Hold Your Breath 01 - Stone Devil Duke (25 page)

Setting the apple down, s
he pulled her legs up and leaned forward, stripping off her slippers and stockings. Her feet hit the cool water, swelled from the rain, and she let her toes play along a swirling whirlpool.

She didn’t know what to do with herself in that moment.

Last night, Devin had given her something very precious of himself—the truth of what really made him who he was. She knew how hard that had to have been for him. And in return, she had just given him the one thing she had not been able to—complete trust.

But that meant no control. No questions. No wondering. No planning. No worry.

And without all of that, who was she? What was she supposed to think about?

“Duchess, may I interrupt?”

Aggie jumped at the voice next to her. Had she let go so completely—just like that—that she couldn’t even hear someone sneak up on her? She bumbled to her feet as she turned to see Killian standing next to her.

“Yes, hello.” Smoothing the skirt of her
peach muslin dress, she looked past his shoulder for Devin.

Killian looked over his shoulder, then back to her. “Nope, just me.
Devin wanted me to talk to you.”

“He did?”

“He wanted me to make sure you are all right. He thinks you too often hide what you are feeling. So you know—the whole story of his parents? It is a lot to take in.”

Aggie’s hands went to her hips. “That i
s ridiculous. Why would he send you? Why does he not just ask me himself?”

“H
e does not trust himself. Not on this.” Killian rubbed his jaw. “And personally, I want to make sure as well.”

“Make sure of what?
”

“That you are not hiding anything from him. Disgust.
Judgment.”

Her eyebrows shot up.
“What? He told you to ask me that?”

“No. Of course not. That is for my own reassurance.
” Killian’s easy smile disappeared. “I like you, Aggie. Even if you don’t remember meeting me. I know a lot about you, and I like you. But my enjoyment of your antics only goes so far. Devin is like a brother. The only person I consider family. And I will ask things that he will not. Things he does not want to know the answers to.”

Aggie folded
her arms across her ribcage. “I cannot say that I return the sentiment of ‘like’ to you right now, Lord Southfork. It is only because of your importance to Devin that I have yet to walk away from your rudeness.”

“Forgive me, duchess. I may be rude, but I have
Devin’s best interests in mind. And you have yet to answer my question.”

“Am I disgusted? Am I judging? Yes. Hell yes. Of course I am. His parents disgust me. I never knew
them and God forgive me for speaking ill of the dead, but I think they were awful people. I think they were weak. I think they were selfish. I think they were cruel. I think they did something unforgivable to a child, and then crushed whatever shred of innocence Devin still had left that night. And I think he is better off with them dead.”

Aggie sucked in a breath, shaking. She had no idea that much anger was in her about it. She hadn’t recognized it. But there it was.

“I am sorry. That…that was too far.” Aggie closed her eyes, shaking her head and trying to stop the fire that had lit her body. She wiped away the wetness around her eyes. “It was only last night he told me. What they did…I cannot yet bear to think about the horrendousness of it, much less come to any sort of terms with it.”

When she opened her
eyes, Killian’s hard features softened into a smile.

“Good. Then we are of like mind. I must apologize for pushing you into that. I was unsettled by what I saw inside.”

Aggie shook her head, confused and heart still pounding. “What?”

“When he asked you
to drop your idea about becoming bait. Devin does not ask. He tells. He forces. He makes happen whatever he wants by demands. But inside just now, he was pleading with you. Pleading. It was something I have never seen before. So you can imagine my worry.”

Aggie couldn’t help the smile that
touched her lips. “All that demanding, yet he inspires a great amount of loyalty, does he not?”

Killian nodded.
“He does.”

“But again, if he is worried about how I reacted, why not just ask me?”

“My perspective?”

“
Please.”

“
He does not always think straight when it comes to that night. And because of it, he has thought of himself in a certain way for a very long time. That can be hard to overcome.”

“
How does he think of himself?”

“
The night his father killed his mother. In that one moment of time, he convinced himself he was either a coward or a monster. And he has been living it ever since. He spent an entire war trying to prove to himself he was not a coward.”

“And?
”

“Having fought by his side time and again,
I can say Devin is the furthest thing from a coward. So much so, I had to save him from himself a couple times.”

“He does give you credit for that.”

Killian smiled. “He should, the ass. He makes bad decisions in the name of his demons.”

Aggie took a deep breath, afraid to broach the second half of Killian’s assessment.
“And the monster?”

Killian
looked away from Aggie, watching the bubbling water for a long moment. Eventually, his eyes swung back to her, heavy with sincerity. “The monster part…I think that part rests with you.”

~~~

Killian disappeared from view, and Aggie sank back down to the bankside, the weight of his words on her shoulders.

Her blank mind a distant memory, she pulled her feet up, wrapping her arms around her legs as she watched the water.
That Devin could think himself a monster. It broke her heart, but it also lit a fire in her belly. She would spend the rest of her life, if that was what it took, to show him he was the exact opposite of a monster. She knew exactly what a monster was. And it wasn’t Devin.

A me
mory from London flashed in her mind, and she bit her own tongue. It was long ago, but that she had even spoken the words “Stone Devil” to him. Atrocious. Her gut churned.

Consumed by
examining every moment they had spent together, every moment that she must have made him question himself, Aggie didn’t hear the sound at first.

The odd noise repeated, again and again until it finally made its way into Aggie’s conscious mind.
Almost like the call of a falcon, except it was just a bit off.

It echoe
d from the woods, repeatedly, until Aggie finally pulled up, truly concentrating on the noise. Cocking her head, she waited for it again. It came, and it sounded fake, almost like the secret calls she and Jason used to have for each other in the woods.

N
o—it couldn’t be.

The call sounded again.

Aggie stood, ears straining. No. It couldn’t be. No. She pulled the knife from the apple, shoved her muddy feet into her slippers, and started a desperate walk into the woods.

Jason was dead.
She never wanted to admit it, but she knew it in her gut. Only death could keep him away from his family for so long.

The call reached her ears once more
. Aggie walked deeper into the thick woods on her left.

A cruel joke.
Someone was playing a cruel joke on her. She bent over as she walked, hand gripping the knife tightly. She knew she was safe at Stonewell, but she was not stupid, and the memory of being attacked so close to the estate hung in her mind.

Aggie picked through the trees, following t
he strange calls that continued sporadically. Fifteen minutes into the woods, a thick canopy of trees above her filtered out much of the sunlight. Aggie paused, hand on a tree, willing the sound to come once more. She knew she was close.

A twig cracked
behind her, but before she could turn around, a hand came tight across her mouth and an arm engulfed her, locking her arms to her sides. The knife dropped. Aggie kicked as hard as she could, hitting shins, but making no impact.

“Aggie! Hush
!”

She stopped.
No. It couldn’t be. She stood motionless, dazed. The arms around her relaxed, and she slowly turned, terrified at what she would find.

E
yes of a man she knew better than her own met hers. Aggie searched his face—so different—scars. But the eyes were unmistakable. Save for the flecks of brown, her exact eyes.

“Jason.” The word
choked out as she threw her arms around her brother’s neck, burying her head deep into his shoulder. Tears were both immediate and uncontrollable.

“Aggie,
I don’t have much time.”

She ripped her head back to look at him. “How—w
hat—where have you been?”

“Not here,” Jason whispered, peeling her arms off his neck
.

“But why
—”

He
shook his head with finger poised over his mouth. “Come.”

Aggie
nodded and grabbed Jason’s hand. He led her deeper into the forest, and ten minutes later, Jason ushered her up, of all things, a tree. Aggie wasn’t sure whether to be complimented that Jason still believed she could easily scamper up a tree, or annoyed that he thought she would do so without complaint.

He
swung up onto the first branch he had hiked Aggie up to, and followed her up several more thick branches until they were both out of sight from the ground.

Dumfounded, Aggie looked at her brother as he climbed and got
comfortable on a fat branch across from her. This was a hulking man, bearing little resemblance to the skinny boy they had said goodbye to years ago. His face was deeply tanned, except for the white scar that ran from his temple to below his jaw. She swallowed hard at the sight. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know where he had been all this time.

Catching her appraisal
, his familiar mischievous smile appeared. At least that hadn’t changed.

“Sorry about the tree. And the scare.
Your duke has this place locked down tighter than the place I just got out of. There are five rings of guards around the estate. Ridiculous.”

“
What? Really?” Maybe she should have been quicker to believe Devin when he said she was safe here.

“Yes. I have been lurking for a week, trying to get to you.”

“Why not come to the house?”

“I am effectively dead, and it needs to stay that way for the moment.
And I only dare keep you here for a moment. They watch you, and if they find you missing from the creek—”

“Then tell me everything as quick as you can.”

Jason arched an eyebrow at her demand, then shrugged. “About a year before father died—right before you and the family were told I had disappeared and was most likely dead—I was working on a special force under the crown that investigates treason. We were mostly concerned with transgressions that happened during the Napoleonic Wars. Best to know who your enemies are, and all.”

He shifted his foot on the trunk of the tree, gaining better balance. “I discovered
damning evidence against a group of three in acts of treason during the last years of the war. It turned out they were business associates of father’s.”

The blood dropped from Aggie’s face.

“No, father wasn’t involved. H
e did not even know these men until a few years ago,” Jason said. “I was missing some critical pieces in the evidence. So I was stupid. I involved father. I asked him to do some light investigations.”

Jason paused and rubbed his eyes
, shaking his head.

“It
is my fault, Aggie. He is dead because of me. I convinced myself he would be fine. I was very wrong. I did not even know until I got back—two days after I contacted father to tell him about the three, I was beaten unconscious and thrown into a ship hold.”

Jason stopped
, his face tight against obvious guilt. Aggie reached across the expanse to grab his hand and squeezed.

He took a deep brea
th. “I have only been back two weeks. No one knows I am alive. I found out you were here, so I have been attempting to get to you.” Jason shifted on the trunk uneasily. “They killed father. I need to finish this, Aggie.”

Aggie’s throat had closed up almost immediately into Jason’s story. She opened her mouth, and it took a long instant for words to
escape. “Yes. Yes, you do.”

Jason’s head cocked at her, curious, but she ignored it. She couldn’t go into all that had happened. Not now. Not yet.

“Two of the three men in the group are dead. I believe the third, Baron Von Traff, killed off his partners, tried to dispose of me, and murdered father.”

M
ovement sounded below them. Aggie looked desperately at Jason, but he just motioned for her silence and shook his head. The footsteps soon retreated.