“We can change that,” she cried. “Together.”
He bent and thrust his strong, cruel face into hers, water falling from his hair onto her skin. “That’s what you’re too blind to see. I don’t want to change. I like being the Blackheart of Ben More. I relish making the imbeciles that run this empire into my puppets. I feed on the fear of others. I love to crush my enemies and outwit the police. I am not the redeemable hero, Farah. I am not the boy who loved you. I am the villain—”
“Fine!” Farah held her soiled hands up. “All right. I’ll take it, all of it. I’ll take you just as you are. Dorian Blackwell, the Blackheart of Ben More. I’ve seen the kind of man you are, how you take care of those whom you pretend not to care about. I’m your wife. I’ve been your wife for seventeen years. I love you.”
His next words made her doubt the twitching flicker of agonized emotion that struggled to peel itself from his bones before he crushed it behind his mask of ice and stone. “I know what you’re thinking, Farah. Don’t you think it has been offered to me before? Maybe if you love me enough. Accept me enough. Set a good example of compassion and kindness that you’ll make me a better man.”
He was so astute, so brutally correct, that Farah had to force herself not to cringe from him.
“There is no better man under this.” He gestured to his scarred eye. “In fact, with you here, I’m much worse. I lose control around you, Farah. You make me blind. The thought of touching you dissolves me into madness. The thought of another man touching you…” He grabbed her wrists and held the raw skin in front of her eyes. “Look what I’ve done. What I—forced you to do upstairs.”
“You didn’t force me,” Farah breathed. “I—wanted you.”
“I would have.”
“You can’t have done,” she argued. “Dorian, I’ll never deny you. I’m yours. Only yours. Just like you’ve always said.”
Before her eyes he became a stranger. The vestiges of the angry, possessive Dougan Mackenzie disappeared. And even the cold, aloof, and dominant Dorian Blackwell gave way to someone new. It wasn’t just the light and life that disappeared from his eyes, but the shadows and mystery, too. It was almost like watching him jump off the edge of a cliff. She’d never in her life felt so utterly helpless. Not with her hands bound to the bed. Not when they’d taken the boy she’d loved away from her. Not ever.
“What about your promise?” she reminded him desperately. “You promised me a child.”
“Consider this the first time of many that I’ll disappoint you.”
“But you said that you always keep your promises.”
“I was wrong to say that.”
Farah panicked. He wasn’t just retreating. It was like watching him die. Right there, in front of her. Severing the ties with the last of his humanity. With the part of himself that still searched for her after all these years.
“Why?” She hated the pleading note in her voice.
“As I said before.” He straightened, his hair hanging down into his eyes. “I do not suffer fools.”
He stepped over her like one would a sopping puddle and strode toward the house. Farah watched his drenched clothing molding to the wide back he held as straight as an arrow.
She fought her heavy, sodden skirts to stand. The ache in her heart echoed in the falls of his feet on the wet flagstone walk to the house. It was like she’d thrown her heart beneath his boots and each beat was the stomp of his heel.
Well, she wasn’t a flame to be stomped out so easily. “Then why marry me?” she called after him, pushing her wet ringlets out of her eyes. “Why capture me and bind my life to yours if you planned to cast me away? What’s the bloody point?”
“The point is, I’m a bastard,” he replied over his shoulder. “In every sense of the word.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Why doona ye go with her?” Murdoch asked for maybe the millionth time. “It’d be a damned sight better than staying locked up here and working yerself to death.”
Dorian looked up from where he unpacked crates of books he’d unloaded this morning, and swiped a forearm across his sweating brow. He’d been up and down the library ladder possibly hundreds of times today, and planned to climb it a hundred more, until every book had been placed where it belonged. Maybe then, he’d expand the wine cellar. Regardless of his past, there were times his hands ached for the feel of a sledgehammer or a pickaxe again. Perhaps he’d dig a tunnel to France. By himself.
“Blackwell—”
“It’s this, or drinking,” Dorian interrupted. “Pick one.”
“Drinking yerself to death would certainly be more enjoyable,” his steward muttered.
A flurry of dust erupted as Dorian dropped a pile of gold-leafed hardcovers on the table with a loud crack. “Is there something that needs attending?” he asked irately.
“Yer wife,” Murdoch challenged.
Dorian paused, a pang of pure agony spearing through him with such force he couldn’t bring himself to lift his head above the book spines in front of him. “Careful, old man.”
“Ye aren’t even going to say good-bye?”
“She’s going to Hampshire, Murdoch, not the Indies. It’s an hour or so by train.” Dorian sorted through books he could not see, moving them from pile to pile just to avoid the knowing stare of his oldest living friend. “It’s better this way,” he finally murmured.