13. No Penance Without Confessions #3
Bran inhaled until his chest could hold no more air, then he exhaled until every ounce of it was gone. He hated talking about this sort of thing. But this was another part of his penance. No matter how deeply she wanted to flay open his skin and peer inside him, he’d hand her the scalpel.
“My grandfather,” he finally said, “was a different sort of man than me, a kind man, a thoughtful man, a man of great intelligence. He took time to think things over, so he understood them from every angle. I don’t have the patience for that.
He resembled the glamour more than I do, or perhaps that’s my memory because I saw him so often in it.
When I see my glamoured reflection, I’m always shocked for a second. Because that should be him, not me.”
Her inhalation was ragged, and she wrapped her arms around her waist.
She’d asked for this, though, and he wouldn’t stop.
“Grandfather always had a kind word for me. More than that, he loved me. And my uncle, who was his heir, was funny and jovial. He always had a joke and knew how to pull a coin from behind my ear. And my cousin, he was a friend. Him and me and my brother… we were close. We lived in Scotland at a Lennox house in Edinburgh. And he lived in London. But we saw each other several times a year. It was… difficult when my uncle died. He went first, then my grandfather, then my father. Then my cousin had the title for a short while. Then my brother. I never even got to see him as the duke. When I’d returned from the Americas, he was dead, and I had inherited everything. ”
“They sound lovely.”
If anyone was going to believe in curses, it was Bran.
“My father…” Now that he was talking about them all, he didn’t want to stop.
It made them alive, gave him the strength he’d need to face the ton tonight as the duke.
“He liked the shadows. He said he liked how, in Scotland in summer it was never quite dark. There was always a little bit of light. He often told me to never forget how important the light is. How it is a source of all life. The men who came before me… they would have made excellent dukes, filled with kindness and empathy and intelligence. They would’ve done great things with the wealth and the power.
They had the temperament for it, the ability to sit still, the ability to read long complex arguments.
I was made like a blunt club—good only for violence.
You’ve seen how ill the glamour fits me.
I was meant to be a shadow. To disappear into the night before I slice someone’s neck. I was made to end life, not nurture it.
“It would have been better had I died and at least one of them remained in my place. But all of them are gone. Every single good thing that they were is gone from this earth, and all that’s left is me.
A liar. A killer. But I’m the one who must step into that room tonight under the eyes of all the ton and with the approbation of the queen and the acceptance of all about me when it should’ve been one of them. ”
When he stepped beside her, he could just see her face beneath her cloak, pale, almost porcelain in the moonlight. And the corners of her lush, dark lips were down turned but soft. So terribly soft.
She didn’t offer objections to anything he had said. Why would she? She knew the truth of it. When they’d reached the gate out of the garden close to Morington House, she surprised him, slipping her arm through his and tugging him to a stop.
“I think,” she said, her voice like an evening breeze, “you are forgetting a part of your duties.”
“What do you mean?”
“You label yourself a killer so easily. A figure of darkness to be feared. But as your father said, shadows need light. And you are not simply a killer. You are a protector. And that is why you are standing beside me in the ballroom. Because you protect me, not just with your strength and your violent skill. You protect me with who you are. The queen recognized that before either of us did. By giving me your name, you protect me with the might of your family. All of its honor and its power. Everything you found in your grandfather and uncle and father and brother—it stands over us tonight in guard.”
He worked his jaw from side to side, not sure what to say.
Then she patted his hand and tugged him through the gate and across the street and into the blazing light of the Duke of Morington’s home.
Sometimes he forgot how little experience Guin had among the ton.
She’d been born a transcendent, an earl’s daughter, but she’d been sent off when she was a child to live alone in her betrothed’s isolated castle.
Then the man had died before she’d been married to him half a year.
She’d never had a Season, never made her debut.
But she strode into the duke’s home at the side of another duke like she owned all of it, all of them.
And if he could, he would make sure everyone knew she deserved to be there, even if it was the only good thing he ever did with the cursed title.