“What?” Evangeline backed up a step, crossed her arms.
He winced, and hoped telling her everything was the right thing to do. “You remember when my sister mentioned my love of curricle races?”
She nodded, brow furrowed, eyes frightened.
Devil take it. He didn’t want to tell her any of this…but she deserved to hear the truth from him, rather than through secondhand visions or thirdhand rumors.
He let out a slow breath. “I was seventeen. Home on holiday. Positive my father’s order to ‘mind my safety’ was yet another of his high-handed attempts to control my life. Ban me from curricle racing, would he? Fine. Then no one would drive it. In anger, I took a sledge to the axle to render it unusable, then returned to the house still primed for a fight. When my father called me an immature pup in front of servants and siblings alike, I was too angry and embarrassed to admit what I’d just done to the carriage. Instead I screamed about how he couldn’t tell me what to do, that he’d be sorry he tried, and stomped off to my chambers without looking back.”
Her warm hand settled on his arm, stroked softly. “Adolescents and their parents are frequently at odds. Rendering a family carriage unusable is a petty prank, but I don’t see how it makes you a murderer.”
“I could have prevented the accident,” Gavin confessed when his throat cleared enough to allow the passage of words. “I thought the axle was unusable, but it held together just long enough to...”
He closed his eyes to block the memory. It didn’t work.
When he reopened them, Evangeline’s expression was horrified.
“Iknewmy father planned to dine elsewhere. That he’d promised my sister he and my mother would set out that very night with gifts for her baby. ” He swallowed thickly. “I thought I was forcing them to stay home. Instead, they left… and never came back.”
Evangeline clapped her hands over her mouth, paled, backed against the wall.
“My mother was thrown from the carriage. She died in my arms. My father and the horses slid over a curved precipice into the river below. That night, my brother inherited the viscountcy. He never forgave me.” Gavin smiled humorlessly. “I never forgave myself. How could I? I’d purposely sabotaged the carriage that killed our parents.”
She looked like she might be ill at any moment.
“People talk,” he continued. Lord, did they. And why not? He’d given them plenty to talk about. “By dawn, the tragedy was common knowledge, as was the asinine threat that preceded it. My brother’s first act as viscount was to evict me. I couldn’t blame him. It was better than being hung for my crime.”
Evangeline shook her head, groped for the door, stumbled out into the corridor.
Gavin’s flesh chilled in terror. He’d told her the truth, and now she was as horrified as everyone else. He’d warned her he wasn’t a good person. He’dwarnedher.
He shoved the folded parchment into a pocket and sprinted after her. She wasn’t far, just outside the door, hugging herself, back to the wall. When he came to stand in front of her, several heart-stopping moments passed before she finally met his gaze.
“Did you tell everyone you hadn’t meant for your parents to die?” she asked, her voice wooden, her eyes dull.
“David was too angry to speak to me. I rode to Rose’s, to tell her Mother and Father weren’t coming, to tell her why. She already knew. Wouldn’t let me in.” He shrugged. “I didn’t care about anyone else’s opinion. Didn’t realize the gossip would matter. By the time mourning was officially over and I made my first attempt to rejoin Society, it was too late. Even my tailor gave me the cut direct. Everyone. I was an outcast. And I deserved no better.”
Evangeline hugged herself tighter. “What did you do then?”
“I went to work. I had nothing else to do, nothing to live for. Then I moved to Braintree and Bocking. Eventually bought a home, turned a profit, remembered my love of art. And then, barely a month ago, I discovered the depth of one’s pockets correlates inversely with the length of theton’s memories.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, the sister that spent years refusing my letters decided to come calling with her family. A baroness who hadn’t spoken to me in a dozen years suddenly wished to leg-shackle me to her daughter. Even another death couldn’t deter the Rutherford clan from eating my food and depleting my whisky. I wasn’t a person. I was a scandal sheet and a pocketbook. An object of derision, wealth, and fear.” Gavin hesitated, fighting the sensation of his heart in his eyes. “Then came you.”
He reached for her.
She flinched.
Part of his soul died.
“You’d better go.” Evangeline stared at him for a moment, then looked away. She motioned down the hall with one listless finger. “Susan can’t hold Francine captive forever.”
“I promised you a carriage to anywhere you chose, but…don’t leave me. Please.” He reached out, gripped her tense shoulders. His voice trembled with desperation. “I need you.”
Her gaze lowered. She said nothing.
He released her, backed up a step, paused just in case…
