“And what?” he pressed, folding his arms at his broad chest. Her mouth went dry. Standing as he was, Lucas exuded strength and she ached to slip into his arms once again and know that vitality.
“And I’d seek the stories contained beyond those military feats. Who were those men?” she asked, approaching him. “What did they dream of beyond war and what would they do once returning home? Whom did they love?” her voice trailed off on those silly, girlish musings that had traipsed through her mind while pouring over those books. Those dreams had carried into womanhood, when she’d hoped for love. A husband. A family of her own.
“Those were the only books I read,” he said quietly. “Only I, as only a foolish young man could, dreamed of battlefield glory.” Odd, they’d been born to different stations and, yet, they’d both poured over those same works, taking from them their own visions of a future. “When I returned from war, my rooms had been arranged precisely as they’d been when I’d left. And my mother and sister lovingly filled it with those same books that held me riveted as a boy and inspired me as a hopeful young man. Of all the titles in our great library, these are the ones they delivered to me.”
Books of war, and triumph, and great glory. “They could not know,” she said gently. How could anyone ever know unless they suffered through the hell of war?
“No,” he agreed. “But the longer I was home, they ceased to see their son and brother and all looked upon me as an oddity, until it became easier to shut myself away.” He laughed. It was a harsh, empty sound. “It was as though they believed if I read the books I once loved and donned the same garments, that I could somehow be the man I’d been before.”
She knew what it was to earn the horrified looks of all. To the world, she’d ceased to exist as anything more than an extension of her father’s crimes. Not unlike this man, she’d found her peace in hiding. It was a crime that a man who’d valiantly fought for his King and country should impose exile upon himself. Yet, he’d left his bed—for her.
Eve fanned the well-read book and lingered her gaze on one bent page. She worked her gaze over the words inked there, settling on a single sentence in the middle.
“...For my part, I had rather be the first man among these fellows than the second man in Rome...”
“I am the spare.”
She looked up and her heart raced. He stood but a handful of steps away. How was it possible for a man of his size and strength to move with such a stealthy grace?
“Richard is heir to an earldom,” he went on to explain. “It is why I had a commission purchased.” And in the end, he’d returned a man battling monsters. Her chest tightened and she fought the urge to rub the pain there.
“Is that truly why?” Knowing him just a short while, she no more believed that than he himself did.
He chuckled. “No,” he conceded. “Aidan is the youngest, impulsive brother, and Theodosia...my sister, well you’ve met Theo. She is the hopeful dreamer.” A grin turned his lips, and this was real, and easy, and not at all the hard-mocking sneer that had met her a week earlier. Lips that had covered her own. Lips that she wished to know once more. Her heart sped up and cheeks afire, she looked again at the book.
To give her fingers something to do, Eve picked up the small, aged leather copy and turned it over in her hands. “And what are you?” she forced herself to ask, needing a glimpse of the man who’d rushed off to fight.
“Me?” He quirked a black eyebrow; that slight arcing so enticingly wicked. “Why, I was the honorable one. The one who ran off to defeat Boney’s forces all on my own.” Lucas gave his head a sad shake and a midnight curl fell across his brow. “And they all expected I would return the same man who left them.”
Her fingers twitched with the need to brush that silken strand back. “I never knew a brother or sister. As I mentioned, my mother died when I was born. You are fortunate to have siblings,” she murmured. “They know you’re the same honorable man who left them.” Even if Lucas didn’t see it himself.
“They pity me,” he said, perching his hip on the bed post. A little fluttering danced in her belly. How had she failed to note the intimacy in visiting Lucas in his chambers? In talking to him of one another’s pasts?
“They love you,” she countered. She’d spent her life an only child, more often than not forgotten by her father, until she’d become of political use to him as hostess. She thought of the Duchess of Devlin and the pain in her eyes. “They might not know the books you once read bring reminders you don’t need...” Leather tome in hand, Eve motioned to the door. “But then, how can they know who you are now or what you’d care to read if you do not let them back in?”
Lucas had locked himself away in this room; shutting his family out. Shutting the memories of all that was once good, out. Shutting out the entire world. He deserved to live. Even if he believed himself unworthy of that gift.
Holding his gaze, she walked with slow, deliberate steps to the drawn curtains.
“What are you doing?” he rasped, as she reached for the fabric.
“I’m letting the night in,” she said softly. “Because until you confront the night, you can never greet the day.”
A sharp cry burst from his lips and he raced across the room just as she tossed the gold brocade open. “Do not—” Lucas’ entreaty swiftly died.
The moon’s soft glow cast a shimmery white glow upon the hardwood floor, the pale light glancing off the polished mahogany furniture.
She braced for his stinging diatribe.
Instead, a long silence filled the room, punctuated by the loudly ticking clock. Lucas’ gaze remained riveted on the crystal windowpanes that revealed the English countryside, awash in moonlight. “I had forgotten how beautiful it was.”
She struggled to hear that faint whisper; words spoken more to himself. Unable to confront the depth of emotion parading over the chiseled planes of his face, Eve stared out at the countryside seeing it also through new eyes. For nearly two years, she’d buried herself in whatever work she managed to secure, before her identity was invariably discovered. She’d lived, not unlike Lucas, as a shell of a person who’d ceased to see the world around her—the shimmering white light of a full moon’s glow. The emerald green of the rolling English countryside. The countless stars glittering in the night sky.
Lucas slipped his hand into hers and gave a slight squeeze. No words were needed. And though it was the height of folly, with every moment spent with this man, he cast a greater and greater hold, making her wish for things that could never be.
Eve battled down the panic roiling through her belly. There would be time enough for worry, later... For now, in this instant, there was only them.
Chapter 7
In the days that passed, all the haunting legends about Castle Rayne had receded. During the days, the manor had come to feel more like a home than any of the others Eve had known as a motherless girl, forced around the Continent by her father.
Until the night sky crept in and darkness descended over the countryside.
As a girl, Eve had come to appreciate that there was no such thing as true silence. For even in the absolute absence of sound, there remained the sharp hum of quiet. There were branches that struck lead windowpanes. Winds that howled across the countryside. From somewhere deep within Castle Rayne, there was a distant bang, followed by more quiet.
Eve swallowed hard. For all her bravado and mockery of the tales of ghosts, she drew the covers tight to her chin and stared wide-eyed up at the ceiling. It is just my imagination. There are no such things as ghosts or curses...well, mayhap there are curses, but there are certainly not ghost—
Thump.
Her pulse pounded in her ears and she yanked the covers over her head. Once more, the loud midnight humming served as the only sound as she stared into the inky blackness.