me. He told me that was what I deserved. And then he told me that if I was so worthless, he wasn’t about to keep me around. He said he was going to kill me and toss me into the river with the other boys who couldn’t do their jobs.”

Next to him, Annabelle covered her mouth with the hand that wasn’t clenching his.

“I don’t know if he would have done it or if he had done what he claimed before. But he was kicking me over and over and I was certain I would die. I almost welcomed it, just to get away from him. From his boot, from his hand, from the life that wasn’t a life at all.”

“But something stopped him,” she whispered. “Because you are here.”

Marcus swallowed hard, fighting the emotion that mobbed him for a moment. “I remember the kicking stopped and I looked up and there was a man, lit up like an angel and he was pulling Quill away, tossing him aside like he was nothing. And even though he was a gentleman, that much was clear in his dress and his smell, he picked me up, covered in shit and piss and God knows what else, and he carried me away.”

“Who?” she breathed. He met her eyes, held steady, and watched as they widened. “My father.”

He nodded. “Crispin had snuck out of the hall and saw what was happening to me. He told Rafe and together they rushed to your father. He never hesitated a moment to come to my aid, despite not knowing me.”

“You were of an age with his beloved sons and no one deserves what you went through.” She shook her head with a soft smile. “Of course he would do so. Flawed but wonderful, my father.”

“Indeed.”

“And
that
is why you feel you owe my family.”

He nodded. “That night and what happened after. I woke in a clean bed three days later, my wounds tended to, including the one that gave me that scar you examined so closely the first night we were together.”

She flinched. “My God.”

“There was a woman there, sitting by my bed. Calliope Rivers. She and her husband, Oliver, ran this place. Your father had taken me here. I suppose he knew what they would do.”

“Wasn’t Quill enraged? He believed he owned you, you said.”

Marcus laughed. “He didn’t give a damn. After all, your father bought and paid for me. Paid him handsomely, I learned later. Far more than I was worth.”

Annabelle lunged for him, covering his cheeks with her soft hands, drawing him closer. “Never say that again, Marcus Rivers. Never, ever claim you are not worthy. My father made a good bargain, whatever the price, and I’m sure he would tell you the same if you could ask him.”

He covered her hands, lost for a moment in the fervent passion of her expression. She was shaking with indignation at both the circumstances of his childhood and the way he dismissed himself. He ached for how much she seemed to care, for the feelings that true connection stoked in him. He knew their names and how foolish they were under the circumstances.

He could not love Annabelle Flynn.

“What happened with Mr. and Mrs. Rivers?” she asked, drawing back as if she read his mind and knew distance was required as he did.

“They took me in, healed me. The first chance I had, I tried to run away.”