A Duke to Remember (A Season for Scandal Book 2) (11 page)

“And any other man would lose.” The rifle remained steady in her hands. “And I never said you were helpless.”

“Are you always this arrogant?”

“I prefer
proficient
. And for the record, duels are asinine. There are always witnesses, the terrain and conditions are not always optimal, and most dueling pistols are unreliable. Both in accuracy and performance. There are much better ways to deal with such situations. I can offer a selection of other options if you find yourself in such circumstances in the future.” The last was delivered with such cool detachment that a small shiver chased itself down Noah’s spine.

“What, like knives and chains?” he asked carelessly, trying to mask his sudden disquiet. He didn’t want to imagine what “other options” might entail, nor did he want to acknowledge that a future with both of them in it existed.

“Not quite what I had in mind.” She assessed him for a long moment. “You’re familiar with street fighting.” It was a statement more than a question. Her eyes flickered over the knife in his hand again. “You are most comfortable with a blade in close quarters. And I suspect you are very…proficient.” Again a statement, and this one seemed to please her.

Noah opened his mouth to answer but discovered he couldn’t find anything to say. There was nothing pleasing about the memory of the acid taste of fear in his mouth, the burn of blood on his hands and arms, the metallic scent of death. There was nothing pleasing about his proficiency with a knife. There was nothing pleasing about killing. Even if it meant that you got to live.

Noah felt his jaw clench. “We’re not having this discussion.” He sheathed his knife deliberately and turned on his heel, heading back along the path toward the house and weaving his way through the thick foliage. “And another thing,” he tossed back over his shoulder, trying to affect a sangfroid he didn’t feel, “I want you to stay out of my kitchen.” He shoved a branch out of his way and waited for the rebuttal that was sure to come.

Except it never came. Instead all he heard behind him was the chattering of a squirrel and the trilling call of an unseen bird. He stopped and turned but saw…nothing. It was as if Elise had vanished into thin air. He glanced up at the branches over his head, but nothing moved save the occasional leaf.

“Elise?” he said into the space around him, feeling foolish and not a little unnerved.

“I’ll stay out of your kitchen if you stay out of this forest. It’s unsafe. At least for now.”

Noah nearly came out of his skin. He whirled and found Elise standing on the path, only somehow she’d gotten ahead of him. “Bloody hell,” he swore, “stop sneaking up on me like that.” She was like a damn phantom in this damn forest.

“Better me than someone else. I’m trying to ensure that, when you return to London, it is not in a pine box. You are of no use to me or your sister in a pine box.”

Noah threw up his hands.

“Your cousin has hired—”

“My cousin wouldn’t know how to hire a footman, much less an
assassin
,” Noah snapped at her.

“And how do you know that? When was the last time you spoke with your cousin?” Elise gazed at him impassively. “Was that before or after he grew up and gambled away whatever money he had? Was that before or after he found himself in debt to a number of men who are long on memory and short on patience?”

That Francis would have lost money gambling wasn’t surprising. He had never been overly clever as a boy. Though he’d made up for that with sheer meanness. He’d been the type that had taken pleasure in pulling the wings off butterflies and poking the eyes from frogs. But to go to the lengths that she was suggesting…Noah scowled. “That is not the point. Francis was always cruel but—”

“But now he is no longer a child. Now he is desperate. And desperate men are dangerous men.”

“Tell me exactly how you came to be in possession of such information. That Francis Ellery hired men to assassinate me.”

Elise’s face shuttered. “That doesn’t matter—”

Noah barked a rude laugh. “I thought so.”

“Are you insinuating I’m making this up?” Elise asked, color staining her cheeks.

“Have you met these men?” he asked.

“Who?”

“These so-called assassins who are hot on my trail?”

Elise’s mouth tightened. “No.”

“Know their names? How much they were paid?”

“No, but—”

“But nothing. You have nothing.”

Her beautiful eyes narrowed into slits. “I have far from nothing. I have the Duke of Ashland standing in front of me—”

“I. Don’t. Want. The. Title.” He bit off each word.

“I don’t really care if you aspire to be a pauper or the bloody king of England when it comes down to it,
Your Grace
.” There was a razor edge to her voice that was not lost on him. “But I do care if you get your fool self killed because of it. And I care that you have a sister and a mother who need your help. My job is to make sure they get it one way or another.”

The guilt that had been simmering for too long, stirred by dark memories of fear and death, bubbled over, turning into anger. “If I thought Abigail was in any sort of danger, there is no force on this earth that could stop me from getting to her. But she’s not.”

“The same cannot be said for your mother.”

Noah turned away, every muscle in his body tense, an icy cold settling through his bones. It was wrong, he knew, to feel so much hatred and resentment toward someone after so long. A better man would have forgiven his mother for her betrayal and abandonment. A better man would have forgiven or, at the very least, tried to forget the consequences of that abandonment. But he had been unable to do either. He was not a better man. “That is not my affair,” he hissed.

“You are not a man who allows others to suffer.” Elise’s voice had risen.

Noah’s head jerked around. “You don’t know me, Miss DeVries. You have no idea what I would or would not do.”

“I know—”

“You…nothing…you know nothing.” His blood was surging through him, emotion making it difficult to think, difficult to breathe.

“I know enough to know you would not leave your mother in Bedlam.”

“That’s where she left me when I was ten!”

A silence fell hard on the end of those words. A silence that breathed with the forest around him, echoed in the canopy of silvered leaves overhead.

At his sides Noah’s hands were clenched into fists, yet the regret he had expected to follow that confession did not come. In fact there was an immeasurable, if inexplicable, sense of relief. His admission, his release of that secret to this woman had been reckless and rash and utterly unfathomable. He could not begin to explain why he had told Elise DeVries something that not even John Barr knew. Perhaps because she already held so many of his secrets. Perhaps the admission was like a crack in a dam where a steady trickle of truth had eroded the edges until veracity burst through all the lies and secrets, leaving him exposed. Perhaps it was an unacknowledged need to have another soul on this earth to whom he might reveal his true self. But whatever the reason, standing here, with only the trees to witness his folly, Noah wasn’t sorry.

Presently he became aware that Elise hadn’t spoken. He met her eyes, only to find them watching him, betraying no emotion. No horror, no disgust, and, most telling, no surprise.

“You already knew that.” His words were barely a whisper.

She tipped her head as if considering her answer. “Yes. I think I did.”

“I…you…” Noah had no idea what to say to that. “You think? Did Abigail tell you that?” he managed.

“Abigail doesn’t know.”

“Thank God,” he mumbled.

“No one knows where you disappeared to. Only that you vanished as a child and, until very recently, were presumed dead.”

“I almost died in that place,” he said, feeling a little numb. “A number of times.” And there had been even more times he’d wished for death. Prayed for it. Begged for it.

Elise set her rifle down and leaned it against a tree. She stepped closer, so that she was directly in front of him. She put a hand on his chest, directly over his heart, where it beat steadily. “But you’re not.”

Noah dropped his head. “I’m not dead? Or I’m not a lunatic?”

“Well, the former is rather obvious. As for the latter…are you?”

“Am I what?”

“A lunatic?”

“No,” he spluttered.

“Good. I’m so very glad we got that sorted out.” Elise sounded as if she was smiling, but he was a little afraid to look at her.

It was exactly what she’d done on the road when he’d blurted out his first confession. His admission that he got his words mixed up. Somehow she’d reduced it from something looming and horrific to something…less. Something that simply was. A part of his past, a part of him that deserved no more or less attention than any other part.

She raised her other hand and placed it against his chest. He could feel the heat from her touch permeate the cold that had settled into his bones earlier. It was everything he could do not to simply draw her into his arms and bury his head in the softness of her neck and let her strength chase away all his ghosts.

And on the heels of that came a wash of embarrassment. When had he become so maudlin? So weak? Since when did he need a woman to find courage and to stand firm? And a woman who had her own agenda at that? “I don’t want your pity,” he mumbled, trying to reassert whatever dignity he still had left. There could not be a repeat performance of the debacle in the lane this morning, when he had allowed the base demands of his body to obliterate all his resolutions and intentions and good sense.

“No, I never expected you would,” she replied. Her hands suddenly slid up and caught his face when he would have pulled away.

He froze before raising his eyes to hers. She was gazing at him in that level, intense way she had, as if she were peering past his exterior and reading his soul.

“You have the corner on my aggravation and frustration at the moment, if I’m being honest,” she said, though she said it with a small smile. “Though that is simply because you’re making my job somewhat arduous and we are not yet on the road to London.” She paused. “But you will never have my pity. A survivor is not a man to be pitied. He is a man to be respected.”

Something in Noah’s chest lurched. With sudden clarity he realized he wanted this woman’s respect with a force that he wasn’t prepared for. It was one thing to know that she desired him on a physical level. It was something deeper, something so much more significant, to know he held her regard.

“I can’t go back to London,” he said, needing her to understand more than he had ever needed anything.

She didn’t argue or remind him about Abigail or his title or any of the things she’d presented to him already. “Why?” Her hands still rested against the sides of his face.

“I…killed.”

“Ah.” She didn’t flinch or recoil. There was no gasp of dismay, no shadow of trepidation. Though by now Noah should have known better. “Tell me,” was all she said.

He stepped away from her then, afraid that, if he remained where he was, he would give in to the urge to simply kiss her and use that as an excuse to stay this conversation.

“I was in Bedlam for five years,” he said, trying to keep the facts separate from the emotion that was twisted through them. “From the time I was ten until I was fifteen.” He pulled a leaf off a bush and traced the tiny lines on its emerald surface with his fingers. “My father told the men who came for me that I was the gardener’s son, and I was committed under a false name. Presumably to spare the dignity of our family until such time that my faculties of speech could be fully restored.”

“What happened when you were fifteen?” Elise asked, and he was reminded of just how perceptive she was.

“We escaped.”

“We?”

Noah forced himself to speak evenly. “A boy, Joshua, the same age as me, who was committed before I arrived. Often, throughout the years, they would keep us chained together. Part of our individual recoveries, we were assured by the mad-doctors and the keepers, though Joshua had no trouble with speech. The night we escaped, we were such—chained together. One of the keepers on our ward had taken a fancy to Joshua. Abused him often in a manner I will not detail further. Fully intended to do the same on this particular night, regardless of the fact that we were shackled together.
Because
we were shackled together. The man told me to watch. He told me I might learn something before it was my turn. He never got the chance.” Noah realized he had shredded the leaf in his hands and he let the pieces fall, watching them flutter over the toes of his boots. “Along with the keys, the bastard carried a knife at his belt. I waited until he was…distracted. And then I was quicker than he.” He dropped his head. “And I can’t be sorry for it. I’d do it again.”

Elise was watching him silently, her eyes shadowed by her cap and completely unreadable.

“There were others. After I escaped. I lived on the streets of London for three years, and there were those who would have seen me gutted if only for the clothes on my back.” He dropped his head. “I was quicker than they as well.”

A quiet settled and stretched on, the wind whistling through the braches overhead before subsiding again. A raven cawed loudly before it too fell silent.

“I am no use to Abigail if I am arrested for murder upon my return,” Noah said, if only to break the stillness.

Elise tipped her head but still remained mute.

“Say something,” Noah demanded.

“Why are you glad that Abigail is ignorant of what happened to you as a child?”

“What?” That wasn’t what he had been expecting. He’d been expecting platitudes, reassurances that he’d done what was necessary, appeals to ignore any lingering guilt. All things that Joshua had continually intoned in the months after their escape.

“Do you not think Abigail is strong enough to handle the truth?”

Noah blinked. “My sister is one of the strongest people I know.”

“Then why keep her in ignorance?”

“Because I do not wish her to know what I did. What I became.” That sort of darkness was his burden, not hers.