With This Ring (26 page)

Cas stepped forward, rubbing his hands briskly.
“You heard her, lads!
Zander, wake up the old horses, will you?
We’ll need the carriage to do this properly.”

Aaron peered around him, leaning hard to one side, trying to catch one last glimpse of Elektra.
Did she care?
Could
she care for Lord Aaron the way she had for Henry Hastings?

Does she love me still?

Then Cas’s words sank in and he gazed warily at the brothers crowding ’round.

I may not live long enough to find out.

Chapter Twenty-one

Elektra moved numbly through the house, avoiding obstacles through long practice despite the roaring in her ears and the dull hollow thudding of her heart.
At last, she reached the sanctuary of her own bedchamber, but it was an empty haven.
A girl’s room, festooned with the dreams of girlhood.
There was no room for the brokenhearted here.

Her gaze flinched from the site of butterfly-blue ribbons still pooled upon her dressing table.
She turned her back on it all—the lace, the ribbons, the silly novels she had studied to learn the art of love.
Only the fire-blackened hearth did not make her twitch away.

Bliss found her sitting primly in the chair by the cold fire, her hands neatly folded in her lap and her spine quite erect.

“Cousin?”

“I’m sorry, Bliss.
This is not the time.”

“I see.”
Bliss daintily seated herself on the needlepoint footstool before Elektra.
“His Grace was looking for you this evening.
I believe you quite caught his fancy.
I’m not sure that making yourself scarce was precisely the best mode—”

Elektra put her hands over her face, and tried to remember how to breathe normally.
“Bliss, I don’t give a petite pony’s tail about the best mode.”

“Language, cousin!”

Elektra giggled, a hysterical torn laugh that threatened to become a sob.

“Well, if you aren’t upset about His Grace, then your distress must concern Mr.
Hastings.”

Elektra caught her breath.
There was no point in turning her gaze away anymore.
“I thought he was the only truly honest man I had ever met.
I admired his ability to move through the world without caring what it thought of him.
All lies.
His name is not Hastings.
He is Lord Aaron Arbogast.”
Say it all, say the whole thing, out loud.
“They call him Black Aaron.”

“Oh, dear.”
Bliss was silent for a long moment.
“
That
Lord Aaron.”

Elektra turned disbelieving eyes toward bliss.
“You know about Black Aaron?”
She threw out her hands in frustration.
“How does everyone know about Black Aaron except me?”

“Some of us have learned to listen.”
Bliss’s tone was gentle.
“In addition, you seem to have been focused on other matters for some years now.”

The husband hunt, she meant.
The all-consuming meaning of Elektra’s existence.
“It was all I’ve ever cared about.
I threw it away tonight, simply tossed it to the winds—all for a kiss from a heinous liar.”

“Oh, I know why you threw it away.
I simply wonder why it consumed you in the first place.”
Bliss tilted her head, her summer-sky eyes as ingenuous as ever.

“Why?”
Elektra stared at her cousin.
“You know the state of the manor!
You know the wealth it will take to restore it!”

“Yes, of course I do.
But why must it be you who sacrifices yourself to rebuild the manor?
Why not I?
After all, I was just as responsible for the fire as you were.”

“I—what?”
It couldn’t be.
It wasn’t possible.

It would explain everything.
She shook her head, rejecting that thought.
“I don’t know what you speak of.”

Bliss folded her hands in her lap, her pose mirroring Elektra’s perfectly.

“I speak of you and me, playing in the drawing room.
I speak of two curious little girls, encouraged in their curiosity, I might add—investigating the mechanics of a carriage lantern taken from the stables.”

Elektra stared at her cousin with icy horror rising in her throat.
She swallowed desperately, trying to rid herself of that growing realization.
“I don’t remember.”

“Just as you don’t remember me.
Just as you don’t remember what set you on this path of ruthless self-sacrifice in the first place.”

“But the fire … It consumed everything, not just the drawing room.”

“This may be hard for you to hear now, cousin.”

“Tell me!”

Bliss sighed regretfully.
“We did not alert anyone to the fire.
We ran away and hid in the woods across the meadow.”

The woods. Huddling in the great branching roots of an oak. Shivering, breathless fear.
“I hate those woods.
I would never go into them voluntarily.”

“That is how you feel about them now.
You used to like them.”

Elektra shook her head violently.
“I would never do such a thing!
I would never run away and leave my family in danger!”

Those summer-sky eyes gazed at her with pity and understanding.
“We were five years of age, cousin.
We were infants.
No one held us responsible for what happened.
Except you, evidently.”

Elektra’s breath left her and would not come back.
She covered her face with her hands and bent low over her lap.
A shock-filled keen rose in her throat and stayed there, choking her.

It was me. It was always me.

I’ve always known it, haven’t I?

It’s all my fault.

Bliss leaned forward to gently pull Elektra’s hands from where they threatened to tear her face.
“It was an accident, cousin.
Accidents happen.
No one was to blame.”

Bliss wasn’t going to go away until she calmed herself.
With every shred of iron will she had developed in this household of strong wills, Elektra forced air in and out of her lungs.
She straightened in the chair and relaxed the fists still held in Bliss’s grasp.
“Thank you, cousin.
Of course, you are quite correct.
I understand everything now.”

Bliss released her slowly.
Her wide-eyed gaze might seem vapid, but Elektra had the feeling that her serene cousin missed nothing.
However, she did nothing to refute Elektra’s words.

“That is good news, cousin.”
She stood.
“Now, if you will excuse me, I must be off to bed.
I am exceptionally weary, for I danced every dance.”

Elektra blinked.
I only danced one.

The strange mad giggle threatened once more.
Points for Bliss.

At the door, Bliss paused and turned back to her.
“I know you are disappointed in yourself for succumbing to such a terrible man.
However, he did save my life.
I liked him, too.
We all did.”

“Except for Dade.”

Bliss nodded.
“Except for Daedalus.
I expect that that is not so unusual.”

Elektra used the very last of her self-control to offer some kindness back to Bliss, who was not who she’d thought.
“I appreciate your thoughtfulness, Bliss.
You have been very charitable to me.
I’m sorry I misjudged you.”

Bliss blinked.
“People often do.
I imagine you know how that feels.”
She turned to leave once more, then turned back again.
“As does poor Lord Aaron, I’m sure.”
Then she was gone, leaving Elektra in her chilled pit of turmoil.

I have done so much damage in my life—and I am only nineteen! Please, someone stop me before I rain down the end of the world.

She would trade that world for one opportunity to fix what she had broken.
She would go back in time to that single moment, the moment when she knew she had passed the point beyond which there was no return.

When was that? When you started the fire, or when you first kissed Lord Aaron?

*   *   *

Aaron’s body hit the rippling surface of the Thames with hardly even a splash to give away murder in the act.
Not that there was anyone near at all.
Cas had directed the brothers to a stretch of riverbank off Vauxhall Gardens, currently deserted at this near-dawn hour.
Too late for the respectable to be out, too early for the dishonorable to be awake.

As his head slipped beneath the icy, muddy water, Aaron wildly wondered how the Worthington twin had known precisely where one might dispose of an inconvenient soon-to-be dead body.

There would be no rescue, of course.
If anyone in London knew what transpired, they would likely gather ’round to watch the death of Black Aaron, nibbling on candy floss and cheering when the bubbles of his last breath rose to the surface.

His wrists were bound with rope, as were his ankles.
Feeling himself roll in the water, he flexed his body violently back and forth, fighting for the surface.
He’d taken one last good breath as they’d tossed him from the bank, but he’d lost half of it in shock at the freezing water.

Panicking now, he struggled senselessly, his body taking over for a mind frozen with impending doom.
He simply writhed in protest, in soundless vehement protest that it wasn’t yet his time, that he didn’t want to die.
Twisting and rolling, he lost track of up and down, of surface and distant, filthy bottom.

Then, like a miracle accompanied by angel song, the ropes about his wrists simply parted and fell away.
He clawed his way up and up—at least, he prayed it was up!—until his head broke the water and he sucked in a great gasp of fetid river air.

Beautiful.

He kept himself there for several seconds, taking in one great lungful after another of lovely, dank air.
Then, he held his breath once more and let himself roll beneath the lapping waves to tug at the ropes around his ankles.
They, too, fell away like magic.

No, not like magic.
Like a trick knot.
The Worthingtons knew their knots, after all.
It had been Lysander who had taken the rope from Cas to tie Aaron’s hands in the house, and again to tie his ankles in the carriage.

As Aaron stretched out to swim to the bank in long, powerful strokes, he pondered that notion, but he could think of no other explanation.

Silent, mysterious Lysander, it seemed, was on Black Aaron’s side.

*   *   *

Aaron was quite sure he was risking another dunking—or worse!—by going back to Worthington House, but every time he considered the alternative, he saw her face in Dade’s study—her chilled, proud expression that in no way hid the slight tremble of her bottom lip.

He had to tell Elektra … something.
He couldn’t tell her the real truth of Black Aaron, obviously.
He simply couldn’t bear to part ways with her thinking that he’d lied and finagled and kissed her—

You did lie and finagle and kiss her!

Yes, but not for the reasons she thinks!

Those reasons mattered to him.
He only hoped they would matter, a little, to her.

Besides, those Worthington louts had kept his horse.

So after he’d climbed out of the revolting river and squeezed out his clothing, he set out.
He crossed the section of London between the Thames and Elektra on foot.
By the time he found his way, the sun was well up.
Thankfully, his clothing was mostly dry by then.

As he approached the house, limping in the shoes he’d borrowed for the ball the night before, cursing all the Worthington males to the fires of hell, he saw the old family carriage waiting out front.
The gray-muzzled team drooped resentfully in the traces, and the clear morning light was not forgiving to the tarnished brasses.

He’d thought his old carriage had been a collection of sticks and varnish, but this one had to precede his by a couple of decades!
Cas and Lysander appeared.
Aaron stepped back into a shadowed doorway on the other side of the street.

The Worthington lads lugged a battered, strapped trunk between them.
When they hefted it carelessly onto the carriage’s baggage rack, the entire conveyance shook like old kindling.

Then Aaron saw Elektra exit the house.
She wore a mint-green gown, topped with a dark green spencer and a bonnet trailing hunter-green ribbons.

Her eyes must look like emeralds, wearing that.

Her lethally fashionable ensemble, along with her natural grace, made her look like a princess among the peasants.
Her brothers could dress well when required, and Cas’s formal weskit last night had been either fashion-forward or delusional, but today they wore nondescript browns, rather like his own third-best suit.

Then Iris and Archie appeared.
Archie was stuffed into the same fine, if slightly shiny-in-spots suit that he’d worn to the ball the night before.
Iris wore layers of blue diaphanous fabrics that trailed behind her and fluttered about her so that Aaron got the distinct impression of medieval banners flying.
It would have been rather impressive had Iris not wandered dreamily into the street and required Cas’s quick reflexes to snatch her back before someone ran her over.

The whole clan emerged from the house, including Attie and Bliss, and even Philpott, who looked remarkably lucid.
Then again, it was early yet.
Iris and Archie, along with Elektra, distributed kisses and hugs and then boarded the carriage.
Lysander listened to some murmured instructions from Dade, then climbed easily into the driver’s seat.
The rickety carriage rolled away with a clatter as the crowd on the walk waved good-bye until it was out of sight.

Aaron drew back into the shadows.
A journey of some days, by the looks of the trunk.
This could be very good.
There would be only one Worthington lout between him and Elektra.
If he could discover their destination, he could easily reach it on Lard-Arse before they did.

He didn’t want to cause trouble.
He only wished to speak to her for a moment.
To apologize, to explain, to beg her forgiveness …

That was all.
Truly.

Until Dade put his arm around a sulky-looking Attie.
His deep voice came clearly across the street.

“She isn’t getting married quite yet, Attie.
She has to accept the proposal first.
They are simply going to the Duke of Camberton’s estate to work out the details.
She’ll be back in a week.”