Chapter 13
A lmost as long as Opal knew Locke, the Duke of Strathearn, she’d loved him.
She admired him for his vast interests in literature and the generous support he provided circulating libraries throughout London. Especially as most gentlemen tended to spurn literary pursuits for athletic ones.
Opal loved him for having used the power he held as a duke for good and boldly and fearlessly standing up for Abaddon and Glain’s union, when the Duke of Devonshire would have gleefully separated the couple forever. As much as he’d been, Locke showed that same devotion to Opal and Flint.
She’d never, however, loved him more than she did in right now in this moment with him demonstrating the breadth of knowledge on history and so using it to vigorously affirm Opal’s worth.
And no matter what came to pass at the end of this house party he’d allowed Glain and Abaddon to throw on her behalf, she’d never love another after him.
“I love this place,” she said. She loved even more sharing this space with him.
Immense relief washed over Locke’s face. “It was my mother’s. She’d come here to,” he grimaced, “escape my father’s company.”
She caught the way he curled his fingers into the side of the table and swiftly released his hold and the tension from his hands. They’d never spoken about their families. It’d just been an understood, unspoken bond they’d shared, two people with monstrous sires.
“I do not remember your father,” she said.
“You are better off.” Locke fetched a long stem of holly, abundantly peppered with crimson berries. “He was cut of the same cloth as yours.” He handed the branch over. “If you know yours, you knew mine.”
Murmuring her thanks, Opal accepted the next piece for her bough. “What of your mother?”
“She was all things good. As kind and gentle as a spring breeze.”
The wistful quality of his voice, drew her gaze to Locke. He wore a sad, smile of a man caught in past reminiscences.
Upon catching her stare, unmistakable color suffused his cheeks. “What?” he asked with an adorably boyish gruffness.
“It is nothing,” she said softly.
Opal grimaced.
It felt wrong to lie to Locke. As it was, she’d withheld enough from this man who’d become a friend to her over the years.
She came quickly to her feet so she could better meet his gaze. “No!”
He stared at her askance.
“It is everything , Locke.”
“I don’t—”
“What you said earlier…about my name. I’d always prided myself on shrugging off my father’s contempt. I’ve always known he’s a sadist. In fact, I used to pride myself for caring as little as I did about his cruel and small-minded opinions on me, my interests, literature.” She waved a hand about. “ Everything . But all these years, I’ve lied to myself. His disdain has eaten up at me.”
“He isn’t worth it, love,” he said quietly. “Don’t give him that power.”
Don’t give him that power.
The Duke of Devonshire might hold complete control of her life and future, but this good , kind, wonderful duke reminded Opal she herself could remain the keeper of her own thoughts, passions, and beliefs.
Filled with a welcome and soothing peace, Opal found the angry energy leave her.
Holding Locke’s gaze with hers, she rested both palms upon his chest.
Under her fingers, she felt the steady thump of Locke’s heart pick up a faster beat. In a bid to quell his concernment, she smoothed her fingers over the place where that organ erratically pounded.
Except, her efforts appeared to have the opposite effect, and so she did what one did when consoling another—Opal folded her arms about his neck and held him tight.
“I’ve been so unhappy. So alone,” she murmured against his neck.
His arms came up to wrap about her and blanketed in such radiant warmth, she could feel no pain.
With her face shielded as it was, Opal inhaled deep of the sandalwood scent he favored. “I allowed the duke and Madame Touraine’s bullying wear me down. You reminded me of my self-worth.” For that, she’d be eternally grateful.
Locke tensed. “With every fiber of my being, I despise that you have a bastard of a father and that you’re away alone at that miserable school you have no place being.”
He seethed with a fiery rage, that had it come from any other man would have terrified her witless. “Devonshire sent you to punish you and humiliate you. Those schools are places aspiring families send unrefined daughters whom they wish to parade before the ton , when even a queen herself cannot command your majesty.”
Laughter bubbled forth from her lips; as carefree as it’d once been, and all because of this man. “Given the many times you caught me riding, hiding, or up to some mischief, and my complete lack of ladylike graces, I daresay queens everywhere would take deep offense with your high-praise on my behalf and at their expense.”
His mouth slanted up in one corner. “Were they to meet you, they’d understand.”
The playful air diminished beneath the weight of something far heavier and fraught.
The slight nob in Locke’s throat moved. “I am so damned sorry, love.”
Love. Uttered in that ragged, jagged way, she could almost believe she was the fortunate lady he loved.
“I don’t need your pity, Locke,” she said gently. It was the absolute last thing she wanted from him.
His eyes blazed with a force of emotion that stole her breath.
“I respect you. I’m in awe of you. I greatly admire you, Opal—your resilience, your ability to laugh and smile despite the hell you’ve endured.”
Had she been a better woman such words of praise from this man, of all people, would have been enough.
Locke drew back and she mourned that loss. “My regret though, Opal, isn’t borne from any pity but of the fact that someone as magnificent and estimable as you should ever be so treated leaves me enraged.”
She managed a non-committal sound.
He studied her with a thoughtful expression and then spoke in an equally pensive way. “Given the fact our sires were the closest friends, you’re well-aware my sire also happened to be the miserable sort.”
Yes, she suspected that was one of the reasons she’d bonded so quickly with him.
“When I was a lad, my father had but two requisites of the tutors he’d hire for me: one.” He stuck a finger up. “The fellow be the sternest fellow in the kingdom, and two ,” he added another digit, “that the man be as strong as an ironsmith.”
Opal grew queasy.
Most ladies would not understand the significance; but Opal had suffered the Duke of Devonshire and Madame Touraine’s wrath enough times to gather the reason.
She wanted to weep. “So, your tutor, a grown man, could inflict the greatest pain on y-you.” Her threadbare voice cracked.
He snapped his fingers. “Precisely!”
By the grin he quirked, Opal may as well have delivered a witty rejoinder. “Well, my ducal father didn’t refer to it in quite those terms. Rather, he hired the strongest fellow to oversee my discipline. As you can imagine they proved about as effective in crushing me as my father did. But they certainly gave it their best try.”
Tears clouded her vision.
“Oh, Locke,” she whispered.
“Mm. Mm,” he said with a waggle of his eyebrows. “I don’t want your pity.”
“It is not—”
His eyes glimmered and she knew the moment she’d fallen right for his trap.
Opal brushed away the moisture from her eyes.
“It is not the same, Locke,” she said under her breath. “You might think so. But it’s not.” Of that, she was certain.
On his own, he’d survived a lifetime of abuse and still laughed and smiled and what was more, he saw other people’s pain and did good for so many. Opal , on the other hand, proved so self-absorbed she hadn’t even registered when her sister was suffering. Unlike Locke, Opal who as a burden, conferred nothing. She needed so much from her small circle of family. They worried about protecting her because she couldn’t protect herself.
Locke dusted his knuckles back and forth across her chin. “The truth is, Opal,” he murmured, “it is the same. We’re alike. We just can’t ever see it the same when we’re the one on the inside.”
Something in the air shifted. His gaze slipped to her mouth.
He is going to kiss—
“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly. “For earlier. For how I conducted myself.”
An apology. He’d been merely intending to apologize, not embrace her.
Only, this time, guilt had become tangled with his apology, leaving his voice hoarse and hesitant as she’d never heard it.
She lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. “You’ve done nothing wrong.” He’d never had reason to express remorse—and he still didn’t.
Locke cursed blackly. “I’ve done everything wrong.”
He didn’t deserve to take this on. “You told me the truth, Locke.”
“But I didn’t,” he whispered harshly. “To me, you are not the same as any other woman.”
“Because I’m Abaddon’s sister-in-law,” she said, with a stoic calm she knew not from where it came.
Letting out another curse, Locke took her shoulders in his strong, powerful grip and drew her to look at him. “Because you are you .”
The wild, undefinable emotion in his eyes stole all the breath from Opal’s lungs.
Dazed, she shook her head.
“You are witty and intelligent, and you bloody smile.” He laughed hoarsely. “ Real smiles, and you laugh, Opal.”
Not as much as she used to.
His fingers curled deeper into her arms, in a touch as powerful as passionate as possessive. “You are a real woman in every way. There’s nothing false about you.”
There hadn’t been.
“I’ve changed, Locke,” she said, unable to keep pain from creeping into her voice.
“You haven’t. You just think you have but you are the same, and you deserve to be loved, and I’m so…” Frantic, raw, fervor leant a dark glint to his eyes. “So bloody…”
Opal stared at him as he struggled to finish his thought.
“Happy,” he gritted out and grimaced around the word, and sounded anything but that. “Happy, that you’ve found the man who makes you so deliriously happy , though I still don’t think he deserves you, Opal,” he added that second part as if in warning. “But you deserve to find the manner of love your sister and Grimoire share and I want that for you.”
As if she’d burned him, Locke released her quickly and flexed his fingers out.
How was it possible for one man’s profession to both fill her with a buoyant lightness and terrible, heedless grief all at the same time?
Locke did care for her, after all. He just, cared about her in a different way than she ached for him to care. This would be all she’d ever have from him, and it would never be enough.
Tears pricked her lashes.
A strained sound left him. “Please, don’t cry, Opal,” he entreated. “What happened earlier…those things I said,” Locke curled his fingers into the edge of the table so hard, his knuckles went white, “I…was a cad.” A harsh laugh ripped from his throat. “I am a cad.”
Never had she viewed eyes more ravaged than the ones boring into her now.
“You’re not, Locke,” she whispered, hating that he should flagellate himself so.
“No.” He took her again by the arms and steered her around to face him. “I am,” his smooth baritone dipped and turned his next whisper hoarse, “because the fact remains, I desire you, Opal and I should not, but I cannot help myself. Even as I wanted—want—to help you, being with you in this way, is torturing me,” he rasped. His fingers curled and uncurled reflexively upon her arms. “I have never wanted a woman the way I do you, and I have nothing to offer you that could even begin to make me a decent fellow.”
“That is not true.” You have everything to offer me. For it is you, you are all that I want. Opal needed to tell him—he was her one and only. He was the mystery love whose name she’d been unable to share in fear he’d run, and in larger part because she’d not believed Locke could want her, in the ways she longed for him to want her.
Opal made soothing sounds in his ear. “I am not sad now.”
“You are a terrible liar.”
“You have no idea,” she muttered.
Her response had the desired effect. Locke laughed and they were restored to the safe, comfortable way it’d always been between them.
There came the tread of footfalls; shattering yet another moment.
They looked to the open doorway.
“I—”
“I know,” she said softly. They risked much by being alone here. Well, he did. Opal would be the beneficiary of a scandal being found alone with the Duke of Strathearn.
She didn’t want him that way.
There was only one way she did want Locke—with he as desperately and beautifully in love with her as she was with him.
For a split second in time, she thought he intended to say something else—something more, but then, he dropped a bow. Without so much as a backward glance and with a mortifying alacrity, he took himself off.
Opal only just reclaimed her seat and began finalizing the details of her arrangement when her brother walked in. “Hullo, sister.”
Donning a smile, she looked up. “He—”
Flint cut her off. “I happened to pass Strathearn in the corridor.”
At her brother’s un-ceremonial pronouncement, the reply died on her lips and her mouth felt painfully tight. “Did you?” she asked carefully.
Hooking a foot around the chair directly across from her, Flint turned it backwards, and straddled the seat.
He gave her an expectant look.
Oh, blast.
“Is there something you wish to talk about, little brother?”
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
Opal made a show of examining her completed floral arrangement.
“You didn’t answer me, Opal.”
She shrugged. “It didn’t sound much like a question.”
“You should tell them.”
“Tell wh—”
He surged to his feet so quickly, the legs of his chair scraped loudly over the floor.
Opal jumped.
“Bloody hell, Opal,” he snapped.
A frown toyed with her lips. “I don’t like these shows of temper from you, Flint.”
When he’d been a young boy that admission from her or Glain had bothered him. Not anymore.
Flint’s glower grew darker.
Unease tripped up and down her spine. Between him being away at Oxford and she in France, and Opal consumed by her own circumstances, she’d failed to see the darker transformation that’d befallen her youngest sibling. Not unlike Opal, Flint was still of an age where he remained under their father’s restrictive control. With Glain out of the duke’s grasp, Opal and her brother were the last two of Father’s children whom he could punish and try and bend. Where Flint was concerned, however, their sire had limited time. Flint may be a very young man, but the fact remained, he also happened to be a marquess…and a male. The duke couldn’t and wouldn’t control him forever. The same, however, could not be said for Opal. Case and point being, the urgency of her plan to win Locke’s heart and the limited time she had to do so.
That did not, however, change the fact, that for now, Opal’s brother was as much a ducal prisoner as Opal. They were together and alike in this.
As such, Flint deserved more than stilted and evasive responses from Opal. He deserved the whole truth.
She stood and joined him on the other side of the table.
Opal hitched herself up onto the edge. “Flint, I can’t tell Glain,” she said quietly. “You know that.”
His obdurate jaw tensed. “I don’t.”
Instead of giving him the fight he so clearly craved these days, she gave him a gentle look. “Yes, you do. You’re cleverer than most and very much attuned to your siblings in ways that other gentlemen are not. Our sister is expecting and you know it has not been an easy path to any of her previous pregnancies.” This being the furthest Glain had ever come in any of her preceding—and heartbreaking—ones.
“That doesn’t mean you don’t matter,” he said with such loyalty and adamance, tears filled her eyes.
“I know,” she said thickly.
“No, you don’t.” Grunting, Flint pulled himself onto the edge of the table next to Opal. “What of Strathearn?”
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “What of him?”
Her brother scowled. “Damn it, Opal. No one else has a bloody idea as to what is going on or what fate awaits you, but stop acting like I’m not all too aware of what’s coming if you don’t succeed.”
“He…” Opal bit her lower lip. She didn’t want to talk about this. “I…he is not one to marry, it appears.”
He snorted. “Of course, he is going to marry, if for no other reason than because he is a duke, which I—as a future duke, though one many years younger than Strathearn—am myself cognizant of my duties, and that includes marriage. Do you truly believe Strathearn doesn’t?”
“I won’t have him marry me out of pity or to save me, Flint,” she said through gritted teeth.
“You’d rather sacrifice yourself, then?”
God love her brother. He sounded positively outraged on her behalf.
“Rather than have Locke sacrifice himself for me?” she asked gently. “Yes, I most certainly would.” And will…
He deserved far more than that. “I would never have him give up his freedom to marry where his heart is not engaged.” Even if in doing so, she’d be saved.
Flint examined her with an unnervingly old-for-his-years stare. “I’ve always admired you, Opal,” he said quietly. “Glain loved and still loves literature, but you? You’re spirited and funny and have an even wider breadth of knowledge and depth of love for books.”
Touched, she rested a hand on his. “Thank—”
He gave her a stern look. “But for someone who’s so damned clever, how can you fail to see that which is as plain as the nose on your face?”
“Well, that took an all-too-quick turn from heartwarmingly comforting to brutally blunt,” she mumbled.
“I’m not trying to be comforting or insulting,” he said, matter-of-factly.
Flint glanced around; lingering his attention on the entryways in and out of the room.
When he returned his attention to Opal, he spoke in a hushed voice. “Opal, I’ve seen the way Strathearn cannot take his eyes off you.”
Her heart jumped, and then promptly settled. “By his own admission, he admires and respects me. He appreciates my mind.” And though those were further reasons she loved him, the fact remained, he’d given no indication that he loved her in return. “He sees me as Abaddon’s younger sister.”
His jaw flexed. “Opal, you may be older than me, but I’m a man and possess greater authority on the subject.”
He continued over her protesting. “I’ll tell you this: If it were any other man but Strathearn?” Barely suppressing his anger, Flint balled and un-balled his fists. “I’d kill him and happily for the way he looks at you.”
Tears formed in her throat. Having been alone for so long, separated from her family, she’d forgotten what it was to be loved and cherished. In just a short visit with her siblings, Abaddon, and… Locke, it’d brought the warm sensation of belongingness back into her heart.
Oblivious to the enormous fissure in armor she’d unknowingly erected in their time apart, Flint continued in seething tones.
“But it is Strathearn, and given Devonshire’s plans for you, when presented with the idea of you marrying Strathearn or some ruthless chap the duke’s got picked for you, then I’ll make allowances where Strathearn is conc—”
It proved too much.
“ Oomph .” Flint’s neck went red. “What the hell is that for?” he grumbled.
“Just…because.” In spite of the clear evidence that her brother was no longer a small lad, she ruffled the top of his head a second time.
He grunted. “I’m right, you know,” he groused, reminding her for all the ways in which he’d grown and matured, there were hints of the small child he’d been when they’d both been the best of playmates.
And as much as it’d always pained her to admit either of her siblings were correct, this time Opal found herself secretly and silently hoping this time, her younger brother was right.