Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,110

oh, God, indeed.

“Who is he?” he implored.

“So that you can find him?” she shot back.

Faye might as well have struck him for all the hurt and horror on his face. “I wouldn’t deceive you, Faye. If I had wanted to strike him down for daring to come near you and”—he blushed—“and…”

Make love to her, Faye silently supplied. Faye, however, also knew better than to speak those words aloud, lest she rouse her brother’s fury any more toward Tynan and inadvertently end whatever goodwill her brother had managed to show in his earlier exchange with him.

She ran a tired hand down her face. Oh, were the whole day not responsible for utterly and completely shattering her heart, she would have laughed at her former rogue of a brother being wholly unable to utter aloud the words of what she’d been doing, but then… brothers.

Faye sank onto the arm of the sofa. “He was a prison warden.” She paused.

Tristan sharpened his gaze on her. “Of what prison?”

Oh, bloody hell.

“Faye?” he said tightly.

“Newgate.”

Her brother went absolutely motionless, and then a curse exploded from his lips, a black one she’d never before heard from Tristan’s lips.

“Tynan Wylie? The man charged with bribery and imprisoned? That is who you’ve been keeping company with?” His whisper teemed with fury and horror.

“He was helping me with my research on a project.”

“Oh, I bet he was,” Tristan gritted out. He dragged his hands through his unkempt hair. “My God, Faye, what in hell were you thinking involving yourself with one such as him?” His features grew strained. “Giving yourself to…”

“Stop,” she cried. “Just stop making what he and I did tawdry and shameful. It wasn’t. I… I enjoyed being with him.”

He choked, shaking his head, and green as he’d gone, he was one more word from casting up the contents of his stomach.

“Not that way,” she exclaimed, tossing her arms up. “Well, that way, too, but—”

At the pained, strangled sound that garbled in his throat, she swiftly shifted course.

“It is about more than the physical, Tristan. I enjoyed talking with him and being myself, a-and…” Her voice and lips trembled, and she hastily bit down hard on her lip, hoping to not only steady her words, but blunt the pain ripping through her.

She distantly registered Tristan sliding onto the sofa beside her.

“He didn’t want to help me,” she whispered, because despite her brother’s disapproval and rage, she needed someone to talk to. And like Claire and Christina, she’d once been able to talk to him about anything. “He insisted what I was doing was foolish and sought to talk me out of it.” Faye wrapped her arms around her middle. “But he helped me anyway. And being with him”—closer than she’d ever been with anyone—“I saw who he was, Tristan.” She tried to will him to understand.

“And who is he?” he asked guardedly.

“He’s a man who looks after people, but does so in a way that his efforts are a secret to the whole world. He is a man who is devoted to his sister.” A man who loved poetry so much he kept that little volume close. “A man who helps children in the streets.” She held her brother’s gaze. “Can a single one of us in our family even claim to have done anything so noble or honorable?”

“A man who is noble and honorable doesn’t go about bribing those in his prison care,” he said with a grating level of superiority.

That was what he would see. None of the good she’d spoken of. But rather, the deed that had landed Tynan in prison.

“You don’t know anything of it,” she scoffed. “Not a single one of us do, Tristan.” Storming to her feet, she faced him, relishing the fact that, seated as he was, she towered over him. That advantage added a sense of satisfaction to her lecture. “Our parents committed crimes of their own, and we benefited from those sins. We lived a life of comfort and prestige and security.” He tried to speak, but she continued over him. “Even when the truth fell out, we never knew the hardship reserved for those born outside our station. You moved into Black’s, a luxuriant hotel, where you lived freely on those comforts because of the elevated people you kept company with. Did we help feed the poor in the streets? Or see that those struggling had the help that you were so granted because of our connections?”

Another rush of color flooded his cheeks, and at this rate,