Chapter 8 #2
She forced her expression not to change.
She’d been used as a weapon before. Sometimes that was the entirety of her role.
Step out with one person, hurt someone else.
But the fact that Silas wanted to use her that way…
well, she wasn’t especially fond of it. But perhaps that was good.
It helped remind her that even if he behaved otherwise sometimes, she was still just a whore to him.
Just as she was to his brother. She couldn’t forget that was a line between them.
“If that’s what you want, I’ll go.” She briefly touched the hair she had fixed. She knew it was fine. She had trained herself to become quickly presentable under any circumstances. Part of her own armor.
Silas brightened up and held out an arm. “Good. Thank you.”
She took it and they stepped through the antechamber and out into the hallway together. He didn’t release her until they’d gone downstairs and stood outside the parlor. He was almost vibrating with anticipation, shifting his weight a little back and forth.
She squeezed his arm briefly and he looked down at her. For a breath’s time, their eyes locked and then he nodded, released her and opened the door.
* * *
T he last time Silas had seen his middle sibling had not been pleasant. It was the morning after their father’s death. There had been thrown blows and angry words, so when he stepped into the parlor, Arabella on his heels, his heart was pounding.
Reggie was standing at the window, looking out onto the street he’d come in on.
When he turned, Silas caught his breath.
He didn’t know why he felt so surprised that his brothers had aged.
It had been six years, after all, and all his siblings were at least ten years his senior.
But still, seeing Reggie with the gray in his temples, the heavier lines on his face, was startling. So much had changed.
Then his brother pursed his lips and Silas realized nothing had changed at all, actually. It seemed Reggie’s annoyance picked up just where he’d left off.
“Silas,” Reggie said softly, and stepped toward him, hand outstretched.
Silas met him halfway and they shook briefly. “Reginald.”
His brother’s gaze flitted past him toward Arabella, still in the doorway, giving this reunion space. Silas turned toward her slightly. “May I present Miss?—”
“I know who Arabella Comerford is,” Reggie interrupted.
Arabella stepped up then, casting Silas an I-told-you-so look and then she extended a hand to his brother. “Good afternoon, Lord Reginald. What a pleasure to meet you.”
“Miss Comerford,” Reggie managed to grind out past what were obviously clenched teeth as he briefly shook her hand. His gaze didn’t linger on her but narrowed on Silas again. “Is this what you do instead of having supper with your dying brother?”
Silas flinched at the plainly stated question and the deep disappointment that laced it. He’d been hearing that tone from his father’s side of the family for years and years. Somehow his first reaction of guilt and shame was never muted.
He could feel Arabella staring at him even though he didn’t look in her direction. He did hear her though when she whispered, “Dying?”
Silas pushed aside all the weaker emotions that crowded in his chest and shook his head. “He’s not dying. And I never said I was coming to supper.”
“No, you never said anything at all, did you?” Reggie threw up his hands. “You didn’t bother to answer the invitation, like some petulant child who?—”
Silas stepped up to him. “I’m not a child, though, am I, Reg? And what you’re really angry about is that you can’t make me dance to some drum anymore. I don’t give a damn about your opinions about me.”
That wasn’t entirely true, no matter how he wished it were.
Reggie shook his head. “Then why come back?”
“Why ask me back?” he shot back.
“ I didn’t!” They stared at each other for a long moment and then his brother shoved a hand through his hair.
“Fuck, you are impossible.” He let out his breath slowly and then smoothed himself.
The high emotion fled and there was nothing but coldness and formality to him when he said, “Whatever you’re going to do, Silas, just figure it out.
I have children of my own, I don’t need to spend time chasing around one that’s thirty. Good day.”
He pivoted on his heel and stalked from the room. In the distance he heard the murmurs of Poole speaking and then the slam of the door as his brother left.
It was in that charged moment that Arabella touched his arm.
He felt every warm finger fold over him, even through the layers of propriety they’d put on him earlier.
He drew a shaky breath and forced himself to look at her, somehow expecting her to be captivated by this encounter.
After all, that was the currency she collected for her own protection.
And yet there was no prurient interest in his family dramas or his pain. There was nothing but gentle understanding in her stare and he was surprised that a sense of peace moved over him as he lost himself, albeit briefly, in the endless blue of her eyes.
“Silas,” she said softly after that moment passed. “Is your brother truly dying?”
* * *
A rabella could see the unspoken and always had.
It was something she’d nurtured in the years since she’d entered the game as a courtesan.
After all, to be able to tell a man’s mood was one way to avoid being harmed, either physically or emotionally.
And it also helped her preemptively provide for her lovers, which was part of her charm, she supposed.
Right now she felt Silas’s pain radiating off of him in long, sharp waves.
Oh, he showed none of it on his handsome face, in fact he looked angry in that moment, not at her but at the world.
But the pain was there, pulsing below the surface.
And she wanted to ease it, not as part of a seduction, not because it was expected of her… but because she truly wished to help.
He let out a long sigh. “He’s not…dying,” he said, repeating the words he’d said to his brother a few moments before. But now he didn’t sound as certain in that statement. “Well, it’s not entirely clear, actually.”
“How so?”
“He’s been ill for a while now. It has gotten worse in the last six months, he was on the brink a few times.”
She nodded slowly. “That’s why you came home.”
“Home,” he repeated, and she wasn’t certain he knew he’d done that. He shook his head slightly. “Y-yes. My sister Phoebe asked me to return. I’m closer to her than to either Reg or Charlie.”
“I see.”
He scrubbed a hand through his hair, deconstructing the formality she’d helped him put on less than half an hour before. “My mother was a courtesan,” he said.
She nodded. “Yes. I…know.”
He glanced at her. “Oh yes, your research. I’d forgotten you delved into every facet of my life. So you know what everyone knows at the very least, that I was a product of her ill-conceived arrangement with the previous marquess.”
“Yes, and then he took you into his home. A very odd arrangement.”
He pursed his lips. “Most men would have sent me off to some other family. But he wanted to claim me for some reason. To control me when he couldn’t control her.
Whatever his reasons for such a strange decision, I was raised in the same house as my siblings, from the time I was five, but they were older than I am.
There was distance. Walls.” He turned away a fraction. “Never mind, it’s a boring, sad story.”
She wasn’t so sure of the boring part, but this wasn’t the moment to push. It wasn’t her place, either. After all, she wasn’t keeping him.
He shifted and she saw him put a mask on, cover up the vulnerability she had found there with this topic. “What about you, Arabella? Do you have siblings?”
She laughed at the loaded question he didn’t even know he’d asked. “Yes. You’ve been gone a long time, but we’re actually quite infamous.”
“Infamous,” he repeated with a small smile. “How so?”
“We’re called the Comerford Courtesans. I’m the eldest, Evelina is the middle and Julia is the youngest.”
“And all three of you are courtesans?” She heard his surprise, but not his judgment.
She nodded. “They followed me into the life.”
Now it was her turn to put on the mask. To cover the discomfort she somehow felt at this topic.
It was such an odd thing, for a great many in Society knew of her and her sisters.
The answers to his queries weren’t ones she often had to give.
And yet this man appeared and when he pressed his finger to this particular nerve, she found it to be raw. What a surprise.
He held her gaze a moment and she felt him reading her. “You don’t have to tell me, Arabella.”
She shrugged. “Well, it’s a boring, sad story.”
He smiled slightly at the fact she’d used the same words he had.
There was no denying the effect, though.
They’d both shut the door on a deeper connection in that moment.
A connection that had been right there, begging to be taken since the first moment they’d seen each other all those years ago.
Certainly since she’d discovered him at Donville just a few days prior.
It was better that the wall had been erected, though. She knew it. Attachment, closeness, those weren’t things she gave easily, nor truly, very often. And she couldn’t get close to this one. There was an inherent danger to that possibility that felt sharper than any she’d sensed in a long time.
She forced a smile of her own, one that felt false, and stepped up to press a brief kiss to his lips. “I think I may have overstayed my welcome. I’m sure you have much to think about and do.”
He held her gaze a beat. “Ah, I see.”
“But perhaps we can see each other later?” she said, hoping that softened this. She didn’t want to stop playing with him, after all, she just wanted to make sure what was happening between them didn’t end up crossing a line.
“To try out that big tub you promised me,” he suggested.
Her smile became less false at that idea. “I’d love it. Until later.”
She slipped away then and he didn’t follow. When her carriage was brought around, she got in, but the moment it began to move, her legs got shaky. She gripped her hands against them, drawing a few deep breaths.
Every part of her that had ever protected her was now screaming that this affair was perhaps a bad idea. That it couldn’t only lead to heartache.
And yet she didn’t want to end it. Not yet.