She tried to reach for his hand, but he pulled it back. “Please, Nathaniel. Stop this.”
“I am coarse and violent,” he carried on, needing her to hate him so her heart would not break, “and though I despised my father, I am not so dissimilar to him. He married a woman like you, a woman so far above him that it made him realize how pitiful he was. That is why he became cruel, because she made him feel unworthy—not by her actions and not through any fault of hers, but simply by being. I would not put you in that situation. I would not become any more like him than I already am.”
A tear fled down Leah’s cheek. “What are you trying to say? I do not understand. How can you kiss me one moment, and say such things the next?”
“To protect you,” he growled, grabbing a fistful of his waistcoat, right above his heart. “It is the only good thing Icando. That is why you were right—the contract is null and void because my objective has also changed. I no longer wish to play games. Instead, I will do what I should have done in the first place; I will tell my mother the truth, and I will let that be enough to stop her from trying to match me again.”
Leah shook her head. “Is that story true? I do not believe it. I will not.”
“Ask Bill—the man you overheard me speaking with at the Countess’s carnival. I can arrange a meeting if you are not convinced,” he replied as calmly as he could. “He is the man who trained me; he will confirm it.”
Leah narrowed her eyes. “Then I do not believe you are unworthy.”
“That is not for you to decide,” he replied, a piercing pain shooting through his chest. “Leah, it is over. I will keep my promise and take all of the blame, but you must break the courtship. Tell the scandal sheets what I have told you tonight, but say nothing of my father’s part in it. Tell them what I am, tell them that I am known in the warehouses of the London Docks as “the Highwayman.” It will be enough to turn the tide of public opinion against me. No one will blame you for breaking our courtship. Indeed, I suspect you will be championed for it.”
His mother would be shocked, but she would find out from his mouth first, lessening the blow. And, in that one sacrifice, he would spare her from an investigation into her husband’s wicked antics—at the very least, from cruel gossip. He would face all of that alone, soothed only by the notion that he had protected his brother and the two women he loved most in the world.
I have fallen for you,he wished he could say.I do love you, but I am doing thisforyou. So, hate me, blame me, make yourself safe again.Meanwhile, he would have to keep the secret of his feelings to himself. A secret far greater than his other identity.
“It is over?” she choked.
He nodded. “It is. And do not forget, “the Highwayman.” That will seal your innocence in this.”
“I see.” She straightened up, anger flaring in her eyes. “Indeed, perhaps this is for the best, for I am beginning to think you arenotthe gentleman I thought you were. Not because of the story you have told me, but because you did not let me leave, because you kissed me first, and then you took a fist to my heart. No, you are not who I thought you were at all. Thank you, Nathaniel, for making this so easy.”
He was about to ask what she meant when she stormed past him and disappeared back into the dark of the empty room behind them, answering his unspoken question. The door slammed… and she was gone, marching out of his life forever.
Swallowing down a tide of rising tears, his eyes stinging, he turned to face the falling snow, letting the icy flakes cool his feverish skin.
“I love you,” he whispered, hating that he would never get to tell her, “but you must despise me now. Despise me with your whole heart, so it cannot break.”
He had thought the fight with Jonathan was over, wrongly believing his opponent was down for the count, but Nathaniel hoped the bell would now ring to end their bout, leaving no one beaten and bruised but him.
CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
For four days, Leah had not moved from her bed, feigning the same sickness that had temporarily afflicted Phoebe and Anna and seemed to be sweeping through London. She kept the drapes drawn, refused all food other than the soup her mother brought her, and slept fitfully, her dreams transforming into nightmares where a great bat swooped down and carried her off the balcony of Lord Haughton’s manor in its piercing talons. Still, even those nightmares were better than being awake, remembering everything that had passed between her and the man who had stolen her heart.
However, on the morning of the fifth day, she awoke from an afternoon nap to discover that the cavalry had been summoned.
Startled, she sat bolt upright, rubbing her bleary eyes as Matilda marched to the windows and yanked the drapes aside, letting in a haze of dull, grey light. “We know you are not unwell, Leah,” she said, returning to an armchair that had been dragged to Leah’s bedside. “So, begin at the beginning. What is the meaning of your self-exile?”
“Iamunwell,” Leah mumbled, shifting awkwardly beneath the bed linens. It was nigh-on impossible to lie to Matilda; she had a keen sense for deception.
Matilda clicked her tongue. “Try again. I touched your brow; there is no fever. Nor are you coughing and spluttering like a seal with a fish caught in its throat. I asked your mother; she said you had not had a cough of any kind.” A small sigh escaped her lips. “That is when I knew you were lying and became twice as concerned.”
“I could barely breathe for at least the first two days of my sickness,” Phoebe confirmed. “My sisters, too.”
Anna climbed up onto the edge of the bed and took hold of Leah’s hand. “What has happened, dearest Leah? I fear there is a lovesickness in the air.”
Without warning, Leah burst into tears, hiding her face beneath the edge of her blankets as her shoulders shuddered with the weight of it all, her shattered heart unable to hold itself together any longer—not in front her friends where there was no need to pretend.
All three of the young ladies crowded the bed, clambering right up onto it, smothering Leah with their tight embraces. They held her as she sobbed, letting out everything she had been bottling up for the past few days, fearful that even the smallest whimper would bring her mother and father, and with them, questions.
“It is over,” she whispered, explaining what had occurred on the balcony between strangling sobs that left her throat raw. For context, she told them about the botanical gardens and of Jonathan’s unwelcome appearance on the terrace at Lord Haughton’s ball, but that was all she could say. Indeed, reliving it all had exhausted the small amount of strength she had remaining. “But… despite everything,” she added weakly, “I love him. And I do not know what to do.”
Matilda hugged Leah tightly, muttering “scoundrel” under her breath.
“I am so very sorry,” Phoebe said, stroking Leah’s hair.
