Heartless (The House of Rohan 5)

She narrowed her eyes. “My memory is equally stellar. In fact, I might be bold enough to suggest that my own recollections far exceed yours.”

“Do they indeed?” There was a silky undercurrent to his voice, and she stared at him. She was no fool. Was it possible he’d finally remembered her, and was now somehow furious with her for nursing him back from death?

But surely if he remembered her at all it should probably be with the same affection she had felt. They had been friends. They had hovered beyond friendship. If he disliked the fact that he’d once seemed to harbor tender feelings for her, he could hardly blame her for it, could he?

In her experience men could do all sorts of heinous, irrational things, but looking into Brandon Rohan’s cool eyes gave her no hint. There was no reason for him to dissemble—if he remembered he would say so.

She straightened her back, keeping the shawl wrapped tightly around her. “I’m going to avail myself of a mug of warm milk and then I plan to return to bed. Doubtless you’ll have retired by then, so I wish you a good night.”

Where had that sardonic expression come from? It was nothing she remembered from those weeks so long ago. “Are you offering me a mug of warm milk, Mrs. Cadbury?”

“I am not. You seek out your own means of procuring sleep and I will attend to mine.”

“I can only think of one way to ensure a good night’s sleep, and I doubt you are about to offer it to me.”

To her absolute shock, her face warmed. When in her life had she been so missish as to blush at the suggestion of sex? She fought back the only way she knew how. “I’m not about to fuck you so you can rest comfortably. Your hand will have to suffice.”

He looked neither shocked nor angry—in fact she thought she spied a trace of reluctant amusement before she whirled around and stormed away. She didn’t want to think about it. She slammed the kitchen door behind her, not caring if she woke the household, and leaned against it, her heart hammering. She needed to get away from the man, more desperately than she’d ever had to escape anything, even her coerced presence at Mother Howard’s establishment. Nothing had been able to tap her deeply sealed vulnerability like Brandon Rohan.

The room was shadowed, dim light coming from the cast iron stove, and her eyes adjusted quickly. It would suffice—she was feeling admittedly low in spirits and sitting alone in the dark suited her very well indeed. She would simply wait until he left.

She found the milk in the larder, scooped herself a tin cup of it, and set it on the warm stove. It wouldn’t take long to heat, and she found a seat nearby, her toes curling in the delicious warmth. She had no choice—she was alone in the dark with nothing but her thoughts and the object of them just beyond the door. She hated him. She truly hated that man, more than she hated her holier-than-thou father, the vicious vicar in Melisande’s parish, or the group of men who’d paid Mother Howard to take their turn with her during her first drugged night in the brothel. None of them had ever been able to touch her soul.

Brandon had. The heart that she had managed to wall off had somehow developed cracks that first night at his bedside, when she thought he was dying, and perhaps therein lay the explanation. The young man who lay in the darkness would be gone before her sudden affection could grow troublesome.

But he hadn’t. He’d pulled back from the abyss, and she’d found herself kissing him, the first kiss she’d ever given or taken despite her years in men’s beds, and it was too late.

She closed her eyes in the darkness, accepting the miserable fact that she’d denied so long. She’d fallen in love with him that first night, when she’d been so certain that she had no heart. She’d loved him, and it had been her own, personal disaster.

At least she was quit of it at long last. Each time she thought she was free something had reminded her that she wasn’t, not quite. Something kept pulling her back to him, like a homing pigeon or a faithful dog.

That was at an end now. Tomorrow he would leave her and disappear, and whether she liked it or not, and she liked it very well indeed, she would never see him again. He would avoid her even more assiduously than she would return the favor. It was going to be just fine.

So why wasn’t she feeling happier? Oh, there was the small problem of three attempts on her life in the last four weeks, something she’d been paying far too little attention to. Now that she could dismiss Brandon from her thoughts it shouldn’t take long to discern whether it was merely a series of unlikely coincidences or someone truly trying to harm her. Now that she would no longer be distracted, it shouldn’t take long to find out what, if anything, lay behind it all.

She drained the milk, shuddering slightly, and then rose. He’d had to have gone up to bed by now—he had no more desire to be around her than she did, and while she hadn’t heard him leave she could be relatively certain she was safe. There was no way he could still be waiting for another confrontation with a woman he despised.

He was tired of this. Brandon paced his small bedroom at the inn, trying to stretch his cramped and aching leg. If he were home in the Highlands, and God knows he would have given anything to be there and never to have left—he’d go swimming in the coldest water he could find, never a difficult feat in that climate, and then lie by the fire with his spaniel Tammas stretched out beside him, and by the next day he’d be capable of anything.

But down here he had to improvise, and he’d discovered the best he could manage was to try to walk it off, ignoring the pain that sliced through his knee and thigh as he’d been ignoring it for years. And so he paced.

He’d wanted to follow Emma into the kitchen, grab her and make her tell him why she’d lied. It was the one thing he couldn’t abide, and by doing so she’d betrayed his returning memory of the Harpy who’d saved his life.

Then again, she’d already betrayed him when she’d disappeared. He’d waited, day after day, for her to return to his side, so that he could tease her, flirt with her, continue with that deep, soul-shaking kiss. But instead she’d run away, and the sister in charge of the ward told him that she had no idea where his Harpy had gone, or even if she would return—that was the way of things, and so finally, reluctantly, he’d told them his name.

Of course he’d remembered it early on, remembered his adoring, ramshackle family including his tempestuous sister Miranda, stuffy Charles, and irascible, impossibly caring Benedick, not to mention his beloved parents. They didn’t need a hideous shell of a man who’d broken every law of decency, even by Rohan standards, and the more time he spent with his Harpy the less tempted he was to confess his background.

He’d had no illusions. He knew the kind of ruined women who came and worked in the hospitals. They were soiled doves, abandoned wives, even criminals. It had been easy enough to know what she was—no man would ever be fool enough to abandon her, and with her looks she’d never have to resort to crime. She was a whore, plain and simple, though there had been nothing plain or simple about her, and he didn’t care. She had become his reason for living, and he didn’t even know her name.

When she’d abandoned him without a word she’d taken that reason with her. He’d had foolish fantasies about carrying her off, finding a place in the countryside where no one knew them and marrying her. Everything had been hazy and completely impractical, but he’d had nothing else to do while he lay in bed but build castles in the air. Those castles tumbled into dust when she disappeared.

Her crimes were manifest—not only had she vanished when he’d needed her, after her implicit promise of . . . what? She’d never promised him anything, and yet he couldn’t let go of his fury. She’d spent days in his company that week and never uttered a word, as if they’d never seen each other in their lives. If he hadn’t actually. . . cared for her then the betrayal wouldn’t feel as deep. Snapping at her was accomplishing nothing. He needed to confront her, have it out, and then he could abandon her once they reached London.

Couldn’t he?

He’d been so lost in thought he hadn’t heard the furious muttering or the stomped footsteps on the creaky old floor, but there was no missing the way his door slammed open, and Noonan stood th

ere, his wispy gray hair straight on end, creating an unlikely halo around his face, his eyes ferocious. “What the bloody hell has got into you, if I may ask? I spend the whole bloody day in the bloody rain because you’re so bloody determined to get away from that place and then when I try to get even an hour’s sleep you bloody well stomp around your room, muttering to yourself! What’s gotten into you, you bloody pissant?”