Chapter 24
Henry’s story was terrifying. It hurt Eva to see him so broken, smashed into a billion pieces. After hearing his speech, Eva couldn’t exactly blame him for acting as he had, but that did not make her pain any less significant.
She looked up at him from her plate of food.
He was slumped, dejected, on the other side of the long, narrow table, with his head in one hand and the other tapping along the armrest. His sea-blue eyes were focused on a crack in the table’s surface. They bore the haunted look of an insomniac.
Eva picked up a knife and stabbed the bread roll on her plate. If she didn’t know any better, she would think he was manipulating her heart strings, tugging at them to make her feel sorry for him, but she knew he hated to be pitied. What infuriated her the most was that she knew his story was true.
You can’t forget what he did to you.
Eva plunged her knife into the bread roll again. “Lottie believed I was put in your world by God. She thought my purpose was to heal you. I told her it was a responsibility I did not sign up for and, even if I could, you’re far too broken to fix.”
His hard stare fell upon her.
His disheartened expression made her chest ache in a confusing way. Yes, she could hurt him with her words. She could make him bleed, force him to his knees and watch as he begged for mercy, but would that make her feel better?
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver case. He removed a thin cigarette, popped it between his lips and lit it with a match.
“Since when do you smoke cigarettes?” she said.
“It is a habit I picked up overseas.”
“It’ll give you cancer.”
The corners of his lips twitched. “If the broken cannot be fixed, there is no use worrying about such things. You were speaking of God?”
“I was mostly speaking of your brokenness.”
His face darkened. “I am quite aware how much of a mess I am. Hence my attempt at changing that.”
Henry was not a mess. He was the chaotic tangled pile of scrap left after a raging storm. Bent out of shape. Rusted in the rain. Missing bolts and screws. It was too bad her truth would take that tangled pile and twist it some more.
He has it coming.
Remember what he did to you.Remember the pain.
“As you know, I don’t believe in God, but after you left for London, I did play with the idea. I wondered why God would bring me here and make me fall hopelessly and horrifically in love with you, all the while knowing we would be separated. If it was his divine plan, what the hell was the point? What lesson could I possibly learn from that? Then it clicked.” She paused and stared at the knife in her hand. “What if the plan was not about you and I, but rather, me killing your father. After all, Edwin Asheford took everything from me: Dad, my life … you.”
“You came to the hotel to seek vengeance?” he said.
“No,” she said with a grimace. “I came to tell you I wanted to stay.”
The cigarette in his right hand trembled slightly. “You wanted to stay in this century for my sake?”
An ugly emotion exploded in her belly. Her lips twisted with the force of incoming tears, and she busied herself with buttering her bread roll.
A tense silence drew long between them.
She was thankful for the quietness. If she spoke, she would break down in angry sobs all over again.
“Where did you go?” he said.
The knife slipped from her hand, falling across her plate with a loud clang.
Her temples throbbed angrily. “You’re really going to sit there and pretend you don’t know what happened?”
“I sincerely have no idea what you mean.”
“Jesus Christ,” she said, pushing her plate away. Whatever appetite she had was gone. “You’re really going to make me say it?”
His cheeks flushed. “How many times must I say that I sincerely thought you had returned to your home. Why must I continue to proclaim my honesty?”
“Because you married her!”
“It was an arranged marriage.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She slapped her hand on the table. “You still married the bitch. How could you not know? How could you have never known what she did to me—”
“What she did—” He straightened in his chair and set his cigarette in the ashtray. “What does she have to do with your whereabouts?” His eyes widened. “Did she harm you?”
Here it was.
The moment of truth.
Eva stood with a scrape of her chair and planted her hands against the tabletop. Her breathing came out in quick angry puffs as she glared into his hollow face, knowing the knife she was about to plunge into his heart would hurt like hell.
“They told me you both wanted me dead,” she said, her trembling voice betraying her slipping courage.
He jumped up. With three long strides, he closed the distance between them. Eager to touch her, he reached for her arm but hesitated and pulled back.
“Eva…”
Her fingers instinctively reached for him, and she roughly clutched his shirt against his chest. “You wanted me dead. That’s what they said to me, that you wanted me out of the way. They said you wanted me dead.”
“They separated us.” His gaze was so direct, so honest. “Forgive me. I had no idea what transpired.”
“How could you have no idea? How could you have been ignorant about what they did to me? You married her.”
“I truly did not know,” he whispered.
“But you married her,” she repeated, her voice falling to new depths.
He clasped her hand. “We were made fools of. I’m sorry. I’m so devastatingly sorry.”
For a moment, his warmth was the only thing on her mind. If she did not break free from his touch, she would crumble into his arms. They would cry together. They would make up. They would move on. It shouldn’t be that easy. Not after everything she’d been through.
“No,” she exhaled, taking her hands off his chest. “No. I spent the last few months hating you for thinking you played a role in this. Do you remember the last words you said to me?”
“They are not so easily forgotten.”
She gave a hollow laugh. “Is that so? How about we go down memory lane for fun?”
“Eva, please.”
“No,” she said, her voice rising. “I want you to hurt as much as I did.”
He looked as if he had been slapped. His head fell between his shoulders. “Everything about this is tearing me apart. I suppose it is deserved, given what happened to you was entirely my fault.”
A pang of guilt jabbed her, cracking her wall of anger. She could feel her determination to hurt him slipping. “You wanted to personally deliver me to your father if I chased after you,” she said quickly.
“A lie to force you into action.”
“A lie that made me think you were nothing but a two-timing criminal. A lie that made me believe what my kidnappers said was true. Can you imagine what I thought of you after I was kidnapped, beaten and taken up north by men who claimed that Mr. Asheford and his lovely bride requested I be dealt with?”
He swayed and caught himself on the chair. Sweat beaded above his brows. His skin was taking on a greenish hue.
She narrowed her eyes. Was he sick?
“They approached you after the hotel?” he muttered.
“Yes.”
“Did you catch their names?”
“I was not in a state of mind to pay attention,” she said.
Gaze distant, his expression darkened.
“Wait a minute. Whatever you’re thinking, stop this instant,” she demanded.
“I could kill the men who did this to you,” he said in a voice as cold as ice.
“Look at me.”
“I will bloody kill them all—”
She grabbed his jaw. “Get out of that head of yours, and look at me,” she said, holding his hard gaze. “Revenge is what got us into this mess in the first place. You need to control those urges. I need you to be strong for what I have to say next.”
He exhaled a shuddering breath.
Up close, she observed his gaunt, pallid figure. Was he sick or hiding a panic attack? Whatever the case, something told her to take hold of his arm instead. Not only to give him the strength to stand but also to give her the strength to face the consequences of her actions, the traumas of her past, and the wounds that had not quite healed. And, as much as it frustrated her, he gave her the strength to do all that.
He lay a hand against hers that held his arm. Cupping it carefully, he brought it to his chest. His cold and clammy fingers intertwined with hers.
“I’m listening,” he said.
Oh.
She had expected more of a fight from him. Trying to find her words, she tucked her chin to her chest and stared at the floor. The motion brought her forehead close to his mouth.
She felt his lips press against her skin.
It was a forbidden comfort. One she was not willing to push away.
“I will always listen to you,” he whispered.
The sudden intimacy made her heart pound. Across the inch of space between them, she could feel his body heat radiating, making her dizzy.
“Shortly after I left the hotel, I was taken by three men. I recognized one of them from your engagement party; he had been speaking to Fanny shortly before I left.” She halted to take in a shuddering breath. “They shoved me into a carriage, bound my hands and … and spoke of their plan to kill me.”
Henry’s burning forehead rested on her head. “Where did they take you?”
“Up north.”
“How far?”
“Somewhere in Yorkshire,” she whimpered. “I can’t remember most of it. They had beaten me, given me some drug—”
Henry groaned.
“At some point in the journey, I escaped by smashing my way through the carriage window.”
His finger touched her right cheek. “These scars.”
“From falling face-first into a pile of glass,” she said.
His breath hitched. Quick to withdraw his hand from her face, he placed it on the back of the chair. The hand that held hers went rigid as he wavered to the side.
She looked up at his pale face. “Henry?”
“Continue.”
“You look like you’re going to be sick.” She placed her free hand against his cheek. His skin radiated heat. “Wait, are you sick?”
“Please, please continue your story.”
“But you’re burning up,” she said.
“The room is warm.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t lie to me.”
He staggered, and she caught his shoulders. More sweltering heat between them.
He breathed in. “I’m listening.”
But he wasn’t.
In fact, he started to drift again. He grabbed the chair and, just as she was about to force him to sit, his eyes opened wide. His blue irises swam in two pools of bloodshot red.
Something was definitely wrong.
He darted from her and floundered around the table, then sped out of the dining room, shouldering a china dinner service from the cupboard near the door. Plates crashed to the floor.
What the hell?
Heart pounding, she chased him.
The door to the back garden had barely closed, yet he had already reached the surrounding stone enclosure. Hand against the wall, he vomited into the thorny bushes. Then, he started to fall.
No!
She rushed to catch him, but it was too late. He crashed onto the dirt path. She fell to her knees, lifted his head onto her lap and screamed for Elias.