Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
The fire had burned to embers.
Nell sat in the chair beside his bed, her hand still wrapped around his.
She watched the shadows shift across the ceiling, tracing the slow movement of light.
Hours had passed since he’d briefly woken, since he’d asked her to say it again and she’d deflected, since exhaustion had pulled him back under.
The clock on the mantel read half past two in the morning.
The storm had long since passed, leaving nothing but silence and the occasional creak of the old house settling around them.
She should sleep. Her vision burned with exhaustion. Her back ached from the awkward position. Her body felt heavy with the weight of the day. Each time she started to drift, her mind dragged her back.
She replayed Philippa in the doorway of the shop. She saw the panic on her face. She saw Dominic lying pale and bloodied in this very bed.
He almost died.
The thought kept circling, a vulture that wouldn’t land. He almost died, and when he was fading, he’d called for her. Only her. Even when he couldn’t remember his own name, he’d remembered hers.
She lifted his hand to her lips, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. His skin was warmer now, his breathing deep and even, but the colour had returned to his face. He would be all right—and Edmund had said so. He would recover.
But she’d come so close to losing him. So close to never—
His fingers twitched in her grip. She went still, her heart lurching. His hand tightened around hers, not the weak flutter from before, but something stronger and more deliberate. His head turned on the pillow, and a low groan escaped his throat.
“Dominic?” She leaned forward, searching his face in the dim light, her free hand reaching to touch his cheek.
His eyes opened. They were not unfocused and clouded like before, but clear and alert, grey as winter rain in the moonlight streaming through the curtains. He stared at her for a long moment, drinking her in like a man dying of thirst.
“You are still here.” The words scraped out, dry from hours of silence. His fingers tightened around hers, a sudden, fierce pressure the way he were trying to anchor himself to the living.
“I said I would be.” She squeezed his hand, her thumb stroking across his knuckles in a rhythmic, soothing motion.
He didn’t look away from her face. His expression cracked open, a flash of determination or the stubborn set of his jaw that she’d come to know so well.
“You deflected earlier.” He pushed himself up slightly on the pillows, wincing as the movement pulled at his injuries. “When I asked you to say it.”
Her stomach dropped, and she pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling. “I know.”
“Say it now.” His iron eyes burned into hers, his hand pulling hers closer to the center of his chest. “Please, Nell. I need to hear it when I am not half-unconscious. When I can remember it properly.”
She wanted to. God, she wanted to. The words sat on her tongue, burning to be spoken and aching to be released. But she couldn’t. Not yet. Not like this.
“I cannot.” She watched the flicker of hurt cross his face, and her heart cracked all over again. “Not until you know.”
“Know what?” He tried to push himself higher on the pillows, his jaw clenching against the pain.
“Don’t.” She was on her feet instantly, her free hand pressing gently against his shoulder to ease him back down. “You will hurt yourself.”
“Then tell me.” He caught her wrist, his grip surprisingly strong. His thumb pressed against her pulse, feeling the frantic rhythm there. “Whatever it is. Tell me.”
“It’s not that simple.” She shook her head, her hair falling loose around her face in a dark curtain.
“It’s that simple.” His thumb traced circles on the inside of her wrist. “You tell me. I listen. Nothing changes.”
“You don’t know that.” She looked away, her chin trembling as she avoided his gaze.
“I know I love you.” He tugged her wrist, pulling her attention back to him. “I know nothing you say will change that.”
“You say that now.” She pulled her wrist free, wrapping her arms around herself like a sudden chill had entered the room.
“I will say it forever.” He reached for her hand again, his fingers gentle but insistent. “Sit. Please.”
She sat, choosing the edge of the bed this time to be closer than the chair. Moonlight spilled through the window illuminating the bandage wrapped around his head.
Now or never. She drew a shaking breath.
“My name is not Ashford.” The words forced their way out against her will. Her hands twisted in her lap, fingers tangling in the fabric of her skirts.
He went still beside her, his breath catching in his throat. But he didn’t let go of her hand.
She stared at their joined fingers, unable to meet his eyes. “My name is Eleanor. Eleanor Whitmore. I changed it nine years ago. When I ran.”
“Ran from what?” He stroked his thumb across her knuckles, watching her with a steady, patient intensity.
“From everything.” She choked on the word and pressed her free hand to her stomach. “From who I was. From what I had done. From a dead man and a burning house.”
They were both quiet for a long time. Then finally, Dominic broke the silence.
“Tell me.” He squeezed her hand, an invitation rather than a demand.
She looked at him, this man who had proposed to her, who had defended her to the village gossip, who had called her name when he was dying. If she told him, he might hate her—yet he might look at her with disgust instead of love. But if she didn’t tell him, she would never be free.
“I was seventeen when I met Gabriel Hyde.” She turned to face the window, finding the glass easier to look at than his face. “My father was an esquire. Respectable. I was supposed to marry well and be a good, obedient daughter.”
She paused, her shoulders hunching. “Gabriel was none of those things. He was handsome. Charming. He said all the right things.”
Dominic’s hand tightened on hers, but he remained silent, allowing her the space to continue.
“I thought he loved me.” She shook her head, the old shame rising like bile.
“I was seventeen and stupid, and I believed every word he whispered.” She shifted her gaze to the far corner of the room.
“He asked me to elope. To marry in secret.” She pressed her nails into her palms, the old shame rising like bile.
“My mother begged me not to go. She pressed her jewelry into my hands and wept. She knew I’d need it.
As for my father… He stood in the doorway and told me I was no longer his daughter. And I ran anyway.”
Her fingers tightened around his. “We married in a small church with strangers for witnesses. My father disowned me that same week. My mother never wrote. I never heard from either of them again.”
Dominic’s thumb continued its steady, warm stroke across her knuckles.
“The first few months were not bad. Gabriel was attentive. We moved often because he said it was for work.” Her expression turned brittle, the softness of the memory vanishing. “I didn’t question it.”
She pulled her hand from his and wrapped her arms around herself. “Then I learned what he really was.”
The fire crackled, a sudden spark jumping in the hearth. She stared into the glowing wood.
“He’d lost badly at cards. He owed a man named Blackett more than he could pay.” The name seemed to scrape her throat like broken glass. “Blackett came to collect. The man was thick-necked. Pig-eyed. Reeking of tobacco and sweat.”
She could still smell him. She could still feel those heavy hands on her arms.
“Gabriel smiled at him. That charming smile I had fallen in love with.” Her nails dug into her own arms through her sleeves. “And he gestured toward me like I was a horse he was selling.”
The bed creaked. Dominic had gone rigid, his entire body tensing under the linens.
“He told Blackett I was his for the night. That we would be even.” She forced the words out flat and distant, the only way she could bear to say them. “Payment for a gambling debt.”
“Nell—” Dominic’s words were a strangled rasp. He reached for her, his hand trembling slightly in the air.
“Blackett grabbed me. He started dragging me toward the bedroom.” She didn’t flinch from the memory. “I screamed. I begged Gabriel to stop him. He just poured himself a drink and watched.”
Dominic’s breathing had gone ragged, his chest heaving like he were the one struggling for air.
“So I fought.” Something fierce flickered in her chest, a spark of the girl she’d been. “I clawed Blackett’s face. Three deep gouges from his eye to his jaw. He was bleeding so badly he threw me to the floor and left.”
“Good.” The word ripped out of Dominic, savage and raw. His hands fisted in the sheets, knuckles white.
“Gabriel didn’t think so.” She touched her cheek, phantom pain ghosting across the bone. “He beat me until I couldn’t stand. He said I had cost him. He said next time, I would do as I was told.”
Dominic was shaking now. She could see it, the tremor in his shoulders and the vein pulsing at his temple.
“There were other nights.” She kept her gaze fixed ahead, though her heart was hammering. “Other men he owed money to. I learned to lock myself in the cellar when he had that look in his eye. I never let them touch me, but there were nights I wasn’t sure I’d manage it.”
“I am going to kill him.” Dominic didn’t raise his volume, but the words carried a terrifying weight. He stared at the far wall like the surface of a frozen lake. “I wish he were alive simply so I could kill him again.”
His jaw worked, his whole body vibrating with barely contained fury. He nodded once—a sharp, jagged movement—for her to continue.