The Highwayman (35 page)

Farah found it difficult to digest his story, her mind threatening to regurgitate its ugliness onto the ground like so much rancid meat. “You won't say his name,” she murmured. “Dorian Blackwell, the boy who died.”

“You don't seem to understand. Whoever was left of the boy I was is buried in that mass grave along with his body. You did not marry Dougan Mackenzie.”

“Yes I did,” Farah insisted in a gentle whisper.

He pushed to his feet, standing over her like a reluctant executioner, about to carry out the sentence of a dark soul. “
I
am Dorian Blackwell. I will always
be
Dorian Blackwell. He lives on in me.”

Farah lifted to her knees, meaning to stand, but froze when he took a retreating step. “Then—I'll love you as Dorian Blackwell,” she offered. “For I married him, as well.”

A quiet and painful desperation speared through her as his face hardened. “Do not speak of love, Farah. For it is something I cannot give.”

Stunned, she fell back on her haunches as though his words had physically pushed her down. “What?” Of course, Dorian had told her that before. But—things were different now.

“I can offer you protection. I can offer you revenge. I've given you your legacy. But I cannot offer you my heart, because I am not capable of giving something I don't possess.”

Bleeding for him, Farah forgot to be proud, forgot to be strong, and prostrated herself on her knees in front of him, clasping her hands in supplication. Ready to give him anything. Her heart. Her soul. Her life. He was her soul mate, back from the dead. It would kill her to lose him again. She didn't care what he'd done, what life had driven him to do. She'd take those sins upon her own head; carry the burdens of his memories on her slim shoulders. “You can have
my
heart,” she offered.

“You'd be a fool to give it to me,” he mocked, twisting his features into something foreign and frightening.

“Then I am a fool,” she insisted. “For I already have.”

“I do not suffer fools!” he hissed. “You gave your heart to
Dougan,
before you even knew what it meant. It is not meant for me.”

She seized his fist, pressing a kiss to the scarred knuckle. “But Dorian has begun to steal it, thieving highwayman that he is.”

“Then take it back!” He wrenched his fist from her grasp, pulling her off balance and forcing her to catch herself on the grass with her outstretched hands, soiling them with the mud beneath. “In my hands it will become corrupted. Poisoned. I'll blacken it until you hate me almost as much as you hate yourself for giving it to me.” He thrust a finger at her to silence her reply. “Every part of my life has been bleak, brutal, and bloody—except you. I'll not add your ruin to my many sins.”

“We can change that,” she cried. “Together.”

He bent and thrust his strong, cruel face into hers, water falling from his hair onto her skin. “That's what you're too blind to see. I don't
want
to change. I like being the Blackheart of Ben More. I relish making the imbeciles that run this empire into my puppets. I feed on the fear of others. I love to crush my enemies and outwit the police. I am not the redeemable hero, Farah. I am
not
the boy who loved you. I am the
villain
—”

“Fine!” Farah held her soiled hands up. “All right. I'll take it, all of it. I'll take you just as you are. Dorian Blackwell, the Blackheart of Ben More. I've seen the kind of man you are, how you take care of those whom you pretend not to care about. I'm your
wife
. I've been your wife for
seventeen
years. I love you.”

His next words made her doubt the twitching flicker of agonized emotion that struggled to peel itself from his bones before he crushed it behind his mask of ice and stone. “I know what you're thinking, Farah. Don't you think it has been offered to me before? Maybe if you love me enough. Accept me enough. Set a good example of compassion and kindness that you'll make me a better man.”

He was so astute, so brutally correct, that Farah had to force herself not to cringe from him.

“There
is
no better man under this.” He gestured to his scarred eye. “In fact, with you here, I'm much worse. I lose control around you, Farah. You make me blind. The thought of touching you dissolves me into madness. The thought of another man touching you…” He grabbed her wrists and held the raw skin in front of her eyes. “Look what I've done. What I—
forced
you to do upstairs.”

“You didn't force me,” Farah breathed. “I—wanted you.”

“I would have.”

“You
can't
have done,” she argued. “Dorian, I'll never deny you. I'm yours.
Only yours
. Just like you've always said.”

Before her eyes he became a stranger. The vestiges of the angry, possessive Dougan Mackenzie disappeared. And even the cold, aloof, and dominant Dorian Blackwell gave way to someone new. It wasn't just the light and life that disappeared from his eyes, but the shadows and mystery, too. It was almost like watching him jump off the edge of a cliff. She'd never in her life felt so utterly helpless. Not with her hands bound to the bed. Not when they'd taken the boy she'd loved away from her. Not ever.

“What about your promise?” she reminded him desperately. “You
promised
me a child.”

“Consider this the first time of many that I'll disappoint you.”

“But you said that you always keep your promises.”

“I was wrong to say that.”

Farah panicked. He wasn't just retreating. It was like watching him die. Right there, in front of her. Severing the ties with the last of his humanity. With the part of himself that still searched for her after all these years.

“Why?” She hated the pleading note in her voice.

“As I said before.” He straightened, his hair hanging down into his eyes. “I do not suffer fools.”

He stepped over her like one would a sopping puddle and strode toward the house. Farah watched his drenched clothing molding to the wide back he held as straight as an arrow.

She fought her heavy, sodden skirts to stand. The ache in her heart echoed in the falls of his feet on the wet flagstone walk to the house. It was like she'd thrown her heart beneath his boots and each beat was the stomp of his heel.

Well, she wasn't a flame to be stomped out so easily. “Then why marry me?” she called after him, pushing her wet ringlets out of her eyes. “Why capture me and bind my life to yours if you planned to cast me away? What's the bloody
point
?”

“The point is, I'm a bastard,” he replied over his shoulder. “In
every
sense of the word.”

 

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-ONE

“Why doona ye go with her?” Murdoch asked for maybe the millionth time. “It'd be a damned sight better than staying locked up here and working yerself to death.”

Dorian looked up from where he unpacked crates of books he'd unloaded this morning, and swiped a forearm across his sweating brow. He'd been up and down the library ladder possibly hundreds of times today, and planned to climb it a hundred more, until every book had been placed where it belonged. Maybe then, he'd expand the wine cellar. Regardless of his past, there were times his hands ached for the feel of a sledgehammer or a pickaxe again. Perhaps he'd dig a tunnel to France. By himself.

“Blackwell—”

“It's this, or drinking,” Dorian interrupted. “Pick one.”

“Drinking yerself to death would certainly be more enjoyable,” his steward muttered.

A flurry of dust erupted as Dorian dropped a pile of gold-leafed hardcovers on the table with a loud
crack
. “Is there something that needs attending?” he asked irately.

“Yer
wife,
” Murdoch challenged.

Dorian paused, a pang of pure agony spearing through him with such force he couldn't bring himself to lift his head above the book spines in front of him. “Careful, old man.”

“Ye aren't even going to say
good-bye
?”

“She's going to Hampshire, Murdoch, not the Indies. It's an hour or so by train.” Dorian sorted through books he could not see, moving them from pile to pile just to avoid the knowing stare of his oldest living friend. “It's better this way,” he finally murmured.

“Ye're a bloody idiot,” Murdoch declared.

“And you are
this
close to losing your—”

“She's yer
Fairy,
Dougan. How can ye possibly let her go now?”

“Don't call me that.” An abyss that could encompass the night sky had opened up in his chest a week ago, on that day in the gardens, and Dorian rubbed at his sternum, wondering when it would burst from his rib cage and swallow the earth. “You've seen what I've done to her.” He fingered a page, receiving a cut for his troubles. “It was never part of the plan to keep her with me. She wants to make me a father. We both know that's a terrible idea. I'm not—whole.”

“She loves ye,” Murdoch offered.

“She loves her memories of Dougan. She's known Dorian for such a short time, and I've already done more damage than can be repaired.”

“But, what if ye—”

“What if I broke her?” Dorian seethed, advancing on Murdoch. “What if I hurt her in my sleep, or worse? What if I lost my temper? What if I lose my mind?”

“What if ye let go of yer past and she made ye happy?” Murdoch retorted. “What if she gave ye peace? Maybe a little hope?”

Dorian swiped a bottle of Highland scotch he'd been nursing and took a deep, burning swig before turning toward the window overlooking the drive. Maybe he
would
drink himself to death. At least then the fire in his belly would be something other than this numb sort of despair. And wouldn't Laird Ravencroft be glad to hear of his demise? By his own whisky, no less.

“There
is
no hope for a man like me,” he told his reflection, and the pathetic bastard in the window seemed to agree, looking back at him with disgust. “No peace to be had.”

After a hesitant moment Murdoch asked, “Are we going back to Ben More, then?”

A black coach and four pulled into the circular drive and rolled to a stop beneath the portcullis. Dorian watched its progress with a sinking desolation. “I will likely be, but you're to accompany Lady Blackwell to Northwalk Abbey.”

“But sir!” Murdoch argued. “I havena packed.”

“I had them pack your things this morning,” Dorian informed him. “I don't want her traveling alone and Argent is—occupied.”

“Very well,” Murdoch acquiesced. “But she should get used to the idea of her being alone. Ye've just cursed her with a life of nothing
but
isolation. She'll be the unwanted wife of the Blackheart of Ben More. How lonely do ye think that'll be?”

Dorian took another swig, his books forgotten, his head swimming in scotch and misery. “Have a safe journey, Murdoch,” he said in dismissal.

“Rot in hell, Blackwell,” Murdoch tossed back before quitting the room and slamming the door.

He already was, Dorian thought with a wry huff before taking another swig. He didn't think he stood staring out at nothing for that long, but before he knew it Farah stepped from under the front awning.

There couldn't be a picture of a more elegant and refined countess. Her traveling dress, a jewel green with gold ribbing at the hem of the jacket, matched the hat covering her intricately pinned hair. A tasteful black feather flowed from the hat and matched the gold and black bobs at her ears.

Dorian drank in the sight of her. Committed it to his memory as he had none other. The indent of her waist. The fourteen ruffles of her pelisse. The delicate curve of her neck and the way a few lone ringlets draped down her shoulder.

Don't look back at me,
he begged, unable to tear himself away from the window.
Don't give me another memory of your eyes to haunt my dreams.

It had been at his insistence, hadn't it, that she go and properly claim her father's Hampshire castle? He could no longer stand her presence beneath his roof. No longer watch her while she slept and not be tempted to take her. To hold her. To curl against her body and lose himself to the oblivion she found so easily.

The blood of the dead and dying didn't haunt her dreams.

And he had to make certain it stayed that way.

Don't look back.

If she did, he wouldn't be able to let her go. He'd lock her in the tower like some pirate's captive and—and—well, it didn't bear thinking what he'd do. All manner of debauched perversions, that's what. He'd use her in all the dark and devious ways he'd been trying not to obsess about since that first night.

He took another swig.

Murdoch took Farah's hand to help her into the coach. She paused, her chin dropping and tilting toward where he stood at the grand library window.

He put his hand on the windowpane, feeling more like that boy at Applecross than he had in years.
Don't look back at me.

And she didn't. For there was nothing to see.

*   *   *

Farah stood on the banks of the river Avon and enjoyed a few minutes of rare and blessed silence. It wasn't that she minded all the callers and well-wishers who had swarmed upon Northwalk Abbey; in fact, they provided a lovely diversion. One could not dwell on a broken heart when there was a house to put in order and a past to reclaim.

Breathing in fragrant air chilled by river water and sweetened with bluebells, Farah turned back to admire the gables of Northwalk Abbey. Diversion only took one so far. The mind was a powerful tool, but altogether useless when it came to matters of the heart.