Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
He had never felt so rewarded in his life.
He’d carried her back to her own bed at sunrise to spare her the embarrassment of being discovered with him. Both times he’d
left her there, he’d resented the loss. Resented whatever weakness of the spirit that had turned him into this.
Hugh couldn’t remember the last time he had simply slept beside a woman for the comfort of it. He’d never lingered after lovemaking;
the society matrons and widows he’d dallied with had always seemed to prefer a quick assignment. He’d certainly never brought
a woman into his home, let alone his bed. Only her.
Only her.
The source of all his fears, desires, frustrations, needs, impossibilities.
He had to put a stop to it. He had to.
Reddy was right—she was a distraction. After she’d been poisoned he hadn’t spared a thought to propriety as he’d brought her up to his room. He’d simply carried her to the safest place he could think of, a place no man would dare enter without permission.
But Keyes was no man, and Hugh had felt a sting of embarrassment when she’d come to change Viola into a dry, clean nightgown.
At the knowing look she’d leveled at him.
Hugh had helped lift Viola’s prone form, trying his damnedest to be a gentleman about the whole thing. It had been only a
glimpse, accidental and glancing, but the sight of her back had drawn a ragged noise from him. Keyes and Felicity had warned
him, but they had spared him the worst of it. A new nightmare seared into his memory.
“God,” he’d ground out, watching as the woman applied ointment to the fading bruises, the new crosshatch of pink scars laid
over older, thicker lines. Brutal scars, meant to mark her forever. He could barely speak, suffocated as he was by his own
rage. “What in all of hell would cause wounds like this?”
Mrs. Keyes held out a quelling hand toward him as Viola murmured with pain at the ointment’s touch. Hugh nearly came out of
his skin at the sound, moving to stop her.
“Don’t interfere, darling,” Mrs. Keyes warned. “She has enough scars, hasn’t she?”
Hugh had forced himself back against the wall, pressing his hands to it to keep from touching her.
“You said her father,” Mrs. Keyes began, glancing back over her shoulder at him, “was a captain for one of the trade groups?”
Hugh’s heart sank into the roiling pit of his stomach. “Until he suffered some sort of injury. Fell out of favor at the company
when he couldn’t work.”
“If he lived as a captain,” Mrs. Keyes continued, “he likely meted out discipline as one, too, with a birching. Or perhaps
with a rope’s end—a length of it dipped in tar, to stiffen it.”
“My God,” he murmured. Viola hadn’t even reached her age of majority at the time of her father’s recorded death. Which meant
she had been younger still when he had done this to her. His own child.
For the first time in his life, Hugh felt only satisfaction at the knowledge he was destined for hell. He would cross a thousand
of them to find this man’s soul and tear it to shreds.
When she’d finished, Mrs. Keyes stood, handing him the tin of ointment. “Wake her before she’s ready and I will do worse to you, my darling.”
Hugh almost wished she would. Anything was better than the chaotic knot of emotions in his chest. Every attempt to soothe
and straighten the tangled mass only tightened it. Fed his fury.
He is half mad with longing. Sending her to Fairgate was justifiable but unforgivable all the same. And now this would be his punishment, one he rightly
deserved: to yearn for fire that would only ever be extinguished by her touch.
He knew Reddy was right, because Hugh had felt the shift in himself, too. He felt it even now, that slide into increasing
desperation. It was as if her clever hands had robbed him. Little by little, so carefully he’d hardly noticed, she’d stripped
away everything else, until protecting her had become his very reason for breathing, the rhythm of his heart.
“This is not real,” Reddy told him in the darkness. “I understand, I do. She is wonderful, Fox. Intelligent. Certainly enough
to excite a man—”
“Careful,” Hugh warned sharply.
“—but she is not actually yours,” Reddy finished. “And now you’ve tied a knot with your tongue you cannot untie with your teeth.”
Hugh’s hands curled on the stair rail, his silence daring his friend to continue.
“I told you this was a bad idea from the start,” Reddy said, undaunted, “but you insisted there was no other way. You brought
her into Glenmoor’s sights.”
“What was I meant to do?” Hugh ground out. “Let the King die?”
“Now you play with not just her life, but her heart and reputation.” Reddy lowered his voice further still, and Hugh nearly
lost the thread of it. “You’ve only given society another reason to despise her. Your annulment will be the grave they use
to bury her.”
“You think I don’t know this?” Hugh ground out. “That I don’t remember, every moment of every day, the choices I made?”
“And can you say in all honesty that you did not manipulate this situation to suit your own desires?” Reddy cut back. “That your choices,
consciously or not, were not a way to snare a woman who had previously refused to be caught?”
A disquieting feeling slithered through Hugh.
Had he? Not by intentional design, but through his subconscious choices, his rotted heart, had he contrived this outcome?
They both knew Hugh wasn’t above such scheming and rather excelled at it, just as they knew this was one of those rare instances he’d been outplayed.
Viola was incomparable—perhaps not by society’s definition, but certainly by his own. Had he been like all those other men
he despised, the ones who wanted to cage a fiery woman simply for the pride of having been the one to do so? No. Hugh blew
out a harsh breath. He wasn’t like them. He would never seek to smother her inner flame or crush her spirit. She was indomitable
in that regard.
That was enough of this. He had come here for Eleanor, not to be chastised for something that would be impossible for Reddy
to understand. He knew of only one way to end this argument, and he seized it.
“I wasn’t aware we were only allowed to have a single purpose,” Hugh bit back. “You running your business and driving through
Linden seeking rumors of her would indicate some divide in your own, wouldn’t you say?”
Reddy’s head pulled back, all traces of geniality gone. Hugh’s gut twisted with immediate regret, his fury at himself deepening.
He had never used Reddy’s misery against him. Not since they were boys. Once you learned a man’s key, you didn’t twist it
carelessly or without reason, and God knew Reddy enjoyed being perceived as much as Hugh did.
“I should call you out for that,” Reddy said, the words iced.
Hugh forced himself forward, climbing to the second floor, then the third, letting the cold silence grow between them. His
mouth twisted in a humorless smile. Another person he’d have to make amends to.
He had marked the entrance to Eleanor’s apartments with a small carved X. He held out a hand, feeling for it along the wall
as he made his way forward. He could all but hear Reddy grinding his teeth behind him as he shifted the lock and slowly eased
the hidden door open into the apartment’s lavender sitting room.
In the sudden glare of light, it was a moment before he spotted Eleanor’s willowy figure at the window, staring morosely into
the gardens below. She wore a simple morning dress and silk wrapper, but she had left her tight, dark curls down to frame
her face.
“Elly,” Hugh called softly, trying not to startle her.
She gasped, clutching her hand to her chest as she spun toward them. Her eyes widened as she took in what had only been a wall panel moments before. “You’re here—I thought I heard your voice, Reddy, but then—I wasn’t sure what day it was—goodness, I had no idea that was there—”
“You know how we love our dramatic entrances,” Reddy said, shutting the wall.
Eleanor had possessed an almost preternatural discipline and restraint from the time she was a child, solemn and alone. The
way the words spilled from her now, how very young she looked in her relief, jabbed at Hugh painfully.
She had been waiting for them, hoping they would come.
The princess took a step toward them, only to bring herself up short. Hugh exchanged a concerned look with Reddy as she resumed
her place at the window, angled away from them.
“I’m all right,” she told them bravely. “Especially now that I know there is another way out of here to look in on Uncle.”
“Elly, what’s happened?” Hugh asked, coming toward her. He reached for her arm, the rigidness of her body betraying her desperation
for comfort. Still, she resisted, pulling away from him. And he knew. He knew why Glenmoor was keeping her hidden.
Gently taking her elbows in hand, he turned her toward him. She resisted, trying to keep her other cheek angled to the window,
but he saw it all the same.
“I spoke back to him after he threatened one of the footmen,” she said softly. “He seemed rather surprised that he had done
it.”
A bruise covered her right cheek, as dark as an inkblot on her brown skin. The blow had had enough force to slice her cheek
open, leaving a horrid scab. She was being hidden, not just from society, but from Glenmoor himself, who could not abide proof
of his loss of control.
A molten rage surged in him, burning away that last thread of restraint.
“Hugh?” Eleanor began warily.
“I’ll kill him,” Hugh snarled, turning toward the hidden door.
“Hugh!” she called after him, but he was already gone, rushing headlong back into the darkness.
In his younger years, Hugh had treated Almici’s School of Arms as his personal refuge—a place away from his uncle’s ever-judging
gaze, a place to ease his helpless fury into more manageable and useful anger.
He had watched it transform from a simple warehouse into a place of refinement, a school that catered to princes, lords, and gentlemen who could afford its galling membership fees.