Heartless (The House of Rohan 5)

And he’d hit his own brother. No one had ever done that, defended her with a violence that was both shocking and arousing. Not that any other guest had dared be that rude in front of Benedick and Melisande, but with any other confrontation she was on her own. It was dangerously seductive to be championed, almost as seductive as those kisses had been.

She could sleep with him. She could give him her body and the pleasure men seemed to take from it. There was no possibility that she could enjoy it, but with Brandon she could endure, as long as he kissed her like that. It was a frightening, enticing thought.

She reached her bedroom, slammed the door and went straight to the window seat overlooking the courtyard. It was raining again—the brief sunshine had been only a small respite—and she leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes, catching her breath, letting her racing heart return to normal. S

he could still feel his hands on her, and she crossed her arms to touch where he’d touched. She wanted to cry, but her eyes were stubbornly dry. If Melisande and Benedick didn’t let her leave tomorrow she would run, and keep running, until no one could find her.

Common sense returned like a slap in the face. Of course she couldn’t run and hide. She was a woman who had always dealt with life head on—she didn’t run.

She let her head rest against the cold window, closing her eyes in weariness. Why was she fussing about Brandon Rohan? In the scheme of thing he was no more than a peripheral distraction. Dismissing him would be easier when she was back in the stimulating atmosphere of Temple Hospital, her mind absorbed in work. No, her problem was far greater than Brandon Rohan.

Someone was trying to kill her.

She couldn’t believe how dense she’d been. The fire at Melisande’s house in London had started when she was alone in the building. It had seemed like a random coincidence—there’d been threats for years about the place. No one had any charity for the soiled doves who took shelter there, and men with power never liked living with the fact that women knew their secrets. Once they no longer served their purpose, those women were disposable, and there’d been threats aplenty. That had been one of the reasons all the women had been relocated to the country, thank God, so no one else would have died but she.

Except it was starting to look like she’d been the target in the first place. That hadn’t been an accidental push into the Thames, as she’d conveniently believed. She had no idea who had pulled her out, but Dr. Fenrush’s man had been in the crowd, and if he’d known about Benedick’s plan to have her supplant his master he probably would have thrown her back in again.

And now the attack in the secluded field, one she’d wanted to convince herself was random. Random, except that Rosie had told her particularly to take that path, a longer, more out of the way path, and now Rosie was dead.

Emma might prefer to ignore inconvenient distractions, but she wasn’t stupid. When you put all those incidents together it meant only one thing, and if she continued to dismiss it, other people might get hurt as well.

She sighed. There was always the possibility that the London attempts had no connection with the danger she’d faced six hours to the northeast, that those incidents were, as she’d first believed, mere accidents, and she’d somehow run afoul of a deranged killer when she’d come here.

She hadn’t endured and survived without a willingness to face ugly truths. It had become even more urgent that she return to London—the answer must be there, somewhere. She could talk to Fenrush’s man, Collins, his name was, and see if he’d noticed anything odd that day by the river.

And she could be secure in the knowledge that her escape from Starlings House would have absolutely nothing to do with the man who had just kissed her so thoroughly that she felt. . . claimed. There was no claiming going on, not by anyone, she reminded herself, and the sooner she got home and concentrated on this mess the better.

Chapter 15

Brandon would have had a great deal to say about it if he’d been informed. As it was, his mind was caught up with the events of the day as he changed for supper with the dubious help of Noonan.

“When the hell are we getting back to Scotland?” the old man demanded. “The longer I stay down here in this place the more nervous I get. Throwing rocks at the British Army can be considered treason, you know.”

“It was twenty years ago if it was a day, and no one even remembers,” Brandon replied. “I’ve still got things to do down here. Besides, I’m supposed to get married.”

Noonan dismissed that particular notion with a colorful phrase. “You’re no more going to marry that dishrag of a girl than you’re going to win a beauty contest,” he said with his usual devastating frankness. “Just leave off and let’s go home.”

“Trust me, there’s nothing I’d like better.” But was there? Was there any other woman whose lithe, strong body felt made for his, whose mouth tasted of paradise? He’d been an idiot and a rare bastard for kissing her this afternoon, but he hadn’t been able to help himself. He’d been wanting to for so damned long, and the chaste kiss of the night before had only whet his appetite.

But he couldn’t have her. Even if he managed to find his way out of this absurd marriage idea, he still couldn’t have Emma Cadbury. She didn’t even like him, for all that she’d put her arms around him and almost kissed him back, and she would have no interest in. . .

“What do I do with this thing?” Noonan interrupted his conflicted thoughts, clenching a spotless neckcloth in one hand. Brandon grabbed it away.

“You don’t crush it,” he said, tying it haphazardly around his neck. “Damned things.”

“You’re right about that, me boy. Those things could strangle you, and there’s no way you could fight in one.”

Not even with a blink of an eye did he show his reaction. Noonan brought up the war at regular intervals, and each time a part of him wanted to recoil. He’d accepted it: the things he had done, the trust he’d betrayed, the monstrous things. . .

Deliberately, he looked in the mirror. In Scotland they had no mirrors, at least, none in the gamekeeper’s house where he and Noonan had lived for the last three years. The main house was shuttered, the furniture covered, and they could have walls and ceilings made of mirrors for all he cared. Noonan didn’t give a damn, and Brandon hadn’t wanted to look at his ugly mug, the constant reminder of all he wished he could forget.

In truth, though, he wasn’t ready to let go of it, of the harsh, damnable past. He looked at the monster in the mirror with steady regard. It was no wonder his pathetic little fiancée had screamed and almost fainted at the sight of him. The thought of being forced to look at him across the breakfast table must have horrified her.

“No beauty contests, eh?” he said out loud, surveying himself.

The left side of his face had looked like raw, bloody minced meat in the beginning, but now it was merely a spider web of scars, his nose had been broken several times before the last battle, and he couldn’t say much for the rest of him. The scars tugged his mouth into a perpetual glower, his left eye was tilted, though praise be he still had vision in it. He could stand there and catalogue the deficiencies, the damaged ear, the deep vertical scars, but he didn’t bother. He was repulsed enough by his reflection, knowing that he deserved it. It was the outward sign of all his inner torment, a punishment for the horrors he’d committed. He’d never shirked responsibility—he took his punishment like a man.

“I pity that poor girl having to look at the sight of this every morning,” he said.