Farah gasped, holding a horrified hand to her heart to keep it from bleeding out of her chest. “They—killed Dorian instead?”
“He happened to be working on a cipher for outside communication with my cell mate, Walters, and so we switched for the night, knowing the lazy guards had a hard time telling the difference between us.”
“Walters, you mean—Frank?”
His lids shuttered for only a moment. “Walters used to be brilliant and brutal and prone to manic episodes of extreme artistic genius. One of the best forgers ever captured. They tried to kill him that night, as well, but he survived to become the gentle simpleton you met. I suppose they left him alive because he can’t remember what happened, and therefore couldn’t speak against them.”
Farah couldn’t tell which was more responsible for the moisture on her cheeks, the relentless rain, or her tears. “Dear God.” She sniffed. “Your own father caused all this?”
A frightening satisfaction lifted her husband’s satyric features. “He paid his price, and was the first to experience my wrath. He funded my rise and, needless to say, there is a new Marquess of Ravencroft. His legitimate heir, Laird Liam Mackenzie.”
Farah didn’t even want to know what happened to the old one, and couldn’t exactly summon pity for the man who’d paid for the violent death of his own son.
“Liam Mackenzie is … your brother?” she breathed.
“Half brother,” he answered tightly. “I am only one of countless Mackenzie bastards out there. We tend to stay out of Laird Mackenzie’s way.”
“Why?” Farah asked.
He looked away, signaling that the matter was closed.
She wisely moved on. “Now Cranmer’s gone missing?”
“Dead. And they’ll never find the body.”
Farah wasn’t surprised. “How were you able to take on Blackwell’s identity?”
His lip curled into a snarl of disgust. “There are no words to describe the filth of the railway mixed with that of the prison. Infection killed more men than violence.” He swallowed obvious revulsion. “We truly could have been brothers. The Blackheart Brothers. And we smeared our faces and skin with soot and mud to protect it from the sun and cold when we worked. The added benefit was often men didn’t realize to whom they spoke if we weren’t standing next to each other. I lost all traces of my Highland brogue and learned his mannerisms and accent very early on. Once I grew to roughly his size, there was no telling us apart.”
“Who knows who you really are?” she asked.
“Murdoch, Argent, Tallow, and—well—Walters is confused most of the time. We were the five who ruled Newgate. The fingers that made a fist.” He curled his fingers over his scar, squeezing until the creases whitened. “We all knew it was supposed to be me who died in that cell. And we all wanted revenge, so we took it. And we’ve never stopped taking since.”
Farah found it difficult to digest his story, her mind threatening to regurgitate its ugliness onto the ground like so much rancid meat. “You won’t say his name,” she murmured. “Dorian Blackwell, the boy who died.”
“You don’t seem to understand. Whoever was left of the boy I was is buried in that mass grave along with his body. You did not marry Dougan Mackenzie.”
“Yes I did,” Farah insisted in a gentle whisper.
He pushed to his feet, standing over her like a reluctant executioner, about to carry out the sentence of a dark soul. “I am Dorian Blackwell. I will always be Dorian Blackwell. He lives on in me.”
Farah lifted to her knees, meaning to stand, but froze when he took a retreating step. “Then—I’ll love you as Dorian Blackwell,” she offered. “For I married him, as well.”
A quiet and painful desperation speared through her as his face hardened. “Do not speak of love, Farah. For it is something I cannot give.”
Stunned, she fell back on her haunches as though his words had physically pushed her down. “What?” Of course, Dorian had told her that before. But—things were different now.
“I can offer you protection. I can offer you revenge. I’ve given you your legacy. But I cannot offer you my heart, because I am not capable of giving something I don’t possess.”
Bleeding for him, Farah forgot to be proud, forgot to be strong, and prostrated herself on her knees in front of him, clasping her hands in supplication. Ready to give him anything. Her heart. Her soul. Her life. He was her soul mate, back from the dead. It would kill her to lose him again. She didn’t care what he’d done, what life had driven him to do. She’d take those sins upon her own head; carry the burdens of his memories on her slim shoulders. “You can have my heart,” she offered.
“You’d be a fool to give it to me,” he mocked, twisting his features into something foreign and frightening.
“Then I am a fool,” she insisted. “For I already have.”
“I do not suffer fools!” he hissed. “You gave your heart to Dougan, before you even knew what it meant. It is not meant for me.”
She seized his fist, pressing a kiss to the scarred knuckle. “But Dorian has begun to steal it, thieving highwayman that he is.”
“Then take it back!” He wrenched his fist from her grasp, pulling her off balance and forcing her to catch herself on the grass with her outstretched hands, soiling them with the mud beneath. “In my hands it will become corrupted. Poisoned. I’ll blacken it until you hate me almost as much as you hate yourself for giving it to me.” He thrust a finger at her to silence her reply. “Every part of my life has been bleak, brutal, and bloody—except you. I’ll not add your ruin to my many sins.”