Page 8 of How to Tempt An Earl (Wed Within a Year #2)

S he’d known it would come to this—the request for more information. He’d protected her tonight and killed for her without hesitation. He would expect something in return, something that would make his efforts worthwhile. She’d hoped it wouldn’t happen so soon. To give away too much would be to lose her leverage. And yet, to give away nothing might cause him to lose interest, to think she was leading him on. Her sense of fair play felt it only right that she told him. He had put himself at risk for her. He’d earned, if not her trust, then at least something from her. After all, protecting her had been in his best interest. If anything happened to her, it would also happen to her information. She had to give him a piece, but not everything: just enough to keep him with her, to ensure she remained of interest to him.

She drew a breath. ‘I have a list. I will give you half of that list when we reach Wrexham and the other half once I am free of Roan.’

‘Is this list important to me?’ Kieran folded his arms behind his head and gave every impression of a man settling in for the long haul.

‘Of utmost importance, I would think. It contains the names of the men who were involved in the sabotage attempt at Wapping, and on that list is the name of the explosives expert who was to be rowed out to the ship that night.’ She held her face impassive, her gaze steady, willing herself not to give away an iota of her desperation. She had nothing else to bargain with.

‘My God, you should have said so at once.’ A hungry dark flame leapt in his eyes.

‘You know I could not. To give everything to you all at once exposes me. As you pointed out yesterday, I would no longer have any use, no longer be worth protecting, if I had nothing left to give.’

‘I would give you my word ,’ he growled defensively, clearly insulted by her suggestion.

She shook her head. ‘A word? Am I to stake my life on the word of a man I barely know? Tsk, tsk, now who is the na?ve one?’

He fumed, clearly not liking having had his honour called into question, but she had no room for principle at the moment. This was about the practicality of staying alive. She needed insurance he would keep her alive, that he wouldn’t leave her to fend off Ammon Vincent on her own.

His fuming subsided. ‘I see your point. I do not like it, but I understand it.’ He crossed his arms over his chest. ‘How did you come by the list?’

‘The same way I came by a lot of pieces in Roan’s household. It was lying around.’ She let that bit of information drop in the hope it might provoke curiosity. Instead, it prompted scepticism.

‘You may have overplayed your hand there.’ Kieran grimaced. ‘Roan’s too careful. He wouldn’t leave sensitive information out in the open for just anyone to see.’

‘I wasn’t “anyone”. I was his ward, and I was never expected or allowed to leave.’ She leaned forward in earnest to make him understand. ‘When he sent for me after my schooling finished, he didn’t just bring me into his home, he brought me into his world, whether I wanted to be there or not. There was no choice for me. It was made clear that I would not leave the grounds of his estate. On the rare occasion that I did, it would be under heavy escort. I was to serve as his hostess and, if the time came when a marriage could be advantageous, it would be a match made in his world, to a person of his choosing, and then I would act as his worm in another man’s house.’

She shook her head. ‘He could leave about whatever material he wanted. I was going nowhere. I was no threat to him. I was less than his prisoner. A prisoner might have hope of escape, of freedom in the future. I was his slave. He owned me in every way possible and the law allowed it.’ Her throat clogged a little at saying the words out loud. That last had been her father’s betrayal. She would never know what had possessed her father to make Roan her guardian.

‘Dear Lord, what a nightmare that must have been.’ He breathed deeply. She watched his eyes, waiting for pity to move in those velvety depths, and steeled herself for the inevitable. Pity would be a natural response from a man like him. He was a warrior. He was strong. He’d never be another’s captive.

‘Yes, it was awful, but I don’t want your pity,’ she said quickly, as if she could ward it off. She didn’t want him to feel sorry for her. Pity was an emotion reserved for the weak, the pathetic.

‘Is that what you see in my eyes? If so, look again.’ Kieran pierced her with a dark stare that unleashed a complicated warmth—not only the warmth of comfort, of knowing she was safe with him, but the warmth of want, the precursor to a heat that could burn with something hotter—desire, something she could not allow. She was on the run and the running didn’t stop here, didn’t stop with him. It couldn’t stop with him.

‘I’m not in the habit of pitying survivors.’ Kieran’s voice was low, seductively inviting in the privacy of the coach. ‘I admire survivors. I admire strong women. You are both, to have made it this far on your own. You got out, and you’ve lived to tell about it, if you want. It’s your story, but it’s a long way to Wrexham. Would you tell me?’

‘Yes.’ She breathed the single word. She would tell him. He would understand. Not because he’d experienced something similar but because he’d lived the opposite—the absolute freedom of summers at Willow Park with his brothers, embraced by the security and support of a family.

* * *

Kieran was used to hearing horror stories—stories of loss, of desperation and of revenge. These were the things that motivated informants to come forward, to sell information in dark rooms across Europe and to meet clandestinely with strangers. There were certainly all of those elements in Celeste’s tale but the true darkness of her story came from what it lacked. Kieran recognised the absent elements within minutes: any mention of family, the security of routine, or the comfort and anchor of home. What security she had came from her own wits; what home she had came with the price of pleasing Roan and adhering to his wishes.

‘School was a shield, a buffer of sorts for me; it kept me from understanding what Roan did and what my father did for him. I didn’t realise it at the time,’ she began. ‘Instead, I resented my schooling. I moved establishments every few years based on where my father was working. To a young girl, it seemed that I was being pulled away just when I was getting settled, just making friends. Every time I moved, it took longer to settle, longer to believe that this time I would get to stay, although I would convince myself in the end—all to no avail.’

She looked up and met his eyes. ‘I think now that Roan may have planned it that way. Not for me, especially, but for my father. I’ve come to think that Roan didn’t want my father to get too comfortable somewhere. If he did, he might have friends, or allies, who would have been able and willing to help him get out.’

‘Did he want out?’ Kieran asked carefully. She’d trusted him enough to tell him her story. That was no small thing, but he didn’t want to ask for too much too soon and scare her off, even as the questions mounted in his mind.

‘I like to think he did.’ Her gaze returned to her lap, fixed on her hands. ‘The truth is, I didn’t really understand what my father did until I was out of school and Roan had sent for me. I thought my father was a banker, a financier—and he was, just for a corrupt dealer in firearms. There was so much I didn’t understand until later.’

She let out a sigh. ‘When my father and I were together, just the two of us, we had this story we would tell each other—how we would stop travelling and get a house in the Alps. It would have a balcony we could sit on wrapped in blankets and watch the snow fall. It would be quiet. No one would come to bother us. We would play chess and cards all winter. In the spring, we’d walk the paths to the village; in the summer, we’d swim the mountain lakes, grow a garden and put up food for the winter.’

When she looked up, the wistfulness in her gaze stole his breath and something deep within him wanted to give that vision to her. ‘Father and I dreamed of a simple life. No more chandeliered ballrooms, ten-course meals and all the fuss that goes with that.’

‘But it never happened?’ Kieran prompted gently.

‘It almost did. My father had written to me that he had a place for us. When I finished the spring term, we’d go. He died in April, just three weeks before we were to leave. I was away at school. Roan sent a letter to the headmistress, telling her the news, and the instruction that I should spend the summer with a friend. I never got to go back to my father’s home to collect anything of his. It was just one of many places that my father had lived but it was where I’d been with him last. Roan had everything packed. I didn’t even go the funeral. It was too far to come, Roan said.’

She’d been sent away with no chance to say goodbye to her remaining parent. The inhumanity of it cleaved his heart. ‘You were still a child.’ Not that Roan would have cared—men, women, children, he used them all when it suited his purpose. ‘How old were you?’

‘Sixteen. I had two years of schooling left. Roan paid for them, saying it was what my father had wanted. He told the headmistress he felt obligated to give me a home, to bring me out and to provide for me, and of course he’d been named my guardian. There was no reason for the school not to pack me up and send me to him when my education was complete. The generous donation he made didn’t hurt either. I didn’t protest much. I had no idea what I was getting into. I knew him only as my father’s colleague and friend.

‘He was very good at cultivating my services. He was liberal with his flattery and he started small—asking me to help with a menu for this or that dinner, and complimenting my choices. I was happy to help. I was living in a beautiful house, wearing fine clothes, and there was no hint of anything being off. He was busy. There were people coming and going from his office all the time. After I’d been there a year, he asked me to attend one of the dinners, to be his hostess. I was thrilled. He ordered me a beautiful gown of aquamarine French silk with a very sophisticated cut. Too sophisticated for a nineteen-year-old, but I didn’t make the connection at the time. I was too busy being excited by the prospect.’

She hated herself for it; that much was evident. She blamed herself for being gullible. No wonder she’d resented it when he’d said she was na?ve. She was trying so hard not to be, trying so hard to ensure that she wasn’t taken in again, as she’d been taken in by Roan.

‘You can’t blame yourself. You had no idea.’ Kieran offered the meagre absolution. No doubt, she’d told herself that a thousand times.

‘That’s not good enough. There were so many signs and I missed them—all of them. Once I started to hear things and put things together, it was too late.’

He wanted to ask what those things were, along with a hundred other questions racing through his mind. Did she think Roan had had a hand in her father’s death? Who did Roan entertain? But not tonight. Tonight was for her to tell her story, to tell him about her hurt. Tonight was for him, too. The more he knew, the more he could help her.

Whoa, careful there! came the warning from the small part of his mind not caught up in her story.

The goal was shifting. What had begun as a fact-finding mission to obtain information about Wapping had become a mission of protection. Keeping her safe meant keeping the information safe and now, here in the confines of the coach, it had become something far more personal. Wapping, Ottomans, Greek independence and the Four Horsemen aside, he wanted to help her . Hearing Roan had co-opted a young girl to sit at his table, to entertain other corrupt men, had deepened his understanding of why she’d run. He’d not been wrong earlier—she had run for herself as much as she’d run for the Horsemen—and it inflamed him that she should have been put in such a position.

She gave a dry laugh. ‘So now the pity comes. You want to save me, like your water-trough boy the other day.’ She gave a shrug and swept the length of her hair over one shoulder, a move that he found provocative and inflaming in an entirely different way.

Kieran chuckled. ‘You saw.’ She was observant, a skill that would keep her alive, and perhaps had kept her alive this long.

‘Yes. I saw you stuff a fistful of coins in his hand.’ She laughed and then softened her tone. ‘Even when you were worried about our safety, it did not override your concern for him.’

‘Am I not allowed to want to help you? You’re in an untenable position, just as Samuel was. I will grant that the urge to help you is not unlike wanting to help the boy, but the motive is different. Perhaps I do want to help him out of pity for his circumstances, but that’s not what motivates me to want to help you.’

‘No, I have a list,’ she said sharply, eyes sparking in challenge. ‘That’s what motivates you . Keeping me alive is also what keeps alive the chances of finding your brother’s killer.’

‘That’s not all that motivates me,’ he argued, offended by how mercenary she made it sound. But to suggest he was motivated out of concern for her would push too close to the pity she abhorred. ‘I would protect you whether you had a list or not. I need you to believe that.’

He knew that she did not, despite his assurances, given both verbally and nonverbally. She still feared he would drop her when she had nothing else to offer. Now he knew the reason why. She’d been betrayed by men her entire life—her father and Roan, the two men who were supposed to have protected her, and who knew how many others? For all that she’d shared tonight, and as dark as that story had been, he suspected a darkness still remained untapped.

What had she done for Roan? What had he made her do?

‘I don’t know why you would do anything for me without the list. There’d be no reason. Helping me would make no sense. Without the list, I am just a stranger,’ she countered. ‘What would you want from me in exchange?’

‘You are in danger. That is enough.’ She was in danger from more than Roan. He’d seen her face at Grigori’s tonight. It had been the expression of horrified recognition. ‘You knew the man at the restaurant. Who is he?’

‘Roan’s vilest henchman, the one no one wants to come after them. His name is Ammon Vincent.’ She shuddered as she said it, confirmation that his hunch had been right.

Kieran leaned forward and reached for her hand. It was cold. He rubbed it between his own. ‘Let me ask that question in a different way. What is he to you?’

‘Roan’s men are all violent. I know how Roan exacts retribution from those who have crossed him.’ She was being evasive. He wouldn’t accept that—for her own safety he could not accept that. She was hiding personal history here…to protect herself in some way, perhaps?

He gripped her hand to give her strength. ‘You are prevaricating. Now, tell me—what claim does he have on you to cause you to turn white, to stumble into paralysis, you who have braved two weeks on the road alone? You are not a woman who freezes, but you did tonight, twice.’

He could almost hear her swallow, and her heart beat in fear, as if saying the truth out loud would conjure the man himself. ‘Roan has promised me to him.’