Chapter 18 #2
"Jesus, Ban," Warrick said "You court death every damned day.
Billings told us about what happened the night George Fitz-Wilton died.
When are you going to stop trying to crawl back into that grave we pulled you out of?
There is a woman out there who loves you, but she refuses to share you with death, and we don't fucking blame her.
We're tired of doing it. We don't blame her for not being willing to start. "
"Yes, and look at the price you have all paid," Ban shouted. "Con and Fam became murderers to save me. I can't ask Isadore to pay that price."
"You're our brother," Fam said. "We'd pay that price a thousand times. Don't throw that away. Go after her, you great nodcock. Let her decide if she wants to pay the price."
He looked around the room at their faces.
They were his family. The only one he'd ever known.
They'd brought Marianne, Beatrice, and Ethan into their ranks, and others as well.
He glanced down at the crumpled note in his fist. With a shuddering sigh he opened the note and read the words written in Jeremy's hand.
She misses you.
She cries every night.
I miss you too.
Jeremy
"I'm terrified," he said softly, and folded his fingers over the note.
"About fucking time," Con replied.
Isadore tossed the counterpane back and sat up on the side of the bed.
She'd been trying to sleep since ten o'clock.
In the last four hours, she'd sweated through one night rail and donned another one.
She'd tried to read a gothic novel. After the last few months, the last year even, nothing in a gothic novel frightened her.
She even slept with the windows open these days.
She had a pistol in her night stand and a knife under her pillow.
Not that she needed either. With the help of Young Rutherford, she'd hired an entirely new staff.
They'd been approved by the Duchess of Chelmsford of all people.
Some of them appeared a bit rough around the edges, but they were cheerful, respectful, and had already proven they adored Jeremy.
Her life was good, better even than it had been when she was married to George.
Yet every day, a dozen times a day, she found herself unable to breathe.
She'd hover on the verge of tears for no reason.
Oh, she knew the reason. The reason had black hair, black eyes, and the face of a fallen angel.
He fought with her, argued with her, drove her mad, and made her feel safer than she ever had in her entire life.
"Damn him," she muttered.
"At least I know you're still thinking about me," a voice said from her window.
Seated on the window sill, one leg in and one leg out of her bedchamber sat the man himself, as if wishing had conjured him out of the London mist. Her own personal thief, breaking into her house and into her life once more.
"I'll have you know I have both a knife and a pistol to hand against ruffians like you." Her chest hurt so badly, she was afraid to move.
"Promise?" He climbed through the window and prowled across her room.
He turned up the lamp on her bedside table and simply stared at her.
She inhaled deeply, and the familiar scents of leather, smoke, gunpowder, bergamot, and cedar suffused her.
Every part of her body awakened, but she could not afford the price of answering the primitive call that drew her to him.
"Ban, I really--"
"I don't want to die, Isadore."
"W-what did you say?"
He dropped to his knees and took her hands in his.
"I don't want to die, but I don't know how to live.
Not really. What crawled out of that grave in St. Giles cemetery was death on two legs.
I've been trying to find life ever since.
I truly have, but I couldn't. Until I met you.
I've been searching for something worth living for, and.
..I think I've found it. But..." He shook his head.
"I don't know how. Will you teach me, Isadore? Will you teach me how to live?"
"Ban." Impossible. What he asked was impossible. How could she teach him how to live when she'd barely learned herself. She reached up to run her hand through his hair. She caressed his cheek. How could she not? How could she not when he was everything she had ever wanted and would ever want?
"I know I have no right to ask, but I'll try, and I --"
"Stop talking, Ban Dyer," she ordered. "We'll figure it out together." First one tear and then another trickled from her eye to the corner of her mouth.
"Promise?" He kissed her tears away, the way she suspected he always would.
"Promise, my love," she replied. "My dearest, darling love." She kissed him hard and grasped his biceps. "Now bring your magnificent parts up here. I have desperate need of them."
He laughed and climbed onto the bed, pulling her over on top of him. "My magnificent parts are all yours, my lady. And I'll throw the other parts in for free."
She kissed him again. "This isn't going to be easy, Ban Dyer. I love you more than life, but this isn't going to be easy."
"Go back to the part about you loving me more than life, Isadore." He rested his palm over her heart.
"I will," she replied. "Every day for the rest of our lives."
THE END