Page 11 of The Truth Serum (My Lady’s Potions #2)

N o, no, no! After a decade of dreaming about reuniting with Becca, Nate couldn’t let her run away from him! He shot to his feet, cursing the pain that burst through his consciousness with every step.

“Becca! Becca, please!” he called as he rushed after her. It wasn’t fast enough, damn it, but she slowed in the foyer. He wanted to believe it was for him, but he saw her peering out the door for her carriage.

Thank heaven it was nowhere to be seen. He had a few seconds yet before she fled.

“Becca, please just talk to me.”

She whipped around to face him. “My name is Lady Rebecca!”

He winced. She wanted to be on a formal basis with him. She wanted to put barriers between them when he wanted…everything from her. Just as he wanted to give her everything he had.

Well, “everything” included polite respect.

He dipped his head. “Yes, of course, Lady Rebecca. My apologies.” God, the formal words tore at his throat, but if this was all he could have of her, then he would take it. With gratitude.

“Lord Nathaniel,” she said through gritted teeth. “Please remove your hand from my person.”

He looked down, a little startled that he had grabbed her elbow to keep her close. He wasn’t gripping her tightly. Last thing he wanted to do was give her bruises. And yet, it still took a conscious effort of will to open his hand.

“I apologize,” he said. “I’ve done this badly. I’ve been thinking of this for ten years and have stored up so much I want to say. Please, can we not speak as we used to? Like old friends who…” He swallowed as he searched for the right words. “Who care about each other.”

Her expression shifted through a myriad of emotions. He saw pain and fear. He thought there might be a softness in her, but it was quickly suppressed along with everything else. By the time she spoke, her words were coolly formal.

“Lord Nathaniel, we do not know one another. The… the child you once knew is long gone. The woman who stands before you is a stranger.”

“Then let us speak as strangers meeting as if for the—”

“No!”

The word burst out of her in pain and fury. And God, how that hurt. In the past ten years, he’d imagined their reunion a thousand different ways, but not once had he thought she would refuse all communication. That she would reject him so soundly.

He swallowed down the pain and pushed through a single raw question.

“Why not?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“If everything that… if we are to ignore everything that happened when we were younger, then why—as adults—can we not speak? I am as aristocratic as you. We travel in the same circles. I am a man in search of a wife, and you are a woman in search of a husband. I have no debts nor noxious habits. And my best friend—the Duke of Harle—appears to be friends with your brother. Therefore, why am I so objectionable to you?”

He could see her jaw work, tightening and releasing. More telling still, her hands twisted in their reticule. “Fletcher says—”

“Do not parrot your brother’s words to me,” he said, his voice cold. “You and I both know that he is not objective. Tell me from your own experience how I disgust you.”

She looked away. “It is not disgust.”

“Isn’t it?” he pressed, his voice softening. “Your hands are pressed tight into your belly. How do you feel?”

“Nauseous.”

He reached up, wishing to touch her. Aching to caress her cheek and somehow soothe her.

But he held back. “How can I fix this?” he whispered.

It was the one question that had reverberated through his thoughts for ten years.

How could he repair the damage between them?

How could he prevent her father’s death, find her again in a hayloft or a ballroom, and let her know how much she meant to him?

“Some things cannot be fixed,” she said. “You know that.”

He did. And yet he wanted to try. He stroked his thumb across her cheek, catching the tear that hovered at the edge of her lashes.

She blinked at the gesture, as if surprised that she was crying.

He wasn’t. He knew that her emotions were often close to the surface, and that she hated that about herself.

Her family ridiculed any emotional display.

He pulled his thumb back and kissed the wetness there.

“Don’t hold back your feelings from me,” he said.

He saw her jaw firm and then she struck, giving him a fast, whipping slap across his cheek, hard enough that his head twisted to the side, and loud enough that the sound echoed in the room. And it was painful enough that he automatically readied himself for a life or death fight.

Then he strangled the thought. He wasn’t being chased by Napoleon’s men. He wasn’t being beaten by five thugs. He was safe in a ducal household. And she was no match for him physically.

Emotionally, however, she could slay him. Indeed, she just had.

“I never meant to hurt you,” he said. Then he gave her a wan smile. “Do you want to hit me again?”

She didn’t. Indeed, she appeared to be shocked and appalled by her own behavior.

“Curl your hand into a fist. Leave your thumb outside. And punch through the knuckle of your index finger. That will save the rest of your hand.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “So sorry.”

If there was more, she didn’t get to voice it. Neither did she get to hit him again as her brother burst through the front door, followed quickly by Ras.

“Get your hands off my sister!” Fletcher bellowed.

Nate immediately lifted his hands, showing that they were nowhere near his sister. He also stepped protectively between Fletcher and Becca. “Your sister is fine.”

“You keep her name out of your filthy mouth!”

It was part of his own personal perversion that those words conjured a very pleasing image. But he knew better than to say it. “Fletcher, your sister is well able to protect herself.”

“Thank God!” Fletcher responded as tried to grab Becca. He couldn’t reach, but he could glare at the red mark on Nate’s face. “I hope she hurt you,” he hissed. “Come along Rebecca. I should never have trusted that this reprobate would remain decently upstairs.”

“Fletcher—”

“Don’t say anything now. It will only further upset you.” He turned to Ras. “You see now, don’t you? You see the insult he is? He is a damage to yourself and all decent people.”

Ras didn’t answer. His gaze was dark and troubled, especially when it landed hard on the stinging handprint on Nate’s face.

“It’s not what it seems—” Nate began.

Ras interrupted. “Lady Rebecca, are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said as she stepped around Nate to go to her brother’s side, but Miss Petrelli held out a hand. He hadn’t even noticed her there, but she had been close by. No doubt ready to interfere if she were needed.

“Lady Rebecca,” she said. “This is not at all what I planned, and I most sincerely apologize. I hope you will consider speaking with me again. At my cousin’s house. Away from…” She gestured to everyone. “Whatever this was.”

Fletcher didn’t give his sister a chance to respond. “We have no desire to speak with you again, Miss Petrelli. Indeed, I sincerely hope—”

“Have a care, Fletch,” Ras rumbled as he crossed to his fiancée’s side.

Fletcher visibly swallowed his next word. Then he lifted his chin. “Good day to you all.” The words were hurled as an insult. Then he glanced at his sister. “Come along,” he commanded.

Becca did as she was bid. She didn’t look back. She didn’t pause to throw him a glance. She didn’t twist just enough so he was in her peripheral vision. If it were possible for a woman’s back to throw up blinders, she would have done it all around her.

And he, as usual, watched her go, unable to talk to her, unable to make up for the blunders of the day or of the last decade. God, what a mess.

Then, to make it worse, when the door finally closed behind them, Ras dropped his hands onto his hips and glared straight at Nate.

“What the hell were you thinking? You were supposed to stay upstairs! Let her ask to see you! Let her choose, instead of being forced into a confrontation.”

He swallowed. “I couldn’t wait.”

“Then you’re a bloody idiot.”

Obviously. But there was another concern. “Did you learn anything? What does Fletcher think?”

Ras shook his head. “That you’re smuggling something to France.”

“What?”

“That’s what he thinks.”

“But why?” Nate fought to keep all his whirling thoughts from his tone. “Was he following me or investigating smuggling?”

Ras frowned. “I’m not sure. He seemed to be saying both.”

“What does he know about the smuggling?”

Ras’s gaze sharpened. “He didn’t elaborate. Why? What do you know about it?”

He threw up his hands in disgust. “Nothing!” That was the damned problem. And now he had to investigate Fletcher. It was possible the man had stumbled upon important information, or maybe, the man was making up idiocy just to make himself look important. That happened more times than not.

Either way, he needed to know the truth.

Meanwhile, Ras took Nate’s arm and gently forced him toward the stairs. Good idea because Nate’s feet were burning.

“I don’t what to think,” Ras was saying. “Fletcher could be deluded or a very skilled liar.”

“Or both,” Nate said, his tone dry. Meanwhile, he had to pause on the steps to let his feet rest a moment.

God, it felt like his stockings were soaked with blood, all inside his shoes.

Which meant he’d have to buy new ones, and damn it, that was an expense he didn’t want to manage right now.

Spying for the government was not as lucrative as he would have liked.

But first things first. “Think back,” Nate said in an undertone. “Tell me the entire conversation word for word.”

*

Kynthea watched the men go, her hands on her hips as she quietly shook her head. Ras had asked her if she was all right. She reassured him that she was fine but then lost his attention as he focused on the drama in front of them.

That was all well and good, but he’d forgotten to ask her if she’d learned anything. He was deep in his whispered conversation with Nate as they headed upstairs, no doubt to assess how much damage the foolish man had done to his feet.

“Send up hot water, cloths, and more of that honey unguent, if you please,” she directed the butler.

“Yes, Miss Petrelli. Right away.”

“Thank you. And…” She sighed. “Try to keep the gossip to the minimum. We don’t know what all that was about, and speculation only makes us appear foolish.”

The man dipped his chin. “I quite agree.”

Of course he did. He was a ducal butler and had likely seen a great deal in his life.

In the meantime, she had her own investigation to begin.

The men might not have learned anything from Lady Rebecca, but Kynthea was not as blind.

Kynthea had seen several abused women in her time.

There weren’t any bruises on Lady Rebecca’s body, but the woman was trapped nonetheless.

Whether or not the lady wanted to run to Lord Nathaniel was her own business.

That was a choice for when she was free.

Escape, however, was an option she needed to be offered now. And Kynthea knew just how to begin the process.