Chapter Three #2
What had possessed him to chase after the woman before him?
A criminal who, for all he knew, could have killed him the moment he cornered her.
She hadn’t, though, and he wanted answers more than he wanted his next breath.
She might have given him some, but they’d done nothing to quell his curiosity.
They’d been drowned out by his anger and a bone-deep longing he couldn’t shake himself free of.
It was the all-too-familiar scent of lemon that still clung to her skin, the melody of her voice in the dark, low and lilting, the way his name sounded in her mouth, just as it had five years ago—like it belonged to her.
“You’re done pretending not to know who I am, then?” he asked.
The woman’s mouth pursed, and Arden tried not to stare, but he remembered all too well the feel of that mouth against his own, and it made it difficult to focus on the present.
“For now,” she told him. “What are you doing in Garlin?”
Arden blinked. Well, that was an easier question than what he’d assumed she was asking, which was what he was doing in the cloakroom. At least this question he could answer without sounding like a madman with a death wish.
“I’m visiting my aunt.”
She scoffed. “You expect me to believe it’s a coincidence that you’re here?”
“I’m not the one of us who’s proven to be a liar,” he pointed out.
She was close enough that Arden could see the furrow appear between her eyebrows. “No,” she said softly. “You’ve always been a terrible liar.”
That stung, though Arden couldn’t very well deny it.
He wasn’t a good liar, and perhaps that was why he’d had such trouble wooing women since she left him.
No matter how true he told himself his intentions were, they always felt like a lie.
He had no heart to give anyone, not after she’d finished with it.
“It may be novel to you, but most of us are. It’s the shame that makes it difficult, but then I don’t expect you feel at all ashamed for what you did to me.”
She glanced away, but when she looked up at him again, her eyes had hardened and she lifted her chin.
“What I did to you,” she echoed, her voice cold.
“Let’s speak plainly, Arden: I lied to you.
I manipulated you. I made you believe I loved you, and then I took the ring you gave me and a slice of your fortune, and I left.
Tell me—which part, exactly, do you believe I ought to feel shame about? ”
Arden was struck silent. For years, he struggled to hold on to the Arabella he’d known, beautiful and brilliant and perfect, made even more so in his memory.
A brief stretch of clarity had done little to destroy the deity he’d built shrines to in his mind, and it was still difficult for him to reconcile that woman, the one he’d have sworn to know as well as his own shadow, with the one standing before him now, flaunting her cruelty like it was the season’s newest fashion trend.
The Arabella he knew had a habit of speaking with more frankness than the debutantes in his acquaintance—something he had loved about her—but she had never been cruel.
She had been stubborn and determined when she set her mind to something, but never at the expense of others.
She had been guarded, but she had never been heartless.
“No shame, then,” he bit out.
“What is there to feel shame about, Arden?” She laughed around the words, but it, too, was cold, not so much as an echo of the way Arabella had laughed within it.
“Not all of us are born in mansions with a trust in our name before our first cry. I worked far harder for the money I stole from you than you ever did to earn it in the first place.”
“I beg to differ.”
“You beg for nothing,” she countered, each word dagger sharp. “Take it from someone who knows the meaning of that word better than you ever will.”
Heat rose to his cheeks—first from embarrassment, then anger that she of all people in the world would chastise him.
“You stole twenty thousand—”
“I earned twenty thousand solas,” she corrected. “And don’t pretend you missed that money. I did my research—twenty thousand was a pittance to you, change you might find lost in your couch cushions.”
Arden hated that she was only slightly exaggerating. In truth, the money hadn’t meant nearly as much to him as the heartbreak, at least not then.
“We missed it,” he said instead. “When everything else was gone, we missed that twenty thousand.”
Understanding flickered in her eyes. “Your aunt. You were dining with Philomena Gellis—no children, but a vast fortune. I’d heard a rumor she was ill.”
Arden wanted to deny it but couldn’t. “A bad heart.”
She laughed, the sound coming out half scoff. “You have some nerve, shaming me when you’re here to con an old woman out of her fortune while she’s practically on her deathbed.”
“I’m not conning anyone.” He shoved away from the wall and her. “My aunt was the one who demanded I come out here. She proposed naming me her heir.”
Arden could see the thoughts turning in her mind—a fascinating sight now just as it had been five years before when she’d sat across the dining table from his father, solving his notorious riddles and charming him in the process.
Back then, her sharp mind had awed him. Now it terrified him far more.
“Your aunt will be far less likely to name you her heir if she knows exactly how you lost twenty thousand solas to me,” she said.
“Women like Philomena Gellis abhor scandal more than anything, and it would be a scandal, wouldn’t it?
If the truth came out? Not to mention the ring—a family heirloom, wasn’t it?
She’d be very cross with you if she discovered exactly how much of a fool you were to lose it. She’d never name you her heir.”
Arden wanted to protest, but she’d already made it clear she knew he was lying, and he couldn’t allow her to see through him like that again. “It would be embarrassing,” he agreed instead. “For her—or anyone—to discover that I lost that money to a girl like you.”
“A girl like me,” she echoed slowly. “And what kind of girl am I, Arden?”
Arden recognized the danger in that question, but he didn’t care. She didn’t feel shame over what she’d done to him, and he refused to feel shame over what he said to her now.
“Lack dirt.” He held her gaze the same way she’d held his. “I don’t know how I missed it before—it clings to you still, no matter how you dress or the manners you put on or the magic you fake. You’ll always be a vagabond urchin, playing pretend.”
Her expression remained blank and smooth as a statue, though something in her eyes made him fear that he was the one who might be turned to stone. When she finally spoke, her voice came out low and strong.
“I know who and what I am, Arden. But I know who you are too, and now I know that you have too much to lose to risk telling anyone who I am. So I think, perhaps, I’ll stay in Garlin a while longer. And if you stay out of my con, I’ll stay out of yours.”
It isn’t a con Arden wanted to protest, but the words died on his lips.
Was it? He had every intention of fulfilling his aunt’s condition for her inheritance, and that meant convincing a woman he didn’t know to marry him as quickly as possible.
Was it so different from what she had done to him?
No, he thought. Because if he succeeded, he had no intention of abandoning Oriana Mayles once he had what he wanted.
He would be a good husband to her, treat her well, and see that she never regretted tying her life to his.
He doubted it would be the sort of love story his parents had, but he knew plenty of Luster marriages that had been built on less.
The woman he’d known as Arabella pushed away from the wall with a triumphant smile, satisfied that she’d gotten what she wanted, and this time, he didn’t stop her. Not until she reached the door.
“I can’t promise that.”
She froze, turning to face him again, and though she was too far away now for him to see the details of her expression, he could imagine it—the arch of her eyebrows, the twist of a frown on her lips.
“Vengeance won’t pay your bills, Arden,” she said, her voice softer than he expected it to be—almost kind, though that felt like its own knife.
Gods of Old, Arden didn’t need her to lecture him about that.
No matter how much he might want to drag her back into Montenari’s dining room and tell anyone who would listen who and what she was, it would ruin him as much as it ruined her, and whatever satisfaction it brought him would be short lived.
“That isn’t what I mean.” He shook his head. “I can’t promise to stay out of your way, because the woman my aunt has picked out for me to marry is Oriana Mayles.”
She let out a long exhale. “Thaddeus’s sister.” She sagged back against the door she’d been about to walk through. “You’ll need to pick someone else.”
Arden laughed. If only it were that easy.
“I’m picking no one, and I may not know my aunt very well, but she doesn’t seem like a woman inclined to change her mind once she’s set it.
” He watched her sift through her options, realizing she was leaning toward running again.
Perhaps it would be for the best to let her.
But even though Arden knew the truth of who and what she was now, he had spent far too long searching for her to let her slip through his fingers for a second time.
“There is another option,” he said, the thought occurring to him as he spoke. It was a terrible idea, one he would surely regret voicing, but it was one that would be in his own best interest. And hers as well. “We work together.”