Chapter 28
“Darling, I do apologize for missing dinner,” Evander said the moment he entered their quarters.
Helena, looking beautiful in her white nightgown, offered him a silent, wan smile as she sat at her vanity.
His brow furrowed slightly as he observed her drooping shoulders, the way her hands remained clenched at her knees, and the way her long, golden, tumbling hair served as a curtain over the left side of her face.
“I did not want to leave you alone, but my conversation with Adrian and Damien ran longer than predicted, but it was a discussion most needed,” he went on.
“That is fine,” she offered softly, still not looking up at him. “I had a pleasant time with Nora.”
Evander grimaced at her meek tone.
“We… I have a trip to take with Adrian and Damien,” he pushed on, wanting to get the news out of the way.
“It should not take long, but there is…” he searched for the proper word.
He was not ready to tell her about the threatening letters, but he did not just want to vanish and leave her to worry either.
“A new business prospect,” he finally decided to say. “There is a partner that we simply must speak to in person. I promise you, though, I shall extend our honeymoon for each day I am gone.”
Helena’s smile appeared a little more genuine as she finally glanced up at him.
“That would be lovely,” she replied.
“My love, is something the matter?” Evander could not help but ask. “You look… upset.”
“Do you think there is something I should be upset about?”
Evander’s eyes narrowed as he studied her, wondering what could have changed her disposition so quickly. Then his eyes widened as he got down on his knees before her, apprehension moving down his spine.
“I was too rough earlier, wasn’t I?” he asked, gathering her hands from her lap. “Oh, love, did I hurt you? I know what we had planned for this evening, but perhaps I should draw you a bath and I could—”
“It is not that,” Helena quietly cut him off, her smaller hands clenching around his own. “It is about the letters. I know everything,” she went on, pinching the tip of the middle finger of his gloved hand.
Evander went still, unable to move as she slowly pulled the glove off and tossed it to the floor.
She knows? Have Adrian and Damien already spilled everything to their wives? No, that could not have happened so fast. Then how?
“You…” he rasped. “You found them?”
She nodded as she moved to his other hand and pulled that glove off in a similar fashion.
“Why did you not tell me?” she asked, lacing her fingers through his.
Evander shook his head, not sure what to say.
“You have been through so much. I did not want to add any more strain. I just… I just wanted to provide you with the comfortable life you deserve,” he began to ramble.
Her delicate brows creased as she tilted her head to the side, her green eyes shining with curiosity.
“Why would such a thing cause me strain?” she asked. “Do you have any idea how quickly I would have turned down Jeremy’s proposal if you had told me? It could have made everything so much easier.”
Confusion bloomed in Evander’s mind.
“You… You would have been happy?” he asked carefully.
Helena shook her head, looking at him as if he were ridiculous.
“Of course I would have been! You have no idea how often I thought of your letters! How long I yearned to know who you were, where you were, why you did not show up that day! I thought I had been in love with a man who never existed.”
Realization dawned on Evander then, and he could not help but expel a deep sigh of relief.
She had not found the threats, he now understood.
She had found the letters she had sent him long ago.
He drew her hands to his lips and rained kisses down on her knuckles.
It was not how he wanted her to find out, but at least it was out in the open now.
“I almost told you just yesterday,” he confessed. “Right before Alex threw that mud at me.”
“Tell me now,” she urged, her green eyes full of love and patience. “Why keep such a thing from me? Why did you never show up?”
Evander nodded, knowing it was time. He kissed her knuckles one last time, then stood up, helping her rise along with him.
“I want you to know that I did not abandon you on purpose,” he said, leading her to their bed. “I had been hesitant to show you who I was at first, yes, but when we decided to meet, I knew I was ready to reveal myself.”
He sat her down on the edge of the bed and walked to his wardrobe.
“The night before we were to meet, I had every intention of coming to you,” he began, his back still turned to her.
“I had already purchased the necklace. I had flowers sent ahead of me. I meant to do this properly, as a gentleman ought, before joining Adrian and Damien for the evening. But I was delayed. I argued with several men that day over matters that seem laughably small to me now, and by the time I was finally free of them, the hour had grown late.”
He drew in a slow breath, his hand resting against the wardrobe.
“I never made it to your door. On my way, I was set upon by several men. I want you to know that I fought them. I did not go easily.” His jaw tightened, some old fury surfacing briefly before he mastered it again.
“But there were too many of them, and they had planned for it well. I was taken aboard a ship before I fully understood what was happening to me.”
Helena’s hand found his, though he had not heard her move.
“The man responsible was called Augustus,” he continued.
“He dealt in women, smuggling them out of England to be sold to men overseas with vile enough appetites to pay for them. I uncovered his operation several months earlier, destroyed two of his ships, and had several of his men arrested. I gave him an ultimatum: leave England for good, or I would expose him to the authorities and put him in irons. He agreed to leave. I believed that was the end of it.”
“It was not,” Helena whispered.
“It was not,” he agreed. “He waited, observing my habits and noting which nights I walked alone. The night I meant to come to you was the night he finally had his chance.” He shook his head slowly.
“I tried to escape once. Got as far as the door of my cell before they dragged me back. That was when the ropes came out, and the fire…” He touched his own throat without seeming to realize he had done it.
“They did not kill me. I believe now that was never truly Augustus’s aim.
I think he wanted to torture me. But I would not scream for him.
No matter what he did, I would not give him that. ”
“How did you get free?” she asked softly.
“I killed men to do it,” he admitted, without flinching from the admission. “But eventually… My sister found me.”
Helena’s brows lifted in surprise. “Elara?”
“Yes. She and her husband got me off that ship alive when I should not have been.” He shook his head slowly, as if the memory still did not sit easily with him.
“I owe her my life twice over. Once for finding me, and once for never giving up the search when everyone else had already begun to mourn me instead.”
He let out a dry, humorless laugh as Helena’s full lips began to drift open into a look of awe, her eyes shining with understanding.
“Now you know why I disappeared,” he said.
He reached for the box he had kept all those years and walked back to the bed.
“Enslavement was the only thing keeping me from you that day,” he said solemnly as he laid the box in her lap. “And for those years I was forced to endure such torture, it was those letters, the idea that perhaps one day we could be together, that kept my sanity from fleeing entirely.”
Helena’s wide eyes began to shimmer with tears; a choked sob left her throat as he opened the box and drew out the necklace he had had made for her all those years ago.
“Why did you not come to me after?”
“Because when I was finally freed…” he pressed on, haunted by a fear and sense of isolation that reverberated deep into his soul.
“I was transformed. A beast with burn marks where a man had once been, and I convinced myself that no one as pure as you could love something so dark, deformed, and twisted as me. So, I stayed away. Even when I heard that you had not yet married, it was the memory of your eyes—so green and full of life, like springtime itself—that comforted me through my nightmares.”
“Evander…”
“I shattered a glass in my grip when Damien and Adrian arrived with the news that you were to marry Jeremy,” he continued. “Then, when they asked me to help him plan his wedding. To you. I thought for a moment that would be worse than anything I endured on that infernal ship.”
“That is why you did not speak to me,” she breathed as a tear rolled down her cheek. “Why you tried to stay away?”
Evander nodded as he leaned forward and gently clasped the necklace around her throat. Helena reached up with reverent fingers and delicately stroked them over the jewels and fine strands of silver.
Then, in a rush, she stood, throwing her arms around his neck. He met her impassioned kiss readily, love and relief making him tremble as he swept her into his arms and laid her down on the bed.
“I could not stay away,” he rasped between fervent kisses. “Not from you. Not anymore. And I will never apologize for such failings, for the happiness you bring me is better than anything heaven can offer.”
He pulled away, just enough to peer into her eyes with a pleading look.
“Can you forgive me for my secrets?” he breathed.
“I want to,” Helena whispered, framing Evander’s handsome face with her hands.
Worry glimmered in his eyes, creasing his brow.
“You… want to?” he choked out. “But you will not?”
Helena wrapped her legs around his waist and rolled, putting her giant of a man beneath her so she could sit up as she straddled his lap.
“I will,” she said with determination. “If you will stop hiding from me.”
The worry that had faded from Evander’s face when she said I will quickly returned as her hands moved up to his cravat.