door.
At first, there was no response to my summons, and I wondered if, it being shy of ten o’clock, the slug-a-bed marquess was still sleeping. I had raised my fist to rap again when the door jerked open. I clearly wasn’t the person he’d expected to see, for his face was twisted by a mask of rage. One that made me stiffen. But as soon as he realized it was me, it abruptly faded to reveal the pain lurking underneath. A pain he struggled to conceal with a contorted smile that I suspected was supposed to appear roguish, but merely made him look constipated.
I held up my hand to forestall him before he spoke. “No quips,” I ordered not ungently, for in the frame of mind he was in they were certain to be, at best, clumsy, if not outright vicious. “May I come in?”
“Alone?” he replied, evidently unable to keep the mockery from his voice.
I glowered at him.
He closed his eyes, exhaling a tightly drawn breath, and then nodded.
I glanced over my shoulder at Bree, who stood with her arms crossed, before following him inside and closing the door. She may have held doubts, but I knew I had nothing to fear from Marsdale, despite the evidence of the helpless anger simmering within him. Whatever he might tell me next was not meant for others’ ears, not even those as circumspect as Bree’s.
The bedchamber he’d been given was even more spacious than the one I currently occupied, though rather than being stuffed with furnishings, the arrangement of décor allowed for space to flow between them. Set into the southwest corner of the castle, it held vantages of the western braes, and the abbey ruins and the moors beyond.
He slumped against the back of one of the giltwood armchairs, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his trousers as he gazed morosely out the window. Mist draped the ruins of the abbey like gossamer lace, hiding and then revealing the ancient stone as it shifted, and the moors stood silent and still, the dormant heather adorned in a gray shroud, which seemed to suit his mood.
“You didn’t kill Helmswick,” I stated, advancing toward him.
He turned to look at me. “No.”
“And neither did Eleanor.”
His eyes searched mine, as I came to a stop before him. “No.”
I tilted my head, hearing the pain that echoed within the hollowness of his voice. “But perhaps, right about now, you’re both wishing you had.”
His brow furrowed. “Yes, well, think what you will of me, but it’s a bitter pill to swallow, thinking you might actually be given a second chance to correct the biggest blunder of your life, to be with the woman you love, to claim the life you should have led all along, had you not been such a colossal idiot.”
He turned aside, as if embarrassed he’d said too much.
“Eleanor told me what happened between you.”
The cording of his neck tightened as he swallowed. “Then you know what a contemptible blackguard I was.”
“What I know is that you were both young and afraid, and you hadn’t been shown the best example of how to comport yourselves.”
He glanced sideways at me, and I arched my eyebrows, daring him to disagree with me.
I turned to pace toward the window, knowing that he would better accept what I had to say next if I was not looking at him. “But now that you’re older, you understand that age does not necessitate wisdom, and love is often complicated. Sometimes people are the most hurtful to those they care the deepest about.”
I paused to stare out at the scene below as a shaft of sunlight penetrated through the mist, briefly illuminating a portion of the lawn, a battered wall, and the tracery of the remains of one of the abbey’s rose windows. Once upon a time, the light glistening off the stained glass must have been a glorious sight. Then the fog eddied and swirled, smothering the sun again. But if one sunbeam had penetrated, then it was only a matter of time before another would, and then another and another, until the haze was obliterated by light.
“Did you know your father outbid Lord Stratford for one of my paintings?”
The manner in which his feet shifted behind me said that he had not. I’d certainly been shocked when the murderous Stratford had revealed it to me over a year ago.
“It was one of the portraits I painted during my exile. I modeled it from my memory of a