He stood then. As close to the sheet as possible. As far as his chains would allow.
He smelled her. He sensed her heat. He raised his hand, letting his fingers trail down the center of the flimsy material dividing them. He imagined running them over her sweetly curved breasts, rising and falling with each splendid breath. Devon wanted to cup each breast and to tease his tongue over each nipple−until it grew hard, to taste the salt of her skin. He laughed at the decay of his thoughts. Of the animal he’d become. He sank on his pallet. “Why is the sheet between us? So as not to remember the visage of your husband when he hangs. I suppose the experience would not be a romantic memory.” She cleared her throat, but before she attempted to say anything, he answered for her. “No apologies necessary. I guessed as much. And have you any curiosity about me?”
“I’m afraid I do.” Her voice pitched for a second, too complex to attribute to one single emotion. Guilt? Desperation? Fear? But why?
“I am not expected to explain the entirety of it to you?” he said, his own tone must have betrayed his reluctance to do so.
“My time is limited, but if you would supply me−” Her voice drifted off.
“You mean am I a murderer or some other vile character you’d attach yourself to? The answer is no. You are safe.” He leaned over, thanking providence for that hole. She stood in light. He sat in darkness. He watched her exhale. The tops of her breasts glowing in the light. Her scent heady to his senses. He sat torn between laughter, lust, and despair.
“Why are you here?” she asked, her voice soft, lilting.
“It was nothing but a grotesque, mockery of justice meted out by that jack-pudding of a brutally vindictive King.” He laughed and her eyes widened. His laughter shocked her. Did she wonder of his sanity?
“Are you so heedless of your punishment that you laugh at the threshold of an eternity you are about to enter?”
Was it possible she grew more ethereal in the lantern light? A feast for his eyes and torment for his body. Stuck in a dark cell for months, he counted the stones day in and day out. Her question taunted him, reminding him how he arrived at this wretched point in his life.
His sole ambition had been nothing more than retiring to the quiet existence of a country physician. Yet fate delivered a cruel twist. He had been dragged from his bed to perform a surgery on the Duke of Monmouth, the rebel leader responsible for the war incited against the King. The insurrection fell, crushed by the Crown. Too late for retreat, the rebels discovered the sovereign’s soldiers surrounded them. Including Devon. Despite his innocence, he stood guilty of treason against the King, his trifling connection with the rebels, fatal evidence. With bitterness, he recalled the unjust verdict handed down from a marionetted jury, pronounced by the King’s pasty-faced judge. By God, if he broke free, he’d have his revenge.
“Surely, it’s good I keep my humor to retain my sanity. For I am an innocent man whose only offense stemmed from practicing a charity. For my benevolence, I earned a rope about my neck.” Did he see her face soften? Did she believe him when everyone else had damned him? Why did he care what she thought? Somehow her understanding mattered to him.
There had been times in his life, he courted decency. Those glimpses of his past held treasured moments brought on by this beautiful woman who appeared at his darkest hour. Images of his long-dead mother, like an old dream, all the golden eternities of his past and all the living and dying and heartbreak that went on over and over in his head. In those flashes of sudden remembrance, the lack of being able to protect his mother and father plagued him. His hands shook…sweaty and helpless.
“There is no one you can plead to?”
It was a weak effort at sympathy. He gritted his teeth. He realized she knew her transparency the minute she spoke her words. “Good God! Are you not aware of the generation of vipers we live in? Unjust monarchs feed on us mere mortals, men so easy for slaughter. The moment they cease to be cruel is the moment they begin to be bored. There is no compassion for a soul like me, only damnation based on falsehood.”
She took a step forward and stared at the sheet like a queen. “So what is left of your remaining time? Bitterness? Vengeance?”
“Have you noticed it’s much easier to forgive an enemy after you get even?”
“Revenge is sweet upon your tongue, but the little time you have left, it will only taste bitter. I will not listen to your talk of treason.”
“A toast to our wonderful and just King James. As a member of his illustrious and devout aristocracy, why am I not surprised?” He directed the full blast of his hostility toward her. She represented the nobility that determined his fate. Was it a trick of his mind to expect empathy from her? “There is no passion of the heart that promises so much as revenge.”
“The fruit harvested from vengeance bears little.”
She studied the sheet with curious intensity, trying to discern him, still unaware he observed everything about her. There was so much expression in those eyes…as if she cared for his soul. His chains grew heavy, chafing at his flesh. Long ago, he would have respected those words. She was no different than the King and his well-bred aristocrats who destroyed him. “It would be a kind providence for the people of England, if the King would leave this earthly terrain, his passing heralding a public improvement.”
She inhaled. “You have not answered my question. You will marry me, won’t you?”
“Don’t count your eggs before they’re in the pudding.” She swiped at a tear. Devon reared back. Bloody hell. His chest ached with the vulnerability, the grief and fear in this beautiful creature’s eyes. What made him want to take her in his arms and comfort her? They were the same, prisoners in their own worlds. “Tell me,” he urged, but he had a difficult time tamping down the devil within. “Perhaps your countenance compares to a terrapin, or your figure resembles a bovine form?” The devil broke loose. He enjoyed this diversion. Her outrage amused him. He could imagine her tearing down the sheet to strike him. She reigned more beautiful than ever.
“You ask too many questions.”
“Will you answer then?”
“No,” she said, her eyes half veiled by tears, like golden water seen through mists of rain. What had reduced her to beg a felon? He wanted the truth. Every bit of her history. She was an enigma to him, a distraction from the hangman’s rope. Devon raked his fingers through his hair, shaken by his reaction to her. “Is there not someone you can trust with such a sacred vow?” He waited for an explanation.
Claire didn’t know why she had to explain herself to this man, a complete stranger, a felon who provoked her at every turn. She had no recourse than to be honest with him. Besides the engagement was to be announced tomorrow. Perhaps by telling him the truth, he would agree to marry her. Reason. That was it. It was her only alternative. Nothing but the truth, for he would see through any falsehood. “I was in love with someone. I-I mean I thought I was in love with someone− until this morning when I learned what a cad he was.”
“Go on.”
He had a pleasant, vibrant voice, tempered and muted by his Irish accent. It was a voice that could woo seductively and caressingly, or command in such a way as to compel obedience. Indeed, the man’s whole nature was in that voice of his.
She sensed he would listen. “I loved Sir Thomas Durham my entire life, but being shy and plain, I had no hopes of him looking my way.” The prisoner snorted but she ignored him. She had always yearned for some attachment from Sir Thomas, even a look her way, but never so much as a glance. “Being impoverished by society’s standards, I wasn’t good enough.”
