Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,109
him. A spasm so sharp ripped through her chest and threatened to bring her to her knees.
Tynan slowed and then stopped on the pavement.
He wheeled back, his gaze sweeping the streets before settling upon her family’s townhouse, and Faye arched forward as his stare landed on her.
It did, didn’t it? He was so far away, it was nearly impossible to be sure, and yet—
Her brother’s reflected visage slid into the crystal pane, pulling a gasp from her and shattering the connection she’d forged in the distance with Tynan. When she looked back, desperately seeking him out, he was gone.
“Do you truly believe I’m so naïve as to believe any of what you fed me?” he asked tiredly from behind her.
Faye stiffened, her fingers curling involuntarily in the curtains, crushing the heavy fabric, the crunch of satin acutely loud. She took one last glance, but her efforts were of course futile. Tynan was gone. In every way.
She wanted to bang the glass with her fists and wail.
“Faye?” her brother pressed in the same tender way he had when she’d taken a tumble during her first dance session as a small girl. Her mother had berated her. Her brother had soothed her.
Tears pricked her lashes, and averting her gaze, she blinked several times, warding them off. “I don’t know what you are—”
Tristan surged forward. “Do not, Faye,” her brother clipped out, all hint of warmth instantly gone under his steely rage. “Do not presume to believe I have no idea”—he dropped his voice to an angry, harsh, barely discernable whisper—“what occurred just before my arrival.” His damning gaze landed on her wrinkled garments, and he shifted that furious stare to her mussed hair. “Just… do not. As your brother, I had two options in that moment. I either acknowledged what I know truly happened here and killed him, thus shedding light on your ruin.”
Her ruin. How tawdry and ugly he’d make what she’d shared with Tynan.
“Or—”
Faye snapped. “I wasn’t ruined by Tynan,” she shouted, ignoring the frantic shhing that came from him. “I was ruined long before him, by actions that I had nothing to do with.” If he thought she’d be properly shamed or repentant, he could go all the way to hell with that one. She swept over to her brother, her skirts swirling angrily about her ankles. “You think to lecture me?” she scoffed. God, spare her from the hypocrisy of this man. “You? A rogue who bedded widows and kept mistresses—”
“Just shh,” he implored once more, glancing frantically at the doorway.
Alas, he presumed she gave a single damn what the household staff, or the rest of the world, said about her. It had all been said before. She’d wasted all this time, owning her parents’ sins as her own. They weren’t her sins, however. Tynan had helped her to see that.
“No, I will not ‘just shh’!” If her presumptuous brother thought to storm in here and send Tynan away and then try to shame her for decisions she’d made as a grown woman, well, he was in for a bigger surprise than the one he’d found in this very room moments ago. “You think to stand as some manner of moral, holier-than-thou guardian. Well, you do not get to berate me for living my life precisely how I wish to live it.” And having said too much, Faye felt the fight go out of her. “Not when you are guilty of doing that very thing before you married Poppy,” she said tiredly.
“It is entirely different, Faye.”
She glared at him. “It is not.”
“You are a woman,” he cried. “And whether fair or not, that is the way this world is.” He dropped his voice to a furious whisper. “Where men are forgiven their torrid affairs, you will be ruined. With no prospects. With a ruined name.”
“Our name is already ruined,” she said. Only, what she and Tynan had shared hadn’t been anything like the empty entanglements her brother had enjoyed prior to his marriage. There’d been nothing torrid or shameful in it.
All her stomach muscles clenched viciously, and she returned to the window. Looking away from her brother, she hugged her arms around her middle to blunt the pain of it. What had happened between her and Tynan these past days had been special and intimate, gifts she didn’t want to know from any man. Just him. It had always been just him.
Tristan touched a light hand to her shoulder, and she tensed. “You love… I don’t… Oh, God.”