Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,113
pathetic, miserable warden.”
“And you are just resentful that you’ve been replaced. Either way, it appears your Miss Poplar was successful where I failed with the gentleman.”
Your Miss Poplar. Except, Faye wasn’t his. A rueful smile twisted his lips as he stared off across the room to that seat where she’d sat. Independent, strong of spirit and convictions, Faye wasn’t the manner of woman who’d ever belong to any man, and it was just one of the things that he loved—
His entire body seized. Sweat slicked his skin.
No. He could not love Faye. Respect her. Admire her. Like her, even. He’d allowed even that. But love her? That would be folly. Letting anyone in. Why, look at what had happened when he’d been imprisoned, and his sister had been left on her own? It was…
True.
He slumped in his chair and slammed his hands against his face over and over.
“Dare I take it that this is the moment you realize you are in love?” his sister asked, almost conversationally.
He let his palms fall to the arms of his chair and sank even farther in his seat. “You may so presume,” he muttered.
Sara picked up her embroidery frame and proceeded to drag the needle through the tightly pulled fabric. “And this is a bad thing?”
“Can loving someone ever be a good thing?” he countered.
His sister gasped. “Are you off your head? Of course it is. It is—”
“It is strife and responsibility and misery. It’s that, too,” he added. “The awful that comes from any such closeness far outweighs any good that comes from it.”
“Is that how you’ve felt about me?” she asked, sadness wreathing her singsong voice.
He scrambled to the edge of his seat. “No. That isn’t what I meant.” And yet, it was what he’d said. “You don’t understand. Every day, there comes worry.”
“And so you are better off without love because of it?”
The answer should be yes, and yet, it wasn’t. The happiest he’d been in the whole of his damned life had been with Faye Poplar about, challenging him, and reading poetry with him, and being part of this tiny family of two that he’d kept secret for fear of how the world would use that against him.
He burst to his feet.
Sara glanced up. “Dare I hope you are going where I think you should be going?” she asked, pulling that needle through her frame once more.
“I have matters to see to first,” he said gruffly.
“Just see that those matters do not delay you too much, Tynan.”
A short while later, Tynan found himself being escorted through a familiar residence.
He’d not been turned away outright, which was certainly promising. But then, the benevolent lord who called this palatial keep home wasn’t the manner of man who’d turn the indolent away. Not even one like Tynan, who’d failed him, and in those failings, he had betrayed all the efforts this man had made on behalf of a needy boy from the workhouse.
The butler showed Tynan into the conservatory. Cast in darkness, Tynan blinked several times to adjust his eyes and peered around the space brimming with greenery in search of the one person he sought.
Then he found him. Humming quietly to himself, Lord Lothian, his head bent over a potted plant, gave no indication that he heard or saw anything beyond that bloom commanding his attention. But then, he spoke aloud, directing his words to the plant before him. “You returned, my boy.”
Taking that as a cue to enter, Tynan came forward. “I have.”
There’d only been one person in the whole of his life who’d called Tynan my boy. It hadn’t been his abusive father. It hadn’t even been Tynan’s mother, a woman he’d been more able to protect than she’d been able to protect him.
It had been this man.
A man who’d believed in him and given him a path to a future that Tynan had squandered. A squandering he’d not realized, perhaps until this very moment.
The marquess shifted slightly, “I’ve already told you, Tynan. I am not going to help you as long as you are unwilling to—”
“I’m in love,” he said quietly and then instantly recoiled. The admission, where had it come from? He’d not even made it to himself, even as he’d known what had brought him here. Who had brought him here.
“What?”
“I…” Restless, he began to pace. “There is a woman. A lady. And I hate ladies, Lord Lothian. You know that. I hate the whole damned peerage. With the exception of you, of course,” he added when